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"The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave."

-- Leon Trotsky

News and Opinion

An excellent article, even if Schwarz conveniently fails to mention the corporate Democrat complicity in class oppression. he explains the mechanism and the rationale well.

The Corporate Right Is Giving Us Two Choices: Go Back to Work, or Starve

The GOP and its core constituents — conservative corporations — now face two dangers, one in the short term and one in the longer term. They’re currently using their standard playbook to smother both. Whether they succeed will determine our lives for decades. The short-term danger is that Americans will resist the push from business to get us back on the job and making money for them. Their plan is simple: Starve us out. They know we can’t survive indefinitely without a continuing government bailout focused on regular people’s needs. So they’re going to stop that bailout from happening.

The longer-term danger they face is that we’ll make the government work for us in the short term — and then we will realize we could make it work for us all the time by removing the threat of starvation from their arsenal. This would totally change the balance of power in society. This is their deepest fear, one that’s consumed them since World War II, the first time in history that everyday people gained consciousness that it was possible for them to use the government to create a world that puts them first, not their bosses.

In the short term, they will just say that America is now, sadly, out of money. At a recent press conference, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., still metaphorically drenched from the firehose of cash he sprayed all over Wall Street and big American business during the past month, looked mournful. Money for state and local governments so they’re not forced to lay off massive numbers of teacher and firefighters? Hazard pay for doctors and nurses? Help for people paying rent? Sorry, no. “Until we can begin to open up the economy,” McConnell said, “we can’t spend enough money to solve the problem.” The same thinking prevails in the Trump administration, particularly about money for state and local governments. The strategy is already bearing fruit, with states such as Florida, Georgia, Texas and Tennessee easing restrictions on business — all to the approval of various presidential tweets. ...

The problem, from the corporate right’s perspective, is not just that business would lose its cudgel for the moment if the U.S. government pays people to stay home. ... This was famously explained in a 1943 essay by Michal Kalecki, a Polish economist, titled “Political Aspects of Full Employment.” At that moment, World War II was demonstrating for everyone with eyes to see that governments could end depressions and create economic booms via the straightforward method of spending money on basic human needs. There was no technical reason this couldn’t continue after the war, Kalecki wrote. But there was a huge political problem: An economy in which people could live without fear of unemployment would mean employers would no longer hold the whip hand. ...

This perspective — that governmental power was enormous and could be used for the many rather than the few — was obvious at the time in 1940s. But it was forgotten over the next few decades, because powerful people wanted it forgotten. At various points, it’s been rediscovered, as by the civil rights movement during the 1970s. What we need now is slightly different than what Kalecki described: “full employment” with many people essentially “working” at not getting sick or infecting others. But the principle is the same, as is the terror that this possibility elicits on the right.

Economist Thomas Piketty: Coronavirus Pandemic Has Exposed the “Violence of Social Inequality”

"Only in Trump's America": Despite Covid-19, Employees in Texas and Iowa Told to Get Back to Work or Lose Unemployment Benefits

If you don't return to work in Texas and Iowa because you fear getting sick from the coronavirus you risk losing unemployment benefits.

That's the directive from the respective states' two Republican governors, who separately issued guidelines to that effect as part of an effort to reopen their economies despite warnings from public health officials.

In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds announced last Friday that anyone in the state refusing to return to work due to concerns over contracting Covid-19, which has as of press time killed over 59,000 Americans, would be considered as a "voluntary quit" from their job and ineligible for unemployment benefits.

"If you're an employer and you offer to bring your employee back to work and they decide not to, that's a voluntary quit," said Reynolds. "Therefore, they would not be eligible for the unemployment money."

Only in Trump's America are workers forced to choose between their jobs and the health and well-being of their families during a pandemic that has claimed 59,136 lives and rising. #ExtendTheLockdownhttps://t.co/0e09XZSmKQ

— Shelby Kent-Stewart ™ (@ShelbyKStewart) April 29, 2020

In a guidance memo issued Monday, the Iowa Workforce Development agency urged employers to turn in workers who choose to prioritize their personal health and safety over demands they return to work.

"Businesses should report employees who refuse to return to work without good reason or who quit their jobs as soon as possible," the memo declared.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbot on Monday issued an order reopening his state's economy for May 1, meaning Texans who do not return to work could also lose access to unemployment benefits.

Pelosi challenger Shahid Buttar calls out her handling of Tara Reade allegations

100+ Economists Push Pelosi to Urgently Boost Relief for Workers, Stem Massive Surge in Unemployment

In a pair of letters Wednesday, more than 100 economists urged Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to increase relief for workers affected by the coronavirus pandemic by making "substantial improvements" to the federal short-time compensation program and passing Rep. Pramila Jayapal's Paycheck Guarantee Act.

Both letters point out that over 26 million people have filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March—a figure that undercounts the real number of recent job losses—and that while Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act from March provided some much needed help, "it does not meet the scale of the Covid-19 crisis."

The legislation proposed by Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), earlier this month would allow businesses nationwide to continue paying 100% of their employees' salaries of up to $100,000 annually, following the lead of various European countries. The bill was welcomed by labor unions and small business advocates.

Along with the CARES Act, the package passed by Congress on April 23 that provided more funding for the Paycheck Protection Program "fails to adequately address the fallout from the pandemic," says the letter about Jayapal's proposal. "The Paycheck Guarantee Act does much more to prevent mass layoffs, keep businesses intact, and facilitate a faster recovery."

"Congress has the power to protect ordinary workers during this public health and economic crisis," Economic Policy Institute (EPI) president Thea Lee said in a statement. "The Paycheck Guarantee Act will help businesses keep workers on payroll until the crisis is over—preserving economic security, benefits, and employment relationships."

Round two of the “Paycheck Protection Program”: Another disaster for US small businesses and their employees

The launch Monday morning of the second round of the US “small business” Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a debacle. Millions of family-owned entities, desperate for credit and tottering on the brink of permanent closure, were once again shut out from applying for, let alone receiving, government-backed forgivable loans. As soon as the $310 billion program administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA) began taking loan applications at 10:30 am, its computer system, overwhelmed by the volume of requests, crashed. ...

The Washington Post quoted Paul Merski of the Independent Community Bankers of America as saying, “All of the reports I have around the country is that it’s been a disaster.” The big Wall Street banks, which are making a killing off of the government loan program, having taken in $10 billion in fees in the first round, had warned the Treasury Department and the SBA that they had to prepare for a massive flood of loan requests, but nothing was done to avoid the logjam. The SBA said later on Monday that there were double the number of users accessing the system than any one day during the initial round of the program. The banks have warned, moreover, that the $310 billion allotted for the restart of the program will likely be exhausted in less than a week. ...

The program, initially backed by $349 billion in taxpayer money, was presented by the media and both big business parties as a boon to businesses with fewer than 500 employees and their workers. Family-owned entities such as restaurants, beauty salons, barber shops, gas stations and small retail stores, as well as other small firms with little access to capital, could receive up to $10 million in government-backed loans that would be turned into grants if the businesses used 75 percent of the loans to rehire or retain their employees and spent the rest on rent and utilities.

Even if the reality lived up to the dishonest marketing spin, the program would do little to prevent a wave of small business bankruptcies and millions of job losses, since it is set to expire on June 30, many months before the economy can reasonably expected to recover from the steepest contraction since the Great Depression, and when the coronavirus pandemic is certain to continue causing death and sickness on a gigantic scale. But even before the initial round of the program ran out of money on April 16, with only eight percent of small firms that applied for loans having received any money, it became clear that the entire operation was a corporate-government fraud. ...

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin as well as prominent Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have feigned shock and horror over the insider dealing, corruption and lying in connection with the so-called “Paycheck Protection Program.” This is a fraud. They were perfectly aware from the outset that the program was designed, despite the deceptive marketing, to benefit big business and the banks and largely exclude small business and its employees. In fact, the provision in the CARES Act that allowed restaurant and hotel chains to evade the 500-employee limit, so long as none of their individual units employed 500 or more, was negotiated by Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, known informally as the “senator from Wall Street.”

And all but one Democrat in both chambers of Congress—including Sanders and Warren—voted for the second round of the PPP last week, despite the stench of corruption and lying surrounding the program. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed the bill’s passage as a “historic, bipartisan vote.”

Elon Musk rails against 'fascist' shelter-in-place orders in Tesla earnings call

Elon Musk unleashed a diatribe against shelter-in-place orders, describing the public health measures intended to stem the spread of coronavirus as “fascist”, during an earnings call on Wednesday. “This is not democratic,” he said of the orders, which he falsely characterized as stipulating that anyone who leaves home would be arrested. “This is not freedom – give people back their goddamn freedom.”

Musk’s rant came despite a relatively good earnings report for Tesla, in which the company beat analysts’ estimates for first-quarter revenue on Wednesday. It posted its third straight quarterly profit after recording a solid number of deliveries during the period, despite disruptions due to the pandemic.

Earlier on the call, Musk specifically cited the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place order, which has prevented his factory in Fremont, California, from opening, as a concern. “We are a bit worried about not being able to resume production in the Bay Area,” he began. “The extension of shelter-in-place – or as I would call it, forcibly imprisoning people in their homes, against all constitutional right, and in my opinion infringing on people’s freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong, and not why people came to America or pulled this country – what the fuck?” he said, before trailing off. He said shelter-in-place would cause “great harm” to companies.

Musk’s comments followed a series of erratic tweets on Tuesday night calling on the government to relax social distancing restrictions, sharing articles and praising examples of places relaxing their orders. “FREE AMERICA NOW,” one tweet read. ... Musk has repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of coronavirus and spread misinformation regarding the pandemic to his 33.4 million Twitter followers over the last several months. He has tweeted that children are “essentially immune” to coronavirus, which is not true, and said on 19 March that there would be “close to zero new cases” in the US “by end of April”, which has also not proven to be true.

Whole Foods, Amazon, Target, and Instacart workers are striking on May 1st pic.twitter.com/nwnMhxxffy

— Michael Sainato (@msainat1) April 22, 2020

Chomsky: COVID-19 strikes, solidarity can help defeat Trump and the neoliberal assault

Trump Says No to Additional Covid-19 Stimulus Checks, Backs Cutting Tax That Funds Social Security Instead

President Donald Trump on Tuesday expressed opposition to providing additional direct relief payments on top of the $1,200 checks that are slowly trickling out to eligible U.S. households, saying he would instead prefer to slash the tax that funds Social Security and Medicare.

"Well, I like the idea of payroll tax cuts," Trump said at a press conference when asked about the idea of authorizing another round of direct payments in the next coronavirus stimulus package as mass layoffs continue.

"I've liked that from the beginning," the president said. "That was a thing that I really would love to see happen. A lot of economists would agree with me. A lot of people agree with me. And I think frankly it's simple, it's not the big distribution, and it would really be an incentive for people to come back to work and for employers to hire."

Trump says he wants blue states to give him "sanctuary-city adjustments" in exchange for federal financial relief pic.twitter.com/wY2edZifPQ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2020

Trump has floated the idea of a payroll tax cut several times in recent weeks—suggesting at one point earlier this month that the cut should be permanent—even though the move would not provide any relief for the tens of millions of people who have lost their jobs since mid-March.

How Criminal Lenders Are Stealing Homes During Crisis

'So what?': Bolsonaro shrugs off Brazil's rising coronavirus death toll

More than 5,000 Brazilians have lost their lives to the coronavirus – even more people than in China, if its official statistics are to be believed.

But on Tuesday night Brazil’s president shrugged off the news. “So what?” Jair Bolsonaro told reporters when asked about the record 474 deaths that day. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”

Bolsonaro’s 11-word response – the latest in a series of remarks belittling the pandemic – sparked immediate fury. One newspaper, the Estado de Minas, stamped the president’s words on to a black front page beside Brazil’s death toll: 5,017.

5,017 deaths. "So what?" - What a powerful front page from Brazil's @em_com today pic.twitter.com/ucxGHQLI8L

— Tom Phillips (@tomphillipsin) April 29, 2020

“Bolsonaro isn’t just an awful politician and a bad president, he’s a despicable human being,” tweeted Marcelo Freixo, a leftwing opponent.

“My name’s Messiah,” Bolsonaro also told reporters on Tuesday, in reference to his second name, Messias. “But I can’t work miracles.”

ystem Update with Glenn Greenwald - The Three-Pronged Crisis Imperiling the Bolsonaro Government

UN warns coronavirus fallout will lead to the next pandemic – global starvation

The next global pandemic may very well be a hunger pandemic as a result of the fallout from coronavirus.

While the World Health Organization warns that stringent guidelines need to stay in place to combat the spread of COVID-19, fellow United Nations agency World Food Program (WFP) believes that it will lead to an uptick in global poverty and starvation, and the response to the virus itself may end up killing more people by the end of 2020.

Last week, WFP's executive director David Beasley cautioned the UN Security Council that the risk of large-scale famine in much of the developing world was now "of biblical proportions" as a result of the global pandemic.

"While dealing with a COVID-19 pandemic, we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic," Beasley told the council. "There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself."

Even before the outbreak, 2020 was on track to be the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II due to the ongoing wars in places like Yemen, Syria and South Sudan, compounded with natural disasters and desert locust swarms across Africa.

That grim reality has been exacerbated by efforts to curb the coronavirus, which has led to cratering economies, mass job losses and crashing oil prices.

Keiser Report | A Deflationary Spiral

US economy shrinks 4.8% as coronavirus ends longest expansion in history

The longest economic expansion in US history officially came to an end on Wednesday when the commerce department announced the economy shrank 4.8% in the first three months of the year.

The economic slump, the steepest since the last recession in 2008, is just an early indicator of how severely the coronavirus pandemic has affected the US economy.

Much of the US economy shut down in March in an effort to contain the virus, triggering 26 million people to file for unemployment benefits and wiping out a decade of jobs gains, at the end of the first quarter. The next set of figures from the commerce department will more accurately reflect the true scale of its impact.

Kevin Hassett, senior economic adviser to the White House, has predicted gross domestic product (GDP) – the widest measure of the economy – could fall at an annualized rate of 30% in the next quarter. Goldman Sachs expects a 15% unemployment rate in the US by mid-year, up from 4.4% at present.

The fall is the sharpest quarterly decline in GDP since the end of 2008 when the economy contracted by an annualized rate of 8.4%. But on current forecasts the drop-off could soon rival the economic collapse of the Great Depression. In 1932 the US economy shrank 13% over the year.

Remdesivir: early findings on experimental coronavirus drug offer 'quite good news'

Hopes of an effective drug treatment for coronavirus patients have risen following positive early results from a trial of remdesivir, a drug first tried in Ebola patients.

Data from the trial on more than 1,000 severely ill patients in 75 hospitals around the world show that patients put on the drug recovered 31% faster than similar patients who were given a placebo drug instead. Remdesivir cut recovery time from a median of 15 days to 11.

Scientists also suggested the drug could have an effect on survival. In the group on the drug, 8% died, compared with 11% among those given a placebo.

Remdesivir, made by the US company Gilead, is not a cure for Covid-19 and these results must be confirmed by more data, but experts think it could potentially help those who are acutely ill, probably in combination with other drugs that are yet to be shown to work. Multiple trials are taking place in hospitals around the world.

An earlier trial of the drug, in patients with severe illness in China, showed no effect, but it was stopped early because insufficient numbers of people could be recruited as the epidemic tailed off.

The new trial was sponsored by the US’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. Dr Anthony Fauci, a top US public health official, on Wednesday called the early results “quite good news”.

Lots more at the link.

Attention Mollie:

Congress Quietly Boosts Spending on Lawmakers’ Exclusive Concierge Health Clinic

In mid-March, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., became one of the first lawmakers to announce he had Covid-19, after testing positive for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. He received his diagnosis promptly from congressional doctors employed by the Office of the Attending Physician, and recovered by early April. Coronavirus testing was made available early and often for members of Congress, who enjoy concierge medical services courtesy of a world-class government health clinic.

Diaz-Balart, like many other voices on Capitol Hill, has denounced increased public spending on health services as a dangerous “government takeover of healthcare.” But like every lawmaker, he enjoys gold-plated medical care from OAP, which provides on-call services at taxpayer expense — and recently got a boost in funding.

Just months before the pandemic, lawmakers hiked funding for the OAP clinic, a move that has not been previously reported. The last congressional appropriations bill, passed in December, increased the budget for the office to $3,868,000 this year. Then, in March, the CARES Act, the sweeping $2.2 trillion bailout legislation, included a special provision that appropriated an additional $400,000 to the OAP clinic as part of a package of special funds to prepare the capital for coronavirus response and hygiene.

All together, the OAP budget has increased more than 25 percent over the last decade. The move to secure the health and safety of lawmakers contrasts sharply with the policy focus of Congress, which has largely faced a stalemate over the expansion of low-cost health care services over the last decade. In the first weeks of the pandemic, few had access to the same rapid Covid-19 testing that was made available to lawmakers through the clinic.

Krystal Ball: Dem meltdown over Justin Amash reveals their hollow #Resistance party

Justin Amash explores running for US president as Libertarian

A rebel member of the US Congress, Justin Amash, has signalled an expected run for the White House as a Libertarian in a move that could disrupt the November presidential election. On Tuesday night he unveiled his website outlining his campaign, and announced the launch of an exploratory committee, the traditional forerunner to an official candidacy, later tweeting: “Let’s do this” and also saying that he would seek the nomination of the Libertarian party. ...

Amash defected from the Republican party last summer, continuing in office as an independent.

The announcement was met with an immediate flurry of comments from across the political spectrum that ridiculed Amash’s move. ...

The congressman is perhaps most known as one of two non-Democratic votes to impeach Donald Trump, marking a political career defined by Republican favor that fell nearly as quickly as it rose.

Is Joe Biden The End Of #MeToo?

Nina Turner REACTS to New York primary cancellation, denounces Sanders aide super PAC

The Way Liberals Smear Tara Reade Is Everything Rape Survivors Fear

Former Georgia state congresswoman and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who is on the Joe Biden running mate short list and making no secret of her desire for the job, said on CNN Tuesday night that she did not believe rape allegations against Biden to be credible.

“The New York Times did a deep investigation and they found that the accusation was not credible. I believe Joe Biden,” Abrams said when pressed on further corroborating evidence that Biden’s accuser Tara Reade had been talking about a sexual assault by the then-senator way back in the nineties.

CNN’s Don Lemon pressed Abrams on the contradiction between her earlier “believe women” rhetoric about conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, to which Abrams responded that Kavanaugh’s accuser was not given a fair hearing but Tara Reade was. Past tense. Over and done with now.

Lemon did not ask why Abrams considers The New York Times the official arbiter of who was and was not raped. He did not challenge her false assertion that The New York Times concluded Reade’s accusation was “not credible”. He did not point out that the investigation by the The New York Times took place prior to the emergence of the corroborating evidence in question. Abrams was allowed to coolly insert a false, baseless narrative into public consciousness and move on.

It’s gonna be a long six months.

pic.twitter.com/YapER6yIow

— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 29, 2020

In reality, The New York Times is not the authority on who has and has not been sexually assaulted. That’s not a thing.

In reality, The New York Times did not conclude that Reade’s accusation is not credible, only that they “found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable” (which they later quietly edited down to “found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden” at the instruction of the Biden campaign, a very blatant act of journalistic malpractice).

In reality, The New York Times has smeared Reade with a scandalous hit piece dismissing her allegations because she has written approvingly of Russian president Vladimir Putin, implying that either (A) Reade is a Russian agent fabricating the allegations to help Trump, or (B) that it’s okay to rape women if they disagree with beltway consensus foreign policy.

In reality, two new corroborating pieces of evidence have been added to the growing pile since The New York Times published its “investigation” into Reade’s allegations: footage of Reade’s mother anonymously calling in to Larry King Live in 1993 during Reade’s last month of employment with Biden saying that her daughter was considering going to the press with a very serious allegation against a very prominent senator, and a former neighbor saying that Reade had told her about the sexual assault in the mid-nineties.

I have never been in the “always believe all women” camp; it’s a narrative that’s too easy to manipulate once you get enough people believing it. But at this point there are basically only two possibilities: either (A) Tara Reade was going around lying to her closest confidants in the 1990s with the very long-term goal of one day thwarting Biden’s third presidential bid decades later, or (B) a powerful man sexually assaulted a woman. One of these, in my opinion, is a lot more probable than the other. ...

going through all of Tara Reade’s tweets finding spelling and grammar errors in order to prove she’s a Russian agent

the democrats are not ok the democrats are UNWELL pic.twitter.com/dq4r32Dqkd

— june (@shoe0nhead) April 29, 2020

This is exactly the nightmare scenario that sexual assault survivors imagine when they contemplate coming forward. It’s why so many of them don’t. Especially when their attacker is powerful.

Nobody wants to have their name dragged through the mud by widely esteemed mainstream news media outlets. Nobody wants to have their entire past and entire social media history dug through to find anything that can be spun in the most negative light possible. Nobody wants to be told over and over again that they’re a liar, that they’re crazy, that they’re confused, all because they know they were sexually assaulted and said so. Nobody wants what can easily be the most traumatic experience of their life turned into a weapon to bludgeon them with before jeering crowds of millions all around the country.

And that sucks.

Krystal and Saagar: DAM BREAKS as media demands answers from Biden on allegations

Small Farms, Already Stressed and Underfunded, Struggle for Federal Coronavirus Relief

Before coronavirus hit, farmers in the U.S. were already hurting from years of falling food prices, severe weather, and, more recently, President Donald Trump’s trade war. “We’ve had a record number of farm bankruptcies [in the U.S.], total farm debt is at $425 billion, [and farmer] incomes have fallen by about half since 2013,” said Eric Deeble, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which supports small and mid-sized family farms.

Now, with the global pandemic closing factories and restaurants and disrupting supply chains, already stressed farms are grappling with lower demand and fewer markets to sell in, as well as a presidential administration that favors relief for big businesses over small. Small farmers in particular — those who sell directly to farmers markets, schools, and other local food hubs — are facing an existential crisis, as they face slim odds of accessing competitive federal stimulus money. They have reason to be pessimistic. In recent years, federal subsidies to help struggling farmers have flowed almost exclusively to large corporate farms. Of the roughly $28 billion the Trump administration has distributed to food producers to offset losses from his trade wars, almost all went to big farms.

Advocates for small farmers say this is driven in part by the preference of Trump’s agriculture secretary, Sonny Purdue, who has encouraged farmers to get bigger farms if they wanted to stay in business. “Big get bigger and small go out … and that’s what we’ve seen,” he told a group of Wisconsin dairy farmers in 2018, echoing Richard Nixon’s agriculture secretary, who infamously told farmers in the 1970s to “get big or get out.” While 91 percent of U.S. farms are small — defined by the federal government as an operation with gross cash income under $250,000 — large farms account for 85 percent of the country’s farm production.

The public health crisis has already had a devastating impact on agriculture across the country. A report released in mid-March by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition estimated that small farms would see a $689 million decline in sales from March to May this year due to Covid-19, leading to a payroll decline of $103 million and a total loss to the economy of $1.3 billion. Now, as the pandemic shows no sign of slowing, the coalition worries that the impact for small farmers will be even more substantial — which could lead many small farms to permanently close. ...

In the weeks following the CARES Act, farmers struggled to access any relief, as the agriculture aid stalled and many farmers found themselves ineligible for the Small Business Administration emergency loans. On April 10, 33 senators sent a bipartisan letter to Purdue, urging the USDA to follow the CARES Act and distribute federal aid to small farmers specifically. A week later, when the USDA finally announced how it planned to allocate the $9.5 billion from the CARES Act, it appeared that no money would be reserved specifically for small farmers.

WHO Adviser on Meat Plants: If We’re at War, the Weapons We Need Are Tests and PPE, Not Pork

Millions of farm animals culled as US food supply chain chokes up

Covid-related slaughterhouse shutdowns in the US are leading to fears of meat shortages and price rises, while farmers are being forced to consider “depopulating” their animals. More than 20 slaughterhouses have been forced to close, although some have subsequently reopened. On Tuesday President Trump issued an executive order to keep slaughterhouses open which would, he said, help solve liability problems for meat companies.

At least two million animals have already reportedly been culled on farm, and that number is expected to rise. ... A nationwide advisory issued last Friday by the US Department of Agriculture and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said state veterinarians and government officials would be ready to assist with culls, or “depopulation”, if alternatives could not be found.

The advisory was described by Leah Garcés, president of US welfare organisation Mercy for Animals, as a clear indication of a national farm animal emergency. Garcés told the Guardian that chickens are most at risk, followed by piglets. ... Political leaders in Iowa – the biggest pig producing state in the US - have warned that producers could be forced to kill 700,000 pigs a week due to meat plant slowdowns or closures. The situation has been exacerbated by consolidation within the sector, with the number of meat plants having fallen by half in 45 years.

Nicaragua is promoting illegal land grabs in indigenous territories

Nicaragua’s government is actively promoting illegal land grabs and granting concessions to mining and timber companies in indigenous territories, according to a report released on Wednesday. Since 2015, more than 40 members of indigenous communities along Nicaragua’s northern Caribbean coast have been killed and many more wounded and kidnapped, according to the Oakland Institute, a California-based thinktank.

Residents say non-indigenous settlers have been responsible for the killings, but in many cases police do not even come to investigate.

The violence has increased in recent years, obscured first by the government’s crackdown on protests that began in April 2018 and more recently by the world’s attention being diverted by the coronavirus pandemic. So far this year, eight people have been killed in these communities, said Anuradha Mittal, the author of the report. Four of those deaths came in late March. ...

On paper, Nicaragua appears to be one of the better countries in terms of protecting its indigenous people and their land. A pair of laws were lauded internationally for guaranteeing these communities’ rights to their land and their right to manage it. One law includes a provision calling for the clearing of indigenous territories of settlers and outside corporations who are there without legal title.

But “the government has failed to enforce these laws, and instead colludes with business interests and plays an active role in the colonization of the protected lands by outsiders”, the institute said. “A constant stream of settlers, central government interventions, forestry and extractive industries, threaten their lands, economic wellbeing and political autonomy.” The situation is further complicated by the personal business interests of the family of the president, Daniel Ortega. The report outlines the family’s ties to one of the most active timber companies working in protected areas.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Why The Left Keeps Losing And What They Must Do To Win

Intercepted podcast: Viral Injustice: How the Pandemic is Unmasking the U.S. Economic, Racial, and Immigration Systems

Ten reasons why a 'Greater Depression' for the 2020s is inevitable

UN Labor Agency Warns 1.6 Billion Workers at Risk of Having Their 'Livelihoods Destroyed' by Pandemic

This Chart Shows How the Fed Manipulated Junk Bonds to Help the Dow

Bakersfield California doctors with dubious COVID conclusions debunked

With apparently fabricated nuclear documents, Netanyahu pushed the US towards war with Iran

The toxic chemicals in our homes could increase Covid-19 threat

'Sweet City': the Costa Rica suburb that gave citizenship to bees, plants and trees

Krystal and Saagar: Workers plan unprecedented national strike at Amazon, Walmart, and more

Rising: P Diddy's message to Biden on behalf of Black Voters: 'I will hold vote HOSTAGE'

Krystal and Saagar: MSNBC libs demand Chris Hayes' head after covering Tara Reade

Pelosi tells reporter asking about Biden allegations 'I don't need a lecture'

A Little Night Music

Bobby Marchan - I've Got A Thing Going On

Bobby Marchan - There Is Something On Your Mind

Bobby Marchan - Quit My Job

Bobby Marchan - Have Mercy

Bobby Marchan - Don't Take Your Love From Me

Bobby Marchan - Just A Little Ol' Wine

Bobby Marchan - Just A Little Walk

Bobby Marchan - Booty Green

Bobby Marchan - Sad Sack

Bobby Marchan - Help Yourself

Bobby Marchan - Bump your Booty