Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sun Jul 14, 2019 10:45 pm

CRIME, POWER AND MONEY: THE EPSTEIN CASE SPLASHES DONALD TRUMP
13 Jul 2019 , 11:00 am .

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Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump at a party in Mar-a-Lago in 1997 (Photo: Davidoff Studios / Getty Images)

Before we all talked about Harvey Weinstein and the scandals in Hollywood, Jeffrey Epstein had been convicted on charges related to sexual abuse of minors. As it is a billionaire, hedge fund manager on Wall Street, the media resonance was not so lively nor was there greater judicial repercussion in 2008, when he was charged with two counts of prostitution in a Florida court.

The plot is much more complex and involves several geographical points of the United States. Epstein was being accused of creating a network of young girls to force them to have sex in their opulent mansion facing the sea, sometimes three times a day, in exchange for money, according to the Palm Beach Police investigation.

She was also suspected of trafficking girls, including from other countries, for sex parties in her residences in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, according to FBI and court records.

In a series of reports on the case, Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown writes : "Faced with a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in prison for the rest of his life."

His money and powerful connections in the American judicial gear made the case go from the federal level to the state and served just 13 months in the private wing of the county jail of Palm Beach, with the right to go to "work" to a "comfortable office "located in West Palm Beach," which allowed him to be out of the facility six days a week for 12 hours, "says Brown, adding:" This was done despite the explicit rules of the Palm Beach Police that indicate that those convicted of sexual crimes do not meet the requirements to go to work. "

Epstein was also registered as a sexual aggressor on judicial lists, all products of a secret agreement reached by his lawyers and the state prosecutor of that moment, today in the Trump Administration, exposed in the investigations conducted by the Miami Herald .

WITH THE FAVOR OF ALEXANDER ACOSTA
The tycoon's mansions in Florida, New York, New Mexico and on the private island Little St. James (in the Virgin Islands), and even the private plane renamed " Lolita Express ", are the main scenes investigated of the sexual crimes committed by The financial.

Between 2001 and 2005, when the police discovered the plot, it is estimated that sexually abused young girls between the ages of 13 and 16 per dozen. The current estimates estimate that the victims reached a hundred. Local police referred the case to the FBI in 2006, "when they began to suspect that the Palm Beach State Attorney's Office was undermining their investigation," says Brown.

The prosecutor of that time is the current Labor Secretary of the Trump Administration, Alexander Acosta, a Republican lawyer who climbed to his current position from the Southern District of Florida under the Bush administration.

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Alexander Acosta was a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida when he negotiated to defuse a federal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein (Photo: Florida International University)

Acosta in his work as prosecutor of yesteryear promised the whistleblowers, girls who grew up with traumas and diverse pathologies, the fulfillment of justice against the defendant multimillionaire. The financial power was more with the agreement that came with the lawyers of Epstein, specifically Jay Lefkowitz of Washington DC.

The secret agreement of Epstein is one that withdrew the accusations ("non-prosecution agreement") and guaranteed immunity "to any potential accomplice" so that none of the friends and relatives of the financier suffered consequences. The treatment contemplated that neither the victims nor the general public could have access to the judicial documents of the case.

Thus, any repairs to the related victims were forgotten. For now.

Acosta, who is now 49 years old, in the Trump cabinet supervises a huge federal agency in charge of compliance with federal labor laws, including those related to human trafficking . A paradox very usual in the structures of the White House, in which they put wolves to look after sheep.

He has also been on a list of possible candidates to replace Jeff Sessions as secretary of justice, recalls the Miami Herald .

The US president did not have to throw him out for some kind of moral commitment, Acosta himself resigned due to media pressures that began to rise in recent days.

THE FRIENDS OF A SEXUAL CRIMINAL ON WALL STREET
The victims were young girls from poor families, who for 100 or 200 dollars gave their bodies for the sexual enjoyment of Epstein. Sometimes, to silence violations, the billionaire paid $ 1,000, and encouraged them to recruit other girls, always minors, with more money.

An easy target for a well-off sexual criminal. But it is not everything. He also trafficked sexual favors with friends and relatives, as recently reported by Sarah Ransome , including lawyers, bankers, movie stars, politicians and even members of British royalty.

Most media point to a vast "network of friends" who may be involved in the criminal plots of Jeffrey Epstein, including the most visible Bill Clinton, former US president and known for the sex scandal that made him resign from the White House .

In fact, the corrupt Clinton Foundation has Epstein as one of its funders and co-founders .

According to the testimony of Virginia Roberts Giuffre , one of the plaintiffs, the tycoon's private plane was also used for the sexual trafficking of minors, and it was there, in "Lolita Express", where she was abused by Prince Andrew of York and the octogenarian lawyer and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, the latter also accused by Ransome. Is it coincidence that both names appear in flight logs ?

On the other hand, there is the so-called " little black book " by Jeffrey Epstein, under the care of his landlord Alfredo Rodríguez, who told the FBI that it was a thorough compilation of the billionaire's sexual network of minors. The names noted there involve people with a public face as clients and accomplices of the plot:

Ralph Fiennes (actor)
Alec Baldwin (actor)
David Blaine (conjurer)
Jimmy Buffett (musician)
Courtney Love (musician)
Charlie Rose (PBS journalist)
Mike Wallace (CBS journalist)
Barbara Walters (ABC journalist)
Ehud Barak (former prime minister of Israel)
Tony Blair (former Prime Minister of Great Britain)
David Koch (from Koch Industries)
Leslie Wexner (billionaire)
Bruce King (former governor of New Mexico)
Bill Richardson (former governor of New Mexico)
Peter Soros (nephew of George Soros)
John Gutfreund (financier, called the "King of Wall Street")
Prince Andrew of York (British monarchy)
Bill Clinton (former president)
Donald Trump (current president of the United States)
Yes, Donald Trump appears on this list. Will the federal prosecutor call the US president after the Epstein case was reopened in New York?

The FBI arrested the tycoon on Saturday July 6 and on Monday 8 he pleaded not guilty to the charges in this note mentioned. The prosecution, meanwhile, described as "extremely disturbing" the photos found in the residences of the accused, which serve as evidence of their sexual crimes a decade ago.

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Jeffrey Epstein recently pleaded not guilty to charges filed in a New York court (Photo: AP)

IN THE POLITICAL CORE
In view of the full range of recognized names involved, even indirectly, in the case, there is a high expectation that more people will be brought to court than with the case against Harvey Weinstein.

And, in fact, the relationships that the investigation has with Secretary Acosta today and Epstein's lawyers, including the aforementioned Dershowitz, could create a reaction on the part of Congress and start an investigative hearing from Washington. The resignation of Acosta does not answer this scenario, but perhaps he does with another character to uncover.

In fact, will anyone else fall apart from Epstein and Acosta? Do you have any letters up your sleeve, after the scandal in 2008?

Trump once said of Epstein that he is a "great guy, it's quite fun to hang out with him, he even says he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are young." Then I would say that I hardly knew him.

But what is striking as well as the facts is that the scandal arises in an electoral context, with the re-election of Trump in the sights and the Democratic Party, which at least demands the resignation of Acosta, wanting to return to the House White as it is.

Although the #MeToo movement managed to draw attention to sexual abuse in the upper echelons of the American socialite, surely the traffic of minors that are propitiated in the shadows by other persons of deep power will not be judged, let alone known, unless some political rent in a society highly supervised and instrumentalized by the corporate information and propaganda channels such as the United States.

In fact, at the beginning of the year , Acosta himself proposed to the Department of Labor to cut 80% of the budget for the fiscal year 2020 to a program dedicated to combating human trafficking, forced labor and child labor. There will be less chance that the victims of the poor strata of society can see any judicial light in their favor. There is only what we insist on calling justice for the wealthy citizens, as Hollywood actresses.

Once again, the repercussions of sexual cases in relation to millionaires and billionaires in the United States reconnects with the political moment. The Epstein case can be played as one of the main democratic letters against the president tycoon because of the connections he emanates, taking into account that the prosecution of politicians is usual.

Empire in there are many crimes to win, and anyone can be used against the momentary guests of the White House.

http://misionverdad.com/TRAMA-GLOBAL/el ... nald-trump

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 23, 2019 1:25 pm

US gov’t jobs report: The reality behind the fakery
By Paul WilcoxJul 21, 2019

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Photo: Chase Carter. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by ... /legalcode

President Donald Trump never stops bellowing about how the economy is doing “really, really well.” The corporate press, which loves to show Trump rallies, happily cooperates by portraying Trump as the “good economy” president. The official unemployment rate currently is 3.7 percent, historically low, they say. But what’s the truth behind that figure? If joblessness is so low, why is life getting harder for working people?

Behind the propaganda, the reality is very different. More and more working people are unemployed, underemployed and/or not making enough to meet the most basic of needs.

These are the facts.

Long history of fudging figures

Employment and unemployment numbers influence a President’s approval rating, so every administration fudges the unemployment numbers.

In the early 1960s, Pres. John Kennedy was the first to use the term “discouraged workers,” to describe the jobless who weren’t looking for work at the moment because they tried very hard to find a job and couldn’t. Soon they were no longer counted in government statistics as “unemployed.”

Workers are now labeled “discouraged” if they haven’t looked for work in the past four weeks. There are officially about 500,000 of them today. They are not counted as unemployed.

In the 1980s, Ronald. Reagan was the first to count the military as among the employed in order to further lower the official unemployment rate.

This massaging of figures has only gotten worse. The U.S. Jobs Report, a key measure of how well the economy is doing, “has gotten increasingly less accurate in the past 20 years, ” according to a recent report by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Today, there are almost as many ways to fudge the unemployment figures as there are unemployed.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has mind-boggling categories of unemployed, underemployed, marginally employed, seasonally adjusted unemployment and so on. But the BLS states that “the current real unemployment rate is about double the official unemployment rate.”

According to the Household Survey conducted by the U.S. Labor Department, the number of people unemployed has dropped by more than 400,000 since December. Is this really something to crow about when the total number employed has also declined–by almost 200,000?

Part timers who need full-time work

There are about 27 million part time workers who are counted as employed. If you work even one hour a week you are officially counted as “employed.”

How many really need full-time work? Officially, between 6-and-10 million.

How many workers are kept “part time” to deny them benefits? Starting in 2015, a provision of the Affordable Care Act was that every worker who worked 30 hours a week or more was entitled to medical benefits. The result? Many companies decreased the hours worked so they could avoid paying for benefits.

In addition to denying them needed benefits, this also pushes workers into poverty. According to a report by the U.S. Center for Poverty Research, “At least 30 weeks of full-time work per year is needed to generate earnings equal to the poverty line for a single individual. For a family of three, 50 or more weeks of full time work would be required to reach the poverty line.”

Today’s average wage buys less than 40 years ago

According to self-proclaimed “capitalist tool” Forbes Magazine, “Wages used to rise faster when unemployment is low….. average hourly wages rose 2.8% but …. unless you had no housing or transportation expenses in the last year, your cost of living rose at least [their emphasis-pw] 2.7% and possible much more.”

According to the Pew Research Center, “today’s real average wage [that is, the wage after accounting for inflation-pw] has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.”

The popular tabloids are happy to paper over the real facts about the condition of the working class, and fill the airwaves with feel-good propaganda that raises hope and expectations for good-paying jobs that never materialize. This is not a far cry from the infamous quote from President Herbert Hoover during the the Great Depression of the 1930s, that “prosperity is just around the corner.” But the corporate propaganda machine is much stronger now, keeping expectation of good jobs alive.

Then why is this information coming out at all? Because business publications read by a select audience want to know about the actual state of the economy. One reason is that corporations need the truth to profit off interest rate speculation. But they also keep a watchful eye on working class consciousness.

How best to fight back?

The real employment facts don’t deter Trump’s boasting about the “roaring” economy, nor the media that gives him prime coverage for his demagogy.

What kind of a strategy can cut through this cesspool of faleshoods and create jobs at livable wages?

Certainly not what the Democrats are doing. When the Democrats bait Trump for Russiagate, soft-pedal jobs and neglect Pentagon war-mongering, they are setting the table for Trump’s demagogy that the economy is “booming.” That puts the blame on the individual worker: If the economy is booming, why am I unemployed? Who is at fault? Immigrants? Liberals? Unions?

The first way to fight Trump is to tell the truth: Rampant corporate greed has made life much harder for working people.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can tell class truth because they are both bought-and-paid-for by the billionaires. On the surface the two parties fight like cats and dogs, but behind the puppetry curtain, the same corporate beast is pulling the strings.

Only a class appeal that understands the need of the multi-national working class for good-paying jobs, linked with the need to fight racism, sexism, homophobia and the $733 billion war budget, can cut through the lies of Trump and put him and his ilk into the dustbin of history.

https://www.liberationnews.org/us-govt- ... rationnews

Yeah, it's PSL...but as with WSWS sometimes it's real hard to fuck shit up. And see, they limited our opponents to 'billionaires', maybe catchy but lets the bulk of the ruling class and their upper middle class suckfish off the hook. That'll never do.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Thu Jul 25, 2019 5:29 pm

re: the Mueller hearings

I cannot believe we do not have 'Sympathy for the Devils' on this site & the archives are temporally down. Suffice to say, "The Democratic Party is the worst political party in history." This is not from the perspective of policy, there are plenty contenders for that. Rather we are speaking of the 'art of partisan politics'.This is something they are serious about, cause if ya ain't in office ya can't be betraying the working class. Musta been wishful thinking or something, there was nothing to indicate they would get a hammer big enough to hurt Trump with.

Score, Trump.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 30, 2019 2:11 pm

It is notable that the prez's latest racist slander against my home town has driven Jeffery Epstein entirely outta the news.Calculated? I dunno....really don't.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 23, 2019 5:43 pm

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far....

....better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..

....your companies HOME and making your products in the USA. I will be responding to China’s Tariffs this afternoon. This is a GREAT opportunity for the United States. Also, I am ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE,....

....all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!). Fentanyl kills 100,000 Americans a year. President Xi said this would stop - it didn’t. Our Economy, because of our gains in the last 2 1/2 years, is MUCH larger than that of China. We will keep it that way!
I am really tired of people telling me this bozo is some kinda evil genius. Evil, to be sure, but possibly the dumbest motherfucker to ever knot a tie.

But when the King of Israel sez jump US capital better say "How High"......and the markets dive.

I start to wonder if he's completely unhinged, and wonder if he can crash the market single handed.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Fri Aug 23, 2019 6:07 pm

blindpig wrote:
Fri Aug 23, 2019 5:43 pm
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far....

....better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..

....your companies HOME and making your products in the USA. I will be responding to China’s Tariffs this afternoon. This is a GREAT opportunity for the United States. Also, I am ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE,....

....all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!). Fentanyl kills 100,000 Americans a year. President Xi said this would stop - it didn’t. Our Economy, because of our gains in the last 2 1/2 years, is MUCH larger than that of China. We will keep it that way!
I am really tired of people telling me this bozo is some kinda evil genius. Evil, to be sure, but possibly the dumbest motherfucker to ever knot a tie.

But when the King of Israel sez jump US capital better say "How High"......and the markets dive.

I start to wonder if he's completely unhinged, and wonder if he can crash the market single handed.
Big question is whether he 'goes there' and tries to fire "Jay" Powell. From there maybe he'll go even further off the rails (which, believe it or not, is highly possible) and go all Ron Paul and call to abolish the Fed. To which I say "Please do, fucker. Burn ALL this shit down"

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 23, 2019 8:21 pm

Big question is whether he 'goes there' and tries to fire "Jay" Powell. From there maybe he'll go even further off the rails (which, believe it or not, is highly possible) and go all Ron Paul and call to abolish the Fed. To which I say "Please do, fucker. Burn ALL this shit down"
bourgeois democracy is rapidly falling into disarray, ya wonder how much more his peers gonna put up with.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Sat Aug 24, 2019 1:50 am

blindpig wrote:
Fri Aug 23, 2019 8:21 pm
Big question is whether he 'goes there' and tries to fire "Jay" Powell. From there maybe he'll go even further off the rails (which, believe it or not, is highly possible) and go all Ron Paul and call to abolish the Fed. To which I say "Please do, fucker. Burn ALL this shit down"
bourgeois democracy is rapidly falling into disarray, ya wonder how much more his peers gonna put up with.
His peers have no more idea what to do than their Moron-in-Chief does. They don't necessarily want Trump (at least not the persona) but..the old axis of power is crumbling. In Trump they/we see the outline of a new one. Trump himself will pass like some bad gas after Taco Night.

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sat Aug 24, 2019 10:59 am

kidoftheblackhole wrote:
Sat Aug 24, 2019 1:50 am
blindpig wrote:
Fri Aug 23, 2019 8:21 pm
Big question is whether he 'goes there' and tries to fire "Jay" Powell. From there maybe he'll go even further off the rails (which, believe it or not, is highly possible) and go all Ron Paul and call to abolish the Fed. To which I say "Please do, fucker. Burn ALL this shit down"
bourgeois democracy is rapidly falling into disarray, ya wonder how much more his peers gonna put up with.
His peers have no more idea what to do than their Moron-in-Chief does. They don't necessarily want Trump (at least not the persona) but..the old axis of power is crumbling. In Trump they/we see the outline of a new one. Trump himself will pass like some bad gas after Taco Night.
Dunno, this tariff business is putting the squeeze on some cash flow....but for sure, Trump is an example to all hustlers and will be emulated.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Sat Aug 24, 2019 3:35 pm

blindpig wrote:
Sat Aug 24, 2019 10:59 am
kidoftheblackhole wrote:
Sat Aug 24, 2019 1:50 am
blindpig wrote:
Fri Aug 23, 2019 8:21 pm


bourgeois democracy is rapidly falling into disarray, ya wonder how much more his peers gonna put up with.
His peers have no more idea what to do than their Moron-in-Chief does. They don't necessarily want Trump (at least not the persona) but..the old axis of power is crumbling. In Trump they/we see the outline of a new one. Trump himself will pass like some bad gas after Taco Night.
Dunno, this tariff business is putting the squeeze on some cash flow....but for sure, Trump is an example to all hustlers and will be emulated.
If there was a consensus or coherent position on China that was deemed viable, this wouldn't be happening. To the extent that there has been a position, it isn't working and they are in the lurch. You can pretty much bank on the most reactionary element(s) filling that void.

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