30 September 2017. This is What Capitalism “Creates”

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To “punish” the unionised workers of Detroit, the capitalist oligarchs moved many factories abroad or to jackbooted neofascist Southern states (where Evangelicalism supports a vicious and cruel kleptocracy). They showed no sense of obligation to the people and cities who created their wealth… they simply cut them off and let them die. They then accused the decline on “socialism”… not their greed, cupidity, and self-centred sense of power. This is why Capitalism is evil, objectively so… it’s why all forms of accommodation with Big Capital are doomed to failure. It’s why all forms of “distributism” are nothing but capitulations to Capital and its all-consuming Greed (it simply throws a few more scraps to us workers… nothing more).

Socialism didn’t die with the USSR. Socialism had nothing to do with its collapse… nor did the USA play a role in that collapse. It came about due to Gorbachyov’s feckless and erratic personality. Russia learnt many lessons from that collapse. The USA didn’t… it’s allowing Big Capital to run amuck and destroy wide swaths of the USA. I’d note that such policies never work over the long haul… a spectre is haunting Mar-a-Lago…

BMD

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13 May 2016. A Thought from “Big Bill” Haywood

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If you want to hurt those who love money… strike them in the pocketbook… affect their money. Note well how they defend that more tenaciously than anything else. It tells you much about them, no?

BMD

25 January 2016. Harry Bridges on Racism

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Harry Bridges was an Australian-born labour leader on the American West Coast. Since he was a Communist and an effective fighter against Capital’s oppression, the rightwing filth tried to deport him from the ’30s to ’50s, but they never succeeded. The CPUSA was the first major organisation in the USA to become fully integrated… a fact never mentioned in contemporary American school texts.

BMD

101-Year-Old Florida Congressional Candidate Plans Early Bird Concession: Joe Newman Still Fighting Good Fight… Knows He’ll Lose

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Hours before Election Day, Joe Newman already had a gracious “congrats to the winner” letter written and his concession party planned. Seems it’s easy to be a good loser when you are 101-years-old. Newman is at the end of a quixotic write-in campaign for US Congress from southwest Florida, and he’s not letting his infinitesimal chances of victory stand in the way of a good party. The get-together is due at 19.00 EST on Election Day at a pizza place in Sarasota. It’s a little late for the early bird special, but just in time to watch the votes come in. What’s the only thing that could spoil the fun? Joe himself! Give this centenarian a microphone and you have a long night ahead of you. He said, “You get me on a soapbox and you’ve got trouble”.

Born in 1913, Joe Newman is doubtless the oldest candidate for Congress this year. The incumbent he’s challenging, Republican Vern Buchanan, is a relative baby at 63. Florida’s 16th district stretches up Florida’s Gulf Coast from Venice up past Bradenton. The district is reliably Republican… so much so that the Democrats essentially gave up on it. Buchanan’s Democratic Party challenger, former NFL player Henry Lawrence, raised just 48,000 USD (2.1 million Roubles. 294,000 Renminbi. 2.94 million INR. 54,700 CAD. 55,000 AUD. 38,200 Euros. 30,000 Pounds) election cycle to Buchanan’s 1.5 million USD (66 million Roubles. 9.2 million Renminbi. 92 million INR. 1.7 million CAD. 1.72 million AUD. 1.2 million Euros. 940,000 UK Pounds). In that gap, Newman saw an opportunity. The retired accountant got the idea to run at a local meeting of The Nation magazine’s discussion group. His original goal was to get 101 votes, one for every year he’s been on this green earth. Now, he’s hoping to do better than that.

Newman said that he’s done just 10 or 15 campaign events, but the novelty factor of his age has rewarded him with heavy press coverage. In October, he faced off against Buchanan and Lawrence in a three-way debate. Newman, although a registered Democrat, is to the left of the Democratic mainstream. The son of a Studebaker factory hand from Indiana, Newman grew up in the Workmen’s Circle, the Yiddish socialist fraternal group. Newman and his wife, Sophie, were among the founders of The Logan Center, a school for developmentally disabled children. Sophie Newman and their daughter, Rita Jo, are both deceased. Newman now lives with his girlfriend Anita and her daughter.

Despite his age, Newman’s radical views have hardly mellowed with time. He said, “Rather than having industry and commerce as the tool which creates wealth for the benefit of the society, the market system is using government to protect its own interests and letting the society as a whole go to hell, but the essentials of life we can achieve through government, and government has to have the authority to create the wealth to do them”. He’s had harsh words for Buchanan, his Republican opponent, who he said fails basic economics by promising to cut taxes and balance the federal budget at the same time, saying, “My contention is that’s rather unrealistic, if not stupid”. On Election Day, he’ll be out reminding people not to let big money buy their vote… then, handing them fake million-dollar bills that say that they should vote for him. His family, at least, will be glad to see the race end… so he can stop getting himself so riled up at such a ripe old age. Newman mused, “Because I’m 101, they’re a little bit concerned that I can overdo it and push myself too hard”.

3 October 2014

Josh Nathan-Kazis

The Jewish Daily Forward

http://forward.com/articles/208434/-year-old-florida-congressional-candidate-plans/