United States | News & Politics

Full text of statement:

"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defend the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right.

Today, while the very rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago.

Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents. And many of them worry that Artificial Intelligence and robotics will make a bad situation even worse.

Today, despite spending far more per capita than other countries, we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We, alone among major countries, cannot even guarantee paid family and medical leave.

Today, despite strong opposition from a majority or Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government's all out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.

While the big money interests and well paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much political power? Probably not.

In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions.

Stay tuned."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21702392

Democrats bet on appeals to neoconservatives — including war criminals like Dick Cheney — and touted harsh border policies, bolstering rather than challenging Republican anti-immigrant frameworks.

Kamala Harris may have relied on women to vote for abortion rights, but she promised little more than a potential return to the flawed and insufficient norm of Roe v. Wade, at best. Like President Joe Biden, she supported a genocide and failed to distinguish herself from extremist Zionists like Trump.

For Democrats, appealing to the right has been a disaster of realpolitik, especially in an electoral system that structurally favors Republicans anyway. But what’s worse, Democratic strategies have failed and harmed the most vulnerable communities both in the U.S. and those who suffer under the yoke of U.S.-backed wars.

There is an urgent need for social justice movement organizing, growing unions and union power, antagonism rather than acquiescence to existing power structures, and expansive networks of care and support. The most powerful social movements of the last decades did not primarily build on support from Democratic leadership under Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden. Nor did they collapse during Trump’s first tenure.

What are your predictions for his Trump's presidency will go?

Overall, I believe we will see a continuation of the trends from 2017-2020, but an increase or intensification of said trends due to Trump's experience in presidency and increased confident position.

• increased deregulation and cutting funding to regulatory bodies across the board
• federal workforce reduction
• immigration workforce reduction, reviving the spike in the backlog of pending immigration cases
• dramatic increase in tariffs. This has many implications, most importantly negative impact on domestic consumers, increase in consumer prices, but also economic war with certain players like China, and causing economic suffering to certain partners such as Mexico.
• Ukraine: this one is hard to predict, as trump is unpredictable on those. There's a good chance trump will push zelensky towards accepting a peace deal with Russia, but equally likely that he will up US' involvement in Ukraine (contrary to what Trump claims)
• Israel / Palestine: Biden admin was the first to show the kind of hesitant rhetoric we see today towards supporting Israel. Trump will reverse this trend, and we will go back to standard neocon Israel supporting. He will likely push for Israel to take over the west bank as a convoluted effort for "peace".
• interest rates: I am less certain of this, but there's a decent chance that trump pushes interest rates lower to catalyze short term economic growth
• job market: if interest rates drop, we will see a short term rally for the job market, especially in big tech. Long term ramifications are tough to predict
• border security: my unpopular / controversial opinion is that trump and biden admins are very similar on this. Although public sentiment about the border issues will likely shift, I do not expect a significant material change or major departure from biden policy.
• Healthcare: Trump didn't make any big moves in 2017-2020. I cannot forecast anything here.
• Abortion issues: with Republicans likely securing Congress, a federal abortion regulation is possible but not certain. Support for some type of regulation is near unanimous among Republicans, but some oppose the degree. Trump himself has flip flopped on whether a federal ban is necessary. I expect that there will be some regulation, albeit limited.

What are your predictions and thoughts?

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/16919526

Just putting this out there, please don't kill the messenger…

The billionaire CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has said it “really doesn’t matter” who wins the US presidential election, because both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will be good for Wall Street.

“I’m tired of hearing this is the biggest election in your lifetime. The reality is over time it doesn’t matter”, said BlackRock chief Larry Fink at an October 21 conference hosted by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, according to the Financial Times.

“It really doesn’t matter”, Fink reiterated. He revealed that, at BlackRock, “we work with both administrations and are having conversations with both candidates”.

BlackRock has $11.5 trillion assets under management, making it the biggest investment company on Earth.

Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press
November 6, 2024 updated 10:03 EST

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22207480

Carter Sherman, Noa Yachot and Andrew Witherspoon
Wed 6 Nov 2024 06.04 EST

In an internal email sent on November 3, Patrick Soon-Shiong, medical technology billionaire and owner of the Times, outlined some of the reasons behind his decision that the paper would not endorse a candidate for president this year.

In the email, sent to the LA Times’s top editor and the president and COO and obtained by Drop Site News, Soon-Shiong says the policies supported by both candidates—in what is a clear reference to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza—played an important role in his decision.

“Has there ever been a time in our history,” he writes, “when our nation is knowingly providing arms to another nation using those weapons to kill children, women, innocent people and target the press, doctors and medical workers? And policies enabling this are supported it seems by both candidates?”

“We can and must acknowledge concerns for democracy and the Jan 6 episode and the horific [sic] Oct Hamas attacks,” he continued. “But how do we ignore the counter issues of the innocents being killed now? Do we accept that indeed genocide is happening and that we stand as a country of willing arms suppliers and yet remain silent?”

Donald Trump has been elected the 47th president of the United States, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who refused to accept defeat four years ago, sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Missouri voters approved a measure on Tuesday that enshrines abortion rights in the state constitution and replaces a near-total ban on the procedure.

The measure guarantees a person’s right to get an abortion and make other reproductive health decisions. It opens the door to legal challenges of a ban on most abortions that took effect immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

The measure made the ballot after an intense legal fight led by anti-abortion advocates who sought to prevent a vote.

Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib defeated her Republican opponent in Michigan's 12th congressional district election on Tuesday, securing a fourth term as the only Palestinian-American woman in the US Congress.

The Associated Press called the race with just 18 percent of the votes counted.

Tlaib secured 77 percent of the vote, defeating the Republican Party's James Hooper who received just 19 percent of the vote.

Her victory comes amid the backdrop of Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians so far and has been diplomatically and militarily supported by the Biden-Harris administration for more than a year.

Tlaib has been a vocal critic of the war, calling for the US to withhold weapons from Israel. Her opposition to the war on Gaza and support for pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses have drawn harsh criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22191088

Updated November 6, 2024 12:14 AM ET
From St. Louis Public Radio
By Jason Rosenbaum, St. Louis Public Radio

It also includes a ratification bonus, as well as improved retirement and health care benefits, and overtime rules.

After seven weeks on strike, Boeing workers voted Monday to ratify a new contract that includes a 43.65% wage increase over four years — a significant improvement over the 25% increase that the aerospace giant offered in September.

Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Districts 751 and W24 approved the contract in a 59%-41% vote around two weeks after rejecting a tentative deal that called for a 35% pay increase over a four-year period.

The contract approved by workers also includes a $12,000 ratification bonus, improvements to retirement and healthcare benefits, and improved overtime rules.

“Strikes work,” labor journalist Kim Kelly wrote in response to the contract vote.

Archive link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22122373

https://www.rockthevote.org/how-to-vote/same-day-voter-registration/

map from: https://www.axios.com/2024/10/31/voter-registration-election-day-2024

Another note that New York is currently even weirder having only allowed same day voter registration on a single day of early voting rather than the entire period unlike North Carolina

The Uncommitted National Movement, which promised to leverage constituents' votes to force the Democratic Party to change its position on Israel, received more than $400,000 from a Democratic-aligned PAC that explicitly prevents beneficiaries from endorsing a candidate other than Kamala Harris, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Several activists and volunteers told MEE that the payments appear to explain why the movement refused to endorse a third-party presidential candidate, choosing instead to redeem the Democratic Party among disgruntled voters once it became clear the Biden-Harris administration would not alter course on Israel’s devastating war on Gaza.

The revelations kicked off a firestorm in October amongst Arab-American activists and others formerly part of the Uncommitted movement. They say they felt betrayed by the movement after it began all but endorsing Kamala Harris despite receiving no commitments from the Democratic Party on their demands regarding Gaza and US military support for Israel.

https://t.me/pflpgaza1/14794

Press release

🔴The Popular Front calls for a boycott of the Democratic and Republican parties and stresses the necessity of not voting for advocates of genocide and supporters of colonialism.

• The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine calls on the free people of America, especially the supporters of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian and Arab communities, and the organizations of blacks and minorities, to boycott the Democratic and Republican parties in the American elections scheduled for tomorrow, which share clear colonial goals aimed at exterminating our people and strengthening the Zionist settlement project.

• These two parties were directly involved in the ongoing war of extermination against our Palestinian and Lebanese peoples, and they never concealed their blatant bias in favor of the occupation, and their continued support for its racist policies that target the existence of our Palestinian people and uproot them from their land.

• The positions of the two American parties reflect an explicit adoption of ethnic cleansing, and legitimize the Zionist crimes and massacres against our people, through financial, political and military support for the Zionist entity; the statements of the symbols of these parties also seek to beautify and justify their imperialist policies that adopt a colonial language, which sees the Palestinian people as an obstacle to their alleged “civilizational project”, and their election campaigns ignore the horrific crimes committed daily against Palestinian civilians, especially women and children, in an attempt to cover up the true face of the occupation and legitimize its crimes.

• The Democratic and Republican parties also continue their attempts to attract the support of Zionist lobbies and influential people, in efforts that aim to strengthen the policies of mass displacement and organized repression against the Palestinians.

• In this context, the Popular Front renews its explicit call to all honorable people in American society not to vote for these two parties that use American tax money, which is sucked from the blood of the American people, to support the Zionist genocidal regime.

• The Popular Front sees boycotting these two Zionist parties in tomorrow’s American elections as a moral stance no less important than any other form of solidarity with the Palestinian people and the rights of oppressed peoples. It is also an effective means of struggle to expose the falsehood of American slogans that speak of freedom and human rights. The United States, through its political tools, is trying to exploit these concepts to justify its crimes and consolidate its hegemony over peoples, without caring about the rights of the Palestinians who are subjected to the most heinous types of crimes.

• Finally, the Front considers that the boycott of the two parties is a clear internal message to the American administration and the international system around it that those who collude in shedding the blood of our people and displacing them should not receive the votes of the free people of the world and our communities, who refuse to be contributors to their election or false witnesses to their criminal policy in power.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Central Media Department 4-November-2024

Original post by @SovietReporter@lemmygrad.ml

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22156612

Matt Sledge
November 4 2024, 1:56 p.m.#

The blockade costs Cuba an estimated USD 5 billion annually and seriously restricts the country’s ability to purchase vital items such as fuel, food, medicine and medical equipment, spare parts for machines, and other goods necessary for the maintenance of daily life and production.

Archive link

I do not have much sympathy for guys like this one, but I doubt that he would have gotten as far along in this plot without the FBI's undercover help.