#Although most Americans currently face hard times with unemployment surging to the levels of the Great Depression, and enormous numbers of people sick or dying from the coronavirus pandemic, the nation's super-rich remain a notable exception.
Financially, they are doing remarkably well. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, between March 18 and April 28, as nearly 30 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits, the wealth of America's 630 billionaires grew by nearly 14 percent. During April 2020 alone, their wealth increased by over $406 billion, bringing it to $3.4 trillion. According to estimates by 'Forbes', the 400 richest Americans now possess as much wealth as held by nearly two-thirds of American households combined.
During this time of economic crisis, two features of the U.S. government's economic bailout legislation facilitated the burgeoning of billionaire's fortunes: first, the provision of direct subsidies to the wealthy and their corporations, and, second, the gift of huge tax breaks to rich Americans and their businesses. Consequently, although the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate, stock prices, helped along by the infusion of cash, are once again soaring.
#TRUMP WATCH: Trump Dumped - A regular feature of the 'Sierra' magazine'.
*Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump 51.1 to 47.1 percent, the worst presidential incumbent defeat since Franklin Delano Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover.
*The lame duck Trump administration begins the process of selling oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
*In a 2-1 ruling, 'Sierra Club v. Trump', a federal appeals court concludes that the Trump administration's attempt to use $3.6 billion in military funding to pay for a border wall is illegal.
*US Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott acknowledges that his agency chose to build sections of the wall in wildlife preserves because it was cheaper than building on privately owned land.
*A federal judge rules that William Perry Pendley is serving unlawfully as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, calling into question Pendley's moves to open public lands to oil and gas drilling.
*The US Forest Service strips protections from all 16.7 million acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, one of the world's largest temperate rainforests.
*The EPA postpones an internal speaker series about environmental justice after Trump labels it a "divisive, un-American propaganda session."
*Wyoming representative Liz Cheney and EPA head Andrew Wheeler ask the Department of Justice to investigate whether anti-fracking efforts by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups are linked to Russia or China.
*The Trump administration removes endangered species protection for the gray wolf.
#Statement of the Annual Meeting of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, issued on May 23, 2020.
"Resumption of nuclear explosive testing is absolutely unacceptable. Even discussing nuclear testing again is dangerously destabilizing. Yet according to news reports, such discussions have recently been held in the Trump White House. US resumption of nuclear testing would lead to testing by other states -- possibly China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and DPRK. It would accelerate the emerging nuclear arms race, and damage prospects for nuclear arms control negotiations. A nuclear explosive test is itself a kind of threat. Testing would generate fear and mistrust, and would entrench reliance on nuclear arms. It would move the world away from, rather than towards, a world free of nuclear weapons. Nuclear explosive testing must not happen, and there must not even be signals of its possibility. Instead the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty should be brought into legal force.
This episode comes in the context of ongoing upgrading of nuclear forces by the world's nuclear-armed states. It is supported by extensive laboratory research and experimentation, which in part serves as a substitute for functions once served by nuclear explosive testing. So, even as we demand that such testing not be resumed, we must recognize the dangers inherent in the ongoing nuclear weapons enterprise. Those dangers are now mostly out of sight of the public and subject to little media scrutiny, but they are real. They too must be addressed, which in the end will require the global abolition of nuclear arms."
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