JOE BIDEN: I'M NOT A REAL POPULIST BUT I PLAY ONE ON TV! NOPE, I'M JUST ONE MORE BRIBES SUCKING SOCIOPATH LYING LAWYER.
Chris Hedges & Richard Wolff | Infrastructure & Pandemic Relief Are BLATANT SCAMS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqCDmLdy5jY
Chris Hedges & Richard Wolff | America's OBVIOUS DECLINE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGQT69IuP4U
Chris Hedges & Richard Wolff | Billionares PROFITED FROM PANDEMIC!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJR5g_mcnoo
What Happened To The American Middle Class? | Financial Crash Documentary | Business Stories
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbTlq7A-wVs
Don’t be fooled by Joe Biden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCqc5Ozrh6c
Chris Hedges | NAFTA, Clinton, and Obama BETRAYED Americans... and Joe Biden was right there with the worst of them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qryblALiqOI
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
As Democrats shield wealth of billionaires, Biden pleads with super-rich to pay their “fair share”
On Thursday, President Joe Biden made a demagogic speech from the White House presenting his “Build Back Better” budget plan as a historic reversal of the decades-long enrichment of the corporate elite at the expense of working people.
He cited a number of indices of the wholesale looting of society by the corporations and the super-rich, including:
- US billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $1.8 trillion since the beginning of the pandemic.
- Fifty of the largest corporations in the US paid zero taxes in 2020, while collectively taking in over $40 billion in profits.
- The top 1 percent in the US evade an estimated $160 billion in taxes they owe every year.
“This is the moment to deal working people back into the economy. This is the moment to prove to the American people that the government works for them,” Biden declared.
But having made the case for the seizure of the wealth of what he referred to as the “pandemic profiteers,” he hastened to add: “I’m not out to punish anyone. I’m a capitalist. If you can make a million or a billion dollars, that’s great. God bless you. All I’m asking is you pay your fair share.”
Biden made his remarks one day after House Democrats assembled the various parts of the overall budget plan that had been drafted and approved by numerous House committees. The 26,000-page package purports to allocate $3.5 trillion over 10 years for social welfare measures, paid for in part by $2.1 trillion in tax hikes for large corporations and wealthy individuals.
The Senate is in the process of assembling its own version of the budget. What ultimately emerges from the process of internal horse-trading between various factions of the Democratic Party, manipulated by a massive corporate lobbying campaign to block any serious incursions into the profits and the personal fortunes of the ruling oligarchy, will be far more modest than even the timid measures contained in the current House proposal.
The Democrats narrowly control both chambers, and the Republican Party is 100 percent opposed to the administration’s budget plan and pledged to vote against it. In order to circumvent a filibuster in the evenly divided Senate, the Democrats are seeking to pass their budget under the budget reconciliation procedure, which requires only a majority vote in the upper chamber, 50 Democrats and the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris and cannot be filibustered.
That means Biden and the Democratic leadership cannot afford to lose a single Democratic vote. In the House, they cannot lose more than three Democratic votes. As a result, corporate interests are asserting their demands most directly via their bribed mouthpieces within the Democratic congressional caucuses.
In a concession to right-wing members of the House Democratic caucus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month agreed to bring the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by the Senate up for a vote in the House by September 27, dropping her previous insistence that no action be taken in the House on that bill until the Senate had passed the broader “human infrastructure” budget bill.
The entire process—a combination of back-room deal-making and political posturing—is dominated by the demands of the Democratic Party right wing. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a multimillionaire coal company owner, and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, whose idol is the late Republican reactionary and war hawk John McCain, have publicly declared their opposition to the $3.5 trillion price tag of the administration’s budget bill.
Manchin has let it be known he is prepared to accept a bill costing around half that amount. He has proposed imposing means testing and work requirements for extended child tax credits, child care and pre-kindergarten subsidies, tuition-free community college and other social measures included in the bill. He is dead set against provisions that promote clean energy and infringe on the fossil fuel industry, from which he has received $400,000 in campaign cash since 2017, making him the industry’s top recipient.
Last week Manchin appeared on several of the Sunday morning television interview programs to push for the House passage of the corporate-backed physical infrastructure bill and argue there was no “urgency” for the social relief and anti-climate change measures in the Biden budget plan.
This was under conditions of the Delta-variant-driven fourth wave of the pandemic, overwhelming hospitals and infecting record numbers of children in reopened schools, the termination of federal unemployment benefits and the moratorium on evictions, threatening millions with homelessness and destitution, and climate change-driven hurricanes and wildfires that have devastated millions from California to the Gulf Coast to New York City.
In the House, three right-wing Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee—Reps. Scott Peters (Calif.), Kathleen Rice (N.Y.) and Kurt Schrader (Ore.)—on Tuesday voted against the leadership’s proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate hundreds of prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies, using international prices, generally half of those in the US, as the standard. The Biden administration and Pelosi estimate this would save the government $700 billion, which they propose to use to extend Medicare coverage to include dental, vision and hearing. The three Democratic “no” votes prevented the committee from including the provision in its portion of the overall bill.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top industry contributor to Peters’ campaign war chest in 2021-2022 is pharmaceuticals/health products, which has donated $88,550. His top contributors are Pfizer ($10,800), Eli Lilly ($10,500), Amgen ($7,900) and Gilead Sciences ($7,750).
Schrader’s top industry contributor is oil & gas ($34,000), followed by pharmaceuticals/health products ($24,000).
The second highest industry contributor to Rice’s campaign is insurance.
Biden and the Democratic congressional leadership have bent over backwards to accommodate and placate these forces. On Wednesday, Biden met separately with Manchin and Sinema. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said the $3.5 trillion package could be scaled back by cutting back the size of some of the programs or reducing their duration.
The House budget package as it currently stands raises the top individual income tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent (where it was prior to Trump’s 2017 tax windfall for the rich). It increases the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 26.5 percent, which is lower than Biden’s proposed 28 percent and far lower than the 35 percent rate prior to the 2017 Republican tax bill. It raises the capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 25 percent—still a far lower rate than for the equivalent wage income and lower than Biden’s initial proposal.
More significant than the minor tax increases on the wealthy that are contained in the House bill is what is omitted. The bill addresses only income, not the wealth hoarded by America’s oligarchs. Income comprises only a negligible portion of the fortunes of the billionaires. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, in 2020 received a salary from Amazon of only $81,840. Their money comes from stocks, bonds, real estate and other assets that are largely untaxed.
The House bill drops a proposal in Biden’s original plan that would close a loophole allowing the wealthy to pass accumulated assets down to their heirs without ever paying taxes on the rise in the value of those assets from the time of their initial purchase. It also leaves in place so-called “carried interest,” the loophole that treats the money taken in by hedge fund managers as a capital gain, rather than normal income, which is taxed at a far higher rate.
The Wall Street Journal gloated over the Democrats’ failure to challenge this notorious gift to hedge fund billionaires, publishing an editorial headlined “Democrats Blink on Carried Interest.”
None of this prevented Biden from giving his full endorsement to the House bill.
The Washington Post cited Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, as saying: “If the [House] Ways and Means plan was enacted as is, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk would still pay an effective rate of $0 on most of their income if they pass their assets onto their heirs.”
Ingraham: Biden 'flooding America' as thousands of Afghans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGMrd8zV5_M
Chris Hedges | NAFTA Was CRIMINAL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-104JMiZes&list=WL&index=5
Chris Hedges | NAFTA, Clinton, and Obama BETRAYED Americans... and Joe Biden was right there with the worst of them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qryblALiqOI
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents. Migration also curbs their productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, and wrecks their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This pocketbook opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.
Joe Biden Praises ‘Brave’ Illegal Migrants, Subordinates Americans
Three hundred million Americans must ensure their homeland complies with the expectations of “brave” foreign migrants, not the needs of their own families, according to a “Citizenship Day” video by President Joe Biden.
“Citizenship Day is a reminder that the job of every single one of us is to ensure that America remains a country worthy of immigrants’ aspirations,” Biden said in a September 17 video.
Biden ignored 300 million Americans’ concerns, accomplishments, and right to a national labor market.
He instead praised migrants — including millions of illegal migrants — who are being invited by his government to compete for the jobs, careers, wages, and housing needed by Americans:
Every immigrant comes here from different circumstances and for different reasons, but they all have one thing in common: Courage. It takes courage to leave behind all you’ve ever known and start a new life in America.
Biden also described illegal migrants who took jobs from Americans as saviors of hapless Americans, saying they “carried our country on their backs throughout this pandemic.”
Legal and illegal migrants do a minority of the work in nearly all job categories.
Biden used his brave migrants/hapless Americans speech to urge Congress to pass multiple wealth-shifting amnesties in the pending budget reconciliation bill.
The bill would also import at least three million extra immigrants, and allow companies to hire cheap foreign graduates instead of well-paid U.S. graduates.
He said:
I’m working closely with Congress right now to finally make that [amnesty] a reality, to ensure that every brave immigrant can pursue all the rights and opportunities that come with American citizenship … I’m confident that this year, we’re finally going to put that within reach of so many deserving immigrants that sacrificed and contributed so much to our nation already.
The amnesty is being pushed by Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us group of West Coast investors. The group has strong ties to many White House officials and stands to gain from more cheap labor, government-aided consumers, and room-sharing renters.
Biden’s speech echoes the “Nation of Immigrants” myth that has been pushed by progressives since the 1950s. Before then, the nation’s culture emphasized Americans’ role as independent settlers in a largely empty continent.
Biden’s deputies use that myth to justify their subordination of Americans’ needs and rights to the preference of foreigners. For example, Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s border chief, posted a tweet September 14 praising a corporate-backed group that wants to elevate migrants’ desires above Americans’ economic rights:
This important effort shows the best of who we are: a welcoming, generous nation that serves as a beacon of hope and refuge for those in need throughout the world.
This year, Mayorkas is expected to double legal and illegal migration to roughly 2 million people. That flood delivers one immigrant for every two American births.
Regardless of the 1950s myth, the United States won World War II, created a middle-class economy, invented many new technologies, revived racial equality, and landed astronauts on the moon during the long period of low migration between 1925 and 1970.
In 1955, as pro-migration groups insisted the United States was a “Nation of Immigrants,” immigrants were only 7 percent of the population, down from 15 percent in 1910. Since 1955, the share has doubled, back up to 15 percent.
Family income doubled between 1950 and 1970, according to the left-wing Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But in the subsequent high-immigration era, family income rose far more slowly, by only one-quarter from 1980 to 2020.
Immigration benefits the United States with a bigger economy of many consumers, workers, homeowners, and inventors — Hungarian Steven Grove, and South African Elon Musk, for example. Collectively, they helped expand the nation’s wealth that is stored in house prices, patents, and stock market funds.
But economic studies suggest that migration does little or nothing to increase median income.
Migration also spurs political conflict and chaotic diversity, partly because it allows social-style activists — including Biden — to shift their emotional concerns from poor Americans to the very poor migrants demanded by investors.
For example, Biden’s loose border rules have invited a mass migration of poor people to the U.S. border where they are being held in the open prior to their release into U.S. workplaces:
Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents. Migration also curbs their productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, and wrecks their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This pocketbook opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.
The amnesty is being pushed by Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us group of West Coast investors. The group has strong ties to many White House officials and stands to gain from more cheap labor, government-aided consumers, and room-sharing renters.
WSJ: Facebook Fails to Crack Down on Drug Cartels, Human Traffickers Using Platform
A recent report from the Wall Street Journal claims that internal Facebook documents reveal that the company was aware of drug cartels and human trafficking on its platform and failed to take appropriate action against them.
The Wall Street Journal reports in an article titled “Facebook Employees Flag Drug Cartels and Human Traffickers. The Company’s Response Is Weak, Documents Show,” that Facebook failed to crack down on illegal activity on its platform after being alerted to the issues by employees.
The Journal writes:
Scores of internal Facebook documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show employees raising alarms about how its platforms are used in some developing countries, where its user base is already huge and expanding. They also show the company’s response, which in many instances is inadequate or nothing at all.
Employees flagged that human traffickers in the Middle East used the site to lure women into abusive employment situations in which they were treated like slaves or forced to perform sex work. They warned that armed groups in Ethiopia used the site to incite violence against ethnic minorities. They sent alerts to their bosses on organ selling, pornography and government action against political dissent, according to the documents.
Facebook removes some pages, though many more operate openly, according to the documents.
The leaked documents reveal that in many of the countries where Facebook operates, it has few or sometimes no people who speak the local languages needed to identify criminal content on the platform. Facebook has previously said that it addressed issues in the past by taking down offending posts, but it has yet to update the systems that allowed repeat offenders to remain on the platform.
Brian Boland, a former Facebook vice president who oversaw partnerships with internet providers in Africa and Asia, said that Facebook treats harm in developing countries as “simply the cost of doing business.” Boland resigned from Facebook at the end of last year. “There is very rarely a significant, concerted effort to invest in fixing those areas,” he said.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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