Michael K. Smith's Blog, page 15

Bulletins From The Garlic

 

 

Butt Coin: Blockhead Supported

 

New digital currency introduced by mathematical financial wizard with doctoral degree in FinFB. *

“We’ve given up on silly blockchains of computers being tasked with storing our financial info and switched to full blockhead information and financial record keeping. Now, any enterprising person willing to send us a blank check made out to cash can be assured of raking in millions when all those checks are filed with other blockheads and add up to millions, perhaps billions, in only two or three weeks. Or months. Or days. All depending on the speed of markets, traffic, gullibility, environmental destruction, climate change, weight loss and other intangibles.” said Milton Amadeus Ponzi, brilliant originator of devices like the nose butt picker enabling people to simultaneously pick their noses while scratching their butts, and the dual operated personal ego which made schizophrenic individuals able to vote twice while only paying taxes once.

“The future is limitless for voluntary blockheads with no fear of being laughed at by allegedly thoughtful types who try to change the political economy. By joining it, and remaining fully thoughtless about future outcomes of a personal, social or planetary nature, they can assure continued warfare, poverty, disease, political oppression and other forms of western democracy that are the envy of all thoughtless beings.

 

*Fluent in Financial Bullshit

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homeless Americans Plan Escape To Ukraine

 

Since congress approved billions of dollars in aid to the Ukraine, members of the homeless community upper class – those who sleep in automobiles and not on the sidewalk – are planning to become refugees from poverty instead of war.

 

 “Our government (?) is showing enormous concern for people suffering war in the Ukraine and we figure if we can just get there we will be able to share some of that aid. If they refuse to share with us maybe we can take some of their weapons and comeback home and see if that will help convince people that we humans are worth at least as much consideration as our pet animals seem to deserve.”

 

 

 

 

 Second Amendment Birth ControlInterpretation To Make Us Proud

 

A strong supporter of the American second amendment constitutional right to bear arms suggests that women who are denied a constitutional right to abortion exercise their constitutional right to buy a gun and use it to kill any unwanted child they bear.

 

 

AI foreign policy bots call for nuclear war potential destruction of human race and more pet food production to outdo the Chinese domestic animal market.

 

Equality at last:

Same sex marriages enjoy equal percentage of divorce as opposite sex marriages.

 

Taxpayers owing more than 31 trillion dollars “our” democracy borrowed from minority rich Americans demand use of collective pronoun “asshole” as true self-description. “Whether we have testicles, vaginas, both or neither, our diversity presents us with equality of using our minds the way we use our genitalia” said Diversity President MaxGloria Infantilismia

 

 

 

Further proof of global democracy’s “rules based” international order which is threatened by humanity based political economics: recent U.N. vote found 185 nations against continued murderous embargo of Cuba while the world’s two most rules based murderous tribes voted continued support for international degeneracy. Two cheers for the USA and Israel and the hell with billions of others.

 

 

Homely people demand identity as beautiful, short people demand identity as tall, trans-doubles demand being able to vote twice but not pay double taxes and all insist on being represented by certifiable schizophrenics of either capitalist party.

 

Transylvanians charge attempted Genocide!

 

Transylvanian people have long suffered rumors and folk tales that they all sucked blood from the living and ate the bodies of the dead but current claims of what is called the trans community has them enraged and frightened.

 

“We have suffered enough and now to be confused with people calling themselves trans simply because of sexual confusion are reducing us further with their hate speech is threatening us with genocide” said Transylvanian spokesperson Alucard Namflow, chairperson of Transylvanians United For a Future Society Healing International Trust

 

“We at Tuffshit are tired of being the butt of jokes and being reduced to sinister creatures when all we want is to love and be loved without our genitalia being removed, replaced or reconditioned.”

 

They claim the stealing of their identity by people claiming to be trans who have no connection whatsoever to the rich culture of Transylvania and wish to have people believe there are more than two sexes is causing great concern among real trans people who fear genocide and worse. “ Some may be willing to defame and defile us even after death” charged Namflow “ and if we have to arm ourselves in the American tradition of peace and love which we have learned as immigrants, we will do so.”

 

Shim Themselves, an official from the newer transsexual community, assures the Transylvanians that no harm was meant and that both groups should get along since they have suffered discrimination for similar ignorance and bigotry but Alucard refused the offer. “They have incorporated just like every other identity group and are making money for simply being what they are while we still suffer for the exact same reasons: being what we are. We may have to have a Transylvanian Pride day, with a parade and native folk dancing and Transylvanian snacks of blood burgers and cherry cola. Whatever it takes, America must learn the real trans people wont stand for discrimination, hate crimes and other misery any longer!

 

 

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The Beginning of Democracy or The End of Humanity

 

 

 

America is no longer the most powerful nation in the world and that is great news for humanity, beginning with the American people. But on the verge of social collapse it is still the most militarily dominating nation and as such represents incredible danger to the same folks: humanity, beginning with the American people.

 

The Russo phobic policies which began more than 100 years ago with the Russian revolution have continued and may be more demonic than ever, even though that nation is no longer run by communists but by capitalists. It is too big and powerful to tolerate for the global bully that America has become and now combined with China, an even greater menace to the self-chosen western royals but aligned with growing numbers of nations - a majority the world over - no longer willing to scrape and bow before former colonial powers but anxious to link up in new groups that essentially say to the dominant power for most of the twentieth century: fuck off!

 

 

The military industrial complex America was warned about back in the 1950s by an outgoing republican president has become something far more menacing to humanity than president Eisenhower imagined back then, though he was certainly right to warn us about the dominance of that aspect of capitalism and what it might do to the future. Since the end of the second world war, in which Eisenhower served as a heroic figure as a general, later becoming president, America has killed more people in wars than it did in that historic bloodbath which murdered millions, mostly Europeans and Asians and most especially Russians. Our domination of the world allegedly was supposed to be making it safe for what is called democracy but has far more in common with a market force where the rich rule, as in all other aspects of reality. The numbers slaughtered in Korea, Vietnam, much of southeast Asia, south and central America and scattered spots in Europe are only subject to estimates but even those can cause shudders if considered by people, though most of us are kept preoccupied by sports, celebrities, shopping and incurring debt to know about let alone pay attention to the horrendous inhumanity that is at the root of the reasonably comfortable lives led by a servant class to wealth numbering in the profitable millions while  the losing numbers of humans are in the billions.

 

 That too is hopefully soon about to change but the suffering that looms before humanity and social justice prevail could kill all of us if a nuclear war results from the dying gasps of capitalism.

 

The present war in the Ukraine regularly charged to Russia owes its existence exclusively to America and its Nato lapdogs and their endless pursuit of the destruction of Russia. The insane policies created by homicidal degeneracy that labels murder as democracy goes on while those who pay for it are endlessly told that evil Putin is bent on taking over all of Europe and possibly parts of California and New York in his blind lust for blood and empire. This while America spends more on warfare than Russia and China combined – many many times over – and maintains hundreds of military bases in foreign countries, especially surrounding Russia and China, while endlessly screeching about the threat represented by Russia and China. Having brought the world the infinite gifts of nuclear weapons and taco pizza burgers, there seems to be a belief among the ruling servant class to capital that the USA is a gift to the planetary billions, worthy of worship as the foremost global power in charge of a constitutional or biblical “rules based order” as it’s called, which is like having a drooling mob of rapists and pimps extolling their blessed “love based order”. This alleged “rules based order” has been participating militarily in the Ukraine since 2014, financing, training and supporting a civil war that killed thousands long before most Americans had ever heard of the Ukraine or could possibly find it on a map. Pssst – it borders Russia, not Los Angeles or New York, was once a part of Russia and numbers many Russians who speak the language and believe themselves to be Russian before Ukrainian. Limited to the mental rape performed by propaganda outlets calling themselves major media, decent, otherwise thoughtful people have been led to believe all manner of incredible nonsense about the evil head of state and his menace to decent consumers of bullets, dog food, automobiles, computers, bombs and all the stuff that makes us consumers long before citizens. For an all too brief bulletin, try this:

 

Here is how Putin put the situation in his press conference some time before 2/24, the date Russia began its attack:

“We have made it clear that any further movement of NATO to the East is unacceptable. Is there anything unclear about this? Are we deploying missiles near the U.S. border? No, we are not. It is the United States that has come to our home with its missiles and is already standing at our doorstep. Is it going too far to demand that no strike systems be placed near our home? What is so unusual about this?”

 

Of course if Russia or China placed missiles and military personnel at our Canadian or Mexican borders we would bring them food and refreshments and thank them for protecting us from the evils of Canada or Mexico. That is believable to people conditioned to think that Putin and Russians are evil while our multi billionaire weapons shipment and training for Ukraine and the sacrifice of Ukrainian lives in a so far proxy war are the doings of holy people interested in the salvation of humanity even if we have to destroy it to succeed.

 

Of course, an overwhelming American majority has come together to borrow more than 31 trillion dollars in order to build a fantastic murder machine while millions of our people lack health care, hundreds of thousands are homeless and in current style we all share the pronoun (asshole) transcending any sexual, racial, genital or intellectual difference and acting as a unified democratic majority. In an attempted expression of material reality to counter the fanatic brain washing we incur from our stenographers for the ruling minority – the mass media and its anti-social home units – in order to try assisting in the growing effort to transform material reality before it deforms all of us, the following is advised.

 

The Ukraine war needs to be ended by an American public demanding it but if that is not to be the case the world, led by China and Russia in cooperation with the overwhelming majority of humanity, needs to stop the domination of the dollar and the weaponry of America by trading and arming on behalf of the majority of people on planet earth.

 

A peaceful solution to the present murderous idiocy would have Putin and his foreign minister, Lavin, engage in a debate with Biden and his equally failing intellectual employee Blinken, televised to the globe with questions asked by a panel of not only western toadies but an equal number who are critical and thus representative of a global majority, It would not take very long for even the Americans in the audience to figure out that the Russian duo were brilliant by comparison to the American ruling class servants and while this might not bring an immediate end to the bloody horror  it would energize an American majority to stand with the world in opposition and in demanding an end to the trillions spent on murder while the nation and the world is falling apart. The material development of minorities brought about by capitalism has been dreadfully unbalanced by the moral under development suffered by global majorities. Opportunities for real democracy, not only national but international, are finally at hand but they must be exercised before the grotesque butchery of the word and the world’s people brings us all to a dreadful end. The majority if humanity, not only the American people, need to begin acting like one before the minority brings us all to a tragic end.

 

 

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Michael Parenti Remembers A Champion of Labor: Vito Marcantonio

 "(Vito) Marcantonio represented the 18th Congressional District (mostly East Harlem) in the U.S. House of Representatives. Among all the individuals ever to serve in Congress, Marcantonio took the most outspoken and persistently radical stances on behalf of working people, labor unions, ethnic minorities, world peace, public ownership, and social democracy. He could be judged also by the enemies he made: the moneyed interests, big landlords, corporations, fascists, militarists, imperialists, and reactionary witch-hunters. 

"Marcantonio's district was twice subjected to redistricting in the hope of defeating him at the polls. He had the audacity to join forces with the Communist Party on a number of issues and in various electoral struggles. For this he was red-baited mercilessly by political opponents and the mainstream media. Under J. Edgar Hoover, the F.B.I. amassed a huge file on Marcantonio and deliberated every year about putting  him on the Security Index for detention in time of emergency. 

"Marc (as his supporters called him) contested nine Congressional elections over the years, of which he won seven. In his last try for re-election in 1950, the Republican, Democratic, and Liberal parties joined together to back one candidate, a Republican named Donovan who lived downtown, outside the 18th Congressional district on swanky East 58th Street. Running on the American Labor Party ticket, Marc still carried Italian Harlem but lost to what he rightly called the "gang up." I remember the sympathy we all felt for him at the time. In his excellent biography of Marcantonio, Gerald Meyer observes: 'There is something distasteful and disquieting in the amount of power that was amassed to silence the only opposing voice in Congress.'"

"In my earliest years I was suspicious of Marcantonio, fearing that he might indeed be a Communist. My father saw him as a 'man of the people' who helped anyone who came to his office including many who do not live in his district. This was quite true and quite impressive. It certainly was enough to win Poppa's vote. By the time I got to college my politics had awakened sufficiently for me to become a Marcantonio supporter. 

"Marc was born in East Harlem and lived all his life within a few block radius. He was a short man of slight build. His voice and diction carried a New York street nasality. Yet the fire and the content of his remarks were compelling. 

"Late one night (when I was about 14 years old) I chanced upon a big rally being conducted at what was known as Marc's 'Lucky Corner,' on 116th Street and Lexington Avenue. Given the hour and the venue, the crowd of five hundred or more consisted almost entirely of men drawn from the surrounding Italian neighborhood. Several speakers addressed the crowd, each telling a story of how Marc had fought for some cause that directly helped them and others. 

"Finally, Marcantonio himself took the microphone and launched into one of his fiery speeches with deadly seriousness and scornful humor, striking blows at those stop the social pyramid. (I remember thinking to myself that someday I might be addressing large audiences.)

In the middle of Marc's speech something most unusual happened. A caravan of cars - shooting sparklers, flashing bright lights, blasting melodious horns and wild music, and sending balloons aloft - came rolling up Lexington Avenue from Spanish Harlem right alongside the large crowd gathered on 116th Street. It was a Puerto Rican invasion!

"Feelings between the Puerto Rican and Italian communities at that time were strained, as is often the case when low-income ethnic enclaves find themselves competing for housing, schools, and recreational areas. The Italians saw the Puerto Ricans as encroaching; the Puerto Ricans saw the Italians as shutting them out. 

"Now here they were, those wild Puerto Ricans rolling a blazing cavalcade right into the middle of Marc's talk and into the middle of Italian Harlem. Would he react with fury at the interruption? No, he flashed them a big smile, waved vigorously, and shouted an extended rousing welcome in Spanish. By now it was obvious that the invasion from Spanish Harlem was a friendly one. These were Marc's supporters and he had been expecting them all along. 

"What happened next was something I shall never forget. As if of one mind, the large crowd of Italian-American men all turned toward the caravan rolling up Lexington Avenue and broke into thunderous applause and deep-throated cheers. At that moment we realized that the Puerto Ricans were not our competitors; they were our allies. (In addition, we probably were impressed that Marc could marshal such enthusiastic support from Spanish Harlem.)

"Many politicians divide the common people against each other. Marcantonio brought them together, showing them their mutual interests - which was one of the reasons he was so hated by the powers that be. 

"The Puerto Rican population of East Harlem in the late 1940s largely supported Vito Marcantonio because he was on the side of the renters and workers, not the landlords and bosses. He fought for the inclusion of Puerto Rico in the 1939 extension of the Social Security Act. He fought for job programs for Puerto Rican immigrants, and for a minimum hourly wage in Puerto Rico and numerous other legislation for the island's inhabitants. In his first House speech in 1936, he declared: 'Puerto Rico is the most tragic victim of American imperialism.' 

"People loved Marc because he meant it. He also lived it. He worked tirelessly building an effective organization that was both a political machine and a social service agency. His office in East Harlem was always open to people in need. He put in 14-hour days and never took a real vacation throughout his public career. In 1954, at the age of 52, he burned out; while getting ready to launch a campaign for mayor, he fell dead in the street. 

"I went to his funeral, waiting in the long line to pass his open casket. Then out in the street again I found myself in conversation with a saddened African American woman. She told me how much inspiration and clarity Marc had brought to everything and how she would miss him. We both missed him already.

"Vito Marcantonio goes unnoticed in the official political history of this nation. But he was loved and mourned by hundreds of thousands. For some of us he remains unmatched.

"And I will never forget that night on Lucky Corner when that entire crowd of Italian men did a left face toward Lexington Avenue and gave heartfelt cheers and applause to their newly acquired Puerto Rican allies, just as Marc wanted."

------Michael Parenti, Waiting For Yesterday - Pages From a Street Kid's Life, pps. 93-7

WSJ Recommends Eliminating Frills and Extras in the Family Budget

Feb 14, 2023 at 10:10 am ET

Wall Street Journal
To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip BreakfastBy Gabriel T. Rubin

We Need Democracy, Which Is Far More Than Voting

By Frank Scott

 

As the imperial system of global capitalism suffers an ever more dangerous breakdown at its crumbling headquarters in the USA the once near insanity of its leadership class edges closer to stark raving lunacy.

 

While a new administration presides over what many hoped would be a return to normal after the even more blatant and open worship of wealth, war and Israel of the Trump regime, what's missed is that what passes for normal is what needs radical change. As long as market normalcy in the USA means hundreds of thousands are homeless, millions are living in poverty and millions more than that are so much deeper in debt than ever before in our history that the World Bank warns of the possibility of social collapse.

 

Our (?) government presently needs trillions of dollars more of debt creation to pay off a minority of national and international loan sharks and is presently debating how much more we should borrow to create even more death and destruction than we have already caused.  Calling or considering this a situation that passes for normal is not just highly judgmental but criminally immoral and a danger to all of humanity.

 

While more than a million Americans have died in a pandemic that has wreaked economic havoc among almost all the population, millionaires have become multi-millionaires, multi-millionaires have become billionaires and some billionaires approach becoming trillionaires. A comfortable class of their servants spreads often well-meaning tales of profit-seeking evil individuals whose crime is survivable if only anti-social media mavericks purchase their products available at web sites and on podcasts. In a fanatically anti-social age of capitalism this market "normality" awaits the hopeful arrival of a Green New Deal salvation, named after the world war two version which brought better lives to many, creating a middle class for some but stark horror for more when billions of public dollars were spent to aid survival of the richest while allowing enough money to trickle down to pass for a welfare state form of capitalism. It now actually threatens to bring on even more dreadfulness to an even greater population.

 

This time some trillions in government domestic spending are proposed when tens of trillions are needed but will never be found under the market forces of private profit "normalcy" which spends hundreds of billions on imperial war.  We need a radical restructuring of the economic, political and value system that treats all of nature, earth, air, water and human beings as commodities to be bought, sold, rented in pursuit of enormous private profit for an ever shrinking number while increasing the hundreds of millions who sink lower economically while bearing the public loss that is the outcome of all private profit.

 

While a hopeful program for domestic progress is proposed by some, the old deal of the murderous warfare state is even more dangerous than ever, with the crackpots of the Trump regime replaced by even more experienced creators of mass murder policies and practices to preserve the alleged chosen people status of America's ruling capital and its servant class of often sincere worshippers of the idea of democracy who make it impossible by their service to the most anti-social, viciously anti-democratic political economic system that has reached a point of threatening not only America but the entire world.

 

The old cold war against communism is no more, but the new one against capitalist Russia and China has introduced greater spending on warfare than ever before and the sheer mind numbing idiocy of a daily barrage of mis and dis-information coming from the bowels of corporate mass media and naturally extending to most of their small time imitators at what is often called social media though it usually operates as anti-social as the system dictates. All of us are endangered by the potential of a nuclear confrontation provoked by the fanatic war cult serving the alleged interest of democracy, peace and freedom the way pimps serve the interest of love, marriage and family.

 

Naturally, this is treated as massive terror threats from outside enemies and desperately needing trillions spent on what is called defense, which adequately protects the Americans militarily ringing the Russian border and sailing the South China seas, having hundreds of military bases thousands of miles from America's shores and conducting insurrections in foreign nations while gullible Americans are led to believe a large demonstration at the capital in which fewer humans suffered than in an average hour of automobile traffic was a threat to our sacred democracy which has as much material substance as Santa Claus. This is sold to a mentally imprisoned population as a defense of America rationalized by a bi-partisan leadership of republicrats and demublicans collectively dumb enough to pick their noses and call it self lobotomy while offering absolutely no help at all to more than 25 million Americans without health care and more than half a million without shelter.

 

Despite the unrelenting intellectual and moral garbage being force fed to consumers of what is called by some our sacred democracy, newer generations contain more critical numbers than ever speaking out and showing signs of no more tolerance for this mass murdering drivel. Current mind mashing daily bulletins about Putin's being a murderous imperialist and Chinese performing genocide on Islamic people are part of the daily diet of intellectual sewage that passes for reporting in the news marketplace, where more minds are being destroyed while more wealth is created by the media servants of capital.

 

Daily bulletins inform (?) us that Russia and China are brutalizing their people while we slaughter thousands, destroy nations and reduce millions to poverty, defining all that as freedom and democracy. If there were a judgmental and vindictive deity such as the one created in the more sadistic episodes of Old Testament mythology that had one destroy the planet because of false worship or a bad migraine, there might be a cataclysmic explosion, earthquake, holocaust and plague every fifteen minutes until our nation was obliterated.

 

Luckily, we only have to deal with the largest population of earth dwellers growing fed up with a material reality forced on them by allegedly higher forms of humans practicing a form of political economics that might create a Department of Rape and call it a Ministry of Love.

 

The rest of the world is retaliating by offering lessons in humanity to western social degeneracy by describing how it is possible to end poverty by investing in people rather than murdering them. This revolutionary idea is the main reason for China and Russia being treated as enemies of private profit and public loss, even as both their economies still live according to augmented global rules of capital. Until humanity and not just one or another nation face the reality in which we all live and return to our roots in communal cooperation, the divisions of our race into separate but unequal minorities instead of a unified organism which is what we are and should act like we will be assured an extremely dim future, beginning with a nuclear holocaust which can be the outcome of present national madness especially centered in the western world minority that passes for leadership. The time to create global democracy was never more present nor possible nor necessary than the present moment and those of the ruling minority must be replaced before the majority pays the most awful price.  

 

The word democracy is far more revered than the practice and while the right to vote is a necessary part of the process what we vote for is absolutely more important than simply accepting as we do in America two sides of the same capitalist coin and calling it democracy. In Germany democracy put Hitler and the Nazi party in power and in America we are seeing a collapse in all aspects of our system and while it is especially obvious in the economics reducing the standard and cost of everyday life, the political structure of war and profit worship goes hand in hand. We must create real democracy and it must ultimately extend globally to all our people so that the action needed for social transformation can be up to and include all and not just some. We need to speed up that process which is well underway but not yet apparent to far too many of us. We need to stop watching the news and start making it.  Fast.

 

Debunking The Debunkers 2: Immigration

Michael Slager writing in Counterpunch magazine (The Migrant "Crisis" and 10 Misperceptions About Immigration, February 3, 2023) offers the following corrections to commonly raised concerns related to immigration in the United States. These concerns are debunked in turn by Legalienate.

1. Immigrants Cause Crime

"US government statistics and reputable criminology literature have shown that high concentrations of immigrants do not make crime worse and may even help to lower it. It is worth noting that US-born citizens are twice as likely as undocumented immigrants to commit violent crimes and 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug offenses."

This claim does not address the fact that a crime committed by an illegal immigrant is not one that citizens should have to deal with, whereas the crimes of one's fellow citizens are. The issue is the legitimization of violations of immigration law, not the spillover effects from those violations, be they good, bad, or neutral.

 2. Immigrants Might Be Terrorists

"It is highly unlikely that a foreign-born terrorist would kill a U.S. citizen. A study conducted by the CATO institute in 2019 found that the chances are 1 in 3.8 million per year. The likelihood of a refugee killing someone in a terrorist attack is one in 3.86 billion per year."

In other words, 911 was statistically improbable, which may be true, but not particularly helpful to know, given the trauma such an event inevitably causes. Furthermore, CATO is hardly a neutral source on immigration matters. They find no wage too low, no conditions too degrading, and no reason not to support "free labor" (i.e., desperate and exploited workers) going wherever it feels it needs to, regardless of what the law may require. If the entire planet is to be reduced to a "free trade zone," immigration law is illegitimate. If this is one's position, it should be stated up front.

3. They Take Our Jobs

"When an immigrant enters the workforce a US citizen is either not affected at all or finds work more suitable to their skills. Regarding so-called low or unskilled work, some Americans move into managerial or leadership roles because of their proficiency in English and knowledge of the culture. Labor displacement can happen, but it is a very small percentage and primarily affects those without high school diplomas, who, as I noted, often move into better positions."

It is unlikely that all the black workers who used to staff the nation's hotels moved up into managerial positions. Admitedly, Slager only claims that "some" move up, but then the question becomes, "What about the others?" about which he says nothing. Also, he should address the issue of an overall depression of wages brought about by a "reserve army of the unemployed," which has long been a staple of realistic economic analysis. If it is no longer operative, or somehow not applicable to the millions of desperate workers arriving to the U.S. from abroad, he needs to explain why. 

4. They Want To Live Off The Government

"Undocumented migrants are not eligible for welfare, food stamps, or Medicaid. Eligible migrants or legal immigrants use welfare at far lower rates than US-born citizens. In general, they are about 30 percent less likely to apply for welfare, than the US population, even though rates of poverty among some immigrant communities are far higher."

Why would excluded people apply for welfare at all? It makes no sense to say they are ineligible and can't receive anything, but at the same time they go on applying. In any case, the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants ARE eligible, so welfare reaches them that way. Also, there are a range of programs from free food to low-cost medical care to free English lessons that are available to the undocumented, though it might not be defined as "welfare." Suffice it to say that the undocumented immigrant package in the U.S. is far more generous than anything available in their countries of origin, which provides the inducement for them coming here. It hardly justifies the abuses they are forced to endure in getting and living here, but it is government and non-profit (i.e., quasi-government) support.

5. They Cost Us Money

"No, they do not. According to Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell University, documented and undocumented immigrants paid $328 billion federal, state, and local taxes in 2014 alone. The Social Security Administration estimates that unauthorized migrant workers paid about $12 billion into the Social Security trust fund in 2010. As noted, they are not eligible for benefits. By contrast, former President Trump paid out $750 in federal income taxes in 2016."

The total tax figure has to be compared to the total government costs at the local, state, and federal level in support of undocumented immigrants. Slager doesn't provide it, simply moves on to Social Security, which is a related topic, but doesn't speak to the overall point.

6. They Are A Drag On The Economy

"Many foreign-born workers move to regions in the United States where there are labor shortages, stimulating local economies. Migrants are often more willing to move because of fewer familial ties. Lots of migrant women work in childcare, which allows native born parents, especially American women, to seek employment outside the home."

Yes, many migrants abandon their children to work and support them from the United States, which allows many American parents to abandon their children daily in order to work outside the home. This may not be a drag on the economy, but it's usually an emotional drag for the kids, especially when they are little.  Yes, aggregate economic figures can make it look like this is a benefit all the way around, but is it really? 

7. They Refuse To Learn English

"After a decade of residency, a vast majority of immigrants speak English well. As a former ESL teacher, I can say that the demand for English classes, and it often exceeds available seats in the classroom."

It often takes ten or more years to gain residency, so "after a decade of residency" often means after living a couple of decades in the U.S. In that span of time every single person should have picked up fluent English, which is not to say grammatically perfect, accent free English, but fluent communication ability. Many immigrants who arrive as adults do not manage to do this, but this is not due to an outright refusal to learn. The real issue is the capitalist imperative of cheap labor, which refuses to invest adequately in the workforce, and certainly does not want to pay for years of expensive language training. When the workforce doesn't speak English well, it produces all kinds of communication frustrations, which aren't perceived as a problem unless they interfere with profits. Nevertheless, communication problems always generate resentment. How could they not?

8. They Refuse To Assimilate

The pattern for assimilation has been roughly the same for over a century. Ethnic enclaves in major cities generally only last for about three (and often fewer) generations. One immigrant group is often replaced by others, who then repeat the pattern of settlement and assimilation.

Yes, they assimilate all too well, even to the point of identifying white people as "Americans" and people of color as separate, lesser races. Why are we teaching them to do that?

9. They Are "Illegal."

Approximately 75 percent of all immigrants are here legally. The other 25 percent are not, but of this group, 40% overstayed their visas.

This response misses the point that the line between legal and illegal has been hopelessly blurred by cheap labor policy subsidizing corporate profits. If you enter the U.S. illegally the consequence is supposed to be that you are removed from the country for a period of at least ten years before you are even eligible to apply for a legal visa. This so-called Law of Punishment has been reduced to a brief formality (exit the country for a day, a week, or a couple months and then re-enter legally) or not applied at all. Illegal entry or overstaying a legal visa has been legitimized as the first step on the "path to citizenship." U.S. law, however, continues to define it as a serious violation. We shouldn't be trying to have it both ways.

10. The Borders Are Wide Open

This is false. The southern border is significantly militarized and monitored by almost 17,000 agents. The cost of policing the border is over $16 billion per year. Under the Biden administration hundreds of thousands of people have either been refused entry or deported.

The borders are militarized, and also porous enough to have let millions of illegal immigrants find their way in. But the border fetish is really almost beside the point. Illegal immigrants are fleeing the aftermath of U.S. sponsored military and CIA interventions, as well as "free market" orthodoxy that has made any kind of decent life impossible for all but the few around the "undeveloped" world. Thus, they have legitimate claims to make against the U.S. government. How about we focus on and solve the real problem, instead of dividing ourselves into warring identity factions?

 

Debunking The Debunkers: How To Reason With Scientists and Other Partially Rational Creatures

Scientists are increasingly becoming aware that they need to improve their skills of public engagement, so as to combat scientific misinformation more effectively than they have been able to manage to date. This is a welcome development, on the whole, as the American public's scientific illiteracy is boundless, which has contributed to substantial unnecessary loss of life in the Covid era, and promises to continue to do so on a range of issues in the future. Having said that, however, it is becoming equally clear that the unexamined assumptions of the scientists hoping to keep us properly informed may lead us as far astray as the self-interested propaganda put out by pseudo-scientific grifters. 

Consider the following passage from a recent book on how to reason with "science deniers."

"Content Rebuttal and technique rebuttal can be effective tools."

"We already know, based on the work of Schmid and Betsch, that it is possible to present science deniers with information that might change their minds. In the case of COVID-19 denial, what information might that be? With content rebuttal, we might share the studies showing that masks are effective. With technique rebuttal, we might point out the problem with conspiracy reasoning, either just before or just after they have heard scientific misinformation. Or - if that doesn't work - perhaps we might exploit their predilection for conspiracist thought. Imagine a conversation in which you are talking to a COVID-19  denier (which means that the person is already predisposed to believe in conspiracy theories), and you share the fact that Russia and China are engaged in a massive disinformation campaign on social media in support of the idea that the coronavirus is a 'hoax' and we need to 'liberate' ourselves from more lockdown restrictions. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a real live conspiracy! Might this not appeal to them? I've cited some sources earlier in this chapter that you can print out and hand to them. Some even include graphs and charts. You might encourage your interlocutor to think about who is benefiting from all the polarization and division in the U.S. Doesn't that make them even a little bit suspicious? If all else fails, suggest that they do their own research. It is perverse, but it just might work!"

-----Lee McIntyre, How To Talk To A Science Denier (MIT Press, 2021) p. 174

 

We might cite studies showing that masks are effective. 

True, we might, but that won't necessarily have the desired effect, as there are also studies showing that masks are ineffective. McIntye's book shows that cherry picking data is a key problem in "science denial," so how can he justify overlooking the studies that run counter to his preferred conclusion? See, for example, Dr. Dean Edell's Eat, Drink, & Be Merry," (HarperCollins, 1999) p. 246, which cites a study of Swedish surgeons showing that working maskless did not result in a higher rate of infections,  and more recently, "The scientific case against face masks," (Unherd TV, January 13, 2023), which cites a range of mask studies claiming they are minimally effective or ineffective. For those who feel that the kind of mask is all-important, check with the This Week In Virology podcast, which recently cited a study of medical workers that concluded surgical masks and N95 masks were about equally effective in preventing disease transmission.

We might point out the problem with conspiracy reasoning. . .

Again, we might, but if we do we also have to point out that McIntyre's own sources claiming "apparently" massive Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns targeting Americans about Covid 19 and other issues are anonymous U.S. government officials whose intelligence services have a record of lying, distortion, and propaganda that make Mao and Stalin look like hopeless amateurs. In other words, we can't hope to help others see clearly if our head is firmly planted up our ass.**

I've cited some sources earlier in the chapter that you can print out and hand to them.

Which is about as condescending as it gets. Jehovah's Witnesses use this approach. Should that convince us their worldview is rational?

In any case, why would this be a better approach than people sharing links to their favorite online sources, as is commonly done, with no evidence that it leads to broader and deeper rational consensus? On the contrary. It leads to wholesale denunciation of those who fail to accept the presumbably superior insight of one's favored sources. 

Some even include graphs and charts.

Graphs and charts are not inherently more credible sources of information than pure text, as McIntyre seems to believe. Trying to convince someone by means of the form of an argument rather than the substance is part of the problem. In short, graphs and charts are only as good as the person who makes them. Anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers can and do use graphs and charts to support irrational or misleading conclusions. 

You might encourage your interlocutor to think about who is benefiting from all the polarization and division in the U.S.

This is good advice, but the answer is not "Russia and China," as McIntyre thoughtlessly assumes, but the U.S. national security state and the banks and other corporations that dominate it. The power of the propaganda apparatus they have developed to mislead the public mind is unprecedented in human history, with the possible exception of the medieval Church. The Russian and Chinese contribution to false American beliefs is about as significant as how much your toaster contributes to global warming.

Do your own research! 

Uh, no. Do your research in collaboration with others. This is how science works, and how democracy best works. Doing one's own research leads to endless ratification of confirmation bias, that is, selectively looking for information that reinforces what one already believes. Only when we interact with others do we have a chance of discovering our errors. This is less likely to happen online, where information is curated for your eyes only, which leads to ideological siloes where underlying assumptions remain unseen and unchallenged. So do your research with others, and include people who hold different initial assumptions than you do, though hopefully not too radically different. And be respectful.

Obviously, science has a lot to teach us about what the relevant facts are and how they are best accounted for in areas of specialized knowledge, but there are no grounds for believing that when scientists venture into social and political thought that their conclusions are any better than those of the next guy you meet at the bus stop.

**McIntyre's sources include: "The Coronavirus Gives Russia and China Another Opportunity to Spread Their Disinformation," Washington Post, March 29, 2020, Also, "Chinese Agents Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials Say," New York Times, April 22, 2020

Covid and Class Struggle

 "Let me turn now to why the government and the private sector have failed to contain the (Corona) virus. Here in this country (USA - ed.) a struggle developed between the scientific community [and] the health community that wanted to take the usual steps - the masking, the social distancing, all the other requirements of combating a viral pandemic - vs. the capitalist business community. The capitalist business community discovered early on an old lesson of economics. You can have a wonderful factory, or office, or store, equipped with all the latest computers, and full of all the raw materials you need, but nothing will happen and you will earn zero profit. You have to have the one absolutely essential crucial ingredient and that is labor. Human beings using their brains and muscles. And the Covid pandemic deprived businesses of human beings because the shoppers and buyers were afraid to go in to the crowded stores and restaurants and the laborers were afraid to go in to the crowded workspaces. And so the labor wasn't forthcoming. And the business community suffered. Loss of profits. So they put enormous pressure on our political leaders to open the country up, to minimize or avoid lockdowns, to minimize or avoid masks because they interfere. And most of all the mask was a kind of constant reminder to everybody that we were in a dangerous place in relationship to this illness. So the business community wanted not to respond in the ways that other countries did. And the business community made use of the demonization of the government, which is a way that capitalism survives in the United States. It is always the fault of the government - whatever goes wrong. You may be fired by a capitalist, but you're angry at the politician. This is, of course, a wonderful arrangement for capitalists, because it deflects the anger resulting from capitalist decisions onto the politicians who have at best a tangential relationship to those decisions. And so we had - over and over again - starting with Mr. Trump, and particularly from the right wing in America, the Republican Party, opposition to masks, opposition to social distancing, opposition to lockdowns. And so we did not take the steps that were taken in many other countries. Like the People's Republic of China (pre-Omicron), like New Zealand, like South Korea, like Cuba. Countries with very different economic and political systems, but who were able to support a government that mobilized resources, public and private, to deal with this problem. Having the government mobilize resources is not what American capitalism permits. And it is now paying the price. The Covid disaster is worse in the United States than in any other country on this planet, even though we are one of the richest countries, we have one of the most developed medical care systems, but we weren't prepared and our internal contradictions, which is what they are, prevented this disaster from playing itself out as it is doing literally as I speak with you, when we are breaking new records every day in the number of people getting sick with Covid-19, and the number of people dying from Covid-19."

-------Professor Richard Wolff - Crises of U.S. Capitalism, Pandemic, Crash and Secular Decline, 11/23/20, You Tube

Capitalism, Class, Race, Classist Racist Capitalism and...

Capitalism, Class, Race, Classist Racist Capitalism

and Capitalist Inhuman Nature

 

by Frank Scott

 

There is no god but god: Islamic belief.

 

There is no race but human: scientific fact.

 

The first holds true for many if not all the 1.8 billion Muslims of the world as a foundational belief. The second is true for all Muslims, Jews, Christians, agnostics, atheists, and all the other many belief systems based on creativity, hopes, dreams and strived for explanations of the mysteries of life. But after conjecture on how it all started, which is thus far beyond any of us as fact and available only as belief in legend and myth, once having arrived as our conception of being, our humanity is as scientifically verifiable as anything and more than most. While we can dream, argue, theorize, demand, insist and pray for acceptance of one or another story of how we came to be as a race, originally, it is certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are not members of anything but a human race, no matter what language we speak or what theories have been driven into our minds by rulers who did and do well to keep us divided into what too many perceive, in total defiance of all logic, as different races.

 

Ethnicities are certainly a fact in that we are born in different parts of earth and have evolved and developed different languages and looks based on geography, weather, genetics and most importantly our parents. Those born to Europeans look like Europeans, to Africans like Africans and to Asians like Asians, and so on. But all are members of the one and only species we label the human race. Being born to African and European parents means we look more African than the European parent and more European than the African parent, but we are no more or less human. The ignorance placed in our minds that strives to separate us as races to explain and exploit political and economic differences are cursed divisions which are created by and have fed into the political economic evils which thrive on such divisions and like so much else need to be confronted and dismissed for the ultimate ignorance and even stupidity they represent.

 

 Is there a tall race composed of only tall humans? A short race composed of only short ones? Are male creatures a separate race from females? Then what is the race they and only they can reproduce? Shemales? Malehers? Boychicks? While present language molesting in search of explanations for a crumbling environment to be found in personal profiles to some of us rather than social endangerment to all of us can make it seem so, they are simply up-to-date devices of separatism that make divide and conquer the not so secret to success for minorities to dominate majorities.

 

Since we moved over millennia from being primitive hunter gatherer communists to allegedly civilized mass murdering democrats our tendencies to slaughter one another have grown even more quickly than material development has enabled many of us to lead more comfortable lives only by reducing much greater numbers to lives of misery and deprivation. Sadly, achieving any material improvement for some of us has brought absolute necessities for religion, therapy, alcohol and drugs to avoid mass hysteria. And the people who can afford to suffer mental illness the most are those who can afford the religion, therapy, alcohol and drugs while most seriously disturbed people suffer physical horrors which are reduced to mental problems only if and when they can afford indoor plumbing.

 

 

It would do us all better to not only learn how capitalism came about and brought about our present condition but what we need to do to transform it into a global system that puts the public good looooooong before any notion of private profit. Whatever is learned, surmised, hoped for, believed in by often well meaning conservatives, liberals, leftists, rightists and extremists of all sexual persuasions, skin tones, cultures, societies, study groups and more, it should be understood that all this intrigue, counter-expertise voiced by highly or lowly educated people - depending on their believers and fans - is easily countered by other alleged experts and might as well be attributed to those behind the 911 attack on America. That was often said to be Jesus, the Bush regime, Russia, Syria, the Zionist cabal and other serious descents into near madness, all such plot revealers neglecting to notice that except for the Jesus/Moses/Allah believers, all such plots would have needed accomplices in the upper hundreds in number if not low thousands and a bit harder to keep secret in a world where all these experts exist who know exactly how a relative handful are running the entire planet and as yet haven’t really accomplished a damned thing proving  they exist as such and we go on seeking, finding, top secret elements in a world where some people can’t break wind without twitter-tweeter-twisters screeching it to the millions of anti-social small media in contrast to the anti-social propaganda from big media  and often correctly identified as hustlers of fake news.

 

We can, in nature, fight fire with fire, but we cannot combat bullshit with greater bullshit, whether it originates from alleged professional experts or amateur liars working to further confuse the people of a dangerously confused race who need to not just end the biological threats of disease to millions but the systemic threat to all of humanity’s billions.

 

That threat is one in which every single thing on the market, which is where all of earth gets everything needed for survival (?) means that guns, lingerie, food, clothing, shelter, homelessness, mass murder, books, TV, computers, slippers, poetry, pet care and alleged expertise in all these marketing areas and far far more, is available only to those with the market forces to afford them. If you cannot afford housing, food, clothing etc. you can ultimately drop dead without suffering the present deadly for some virus of the moment but our infinitely greater problem is the far more deadly virus of the political economics of the private profit dominated global marketing practiced by the USA, Russia, China and everyone else destroying the natural world ecologically in the longer term and more immediately by moving closer to wars which could become nuclear and assure that there wont be anyone left to create wonderful exercises in research to prove who started it or created it or financed it or created profits from it.

For a few minutes at least.

 

Both Russia and especially China are attempting control of the exclusively private profit perversion with Russia assuming a slightly social democratic attempted control while China under a communist party rule has brought more control and progress for its people than has ever been achieved anywhere on earth by capitalists or alleged or real socialists who are usually under almost complete control of capital even while they profess wishes to represent all and not only some of the people.

 

As far as human nature is concerned, we are taught to define it by the same forces that teach us about race, though there is at least the acknowledgment of human as covering all of us and not just some though finding it completely logical and moral to burn hundreds of thousands of people to death in pursuit of market domination so we can sell weapons, cosmetics, pet food, bullets, sex aids and other products that make life better for some and absolutely horrendous for others. Humans are all members of the same race – human – and we are produced by our human parents. Again, if one of them is African and the other European, we will look more African than the Euro and more Euro than the African, but still be members of the same one and only human race. It’s just as silly if not dumb to accept social shaping into “identity group” racially divided humanity as it is to believe in short-tall-fat-skinny races. It is human nature, for sure, to need food, clothing and shelter in order to survive, and that’s true whether one is light or dark skinned, euro or afro or Asian or other human, hetero or homo or tranni-multi-bipolar-indigene-tourist or settler. When survival is available to all the human tribe it gets on quite well without bludgeoning and murdering, etc. but when desperation sets in and survival is threatened, humans react desperately, including killing one another and eating the deceased when no other food is available, so the obvious is to arrange things to avoid desperation by doing what many allegedly primitive people did to survive: share, equally, and not tolerate any member of the tribe going hungry when there was food or being cold and homeless when shelter was available. That rape, murder and theft exist is less a specific of alleged human nature (?) than the fact that the overwhelming majority of humans rarely if ever choose murder in order to get food when food is available or attack people to steal their belongings when there are more than enough belongings available. These acts of anti-human nature can be avoided completely by the tribe seeing to it that 1000 loaves of bread and 1000 people means a loaf of bread to every person and not ten loaves for one and none for 10 people. We need to learn that people of the distant past were communists because it was the only way to survive and we need to become democratic communists of the present and that means ending private profit capitalism, which is hardly the reason for all of our problems but is the reason for most of them.

 

Once we create democratic communism, we will still have illness and we will still have death but it will come from natural causes rather than the rape-war-murder-war-marketplace degeneracy that finds profit in murder, profit in cancer, profit in domestic animals and profit in reducing humans to poverty, homelessness and death by countless un-natural causes. That seems so blatantly obvious it’s another sign not that it is not our nature to be oblivious to the obvious but that minority rule has shut down important aspects of our humanity and capacity to think. Revolutionary change is needed to enable us to see the world as children begin life seeing it . They/we are taught the massive idiocy of separate races and the need for war and such. Culture is all taught and learned and hasn’t a damned thing to do with what is falsely identified as human nature. It is our nature to eat, drink, lust, sing, dance and more but very very very very few humans wake up thinking, hmm, what a nice day to crack thousands of skulls open, pillage and burn cities, destroy nations, slaughter children and burn babies. And the few who do are demented degenerates who need special care or more likely to be thrown out of power by any means necessary and replaced by democracy that is global in nature. That calls for a global revolution by, for and about all of us, not just some of us.

Understanding Science While Ignoring Capitalism Won't Work

With Beijing overnight turning from "zero Covid" to "let it rip" pandemic non-policy, hundreds of millions of infections are right now burning through the one billion, four hundred million members of the People's Republic, a tsunami of contagion that is expected to kill from half a million to a million or more people just in the coming weeks. Dr. Michael Osterholm, an outstanding epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, has criticized the Chinese government for nearly a year for its heavy reliance on test, trace, and quarantine strategy, which has left the Chinese people with insufficient immunity to ward off disaster in the current crisis. 

Meanwhile, the Covid disaster in the West continues, albeit on a reduced scale, with over four hundred Americans a day dying of the disease, accompanied by zero national concern and barely any public awareness.

Much has been said about the "politicization" of the virus, and the negative public health effects that ensued from this unfortunate development, and it is certainly true that political tribalism prevented us from "understanding the science," as it were, which is never as simple as political slogans demand.

Having said that, it is not enough to simply "understand the science," important as that is. One must also call out the social policy within which medical science in particular is deeply embedded, especially when that policy fosters public health disaster, as it clearly has in the United States with Covid.

Consider the following statement from Dr. Osterholm on his most recent podcast (December 29):

"We have a 1968 Medicare-financed health care system in this country that is broken and is not going to provide us with the surge capacity we need" (given the situation in China).

But "broken" doesn't begin to describe it. The public health system is and has been under attack for a long time. 

There's a reason no personal protective equipment was available for doctors and nurses when Covid struck, no N95 masks were stockpiled, and hospitals lacked redundant capacity and enough ventilators. These were planned capitalist outcomes, because the cost of maintaining such inventories conflicts with "just-in-time" production, which assumes that immediate profit is a more important social goal than long-term public health. In other words, the owners of the private economy insist that pandemic policy be improvised after contagion hits, not planned out and allocated for in advance. 

With more than a million Americans dead of Covid, this is a political policy that begs to be called out by public health officials. Dr. Osterholm's longstanding "I'm just calling balls and strikes" neutrality isn't adequate to the task.