BIDENOMICS: The issue is not the survival of what the leader of the most powerful imperialist country calls “democracy.” Joe Biden really means capitalism, the profit system, which has produced a level of economic inequality that is entirely incompatible with any genuine democracy. Instead, it is generating fascist movements all over the world, which aim to abolish all democratic rights and subject the working class to the naked dictatorship of the rich.
PATRICK MARTIN
Detroit Water and Sewerage Department resumes shutoffs
After a three-year pause, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) declared this month that it will resume residential water shutoffs for households behind on their bills—a decision that will leave over 700 homes without water.
The temporary moratorium on the shutoffs was enacted in March 2020 as a response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was extended in December 2020 through December 2022 with the claim by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan that a solution would need to be in place by 2023.
Despite Duggan’s claim in 2020 that “as long as COVID-19 remains a health concern, no Detroit residents should have concerns about whether their water service will be interrupted,” the moratorium was allowed to expire on December 31, 2022, based on the false claim made by Democrats and Republicans alike that “the pandemic is over.”
DWSD announced that the shutoffs will begin with residents who owe the most and who live in areas where middle- and high-income earners live, based on US Census data. This means over 700 households are at risk for losing access to water. DWSD has not determined which day next week that the shutoffs will begin.
In January of this year, federal judge Denise Page Hood heard arguments to extend the moratorium as plaintiffs sought a temporary injunction against lifting it. The class action lawsuit, Taylor v. City of Detroit, involves six named plaintiffs, against the city, the DWSD and its director, Gary Brown.
Opening arguments to extend the moratorium asserted that “COVID-19 has not vanished” and that in any case “[t]he concern regarding shutoffs pre-dates COVID-19.” The suit made note of the implications of cutting off water access for households, including threats to health of affected families, dehydration, infectious diseases and inability to provide medically necessary meals or infant formula.
The lawsuit stated that its aim was for the “specific purpose of permanently ending water shutoffs and to bring that into effect in a specific way—namely by making water rates affordable for all residential water customers.” After the hearing, Judge Hood said she would announce her decision on whether DWSD can resume cutting off water to city residents by Friday, January 27. Seven months later, it appears that no ruling has been officially issued.
Judge Hood was nominated by President Bill Clinton to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1994. She became Chief Judge on December 31, 2015, and served in that role until February 2022. She assumed senior status in May 2022 and was succeeded in March 2023 by Judge Jonathon J. C. Grey.
Prior to the shutoff freeze, DWSD had been cutting residents off from water due to lack of payment since 2014. From 2014 to 2019, over 141,000 households were disconnected. A six-month moratorium was sought and denied in 2014, with US bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes throwing out the motion declaring that city residents have no “fundamental right” to water services—setting a precedent that was cited in the 2023 lawsuit.
DWSD continued to charge for water during the emergency response to the pandemic. If residents could not pay, their service remained connected while they racked up debt. According to Brown, 60,000 Detroit households owe an average of $700 each. Brown told the Detroit News, “Just in the last three days, we got 500 calls from households that have received final warnings.”
The city’s “affordability” plan, Detroit Lifeline or the 10/30/50 Plan, was launched in July 2022 as a means to ration water to the poorest residents while increasing monthly payments for most shutoff victims. These plans had little advertising, despite DWSD stating that they went door-to-door to register the eligible households. Plaintiffs of the January lawsuit argued that many residents are not aware of the program or cannot apply due to barriers involving technology, internet access or required identification papers.
Of the 100,000 households that are apparently eligible for the program, just 14,000 had applied in January, leaving approximately 86,000 susceptible to service interruption. The remaining delinquent households qualify for the 10/30/50 program, which charges residents 10 percent of the overdue balance to get service restored instead of the regular 30 percent charge, and then 50 percent of any outstanding balance—in addition to arrears on any current bills. These residents still face the threat of service interruption in the future if they cannot pay a bill.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan brought the lawsuit to a federal court. Mark P. Fancher, staff attorney for the Racial Justice Project of the ACLU in Michigan, told the Michigan Chronicle, “DWSD and the city, generally, have already taken steps in what we regard as the right direction.” Citing the Lifeline program, he said that the ACLU went forward with a preliminary injunction not because the group opposes the idea of the plan, but because the moratorium was scheduled to expire at the end of 2022.
Since the ruling that residents have no “enforceable right to free and affordable water,” the ACLU is now arguing that the return to water shutoffs is premature and the Lifeline program needs to be “refined” and its loose ends “tied up.”
Brown, the DWSD director, scapegoated the households behind on bills, telling the Detroit Free Press earlier this month, “When we don’t receive the amount of money that we budgeted for the year through collections, it becomes bad debt that gets passed on to rates in next year’s budget, so it exacerbates the increase in rates for the next year and that hurts everybody.”
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BIDENOMICS: The issue is not the survival of what the leader
of the most powerful imperialist country calls
“democracy.” Joe Biden really means capitalism, the profit
system, which has produced a level of economic inequality
that is entirely incompatible with any genuine
democracy. Instead, it is generating fascist movements all over
the world, which aim to abolish all democratic rights and
subject the working class to the naked dictatorship of the
rich. PATRICK MARTIN
HOW MUCH DAMAGE HAS BIDEN PERPETRATED ON MIDDLE AMERICA???
What is Bidenomics?
8 Million Evictions Will Cause Americans To Panic In August | Housing Market 2023
Boots on the Ground...Aug. 27th...First Hand accounts of more layoffs...Getting worse
It's worse than 2008. Homebuyers taking out 1% Mortgages (Foreclosures Coming).
100 MILLION DOLLARS a hour of new debt...When do we tell them enough is enough.
Gov. Kathy Hochul Announces Jobs Program for Illegal Aliens as 380K New Yorkers are Unemployed
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) has announced a jobs program for tens of thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens who are arriving in the sanctuary state every week, even as about 380,000 New Yorkers are unemployed.
As more than 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York, mostly in New York City, since the spring of last year, Hochul has pleaded with President Joe Biden not to stem the flow of illegal immigration but to more easily provide new arrivals with work permits.
In addition, Hochul rolled out a jobs program for border crossers and illegal aliens whereby the New York State Department of Labor (DOL) will be authorized to connect migrants with employers so they can nab jobs.
“All asylum seekers with work authorization in New York can now register for assistance here,” a press release from Hochul’s office states of the jobs program:
DOL career experts will work with individuals to assess skills, work history, education, career interests and more, and connect them with employers across the State. Additionally, the New York State Department of Labor launched a portal enabling businesses to inform the State that they would welcome newly-authorized individuals into their workforce. [Emphasis added]
Hochul’s jobs program comes as more than 380,000 New Yorkers are counted as unemployed and likely hundreds of thousands more remain out of the labor market entirely.
For months, Hochul has championed mass immigration to New York as a boon for corporate special interests who are consistently lobbying lawmakers to increase immigration so they have access to a steady flow of willing, cheaper foreign workers they can hire.
Researchers have found that a flooded labor market, a result of mass immigration, can easily diminish job opportunities and wages for Americans.
One particular study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found that for every one percent increase in the immigrant portion of an American worker’s occupation, their weekly wages are cut by perhaps 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American has their weekly wages reduced by potentially ninr percent, as more than 18 percent of the workforce is foreign-born.
In New York, immigrants make up almost 30 percent of the workforce. This suggests, based on the CIS estimation, that the average New Yorker has his or her wages cut by potentially 15 percent.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
8 Million Evictions Will Cause Americans To Panic In August | Housing Market 2023
NY Gov. Kathy Hochul Begs Biden for Bailout: Americans Must Subsidize Housing, Healthcare for Illegal Aliens
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is pleading with President Joe Biden to bail out the sanctuary state with American taxpayers footing the bill to provide border crossers and illegal aliens with jobs, subsidized housing, healthcare, and public transit.
As more than 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York since the spring of last year, Hochul is formally asking Biden to take a number of steps that would see American taxpayers — the majority of whom do not live in New York — pay for subsidized social services for the new arrivals.
“For over a year, I have called for federal assistance and support for New York as we manage the unprecedented number of asylum seekers arriving in our state,” Hochul said in a televised address on Thursday:
New York cannot continue to do this on its own. It is past time for President Biden to take action and provide New York with the aid needed to continue managing this ongoing crisis. [Emphasis added]
Specifically, Hochul is asking Biden to give work permits to border crossers and illegal aliens immediately after they are released into the United States interior.
In addition, Hochul wants billions in American taxpayer money to provide border crossers and illegal aliens in New York with healthcare services, housing vouchers, free public transportation, and additional English as a Second Language (ESL) services in the state’s public schools.
Hochul is also asking Biden to reimburse New York for the cost of deploying the National Guard.
“It is the federal government’s direct responsibility to manage and control of the nation’s borders,” Hochul wrote in the letter to Biden:
Without any capacity or responsibility to address the cause of the migrant influx, New Yorkers cannot then shoulder these costs. I cannot ask New Yorkers to pay for what is fundamentally a federal responsibility and I urge the federal government to take prompt and significant action today to meet its obligation to New York State. [Emphasis added]
Even as Hochul pitches Biden the billion-dollar bailout, she has championed mass immigration to New York for months — arguing it is a boon for business.
“There are not enough workers here in the state of New York,” Hochul said months ago. “This is something that is … affecting us with this historic labor shortage. But at the same time … we also have this unprecedented influx of individuals arriving in New York … they’re eager to work, they want to work, they came here in search of work, for a new future.”
Already, American taxpayers are billed $143 billion annually for costs associated with illegal immigration. This estimate does not include any of the social and economic costs — such as higher housing prices, depleted wages, lost jobs, increased crime, and strained public resources at hospitals and schools.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
The Biden administration has largely ignored efforts to get native-born Americans back into the workforce, instead adding millions of foreign workers to the labor market which adds downward pressure, particularly for working-class Americans in terms of finding jobs and securing higher wages. JOHN BINDER
Is it all that different from his open borders policies, where millions of unvetted foreign migrants are flooding into this country without authorization, bringing crime, drugs, and costs, yet there too nothing is done about it? Joe offers an absurd excuse for that decision, as well claiming that all migrants who can utter the magic word 'asylum' are entitled to a free ride inside the U.S. for years or more, amounting to an all-expenses paid trip for thousands. MONICA SHOWALTER
Faced with an unrelenting surge of foreign nationals coming to the southern border, the Biden Administration has devised a new plan: More comfortable housing for people in the country illegally.
Ralph Nader: Biden's First Year Proves He Is Still a "Corporate Socialist" Beholden to Big Business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTIUtjkDss
BIDENOMICS: The issue is not the survival of what the leader of the most powerful imperialist country calls “democracy.” Joe Biden really means capitalism, the profit system, which has produced a level of economic inequality that is entirely incompatible with any genuine democracy. Instead, it is generating fascist movements all over the world, which aim to abolish all democratic rights and subject the working class to the naked dictatorship of the rich. PATRICK MARTIN
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