Ten percent of US households face eviction by year’s end

Katy Kinner

On January 1, the Center for Disease Control emergency evictions moratorium will expire, raising the existing US eviction and homelessness crisis to unprecedented proportions.

While tens of thousands of evictions have been filed throughout the pandemic, according to a recent report by the Aspen Institute, 30-40 million more Americans could be at risk of eviction by the end of this year. This is a staggering 10 percent of the American population.

In addition, millions of Americans are at risk of being evicted from homes for non-payment of mortgages. According to mortgage analytics firm Black Knight, 3.9 million households were not paying their mortgages as of late August.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, over 20.8 million renter households—almost half of all US renter households—were “rental cost-burdened,” a term defined as households who pay over 30 percent of their income towards rent. Twenty-five percent of rental households were spending over 50 percent of their income on rent before the pandemic. The higher a household’s rental cost-burden, the more likely they are to become evicted.

Amanda Wood, 23, waits to fight an impending eviction notice July 31, 2020, at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Farnoush Amiri)

Some states, such as Ohio, are more vulnerable to the eviction crisis due to insufficient COVID-19 protections, high poverty rates and high pre-pandemic eviction rates.

Avery Kreemer, the founder of Ohio Eviction Watch, recently spoke to the WSWS on the eviction crisis in the state. Ohio Eviction Watch seeks to establish a central database for eviction information in the state by requesting and publishing data from various courthouses around the state. As a result, Kreemer hopes to illuminate the full scope of a crisis that is both growing and underreported.

“Our state legislature has been ineffective with anything regarding Covid-19 measures,” Kreemer noted. “Since March, proposals for eviction and foreclosure prevention haven’t gotten much traction in the House or Senate. This is important because the CDC eviction moratorium only goes into effect if there isn’t a pre-existing protection in that state.”

Kreemer argues for additional state-level action for many reasons, one of which being that the CDC moratorium falls short. The CDC order, which went into effect on September 4, does not stop evictions, but postpones them. The order makes it illegal for landlords to evict tenants who sign a declaration that, among other things, they cannot afford rent and make less than $99,000 a year as an individual, or double that amount for a couple filing taxes jointly.

The order does not provide funding for families to pay rent and it does not stop landlords from tacking on late fees or contacting credit bureaus to alert them to missed payments. The order also does not require landlords or courts to alert tenants to the many stipulations required for eligibility under the order including the completion of the declaration form.

Causing further confusion, the order is inconsistent across states. “Each county and each court will interpret the moratorium differently,” said Kreemer. “One of our reporters lives up in Akron, and someone from The Legal Aid Society told her about a woman who lives on the county line. The court she lives under decided she was not covered under the CDC order, but if she had lived two miles to the west she would have been protected under that court.”

According to data from The Eviction Lab, a Princeton University research institute, Ohio’s eviction rate has surpassed the national average for nearly two decades. In 2016, Ohio had an eviction rate of 3.5 percent of rental households, which averages to about 158 evictions per day and 57,980 evictions per year. For comparison, the US national eviction rate in 2016 was 2.3 percent of renting households.

Several major cities in Ohio struggled with even higher pre-pandemic eviction rates. Cincinnati had an eviction rate of over 4.7 percent of renter households (4,174 evictions) in 2016, Cleveland reached 4.53 (4,483 evictions) and Columbus reached 4.45 percent (9,000 evictions).

In a discussion of the pre-pandemic eviction rates in Ohio, Kreemer explained, “What’s interesting about the CDC moratorium is that its focus is to stop the spread of COVID-19, not to stop evictions. It’s strange that we waited for a global pandemic to try to stop evictions.”

The idea for the Ohio Eviction Watch project predates the pandemic. “I was working at the Dayton Daily News last year when a tornado ripped through the area. It hit the poorest parts of the city. As a result, there was a sort of mini housing crisis in Dayton. People’s homes were unfit to live in, businesses shut down, many lost their jobs or lost a way to reliably get to their jobs. We saw an increase in eviction filings.”

Kreemer added, “Issues that caused this [increase in eviction filings] weren’t fixed, no steps were taken to solve it. Summer 2019 in Dayton becomes Summer 2020 across the whole country.”

Asked how the broader political situation relates to his project and the larger issue of evictions across the nation, Kreemer said, “There are many goals in getting through this pandemic. There are health goals and economic goals and there are many ways people propose fixing the economy. But we judge our economy on how it functions for a minority of people. If the stock market is going up it’s going to benefit the people already holding a lot of wealth. If the jobs are increasing, great, but are the wages of those jobs increasing? The strength of the economy isn’t judged based on how many people are being kicked out of their homes.”

The growth in evictions will lead to the further spread of the coronavirus as people are forced to double up in homes, seek out homeless shelters, or fight against their evictions in crowded court houses. Likewise, homeless people are more likely to have health issues that make them more at risk for contracting the virus.

In addition, further analysis of The Eviction Lab data by reporters at CNN shows that some of the neighborhoods facing higher eviction rates are also facing higher rates of medical comorbidities such as heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and obesity, all of which are COVID-19 risk factors.

Even if a household manages to pull together enough rent, coming close to eviction during a time when losing shelter could lead to exposure to a deadly virus puts an enormous amount of stress on an individual or family.

Evictions also cause aftershocks in a community. In reference to the book “Evicted” by Matthew Desmond, one of the many minds behind Princeton’s Eviction Lab data, Kreemer said, “In one part [Desmond] cites studies that researched how communities are destroyed by evictions. A family lives on a specific street, they are well known on that block, maybe their house is a gathering space. They have to leave, and they can’t play an active role in that community. Something immeasurable is lost.”

The eviction crisis is just one side of a general breakdown of social life caused by the criminal response of American ruling elite to the pandemic. As foodbanks across the country run low on supplies and as the number of chronically unemployed hits an all-time high and millions run out of federal and state jobless benefits, the US government continues to do nothing to provide sufficient aid.

Australia joins “Quad” military exercises directed against China

Mike Head

Acting, in effect, as a spearhead of the escalating US confrontation with China, the Australian government on Monday announced three provocative intensifications of military partnerships unmistakably aimed against Beijing.

The first was to accept an Indian government invitation to participate in November’s annual Malabar naval exercise off India’s eastern coast, joining the US and Japan. This signals the stepping up of the “Quadrilateral” alliance between the four countries.

The second announcement, made from Tokyo, was a commitment to negotiate a new agreement with Japan allowing that country’s military to “protect Australian Defence Force assets” if they come under threat.

Thirdly, Australian Defence Minister Linda Reynolds and her Japanese counterpart, Kishi Nobuo, also revealed in Tokyo that vessels from the two countries had joined US warships in sailing through the South China Sea, potentially close to Chinese-held islets.

Indian, US and Japanese naval vessels during the Malabar exercises in 2018 (Credit: US Navy)

Taken together, these moves mark further preparations for a US-instigated war against China.

None of the announcements explicitly named China as the target, but they flowed from a meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between the US, India, Japan and Australia, held in Tokyo on October 6. There US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo again demonised Beijing, falsely blaming it for the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Pompeo declared that “Quad” collaboration was more critical than ever to protect against Beijing’s “exploitation, corruption, and coercion.” He named the South China Sea, along with “the East China Sea, the Mekong, the Himalayas, the Taiwan Straits” as “just a few examples” of China’s alleged aggression.

The truth is that the Trump administration has deliberately inflamed these flashpoints, including by recently encouraging the right-wing Indian government to take an aggressive stance in its volatile border clashes with China. This has taken to a new level the anti-China “pivot to Asia” conducted by the Obama White House.

Pompeo’s push in Tokyo was part of a US drive for the transformation of the “Quad” into a formal military alliance. Monday’s announcements are an immediate step in that direction.

Announcing the Malabar invitation, Australia’s Reynolds declared: “High-end military exercises like MALABAR are key to enhancing Australia’s maritime capabilities, building interoperability with our close partners, and demonstrating our collective resolve to support an open and prosperous Indo-Pacific.”

Echoing Pompeo, Reynolds said the Malabar exercise “also showcases the deep trust between four major Indo-Pacific democracies and their shared will to work together on common security interests.”

How closely these developments relate to war preparations was underscored by the Tokyo announcements.

Kishi and Reynolds said they had instructed their officials to “commence necessary coordination to create a framework to protect Australian Defence Force assets by the SDF [Japan’s military “Self-Defence Forces”] personnel.”

This raises the scenario of Japanese forces backing Australia’s military in the face of supposed threats from China.

Kishi and Reynolds said the arrangement would be covered by “Article 95-2 of the SDF Law (Provision for the protection of weapons and other equipment of the units of the U.S. Armed Forces and armed forces of other foreign countries).”

This SDF law, enacted by the Japanese government in 2015 in the face of widespread popular opposition, allows the Japanese military to conduct armed warfare internationally for the first time since World War II, by providing support to allies engaged in combat.

Kishi and Reynolds further stated: “In this context, we would like to announce that vessels of Japan and Australia, together with the United States are going to sail in the South China Sea to conduct a trilateral exercise starting from this evening till early tomorrow morning, Japan time.”

As yet, it is not known whether this operation included entering territorial waters claimed by China, as US warships have done increasingly.

While not naming China, the two defence ministers issued a series of incendiary allegations against Beijing, any one of which could provide the pretext for US-led military action. They declared “strong opposition to any destabilising or coercive unilateral actions” in the region, as well as to “militarisation of disputed features” and “efforts to disrupt other countries’ resource exploitation activities.”

Kishi and Reynolds committed their governments to intensifying their military collaboration, featuring “maritime activities in the South China Sea” and “increasing the complexity and sophistication of bilateral exercises and operations, including testing of air-to-air refueling.”

US-aligned commentators in Australia hailed these moves. In the Murdoch media, Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of the Australia n, noted: “Joint naval exercises such as Malabar do not equate to a military pact. However, they are extremely useful. They do signal to Beijing that the region is capable of serious military co-operation.”

In its editorial, the Australian further stoked the anti-China witch hunt: “After an absence of 13 years, Australia’s return to the annual Malabar naval exercise is significant and welcome. The exercise has assumed crucial importance for the security of the Indo-Pacific region at a time of unrelenting Chinese belligerence.”

In 2008, Australia’s Rudd Labor government pulled out of the Quad, in an attempt to straddle to some extent between the US, Australia’s post-World War II military ally, and China, the country’s biggest export market. Rudd remained fully committed to the US alliance but the balancing act triggered his removal as prime minister in 2010, orchestrated by US “protected sources” inside the Labor Party.

Over the past decade, US governments have pressured India also into becoming a frontline state in the conflict with China. India effectively entered into a strategic partnership with Washington in 2010 that has been expanded to include a logistics and basing agreement.

Figures within India’s ruling establishment drew attention to the sweeping implications of the line-up against China. Pankaj Jha, former deputy director of India’s National Security Council Secretariat, told Nikkei Asia the involvement of the full Quad demonstrated the Malabar naval exercises “are going up a level.”

“In past editions, we have seen sophisticated anti-submarine warfare, surveillance aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft all being deployed,” Jha said. “Now when Australia also comes in, and there are logistics support agreements, it technically means the expanse of the Quad is superimposed on two regions: the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean.”

Beijing’s initial response to the Malabar announcement was muted, reflecting the regime’s bid to head off a direct clash with the US. “We have taken note of this development,” China’s foreign affairs spokesman Zhao Lijan told a regular press conference in Beijing on Tuesday. “We always believe military co-operation between countries should be conducive to regional peace and stability.”

Regardless of such diplomatic niceties, the tightening encirclement of China itself heightens the danger of another world war. The US ruling class is intent on blocking China from ever becoming a challenge to American global hegemony. In a warning of what is to come, both the Democrats and Republicans have ratcheted up their anti-China propaganda in the US presidential election campaign.

COVID-19 pandemic surges despite limited curfew measures across Europe

Anthony Torres

Last week saw record devastation in Europe from COVID-19 with 700,000 new cases and 8,000 deaths from the virus—the highest since the pandemic began. The virus is spreading despite the limited health measures, such as regional curfews or closures of restaurants and bars, that the European ruling classes have taken in response to the resurgence of the pandemic.

These record figures underscore the bankruptcy of state policy of returning workers to work, and students to school to guarantee a continued flow of profits to the banks amid a raging pandemic. Millions of workers and youth are being exposed to a potentially deadly virus whose long-lasting impact on health is still largely unknown as part of a politically-criminal “herd immunity” policy.

At a press conference in Copenhagen Thursday, World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said the situation is of “great concern.” He said COVID-19 is the “fifth leading cause of deaths and the bar of 1,000 deaths per day has now been reached.” While the number of deaths has not yet reached the levels of April 2020, Kluge warned however that without firmer prevention policies, projections showed by January 2021, mortality levels could be four to five times those recorded in April.

A funeral at Seville's Cathedral, Spain, Thursday, Jun. 4, 2020 (AP Photo/Miguel Morenatti)

Citing the same epidemiological models, Kluge said that the generalized wearing of masks by 95 percent of the population, compared to an estimated less than 60 percent currently, could save 281,000 lives by February 1 in the 53 countries of the region.

In contrast, the limited measures taken by most European governments in recent days do not represent a move away from a “herd immunity” policy that threatens catastrophic loss of life. They are an attempt to lull to sleep workers and youth increasingly angry at pandemic policies that, by refusing to let youth and non-essential workers shelter at home, are leading Europe to disaster.

Yesterday, Spain became the first European country to log 1 million cases of COVID-19, six weeks after becoming the first European country to log 500,000 cases. It also recorded 575 deaths over the past week. However, the limited regional lock-down measures in Madrid and other major cities all require that youth and non-essential workers continue going to work and school, ensuring that the virus will continue to spread.

Belgium, the European country that had the most dead from COVID-19 per 100,000 inhabitants in the spring, announced that it would close bars and restaurants for a month as part of a curfew that began Monday. But on October 1, Belgium had revoked the obligation to wear a mask outside and the end of restrictions on private meetings. These policies will further favor the resurgence of the virus.

Eastern European countries are particularly hard hit by the resurgence of the pandemic. According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the Czech Republic is the European country worst hit by COVID-19 over the last 14 days, with 521.5 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, more than France (299.7) or Spain (299.8). The government has asked the army to build a field hospital with 500 beds outside Prague.

In Poland, the government announced on Monday a new surge in infections. The national stadium in Warsaw is being converted into a temporary field hospital. New restrictions have been imposed in Warsaw and other major cities that have been classified as “red zones.” Mask-wearing is now mandatory, including in the streets.

All high schools and universities located in these red zones are closed and moving to online learning. Restaurants must close at 9 p.m., marriage ceremonies are forbidden and the number of people allowed into shops, public mass transit and religious services is limited.

In the British Isles, Ireland and Wales announced lock-downs for six and two weeks starting Wednesday and Friday, respectively, citing the necessity of halting the pandemic’s resurgence so that the population can celebrate Christmas under normal conditions. Only workers with essential jobs will be able to leave home to go work, others will have to stay in a 5 km radius around their home when they leave to get exercise, or face fines. However, schools—where much of the transmission of the disease is taking place—are to remain open.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that adopting a “herd immunity” strategy means “we should accept higher levels of illness and death, and it ignores the deadly long-term effects of the virus on many people. … The evidence of a potentially grave situation arising in the weeks ahead is too strong.” However, he refused to allow youth to study from home, insisting that youth “need their education” and thanking school staff for being “on the frontline” of the virus.

This followed a warning from Ireland’s National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) that the situation would become “unmanageable” without immediate emergency action. It warned that “hospitals will have great difficulty meeting demand over the coming weeks, and so extreme measures needed to be taken to avoid a catastrophe,” the Irish Post reported.

These arguments only further underscore the politically-criminal inaction of other European states that are worse hit than Ireland. There were 1,031 cases announced on October 19, and the incidence rate in Ireland is 261.7 COVID-positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

France, one of the worst-hit countries in Europe, closed restaurants and bars and imposed a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in a dozen “scarlet zone” urban areas. With infections having hit over 30,000 per day, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would like to see 3,000 to 5,000 infections daily in a TV address Sunday. Hospitals are beginning to delay non-emergency surgeries and elective procedures to free up emergency room beds. Of 4,500 ventilator-equipped beds in France, 2,000 are now occupied by COVID-19 patients.

Though it is often presented as one of the best in the world, France’s health care system nearly collapsed in the onset of the pandemic in spring. As other countries across Europe, France now finds itself rapidly nearing the situation in the worst of the pandemic in March-April. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the medical system will be able to cope with the coming shock, as health workers were put under enormous stress for months, and there has been a wave of resignations to protest Macron’s leaving the health system unprepared for a resurgence of the virus.

Government promises made this summer to hire 15,000 new staff for public hospitals in order to improve working conditions and patient outcomes have yet to be fulfilled. An anesthesiologist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris told the press that “compared to the spring, we are fewer, especially in terms of paramedics.”

A critical consequence of the lack of human resources in the hospitals is the impossibility of opening new ventilator-equipped beds, explained anesthesiologist Roland Amathieu: “We normally have a service with 13 beds, but now only nine are open because of staffing problems and a third are currently occupied by COVID patients.”

This underscores the class gulf separating broad masses of the working population, who were warmly thankful to health staff amid the onset of the pandemic in spring, from capitalist governments who left hospitals starved of funding and personnel to face a resurgence of the virus created by their own herd immunity policy. Their preoccupation was handing out trillion-euro bailouts to the major banks and corporations, even as millions of workers and small businessmen lost their jobs and livelihoods.

The struggle against COVID-19 requires the political mobilization of workers and youth against the criminally irresponsible policies of the ruling class. A general shelter-at-home order, in which workers, the self-employed and small businesses receive full funding while they cannot work, is the only way to avert catastrophe. This requires a struggle by the working class across the continent and internationally, to topple the European Union, expropriate the financial aristocracy, impound the necessary financial and industrial resources and build the United Socialist States of Europe.

Excess US deaths during COVID-19 pandemic top 300,000

Benjamin Mateus

Far more US deaths are linked to COVID-19 than the official figure of 220,000, according to new estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC found that excess deaths for the period from late January through October 3, 2020, nearly 300,000 more Americans died than would have been expected, based on mortality patterns in the previous five years.

In its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), Volume 69, the CDC found that from late January to October 3, 2020, there were 299,028 excess deaths compared to projections based on deaths occurring during the same time frame in 2015 through 2019. Only two-thirds of those deaths, 198,081 in all, were officially attributed to COVID-19.

The difference of 100,000 deaths in the United States reflects in part the overwhelming of the health care system by COVID-19—to the point where people were dying of the virus before they could be tested and confirmed positive—and the greater than normal impact of other diseases because medical resources were being diverted to the coronavirus crisis. Other research has found a spike in deaths due to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s, because people were either afraid to or unable to visit a hospital.

Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery adorned with tributes to victims of COVID-19 in New York City, May 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

The most important finding of the CDC, besides the larger number of deaths, was the age distribution. While the largest number of deaths occurs among the elderly, the highest percentage increase in deaths over expected levels, 26.5 percent, was seen among adults aged 25 to 44, those of prime working age.

While every other age category had a significant reduction in mortality rates after the initial peak in the spring, the death toll in the 25-44 age group remained sustained from March to June and then began to rise again in July in response to the campaign to reopen the economy. People in this age group were most likely to be classified as “essential workers,” required to stay on the job no matter how terrible the conditions.

The CDC noted that minorities were disproportionately represented in the excess deaths. The Hispanic population was hardest hit, with 53 percent more deaths than expected, while the rate for Asian Americans was up 37 percent and for African Americans up 36 percent. The CDC did not offer a report on the socioeconomic status of those who died, thus concealing the true impact of the pandemic on the working class, although gathering and reporting such data is well within the agency’s capabilities.

The calculation of excess deaths is a way of estimating a temporary rise in the number of fatalities due to unusual or irregularly occurring events like epidemics, heat waves, cold spells, and other natural disasters, or manmade catastrophes like war and famine. The term is defined as the number of persons who have died from all causes, more than the expected number of deaths based on an average of previous years, with population growth and aging taken into account.

Excess deaths in the United States 2020

The CDC figure provides a new yardstick for measuring the impact of COVID-19 under conditions where the second wave of the pandemic is hitting the United States with increasing force. The total number of COVID-19 cases in the nation has now exceeded 8.5 million. The seven-day moving average of new cases has catapulted to 61,000 per day, a 36 percent increase in just two weeks. According to the New York Times, the death rate has climbed to a seven-day average of 929 per day in the same two weeks, a seven percent increase. Yesterday, the number of deaths pushed above 1,100. Texas, California, and Florida each reported over 100 deaths.

As alarming as these developments are, excess death estimates provide a dramatic insight into the grim nature of this pandemic that the official mortality figures have been underestimated and covered up. Furthermore, they suggest the devastation to be expected as the policy of herd immunity is being prosecuted with impunity by the White House with the full support of both Republican and Democratic officials at the local, state and federal levels.

The latest upsurge in COVID-19 in the United States is focused in the Midwest, with the worst impact in areas where state governments either never enforced lockdowns very strictly or did not impose them at all.

In Kansas, for example, rural Norton County is now the hardest hit in the state. The county health department announced that an outbreak at the Andbe Home, a private nursing facility, has led to the infection of all 62 residents with COVID-19, with 10 deaths. Another 22 staff members have tested positive, and the entire work force is now being tested.

This is a horrible throwback to one of the worst features of the initial outbreak in the spring, which ripped through nursing homes in states like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Michigan, in many instances, because elderly people infected with coronavirus were transferred from hospitals back to their nursing homes, where they infected many more.

Though the nursing home residents account for about one half of one percent of the US population, they accounted for 40 percent of all deaths in the initial stage of the pandemic. Contrary to the advocates of “herd immunity” who claim in a recent document, the Great Barrington Declaration, that there can be “focused protection” of the most vulnerable in the population while the majority become infected, the reality is that the elderly and those with compromised immune systems and comorbidities will die at horrific rates.

In Wisconsin, the Department of Health Services reported that the seven-day moving average has risen from 700 daily cases in early September to 3,287 this week, more than quadrupling in a little more than a month. There are now 1,190 hospitalized patients, with 299 in the ICU.

Matthew Heywood, CEO and president at the Aspirus health system in Wausau, Wisconsin, told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “We have been adding a lot of beds. We have about 98 beds throughout the system that are COVID-designated. We only have about 18 left, so that means we have about 80 people in COVID right now that are pretty sick. … I think the thing that’s most painful for them [hospital workers] right now, and most challenging for them, is while they’re working their butts off—and they’re working hard—it’s the fact that they don’t know if the community sees how serious it is. They see the politicization of it, and they see the repercussions of what’s happening when they do their job every day. And they’re watching people die.”

There is a resurgence of COVID-19 along the East Coast as well, tied to the reopening of public schools. On Wednesday, Boston Public School Superintendent Brenda Cassellius announced that the district was halting the phased school reopening that began October 1 because the citywide COVID-19 positivity rate had hit 5.7 percent, well above the 4 percent threshold. Massachusetts has seen a 16 percent rise to nearly 1,000 daily cases. Deaths and hospitalizations have also started their ascent.

Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia have seen a rise in COVID daily cases. Hot spots across the nation include counties in South Dakota, Kansas, Montana, Wisconsin, and Nebraska. Hospitalizations surpassed 40,000 yesterday, from a low of 28,608 on September 20.

To place the present pandemic in the US in its historical perspective, the H2N2 Influenza pandemic in 1957 killed about 116,000, and the 1967 H3N2 (Hong Kong) flu pandemic killed approximately 100,000 Americans. The Spanish flu of 1918 killed 675,000 in the US when the population was 103 million, about 0.6 percent of the total population.

Current projections place the number of deaths from COVID-19 at 316,000 by January 1, which would suggest that the excess deaths will be more than 400,000. According to a recent study, estimates indicate that US life expectancy for 2020 will decline by 1.41 years—a colossal drop in a figure which has been worsening in recent years, but more slowly because of the opioid crisis.

US Justice Department and eleven states file antitrust lawsuit against Google

Kevin Reed

The US Department of Justice (DoJ)—supported by eleven state Attorneys General—filed its long-anticipated lawsuit against Google on Tuesday and charged the online search monopoly with violations of antitrust laws.

The 64-page DoJ lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia and says that Google is guilty of, “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices.”

The essential argument of the lawsuit is that Google has used illegal business practices—such as exclusive agreements with tech partners like Apple to preinstall its search products on mobile devices—to effectively block competition and secure the company 90 percent of all internet search queries in the US.

Googleplex Headquarters, Mountain View, US (Image Credit: The Pancake of Heaven/Wikimedia)

The lawsuit is expected to go on for years. According to the Washington Post, the case is “likely to be a lengthy, bruising legal fight between Washington and Silicon Valley.” The company rejected the claims of the government as “deeply flawed,” saying that the US public has the choice to use competitive search products.

Although the DoJ suit says that it is seeking “to remedy the effects of this conduct” by Google, it does not spell out specifically what measures must be taken to do so. In its concluding section under the title “Request for Relief,” the DoJ asks the court for generalities such as “structural relief as needed to cure any competitive harm,” “enjoin Google from continuing to engage in the anticompetitive practices,” “restore competitive conditions in the markets affected by Google’s conduct” and “any additional relief that the Court finds just and proper.”

The federal lawsuit was joined by the Attorneys General—all Republicans—from the states of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Texas.

In presenting the lawsuit, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen said, “As with its historic antitrust actions against AT&T in 1974 and Microsoft in 1998, the Department is again enforcing the Sherman Act to restore the role of competition and open the door to the next wave of innovation—this time in vital digital markets.”

Attorney General William Barr issued a statement which accompanied the lawsuit and fraudulently claimed the case was filed on behalf of “the American consumer.” It is clear that the timing of the action by the DoJ is directly connected to populist posturing by President Trump in advance of the elections in three weeks. Barr claimed he was on the lookout for the “massive concentration of economic power in the digital economy” represented by Google—as well as the other tech giants such as Apple, Facebook and Twitter—as harmful to “users, advertisers, and small businesses.”

Barr reviewed how Google “no longer competes only on the merits but instead uses its monopoly power—and billions in monopoly profits—to lock up key pathways to search on mobile phones, browsers, and next generation devices, depriving rivals of distribution and scale.” There is something laughable about Attorney General Barr—the lapdog of billionaire President Donald Trump and defender of the capitalist system and US imperialism—spouting off about “billions in monopoly profits” being made by Google.

Barr also said that the antitrust lawsuit is “separate and distinct” from the “content moderation and political censorship issues” that are being taken up by the DoJ in other initiatives “including by advocating for Section 230 legislative reforms.”

Barr had previously submitted language to Congress that would strip social media companies of their Section 230 protections—a provision in US law that grants online service providers immunity from prosecution arising from content posted on their platforms by users—if their content moderation polices are determined by the DoJ to be violating free speech rights.

Finally, Barr also made reference to the DoJ’s lawsuit against Microsoft in 1998 and claimed that the case was responsible for “increased competition” that “enabled Google to grow from a small start-up to an Internet behemoth.”

However, what Barr and Rosen failed to mention was that the initial ruling against Microsoft was overturned in 2001 in exchange for minor adjustments in its business practices, such as sharing its application programming interfaces (APIs) with third party companies. In the end, Microsoft neither unbundled anything from its domination of personal computing nor was it “broken up” into separate operating system and desktop application companies.

Australian corporate elite demands lifting of all coronavirus safety restrictions

Oscar Grenfell

A campaign by the financial elite for the immediate overturning of all coronavirus safety restrictions has reached a fever pitch, with business chiefs, corporate lobby groups and senior state and federal politicians insisting that any measures to contain COVID-19 and prevent further outbreaks are an unacceptable impost on profit-making operations.

The focus of this offensive is the state of Victoria, where a “second wave” of infections resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of cases in July and August. But it is a national push that finds expression in all states and territories.

The campaign is one prong of the ruling class response to the economic crisis accelerated by the pandemic. It dovetails with the federal budget that was brought down by the Liberal-National government earlier this month, the main measures of which were rushed through parliament within days thanks to the support of the Labor opposition.

The budget, which features what the Australian Financial Review described as a “tsunami of money” to corporations and the wealthiest individuals, is explicitly premised on forcing all workers to return to their places of employment regardless of the dangers of coronavirus infection. The worst mass unemployment in decades is to be used to bludgeon ordinary people into low-paid and precarious casual and contract labour.

Governments and big business are insisting that this must occur prior to the holiday season, that begins with Christmas, to ensure maximum returns for business.

The Victorian state Labor government has yet again signalled its backing for this bipartisan agenda. Its Premier Daniel Andrews has indicated that he will present an acceleration of the “roadmap” out of Stage Four lockdown measures, which were imposed in August when Melbourne’s hospital system was threatened with collapse as a result of high infection numbers, as early as this weekend. Andrews has particularly flagged a possible easing of trading restrictions on hospitality and retail outlets.

But the message from the ruling elite is that the plans, under which restrictions on indoor seating and the number of individuals inside establishments would likely remain, is not enough. The corporate elite and the federal government responded to Andrews’ announcement last weekend of an initial easing of Stage Four measures with undisguised fury.

The changes Andrews outlined included the end of a night time curfew in Melbourne by the end of the month, the removal of restrictions on how long residents can leave their homes to exercise and socialise, and an extension of the radius within which they can do their shopping and other activities from five to twenty-five kilometres.

In response, executives at seven of the country’s largest corporations issued an open letter, demanding a speedy reopening. “We urge you now, in light of the excellent recent progress, to permit the careful and staged return to the workplace of office workers and the small businesses that provide services to them,” they insisted.

The signatories were BHP CEO Mike Henry, Commonwealth Bank head Matt Comyn, Coca Cola Amatil chief Alison Watkins, Incitec Pivot chief Jeanne Johns, Newcrest chief Sandeep Biswas, Orica chief Alberto Calderon and Wesfarmers CEO Rob Scott.

They were joined by federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who hysterically denounced the Andrews government in media appearances early this week. The Andrews government, he declared, was showing a “callous” indifference to the plight of small businesses and laid-off workers.

“It’s fine to lift the travel restrictions to 25 kilometres but if the businesses aren’t open people haven’t got anywhere to go,” Frydenberg stated. He asserted that almost all restrictions should have been lifted over the weekend.

The federal government and the corporate media are inciting far-right elements and small businesses to defy the restrictions that remain in place, with increasingly unhinged rhetoric.

"Sunrise" hosts promoting a Melbourne business owner violating COVID-19 restrictions (Screenshot, Channel Seven online broadcast)

Late last week, Channel Seven’s “Sunrise” breakfast program featured an interview with a Melbourne retailer, who was opening his store each day, in disregard of coronavirus safety measures. One of the hosts declared that the man, who acknowledged he was breaking the law, was an “Australian hero.” This morning, the Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper published an opinion piece bemoaning the fact that “whether its climate change or the coronavirus, we are invariably exhorted to ‘listen to the science.’”

The tabloids in Melbourne are also heavily promoting an online campaign to “free Melbourne.” It consists of a motley collection of minor celebrities, including the wives of retired football players, comedians and little-known actors, posting social media photos of themselves donning “free Melbourne” shirts from their plush homes and mansions, in a demand for the overturning of all coronavirus restrictions.

To the extent that the Andrews government has not moved more rapidly, it is because the government knows that all of the conditions for a further COVID-19 resurgence are in place. This, Andrews fears, could have disastrous political consequences for his own government and would inflame anger among workers and young people.

Already, however, measures on paper are being flouted with the support of the government. This Saturday, the lucrative Cox Plate horse race is proceeding in Melbourne, in an event that will bring together 750 jockeys, journalists and racing staff from across the state. The Andrews government had initially allowed an attendance of more than 1,000, including race horse owners, but retreated in the face of a public backlash.

As has happened throughout the pandemic, governments are invoking a decline in case numbers, to overturn the very measures responsible for the decline in transmission. While daily infections in Melbourne and Victoria have declined to the single-digits as a result of the Stage Four measures, the dangers have been revealed by infections at two schools in Melbourne’s north, which have sent hundreds of students, teachers and parents into social isolation, and another in a social housing apartment tower in the impoverished suburb of Broadmeadows.

Epidemiologists, moreover, have warned that undetected community transmission is likely continuing, while doctors have stated that the chronically-underfunded healthcare system remains as vulnerable to further outbreaks as it was several months ago. Well over a thousand infections were recorded among health workers during the last “wave” of the virus, with nurses and doctors denied adequate personal protective equipment.

Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah, who is conducting a survey of Victorian health workers, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation earlier this week: “We’re still seeing outbreaks among healthcare workers in hospitals even with very, very low community transmission, and that is a red flag. I don’t think that hospitals are optimised for safety, and this is a real threat to our recovery as we start to open up.”

Others have noted that the government has not provided any tangible evidence of an improvement in contact-tracing procedures, which completely broke down when Melbourne’s infections reached their peak in August.

The rush to lift restrictions is not confined to Melbourne. In New South Wales, where most safety measures have already been lifted, the state Liberal government is preparing a further easing. It will include allowances for religious services to be attended by 300 people, outdoor concerts with 500 people, and fewer restrictions on gyms.

Under conditions in which new cases are still being detected each day, these measures clearly pose the risk of widespread transmission. Meanwhile, the government continues to invoke a twenty-person limit on other outdoor gatherings, to ban all political protests, even though they pose far less of a risk of contagion.

The state Labor government in Queensland has come under fire for its maintenance of border cross restrictions. But as is the case elsewhere, there are a myriad of exceptions when it comes to corporate operations. This weekend, the Queensland state capital will host the Australian Rules Football grand final, with 30,000 spectators, including corporates and “media personalities” from across the country.

The rush to overturn all safety restrictions is based on the same considerations that have resulted in a resurgence of the pandemic across Europe and internationally. For governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, all measures based on public health and science must be dispensed with, to ensure the fortunes of the financial aristocracy and the largest corporations.

Federal Reserve data shows over 100 million in US out of labor force

Jacob Crosse

Data released by the US Federal Reserve earlier this month reveals that nearly 39 percent of the US labor force, nearly 101 million people, are not working, a jump of nearly 6 million from February 2020.

This is near the highest total ever recorded by the Fed, which was in April of this year when it found that over 103 million were out of the labor force, compared to 95 million in February 2020. Despite lifesaving lockdown measures being quickly abandoned at the insistence of the financial oligarchy in April and May, the number has continued to hover above 100 million, only briefly dipping below that mark in August, before increasing again in September.

This staggering total gives some indication of the real level of joblessness and all the hardship and misery that entails for millions of people and their families. The Fed classifies the “US labor force” as every US citizen 16 or over who is not incarcerated, in the US military, or in nursing or residential care homes. This means retirees are still considered part of the labor force.

A man wearing a mask walks by a closing department store, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

According to 2019 US census data, there are roughly 328,500,000 people in the US. Of those, roughly 260 million are over the age of 16 and 16.5 percent, or some 54 million, are over the age of 65. Capitalism demands constant exploitation of workers, regardless of age, and census data show that nearly 25 percent of those over age 65 are still working.

Overall, about 160 million people in the US were considered employed at the end of February 2020. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) measured the Labor Force Participation Rate at 63.4 percent at that time. However, by April 2020 it had dipped to 60.2 percent and had leveled off at 61.4 percent as of September 2020.

The Fed considers the over 100 million people not in the labor force, a huge swath of the population, as “neither employed or unemployed.” Most are not included in the official BLS unemployment statistics because they are not “currently” looking for work, creating a statistical blind spot that conceals rather than reveals the true state of employment in the US.

The official unemployment rate stands at 7.9 percent in the US as of September, down from 14.7 percent in April. However, as the Fed data shows, this is not a true representation of how many people are not working. If only about 8 percent of the country did not have a job, then there should only be roughly 20.8 million people out of work, instead of 101 million. Further BLS reporting shows, over 25 million people in the US are collecting some form of government assistance, whether through federal pandemic unemployment assistance or state unemployment benefits.

There are several reasons which help explain why so many are considered to be “not looking for work” but still in need of a job.

Not counting 40 million retirees and pensions, there are many reasons why workers would not be “looking” for a job, but still in desperate straits, the main reason being they are watching out for their personal safety. As the US enters the “third wave” of the coronavirus pandemic, which has already claimed 227,000 lives in the US alone, thousands of workers have no confidence that their workplace will implement safety measures needed in order to prevent the spread of the virus.

Over 21 states including Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, Kentucky, Tennessee, Utah, Idaho, and Iowa are seeing 25 or more new daily cases per 100,000 thousand people, an indication of unchecked community spread.

As millions continue to adhere to social distancing guidelines and shelter at home when possible, some small businesses, particularly restaurants and bars are reducing or furloughing staff, if not shutting down entirely.

Millions of workers have been put on extended leaves of absences which, while not affecting the unemployment rate, would increase the number “not in the labor force” since they might not be looking for work as they expect to be called back in the future.

Another reason for the drastic increase in the number of workers not in the labor force is that thousands of workers, fearful of being laid off, have been coerced into accepting early retirement packages. Several large companies that received billions in government relief through the CARES Act, such as major US airlines Delta, United and Southwest, with the assistance of the trade unions, have forced early retirements on thousands of workers.

Despite the harrowing economic and social reality facing millions of workers and their families, an indifferent ruling class has let yet another coronavirus relief bill “deadline” pass with no agreement in place. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had imposed a “48 hour” deadline on Sunday, stating that unless a deal was reached between her and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin by 3 p.m. on Tuesday, no deal would be forthcoming until after the election. After the deadline passed, Pelosi and Mnuchin announced, after a reported 48-minute phone call, that they would continue to negotiate with another session scheduled for Thursday.

Representatives from both political parties have endlessly talked and dithered about “getting a deal done” in the 11 weeks since the $600 supplemental federal unemployment benefit expired, while millions slid into poverty, destitution and hunger. As part of the political theater, Pelosi and senior White House Economic Advisor Larry Kudlow have continued to claim “progress” whenever a temporary boost to the Dow Jones industrial average is needed.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell poured water on the prospects of a deal, advising President Donald Trump and fellow senate Republicans not to agree to anything with Pelosi ahead of the election. McConnell cited the impending Senate confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court next week as a reason why a deal could not be done, insisting the Senate should be focused on ensuring the Supreme Court would be in a position to facilitate Trump’s announced plans to override his likely defeat at the polls.

Wednesday saw more of the same, with prospects for a deal before the election dimming by the day. In the Senate, Democrats blocked a $500 billion Republican stimulus package, which was devoid of local and state aid as well as $1,200 stimulus checks. In the evening Trump tweeted that he did not “...see any way Nancy Pelosi and Cryin’ Chuck Schumer will be willing to do what is right for our great American workers, or our wonderful USA itself, on Stimulus. Their primary focus is BAILING OUT poorly run (and high crime) Democrat cities and states...Should take care of our people. It wasn’t their fault that the Plague came in from China.”

No to police-state rule after the terrorist killing of French teacher Samuel Paty!

Alex Lantier

The beheading Friday of middle school teacher Samuel Paty by a young Chechen Islamist in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine has shocked millions internationally. Quite irrespective of their views on Paty’s decision to show his class obscene caricatures of the prophet Mohamed to provoke debate on freedom of expression, masses of people are saddened and disgusted by the grisly murder of a teacher trying to discuss democratic rights with students.

The bankruptcy of communal terrorism is once more exposed. The state uses such atrocities to whip up support for authoritarianism and war. Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 attacks served as a pretext for US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. After the 2015 Paris attacks by the Islamic State (IS) militia, which emerged from the NATO proxy war in Syria, the French state imposed a two-year state of emergency, suspending democratic rights and deploying the army on French soil.

President Emmanuel Macron and the political establishment are exploiting the latest attack to adopt anti-Muslim policies indistinguishable from those of neo-fascist politician Marine Le Pen. Police raids and collective expulsions of Muslims, calls for mass Internet censorship, and bans on social and political groups branded as “enemies of the Republic” are all being massively intensified.

A police officer watches a woman, Monday, Oct. 5, 2020 in Paris. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

After hailing Le Pen, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Tuesday closed a major mosque near Paris, in Pantin, where 1,500-2,000 people worship regularly.

On Sunday, at a meeting of France’s national security council, Macron called for police to terrorize working class areas where most Muslims live in France. “Fear will now change sides,” he said, adding that “Islamists cannot be allowed to sleep peacefully in our country.” The Interior Ministry has ordered the expulsion of 231 individuals followed by French intelligence and the dissolution of 51 associations.

Macron announced Tuesday the dissolution of the Cheikh-Yassine Association led by preacher Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who called for Paty’s dismissal online. There are conflicting reports as to whether Sefrioui, a former campaign staffer for anti-Semitic Franco-Cameroonian comedian and neo-fascist Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, had spoken to the youth who murdered Paty. Whatever occurs in the case of Sefrioui, who is entitled to legally defend his association, the state clearly aims to ban any Muslim association that falls afoul of the police.

Darmanin has also said that the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), a legal advocacy group opposing anti-Muslim discrimination, is to be dissolved. Its lawyer stressed Monday that “nothing in this association’s activities allows for suspicions of any link to terrorism.”

There are also growing calls to adopt a law, requiring Internet service providers to take down in 24 hours materials denounced to state authorities as online hate speech. Presented in May by Laetitia Avia, a deputy of Macron’s party, the law was struck down as unconstitutional in June by the Constitutional Council. Nonetheless, there are growing calls to resurrect this blatant attack on freedom of speech after Paty’s murder.

France’s parliamentary parties are all unabashedly appealing to nationalist hatreds. After Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the petty-bourgeois Unsubmissive France party said the country has a “problem” with the “Chechen community,” a statement he since dismissed as an “error,” Darmanin said he was “shocked” by kosher and halal aisles in supermarkets. Darmanin refused to withdraw this unambiguous appeal to anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment, when asked.

To be blunt, Paty’s murder is a political godsend for Macron. Hated as the “president of the rich” since his brutal police crackdown on “yellow vest” protests against social inequality and shaken by months-long strikes against austerity by transport and education workers in winter, he now faces rising anger over COVID-19. His call to “live with the virus” epitomizes the ruling elites’ callous “herd immunity” policy amid the resurgence of the virus in Europe. His government is responding by seizing upon Paty’s murder to shift politics far to the right.

The target of this campaign is the entire working class. Moreover, it is impossible to evaluate the political significance of these events based simply on what is occurring inside the borders of France.

This orgy of nationalism and authoritarianism unfolds amid a universal breakdown of democratic forms of rule, even in countries with long democratic traditions. In the United States, President Donald Trump has said he will not honor the election results but will remain in the White House after the November 3 vote. The Democratic Party for its part is downplaying revelations that fascistic militias linked to top Trump administration officials have threatened or, in the case of Michigan, plotted the execution of governors in key states.

In Germany, the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) again sits in parliament for the first time since the fall of the Nazis. Far-right networks are making lists of politicians for assassination, but they are given political cover by the state machine and domestic intelligence agencies. Neo-fascists implicated in the murder of Christian-Democratic politician Walter Lübcke, who made statements in defense of immigrants, were released.

In France, the ruling elite has focused for a month on the so-called anti-separatist law proposed by Macron on October 3. Macron claimed that “radical Islam” is at war with the French Republic, on a perspective that is “separatist” but “whose final objective is to take complete control of it.” He called to post police “at the foot of every tower block, and every apartment building” and said the law would require all associations to “sign a contract respecting Republican values,” as defined by the Interior Ministry.

The Muslim minority, which makes up under 10 percent of the population and overwhelmingly consists of oppressed layers of workers, is being singled out as the target of a fascistic campaign. All Muslim opposition to Macron, including peaceful disagreements with reactionary bans on headscarves in the schools, is branded as “radical Islam” and a sign one is an enemy of the state. Thus, after Paty’s murder, Macron called Islamism an “ideology of the destruction of the Republic.”

In the 2017 French presidential elections, the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES), the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), called for an active boycott of the second round between Macron and Marine Le Pen. The PES warned that Macron was no alternative to the far-right, anti-working class policies a President Le Pen would implement.

This warning has been vindicated by Macron’s mass arrests and bloody police repression targeting strikes and social protests, and now his turn towards a fascistic policy. In 2018, he even hailed Nazi-collaborationist dictator and traitor Philippe Pétain as a “great soldier” before ordering riot police to assault the “yellow vests.” Around the world, the levels of social inequality produced by the bourgeoisie’s austerity cuts and revealed in the murderous “herd immunity” policy on COVID-19, which hit workers and the poor hardest of all, are incompatible with democratic forms of rule.

The threat to the Republic—not to the police-state machine, that is, but to the democratic rights of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity proclaimed in the 1789 French revolution—comes not from the country’s oppressed Muslim minority. It comes from the bourgeoisie and its political servants. Macron’s “anti-separatist” policy against Islam is no more compatible with the universal fraternity of humanity asserted in the 1789 revolution, than his tax cuts for the rich and wage and pension cuts for workers are compatible with equality.

The only way forward against the urgent and mounting threats to democratic rights is the political unification of the working class internationally in a struggle for socialism. The foundation of such a struggle is a rejection of nationalism, which the bourgeoisie uses to divide the working class and subordinate it to dictatorial forms of rule, and the struggle to unify workers of all backgrounds with their Muslim class brothers and sisters in the struggle against police-state rule.