Tuesday, January 9, 2018

HOMELESS CRISIS IN LA RAZA MEXICAN-OCCUPIED SAN DIEGO



THE STAGGERING COST OF THE WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND THE LA RAZA SUPREMACY DEMOCRAT PARTY HAVE BUILT BORDER to OPEN BORDER’

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s 2017 report, illegal immigrants, and their children, cost American taxpayers a net $116 billion annually -- roughly $7,000 per alien annually. While high, this number is not an outlier: a recent study by theHeritage Foundation found that low-skilled immigrants (including those here illegally) cost Americans trillions over the course of their lifetimes, and a study from the National Economics Editorial found that illegal immigration costs America over $140 billion annually. As it stands, illegal immigrants are a massive burden on American taxpayers.
POPULATION EXPLOSION FOR GRINGO WELFARE

THE HORDES OF ILLEGALS KEEP COMING…. Despite America’s jobs, housing and Mexican crime tidal wave.


"If the racist "Sensenbrenner Legislation" passes the US Senate, there is no doubt that a massive civil disobedience movement will emerge. Eventually labor union power can merge with the immigrant civil rights and "Immigrant Sanctuary" movements to enable us to either form a new political party or to do heavy duty reforming of the existing Democratic Party. The next and final steps would follow and that is to elect our own governors of all the states within Aztlan." 

Border Crossings under Trump Back at Obama’s Numbers

The number of illegal aliens apprehended and determined to be inadmissible along the southwest border with Mexico rose again in December. The figures exceed those under President Barrack Obama in the months leading up to the surge of unaccompanied minors and families in 2014. The number of families apprehended in December 2017 rose 15 percent over the previous month.

After falling to historically low rates in March and April 2017, the number of apprehensions began rising for seven consecutive months. In December 2017, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 30,000 between the ports of entry, according to a report published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Tuesday morning.
The number of apprehensions is lower than one year ago when migrants rushed ahead of the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Breitbart Texas reported. In December 2016, agents apprehended 43,375 who crossed the border illegally. In 2017, that number fell to 28,996.
In June 2014, Breitbart Texas’ Brandon Darby published a series of photographs from the federal government, showing massive numbers of unaccompanied minors being warehoused in shoddy detention facilities. The revelation of these images swept across the globe and arguably changed the political discussion of border security in America.
In December 2013, the number of migrants apprehended and determined to be inadmissible rose to 36,695. In the months leading up to the June 2014 report, those numbers would increase to 66,541. That number in December 2017 rose to 40,513, an increase of 3,818 over the same month in 2013.
The number of apprehensions in December 2017 fell slightly compared to the previous month. Agents apprehended 29,082 in November. The December apprehensions reflect a 0.3 percent decrease from the prior month.
However, the numbers of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and Family Unit Aliens (FMUA) continue to rise. UAC apprehensions rose from 3,990 in November to 4,083 in December. FMUA apprehensions rose from 7,015 to 8,121 over the same period.
“The general consensus among border patrol and other experts is that the numbers have rebounded because of the court-imposed catch and release policy, whereby a rogue federal judge decided that all illegally arriving minors have to be released, even if they are with their parents,” Center for Immigration Studies Policy Director Jessica Vaughan told Breitbart Texas on Tuesday.
Vaughan added:
Basically, the smugglers have figured out that illegal crossers with kids will be detained briefly and then allowed to stay indefinitely, whether they try to claim asylum or just join the larger illegal population. It’s a great service to sell, and there’s a huge market, and so they keep getting richer off of this illicit trade, until Congress steps in or until the Trump administration figures out a way around this problem. But the cost to American communities that have to accommodate these new arrivals is getting to be astronomical – not only the cost for schools, health care and welfare services, but also the cost in public safety, because MS-13 and other gangs have figured out how to game the system too. They have boosted their numbers and gone on a crime and killing spree that is unprecedented in places where they are settling.
The Rio Grande Valley in South Texas continues to lead the eight other sectors of the southwestern border with Mexico in terms of the apprehension of UACs and FMUAs. The sector accounts for 46 and 61 percent respectively of the number of apprehensions in Fiscal Year 2018 year-to-date figures.
The UACs are reported to be coming from Guatemala (5,697), Mexico (2,433), Honduras (1,740), and El Salvador (993). Guatemala also leads the list of countries sending FMUAs to the U.S. with 10,650 in the first three months of FY2018. This is followed by Honduras (5,545), El Salvador (3,136), and Mexico (481).
The increase in family apprehensions in December came as the Trump Administration discussed the implementation of a policy to protect these children being put in danger by their family members, Breitbart Texas reported.
“It’s cruel for parents to place the lives of their children in the hands of transnational criminal organizations and smugglers who have zero respect for human life and often abuse or abandon children,” Acting DHS Press Secretary Tyler Houlton said in a written statement in December. She explained the administration is committed to exploring “all possible measures” to protect children.
Vaughan explained, “in the absence of Congressional action to supersede the court, ICE seems to think it has no choice but to start cracking down on this practice. Separating the children from their parents is not ideal, but we have to remember that this is a choice the parents have made, it’s part of a criminal enterprise, and the alternative of simply releasing the kids has been a disaster for American communities.”
“Those who find this objectionable should get behind the legislation pending from the House Judiciary Committee that would give the government more flexibility to handle the problem in a way that is more appropriate and will be more effective,” she stated.
Breitbart Texas has reported frequently on 

children and minors who are abandoned by 

their smugglers and left to die in the fields of 

South Texas and deserts of southern Arizona.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTXGab, and Facebook.
San Diego homelessness crisis remains after hepatitis A outbreak

By Emanuele Saccarelli
9 January 2018
In spite of a series of initiatives carried out by the local political establishment in response to a recent public health crisis, the city of San Diego continues to remain in the grips of a homelessness crisis.
Official reports indicate that more than 9,000 homeless people live on the streets of San Diego, with over a thousand of them being concentrated in the downtown area. According to these latest figures, which are widely believed to underestimate the problem, San Diego has the fourth largest homeless population in the country.
In 2017, the total number of homeless people nationwide reportedly increased for the first time in seven years. While the national number increased by about 1 percent, the number of homeless people in San Diego went up significantly, by 5 percent.
The number of homeless people dying in the streets of San Diego has also been steadily increasing. While 56 homeless people died in San Diego County in 2014, the number spiked to 90 in 2015, 115 in 2016, and 117 last year.
The local political establishment in the city routinely proclaims that a solution for the problem is at hand. As was the case for his predecessors, current Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer professed a great deal of concern for the problem.
Stating that his administration would make homelessness its number-one social service priority, Faulconer promised swift action in his 2017 state of the city address a year ago. These initiatives included a new hotel tax hike to provide financial resources, the creation of a centralized intake homelessness center hub, and hundreds of new shelter beds.
By the summer of last year, none of these promises had been fulfilled.
However, a serious outbreak of hepatitis A in San Diego began to make national, and even international news, at the end of the summer, threatening among other things the standing of San Diego as a desirable tourist destination.
While the outbreak, the deadliest in the US in many decades, was centered in San Diego, other cases were reported in other cities in California as well. To this day, the hepatitis A outbreak has infected more than 500 people and led to the death of at least 20 individuals.
More than half of the infected, and the majority of the victims, are homeless people, as the disease tends to spread under poor sanitary conditions.
The outbreak compelled the local political establishment to suddenly snap into action.
Three large severe weather shelter tents were put up in different locations of the city by the end of the year.
Given the quantitative scope of the problem, the response by the city is totally inadequate. The three new tents together can only host a total of 700 individuals, leaving several thousands more in the streets. Inside, they consist of tightly packed-together bunk beds, thus hardly alleviating the issues that have led to the hepatitis A outbreak in the first place. Finally, the tents are temporary, meant to operate for seven months from December 1.
The tents have been established by the city as a form of “bridge housing.” That is, the homeless can remain there for no longer than 120 days. The stated goal of this arrangement is for 65 percent of those leaving the tents to find permanent housing afterward.
In reality, the Regional Task Force on the Homeless indicates that only about 25 percent of homeless people who enter shelters in San Diego are then able to move into permanent housing. The agencies that win multimillion-dollar contracts to set up temporary shelters have to prove, by various means, that a certain percentage of inhabitants transition to permanent housing; however, many tenants are then unable to remain housed and keep up with increasing rents.
What this snap initiative has accomplished is to secure a total of $6.5 million for various service-providing outfits, including $2.8 million for the Alpha Project and $1.9 million for Veterans Village of San Diego.
The hepatitis outbreak is now apparently subsiding; a handful of cases per week are currently being reported, less than at the peak of the outbreak. The health emergency that had been officially declared on September 1 of last year may be called off by the end of this month.
This means that the city’s paltry response to the homelessness crisis that was triggered by the hepatitis A outbreak, far from constituting the beginning of a serious effort to solve the problem, will be a temporary and inadequate band-aid.
The homelessness problem, moreover, is more than simply a matter of having a sufficient number of beds available for those who live in the streets.
In San Diego, as elsewhere, the homeless crisis is the concentrated expression of all the manifold problems that exist intractably under capitalism. These include housing availability and costs, but also the lack of jobs, low wages, public health and addiction problems, lack of resources for mental health problems, and inadequate education.
This is all capped by the corruption and indifference of the political establishment and the unwillingness on the part of the ruling class they represent to make the slightest economic sacrifice in order to address the pressing social problems confronting the poor and working class.
Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to homeless individuals in downtown San Diego last weekend about the conditions they face and the response by the government.
Rachel, a young woman who has spent time homeless in her hometown of Seattle, Washington, then in Tijuana, Mexico, and finally in San Diego, reviewed her experience living on the streets in the Southern California city.
“I was really surprised when I came here to see how many people are in the streets here. I’ve never seen anything like that before,” she said. “There is a minimal amount of shelters for women. I was turned away from three shelters because there wasn’t space. I finally got into the Alpha Project tents, where I’ve been for about two weeks now, with 300 other men and women. They feed us there once a day, at 5 p.m., so it gets really crazy, there’s fights, drama.”
Rachel explained that the tents “changed things a little bit, but they change the rules daily in there, they don’t really know what they are doing.
“Ever since the hepatitis A outbreak, [the city] wanted to deal with the problem really fast. They promised us there were going to be housing coordinators helping us get into long-term housing. The Alpha Project is supposed to be a bridge to something else, but not permanent housing. There has to be something after that. We are supposed to talk to housing coordinators, but nobody’s talked to me about it. No one really has an answer.”
Debra, 61, originally from Colorado, worked for a hospice for 13 years, then as an in-home caregiver.
“I became unemployed, then homeless three years ago,” she explained “When I lost my job I took two trips to Alaska to try to make that work, that was the last shot I gave it. I couldn’t do the minimum of 16 hours per day they required there. I am just not that young anymore, so I had to come back. No matter how many applications I put out here, due to my age, they wouldn’t hire me. They never gave me a chance.”
“I’ve been out here homeless about three years. I’ve seen it go from bad to worse. The city doesn’t provide much for us. We don’t have facilities to go to the bathroom. I am surprised they actually brought out stations to wash our hands after the outbreak of hepatitis,” she said about the hepatitis outbreak in the city.
“They stopped giving out tents and started setting up big ones. Now everybody’s got to live close to each other, and nobody knows what the other guy has. Tuberculosis could possibly break out. You are talking close quarters, you know? Feet-to-feet, head-to-head bunk beds. Who wants to live like that?”
Debra also addressed the possible upcoming visit of President Trump to San Diego, explaining her attitude toward the political establishment: “The last time we had somebody big like that they started cleaning up the streets, made it look like there’s not a problem here, and I think that’s sad. This is government covering up the real issues. Why cover up the streets? You can’t sugarcoat it, paint it another color.
“I think we are going to end up in concentration camps, because that’s what those tents look like. This is supposed to be America, the land of the free, where you can come and live the American dream. ... I don’t think the government really cares, I really don’t. If they did, things would have been changed by now. It’s getting deeper, and it’s getting worse.”

THE ONLY REASON FOR OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG THE TRUE COST OF THE INVADING HORDES AND THEIR WELFARE STATE TO THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS... what's left of it!

Billionaire warns of growing class conflict in US

By Jerry White
9 January 2018
With the stock markets soaring and corporate America celebrating a massive tax cut, there are increasing warnings from some business circles that the immense level of inequality is generating deep social discontent.
In an interview published in the Wall Street Journal last week, Ray Dalio, who manages the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, warned that “elevated stock valuations” had not translated into higher long-term economic growth, let alone improvements for the bottom 60 percent of the population. This layer of the population, he said, lacked any savings, suffered a higher percentage of premature deaths, and had children destined to earn less than their parents.
“His biggest worry,” the Journal declared, “is that lower corporate taxes and higher stock prices do nothing for the bottom 60% of households who own almost no assets and whose stagnant wages are the mirror image of expanding profit margins, feeding resentment and political polarization. Says Mr. Dalio: ‘If we do have an economic downturn, I worry we will be at each other’s throats.’”
Dalio, who has a net worth of $17 billion, is no social reformer. In 2004, he infamously summed up the parasitic character of the social layer of which he is part by saying, “The money that’s made from manufacturing stuff is a pittance in comparison to the amount of money made from shuffling money around.” His warnings will have no serious effect on the financial oligarchy, which is demanding austerity measures, tax cuts and deregulation.
A decade after the global financial crash, the financial aristocracy in the US and around the world is flush with cash from government bailouts and the near-zero interest rate policies of the world’s central banks. This has fueled the unprecedented stock market rise, which added $1 trillion to the personal fortunes of the world’s 500 richest billionaires in 2017.
A new survey of workers at 5,000 large employers by global advisory firm Willis Towers Watson found that two-thirds “were feeling more on edge than they did in 2015” due to stagnant wages and higher household debt. Fifty-one percent reported suffering a “significant financial event” in the past two years, including a major medical expense. Ten percent of workers reported taking a loan from their 401(k) retirement funds.
Despite supposed “full employment” in the US—with the official jobless rate at the lowest level in 17 years—wages only rose about 2.5 percent in 2017, barely above the official rate of inflation of 2.0 percent. This is well below the annual increases of between 3.3 and 3.6 percent before the Great Recession.
An analysis compiled by Bloomberg News of 665 contracts signed in late December showed first-year pay raises averaging 2.7 percent for workers overall, 2.5 percent for manufacturing workers and only 2.1 percent for government workers.
Analysts have warned that Trump’s sharp reduction in corporate taxes will encourage workers to demand significant wage improvements in 2018. Hundreds of thousands of workers in the trucking, warehouse, telecom, health care and entertainment industries have labor agreements expiring this year, according to Bloomberg.
These include:
* The contracts covering nearly 3,000 employees at Allina Health hospitals throughout Minnesota and 3,000 employees of Abbott Northwest Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), expire on February 28. Nearly 5,000 nurses conducted a month-long strike at Allina in 2016.
* The Teamsters contract covering 7,500 workers at ABF Freight Systems in multiple states expires on March 31.
* Contracts covering 5,000 workers, members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, expire March 4 at Lockheed Martin plants in Georgia and California.
* The contract for 4,500 members of the United Auto Workers at Daimler Truck plants in North Carolina expires in mid-April.
* Several contracts covering 40,000 hospitality and casino workers in Las Vegas expire in May.
* The contract covering 132,000 television workers, members of SAG-AFTRA, ends June 30.
* An agreement covering 43,000 members of the International Association of Theatrical State Employees expires with Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on July 31.
* 230,000 United Parcel Service workers, members of the Teamsters, will see their contract with the giant package delivery company expire on July 31.
* The contract covering 200,000 United Post Office Service workers, members of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), expires on September 20.
After decades of falling real wages, workers are determined to recoup lost income from companies making record profits. “I think everyone’s going to have their hand out when it comes to the potential benefit of the tax bill,” UPS spokesman Steve Gaut told Bloomberg. “Certainly investors are going to expect to benefit,” he added.
UPS made $5 billion in the first three quarters of 2017, after a profit of $3.4 billion in 2016. Corporations will use their tax windfall not to improve conditions for workers, but for stock repurchase programs and dividend payouts to wealthy investors, and to increase mergers and acquisitions, which will result in greater attacks on the jobs, wages and pensions.
The employers are counting on the continued collusion of the Teamsters and other unions. Faced with the danger of a “wages push” in 2015-2016, President Obama called in the leaders of the unions for a White House meeting in July 2015. The result was the sabotage of any unified struggle, the signing of sellout deals barely above the rate of inflation, and the isolation and betrayal of strikes the unions were forced to call, including by oil refinery workers, Allegheny Technology steelworkers and Verizon workers.
The 10-year period between 2007 to 2016 saw the lowest number of major work stoppages since the US Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting data in 1947, with an average of only 14 per year. This compares to an average of 145 per year in 1977-1986, 332 in 1967-1976 and 344 in 1947-1956. Last year, there were only eight major strikes—with half lasting fewer than three days—the lowest annual number since 2009, when there were only five.
The financial orgy on Wall Street has been made possible by the artificial suppression of the class struggle by the unions. Class antagonisms, however, have only grown more intense during this period, guaranteeing that they erupt more explosively, and encompass the widest layers of the working class.
The 2015 rebellion by autoworkers against the United Auto Workers union demonstrated the weakening grip of the union bureaucracy, which is thoroughly discredited after decades of collusion with the auto bosses and the exposure of widespread corporate bribes funneled through labor-management training centers and phony charities. The contracts for 150,000 autoworkers will expire in September 2019.
The New Year has begun with signs of growing class conflict internationally, including demonstrations by workers and young people in Iran opposing price hikes and austerity; strikes and protests by Israeli pharmaceutical workers; and Jerusalem municipal employees against mass layoffs.
In Germany this week, workers are conducting limited strikes at VW, Porsche, Siemens and other corporations, as 3.9 million auto, steel and engineering workers face the expiration of a wage contract at the end of the month. This follows the wildcat strike by Romanian autoworkers at Ford’s Craiova plant in late December.
In France, autoworkers and other workers are confronting the government of Emmanuel Macron, “the president of the rich,” who has unilaterally imposed American-style labor “reforms” to facilitate the firing of workers and vastly expand the use of part-time and temporary labor. In England, rail workers are continuing walkouts against the elimination of conductors pushed by the Tory government and its Labour Party allies.
On January 3, a wildcat strike by an airport ground crew in Buenos Aires followed strikes by subway workers and others in Argentina.
These struggles are increasingly pitting workers against employers, the corporate-controlled governments that defend them, and the pro-capitalist and nationalist unions. Increasingly, workers are being driven to coordinate their struggles against the global corporations and banks on an international scale.
To take this struggle forward, workers will have to break with the pro-capitalist unions and build new organizations controlled by rank-and-file workers based on the methods of the class struggle, not class collaboration. Such a struggle must be linked up with the building of a new revolutionary leadership in the working class, to fight for workers’ power, the seizure of the ill-gotten gains of the financial aristocracy and the socialist reorganization of economic life.

Whom Does Congress Work For?

By John Miano

CIS Immigration Blog, December 12, 2017

When Disney replaced 350 Americans with foreign workers, 

forcing them to train their replacements, did we see any Florida 

members of Congress threaten to shut down the government unless 

it was stopped?

When Southern California Edison and the University of California 

replaced Americans with foreign workers, did any California 

members of Congress threaten to shut down the government unless 

it was stopped?

When Toys "R" Us replaced Americans with foreign workers, did 

any New Jersey members of Congress threaten to shut down the 

government unless it was stopped?

When Cargill and Best Buy replaced Americans with foreign 

workers, did any Minnesota members of Congress threaten to shut 

down the government unless it was stopped?

No.

Yet when illegal aliens working under the DACA program are 

threatened with losing their jobs, members of Congress spring 

into action:

America’s poor and homeless freeze in winter storm

By Kate Randall 
5 January 2018
Heavy snow, strong winds and bitter cold battered the US East Coast on Thursday, as a powerful system that had dropped ice, sleet and snow on the South roared up the Eastern Seaboard and pummeled the Northeast. Snow was on the ground in every state from Florida to Maine by Thursday morning.
The storm was the latest cruel volley in a cold snap that has gripped nearly every state in the Continental US in recent days. States of emergency were declared, schools and businesses shuttered, air flights and trains canceled as the authorities and the public at large dealt with blizzard conditions, coastal flooding, power outages and dangerously snowy and icy roads. State and local governments are for the most part ill prepared to deal with these conditions.
Although the federal government does not track weather-related deaths nationally, NBC News reports that the sustained period of brutally cold weather has claimed the lives of at least 20 people in the US since December 26.
The cold wave has taken at least 11 lives in the past 24 hours, according to CNN, including five in Wisconsin, four in Texas, and one each in North Dakota and Missouri. Safety officials said that three people have died as a result of the storm in North Carolina, where widespread icy road conditions and accidents have been reported across the state.
In all such weather-related disasters—hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, heat waves—society’s most vulnerable are the worst affected, and the current cold snap it is no different. The poor and homeless bear the brunt of the crisis, while authorities attempt to explain away the ensuing chaos, ineptitude and suffering as the result of a “natural disaster” that no one could have predicted.
Meteorologists described Thursday’s storm as a “bombogenesis” or “bomb cyclone,” which happens when a weather system undergoes a rapid drop in atmospheric pressure and quickly intensifies with blizzard-like conditions and hurricane-force winds. Although the media has generally portrayed this as a “once-in-a-lifetime” occurrence, such storms are not an unknown or infrequent phenomenon.
The storm is expected to be followed by a deep freeze. The worst of the cold will be in the Northeast Friday morning, when wind chills are forecast to hit the minus 40s Fahrenheit in New England. Dozens of major cities across New England, eastern New York and the Mid-Atlantic states will have record low temperatures by Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service. About 139 million Americans are under wind chill warnings, advisories or watches.
States of emergency had been declared in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia on Wednesday, and governors and local leaders declared emergencies and blizzard warnings in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine by Thursday.
Since Wednesday night, power outages have affected more that 12,400 Georgia Power customers, 10,200 Florida Power & Light customers and 2,700 South Carolina Electric & Gas customers.
Major streets along Boston’s waterfront were completely underwater Thursday, with the worst flooding occurring at high tide at 12:40 p.m., hitting 15.1 feet and tying the all-time record from the Blizzard of 1978. Record coastal flooding hit towns and cities on Massachusetts’ North and South shores and Cape Cod, with the storm surge crashing over seawalls. More than 24,000 customers experienced power outages.

School closures

The storm shut down schools in Boston; Providence, Rhode Island; New York; Philadelphia; Virginia; and Washington, DC, among other cities. Some school districts in the South, including in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, were closed in anticipation of the bitter cold to come.
In Baltimore, Maryland, children huddled in frigid classrooms Wednesday, prompting outrage from parents and teachers who asked why classes had not been canceled.
Aaron Maybin, a Baltimore native, former NFL player and elementary school teacher, said a thermometer showed it was 40 degrees in his classroom on Wednesday. Baltimore Public Schools CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises said that one-third of the school system, or about 60 schools, reported heating issues during the day.
A system-wide shutdown of the city’s public schools was called only after photos spread on social media showing children bundled in coats, hats and gloves in an effort to keep warm when heating was not keeping up with the plunging temperatures.
Maybin told CNN, “When I spoke to the principal, I was told it was due to nobody being there during the holidays to make sure the heat stayed on and pipes didn’t freeze.” As with other districts nationwide, public schools are being starved for funds, resulting in crumbling infrastructure that places students’ health and safety at risk.
“It’s really ridiculous the kind of environment we place our children into and expect them to get an education,” Maybin said in a tweet. “I got two classes in one room, kids are freezing. Lights are off. No computers. We’re doing our best but our kids don’t deserve this.”
In Lowell, Massachusetts, an impoverished former mill town, the high school was closed on Wednesday as temperatures in 20 percent of its classrooms were below the state minimum. Students shared photos of hands turned blue in the cold. The cold temperatures were attributed to failing heating systems and broken pipes brought on by the cold wave, aggravated by years of neglect. All schools were closed on Thursday.

Rising heating costs

Residents nationwide are bracing for rises in heating costs in the coming months. The US Department of Energy is predicting that this winter’s energy costs will rise by 8 percent for electricity, 12 percent for natural gas, and 17 percent for home heating oil. The main reason for a hike in energy bills is the record cold temperatures.
A rise in energy costs will undoubtedly lead to an increase in house fires, as more households are unable to afford the energy bills and resort to less safe alternative heating methods such as space heaters. As of the end of 2017, 2,152 people had perished in house fires across the US. The victims were overwhelmingly poor and working class.
In the midst of the current cold wave, 8,000 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents were without heat by midday Wednesday. Heating systems in five public housing developments were shut down completely, according to city records, with some residents having lived in these bone-chilling conditions for days.
At Redfern House in Far Rockaway, the heat has been off and on since December 28, and early Wednesday the entire system was shut down by frozen pipes. Resident Jazmin Figueroa told the New York Times she has turned on stove burners and wrapped her children in multiple layers to keep them warm. “They go to bed freezing. I gotta put them in long johns,” she said. “It’s not right, especially if you have kids.”
At the Reid Houses in East New York, 235 seniors have been without heat since Tuesday. At Harborview Terrace in Hell’s Kitchen the story was the same. More than 1,300 units were without heat Thursday at the Woodside Houses in Queens. NYCHA spokeswoman Jasmine Blake said the problem was due to frozen pipes and claimed the heating issue would be addressed at all of the housing developments “as soon as possible.”

The homeless and affordable housing

The homeless are the most susceptible to the winter cold. With a lack of affordable housing affecting all working families, homeless individuals are hard-pressed to find accommodation as funding for shelters is cut back and decent living spaces are few and far between. The rules and conditions at many shelters, with restrictions on drugs and pets, make them undesirable for some.
Many of those seeking housing are also caught up in the opioid crisis and are in need of treatment. But they find that treatment when they need it most is not available, due to a scarcity of affordable, effective treatment beds.
On Monday, the body of a 54-year-old homeless man was found inside a bin near an apartment complex in St. Louis, Missouri. The city’s most recent count of homeless residents, in January 2017, showed 1,336 people. Shelters in St. Louis typically house 150 to 200 people a night during extreme cold.
One shelter in the city, New Life Evangelistic Center, was forced to close last April by the city, citing chronic over-occupancy and building code violations, according to US News & World Report. Many former residents were forced onto the streets, including 56-year-old Grover Perry.
Perry was found dead inside a portable toilet near a construction site on December 20, when temperatures fell to 19 degrees Fahrenheit (-2 Celsius). Rev. Larry Rice, former operator of the New Life shelter, said Perry was mentally handicapped and had no place to go once the shelter shut down, so he started staying in the portable toilet. “I’m surprised there haven’t been more people die,” Rice said.
As the homelessness crisis worsens, state and federal government authorities have scant solutions. Donald Trump, who has touted his support for veterans, has presided over the first rise in the number of homeless veterans in seven years. The number of homeless vets increased by 1.5 percent from January 2016 to January 2017. According to a new report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the homeless census on a night in January 2017 counted 40,056 veterans unsheltered.
On December 1, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin announced he was gutting a $460 million program dedicated to veteran homelessness, telling the Military Times that he did not believe it was practical to aim for zero veteran homelessness. Shulkin reversed his position a few days later after an outcry from veterans’ advocates.

OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!

Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US

history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.

OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy. 

"The massive growth of stock values has occurred during the worst economic “recovery” in the post-war period, characterized by historically low levels of investment, falling productivity growth and stagnant wages."

The Dow at 25,000: The bonanza for the oligarchy continues

5 January 2017
The surge of the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index past 25,000 points yesterday marks a further escalation in the speculative binge that has gripped Wall Street and global stock markets over the past year, signifying a massive transfer of wealth to the heights of society.
It took just 23 days for the Dow to jump from 24,000 to its latest milestone, the shortest period between 1,000-point increments in the index’s history.
During 2017, the S&P Global Broad Market Index soared by 22 percent, the biggest increase since the global financial crisis of 2008–2009. This represents a rise of around $9.6 trillion in market value. The FTSE All-World index rose 1.6 percent in December, notching up 14 straight months of gains, the longest such run on record.
The market escalation has prompted predictions that it will continue into 2018, with some forecasters even pointing to a market “melt up” in the coming period.
Notwithstanding a slight increase in global growth over the past year, the market surge is not an expression of a recovery in the world economy, a decade after the eruption of the global financial crisis. Rather, it is a mechanism for an accelerating transfer of income to the upper echelons of society. For example, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos increased his wealth by $33 billion in the past year.
All arms of government and the financial institutions are 
directed toward fuelling the equity bubble. In the first place 
stand the US Federal Reserve and the other major central 
banks around the world. They have pumped an estimated 
$15 trillion into global financial markets and sent interest 
rates to historic lows, providing the conditions for the share 
buybacks and financial mergers that have played such a 
significant role in boosting the stock markets.
The extent of this financial largesse is indicated by the fact that central banks have bought up virtually all the bonds issued by the governments of the world’s 10 biggest economies over the past two years—a key factor in keeping interest rates close to zero in real terms.
These policies represent a continuation and deepening of the process that began 30 years ago in response to the US stock market crash of October 1987, when US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan guaranteed that the financial spigots would be opened to sustain asset prices.
The response to every financial storm 

throughout the 1990s and early 2000s has 

been the same: the provision of still more 

money to finance the next round of 

speculation, culminating in the bailout of the 

banks after 2008 and the policy of 

quantitative easing over the past decade.

These measures have been pursued in tandem with 
slashing spending on social services, along with 
health and education. In the US, as in all the other 
major capitalist economies, government policies—
whatever the political colouration of the regime in 
power—are based on austerity measures aimed at 
transferring the wealth created by the labour of the 
working class up the income scale.

Having just handed out a bonanza to the corporations and the ultra-wealthy in the form of the biggest tax cuts in history, all sections of the US political establishment are united in developing an agenda that makes ever-deeper inroads into the provision of social services.
The character of the stock market boom can be gauged by contrasting the situation with that in previous periods.
Over the past nine years of economic “recovery,” the Dow Jones Industrial Average has shot up by 177 percent, while the real US gross domestic product has grown by only 19 percent.
Over a similar period 50 years ago, between 1959 and 1968, the Dow grew by only 22 percent, while the real economy grew by 48 percent, or more than twice the current rate.

The massive growth of stock values has 
occurred during the worst economic 
“recovery” in the post-war period, 
characterised by historically low levels of 
investment, falling productivity growth and 
stagnant wages.

The parasitic nature of the boom is evidenced by the fact that about one-quarter of the total increase in share prices has come from just five of the largest US companies by market value: Apple, Alphabet (the owner of Google), Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft.
The characteristic feature of these firms is that their profit accumulation derives not from investment in plant and equipment and the employment of large numbers of workers, as with the industrial giants of the past, but via the appropriation of wealth through intellectual property rights, a modern form of rent. This form of parasitism ultimately depends on the super-exploitation of workers in China and other cheap labour regions.
Amazon, in contrast to the other technology giants, has a big workforce. Its massive share price increase reflects its role in driving smaller distribution networks out of business, through a combination of monopolistic market power and the slave-like exploitation of its impoverished workforce.
There is another, no less decisive, aspect to the stock market boom: the suppression of the class struggle and the virtual disappearance in recent decades of major strike actions.
This is not the result of some organic incapacity of the working class to rise to the challenges that confront it. Rather, it is the outcome of the role of the trade unions and the political parties, supported by the various pseudo-left tendencies, which have dominated it for decades.
The crucial role of these organisations in facilitating the stock market bonanza is not the result of “mistakes” or incorrect assessments, but derives from their material interests and privileges, which are rooted in the maintenance of the private profit system.
With the beginning of the New Year, however, there are indications that the working class is once again preparing to enter into convulsive struggle, as evinced by mass demonstrations in Iran, the latest wildcat strike by auto workers in Romania, and growing labour militancy throughout Europe and the Middle East.
The capitalist profit system constitutes nothing less than a coordinated instrument for the transfer of the wealth of society to its upper echelons and their hangers-on. It cannot be changed through a perspective of reform, but only through its overthrow and the reconstruction of society from top to bottom on the basis of a socialist program.
That is, as Marx put it, there is no way forward other than the “expropriation of the expropriators,” ending the private ownership of the means of production and establishing a socio-economic order to meet human need. The necessity to undertake the political rearming of the working class in the fight for this perspective is the conclusion that must be drawn from the stock market frenzy, and the growth of poverty and social misery that accompanies it.
Nick Beams



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