Food: There are some farms on Long Island, and some farm stands. If you live
near them, or if you can drive to them, or to the stands, you can buy real
fruit. Unfortunately, I don't have that privilege. My shopper buys my
vegetables and fruit from Whole Foods, but that doesn't guarantee taste or
quality either. She was in Albany last weekend and apparently, at a farm
stand. She brought me a glorious tomato, from which I made Fred's Italian
tomato ssalad last night. And she brought me strawberries, honest to God
ripe strawberries that were red all the way through when you cut them open.
I haven't seen or tasted anything like them for years.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2016 11:31 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Slow-burning capitalist depression wreaks
havoc on working people
And even worse, take a look at the quality of what is being passed off as
food today. Meat. I think it's meat. Water added, chemicals added, drugs
added, and we put it all into our bodies. Here in Washington State, I
haven't had a decent orange in many long months.
Either they have no flavor, or they are shriveled and pithy. But gosh, they
sure look good on the outside. Try buying peaches and apricots. Rock hard
and green. They rot from the center out before they ripen. And if you try
eating them, it's like bland cardboard.
Potatoes. We used to buy them in the ten pound sack. Number one Russets.
Today those potatoes are sold separately and what is in the ten pound sack
are culls, what grandpa used to feed the hogs. We quit buying cantaloupe
since they rotted before the outside was ripe. We grow our own tomatoes, so
don't know if the store bought ones are still tasteless.
Well, I got sidetracked, but it is all connected to the slow decline in the
standard of living we working class folks are experiencing.
Clinton is just one more in a long line of liars. And she also is in a long
line of folks who think they are so clever they can sell us stupid bumpkins
any line they choose. The fact they don't want to see and deal with is the
fact that their System is dying. Just like some of that ugly fruit they
sell in the stores, their way of life is drying up. But they will keep on
keeping on until we working class folks wake up and realize that we really
have the power coming our way. The worm has turned...as they say.
Tell Hillary and all her friends, that the way to tell if Capitalism is
dying, is when fewer and fewer people are profiting, and more and more are
suffering. Also, they will know when they hear the first roar of the angry
mob shaking their gates.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/17/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2016/8031/803105.htmleconomy.
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 31 August 22, 2016
(front page)
Slow-burning capitalist depression wreaks havoc on working people
Labor force participation rate - percentage of population over 16
employed or actively seeking work. Shaded bars marks recessions.
Despite claims by Hillary Clinton that economy is doing fine, the size
of working class in U.S. has shrunk since 2009.
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton says the U.S.
economy is doing just fine, pointing to the government's latest jobs
report that claims unemployment has fallen below 5 percent. She says
this shows the economic policies of the Barack Obama administration
are succeeding and she'll give U.S. workers more of the same.
But this doesn't square with the facts. The ongoing worldwide
capitalist economic crisis, rooted in declining production, trade and
employment, has wreaked havoc upon millions of working people in the
U.S. and around the world.
"Economic growth in advanced nations has been weaker for longer than
it has been in the lifetime of most people on earth," the New York
Times said Aug. 6.
The claim that unemployment has fallen simply reflects the fact that
slow-burning depression conditions have shrunk the size of the working
class in the U.S. with millions fewer workers in the labor force since
2009.
This is a crisis that no capitalist politician or the ruling class
they represent have any solution for, except to try to force the
working class to pay.
Millions more can't get full-time jobs. They're either forced to
accept part-time hours, a figure that increased from the previous
month, temp jobs or some spot in what the business press calls the "gig"
immigrants, Muslims and others.
The so-called labor force participation rate - the percentage of
workers who are employed or on the unemployment rolls "actively"
looking for work - has dropped since 2000 from more than 67 percent to
below 63 percent, a 40-year low.
For men ages 25-54, the number with jobs dropped from 97.9 percent in
the 1960s to 88.4 percent in July this year. And for those without any
college classes the rate was 83 percent.
"While the number of people who are unemployed fell by about 7 million
between June 2009 and today," Investor's Business Daily said Aug. 1,
"the number who are no longer in the labor force - either because
they've quit looking for work or retired - climbed an astonishing 14
million."
Between 2009 and 2014 household incomes for workers in the bottom 20
percent declined by 8.4 percent. Over this same time frame 3.1 million
people were added to government statistics as living in poverty.
This is the reality of what Clinton says is all good. Republican
nominee Donald Trump, on the other hand, says workers do face
problems. But his only answer is to promise that he alone can solve
them. Everything else is demagoguery, or rightist threats against
foreclosures.
Because their profit rates have been declining for decades, the
capitalists have been holding back on investing in capacity-expanding
plant and production. Instead, they've been speculating on stocks,
bonds, derivatives and other forms of commercial paper, or hoarding
their cash, and attacking the jobs, safety conditions and social and
political rights of working people.
Workers employed in manufacturing are particularly hard hit. Durable
goods orders in June declined 4 percent, its biggest drop in almost
two years. Caterpillar Inc., which laid off thousands of workers in
2015, recently announced that additional job cuts are coming. Coal,
oil and gas industry bosses have eliminated 220,000 jobs in the U.S.
since September 2014.
Coal mining regions like Appalachia have been devastated as the coal
bosses close mines and step up attacks on health care, working
conditions and the United Mine Workers union.
Falling crop prices mean more and more farmers can't meet the cost of
production. In the Upper Midwest, farmers lost $58 per acre on corn
and almost $3 per acre on soybeans last year. As farmers' debts mount,
banks are applying more pressure to pay up, with the threat of
2.
While hunger and malnutrition continue to mark much of the world, the
press says dairy farmers are overproducing and there is a "glut" of
milk. From upstate New York to Wisconsin to Canada, Ireland and New
Zealand, plummeting milk prices are forcing a deep crisis for these
farmers, driving growing numbers off the land.
Plunging prices for raw materials have had their harshest impact on
working people in semicolonial countries throughout Africa, Asia and
Latin America. Oil prices have dropped from $100 per barrel in 2014 to
about $40 today.
In Angola, where 45 percent of the gross domestic product comes from
the oil and gas sector, the government has slashed funds for vital
social needs.
"Thousands of people are dying of preventable illnesses and the
nation's hospitals are out of medicine," reported the Washington Post Aug.
Last year the government "did not purchase a single dose of malaria
medication," the Post said. "In the first three months of 2016, Angola
had roughly 1.3 million cases of the disease. At least 3,000 people
have died, according to the World Health Organization."
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