1/2 million jobs created are good for us but a problem for Wall Street. We are getting used to cops murdering POC. Ilhan Omar’s defiant speech before the Foreign Affairs Committee ouster’s important.
Great Jobs Report
Great jobs report too good for the workers. So?
The January jobs report is out, and it looks great. The unemployment rate fell to its lowest rate in more than 50 years to 3.4%. This robust economy created over 500,000 jobs. That is more than twice the expected number of jobs. This is great news. Right?
This news is too damn good for the Average American citizen. Wall Street and our corporatocracy does not like that. Reuters reported the following.
Feb 3 (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve is likely to deliver at least two more interest-rate hikes, taking the benchmark rate to above 5%, before monetary policy will be sufficiently restrictive to bridle an unexpectedly strong labor market that is contributing to high inflation.
That was the read from traders of interest-rate futures on Friday after the U.S. Labor Department reported employers added more than half a million jobs last month, far more than expected. Prices in those contracts fell sharply, and now reflect a better than even chance that the Fed will keep raising interest rates to the 5%-5.25% range by June, if not by May.
Why is the Federal Reserve likely to continue increasing interest rates? They want to bring down inflation, not on the backs of those parasitic profiteers responsible for creating it, but on the backs of every poor and middle-class American.
We pay for the greed of the titans of our economy with higher prices. Instead of threatening them with a windfall profit tax to extract the spoils of their pilfering, the Feds force Americans to pay up to the bankster with higher interest rates. These behaviors make our economic system a fraud on average Americans.
Sadly, much of the inflated spending by Americans is again occurring on credit. They are hoping for a better tomorrow. Unfortunately, the corporatocracy through all these different financial structures is sucking us dry,
Let me be clear. This is not hyperbole. Our current inflation, for the most part, is not a result of shortages or supply chain problems. It is a direct result of greed, and it shows in the profits of corporations even as there are, except in a very few areas there is not a supply problem.
Ilhan Omar double standard
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar did not pull any punches with her fiery floor speech before the vote to remove her from the Foreign Affairs committee.
“There is this idea that you are suspect if you are an immigrant,” Omar said. “Or if you are from certain parts of the world, a certain skin tone, or a Muslim.”
The Congresswoman then pointed out that President Barack Obama suffered the same type of indignities from Republicans when he was elected president of the United States.
The premise for Ilhan Omar’s removal from the committee is for anti-semitic tropes she used that she apologized for many times over. The reality is this is payback for the MAGA Republicans who threatened the lives of other Congresspersons, removal during the last cycle. There was no comparison, but that does not matter to them.
“I am Muslim,” Omar said. “I am an immigrant and, interestingly, from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted? Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy? Or that they see me as a powerful voice that needs to be silenced. Frankly, it is expected. Because when you push power, power pushes back.”
Omar said that expanding our ideas to live up not to the myth but to the ideals of who we say we are is essential. And to do that, representation matters.
“I am an American,” Omar said proudly. “An American who was sent here by her constituents to represent them in Congress. A refugee who survived the horrors of a civil war. Someone who spent her childhood in a refugee camp. Someone who knows what it means to have a shot at a better life here in the United States. And someone who believes in the American Dream, and the American possibility, and the promise and the ability to participate in the Democratic process.”
She said she would continue to speak up. After all, she is respected all around America and the world.
The Right wing has tried to make a caricature out of Omar. Check out my interview with Ilhan Omar. It illustrates who she is and what she believes.
Another POC was murdered by cops.
It has become too routine. Five cops murdered a young man in Memphis. Several cops shot 10 bullets or so into a double amputee. There are videos of these murders. Of course, the countless cases of abuse that many injured recount are there for anyone who wants to hear it to see. But it continues, especially to POC.
Another commonality is that somehow the initial police reports never show any semblance to what actually occurred. The Guardian reported the latest incident on video as follows.
Lowe was a father of two and one of eight siblings in a tight-knit family, and he had been struggling recently after he had to have both legs amputated, his family said.
The circumstances preceding the killing are unclear, and officials have faced scrutiny as their narrative has appeared to shift. The Huntington Park police department said in a statement that officers were responding to reports of a stabbing allegedly committed by someone in a wheelchair at around 3.40pm on Thursday, and that they encountered Lowe, who was in a wheelchair and who they believed was the suspect.
The department claimed that officers attempted to detain him, alleging he ignored commands and “threatened to advance or throw the knife at the officers”, although the limited witness footage did not capture this. The department further said that officers “deployed two separate Tasers in an attempt to subdue the suspect”, but when “the Tasers were ineffective”, they shot him. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The one thing that is clear from both of these recent incidents is that these officers showed a complete inability to see their suspect as human. Their actions showed an inhumanity that should preclude their service to any community.
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