There is a problem with the climate crisis that effects are locked-in before they are noticed. For example, we are basically at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels now but it is likely that 2.0C is already “locked-in” so that if we were to stop all emission of climate gases now, we would still reach 2.0C. This is a serious problem because it means that real, effective change to avoid climate disaster is likely to be to late. That raises the question is it worth the bother trying to prevent further climate disaster and the planet becoming uninhabitable: if it’s wasted effort shouldn’t we just enjoy our final years instead?
22.35pm GMT There’s more to it than that. There’s the problem that the climate-destroyers are in ascendance and now blatantly disregarding climate destruction. It’s then more of a question should we continue campaigning if we’re not being effective, achieving. I consider that we are achieving and the situation would be worse otherwise. It appears that we are achieving in UK despite Ed Miliband being so taken with the carbon capture false solution promoted by fossil fuels.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves during a meeting at Downing Street in London with regulators. She is expected to use the meeting to announce more detail on how the Government will cut the cost of regulation by a quarter and set out plans to slim down or abolish regulators themselves, March 17, 2025
CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves is set to announce a huge new programme of spending cuts as unemployment rises and anger at Labour’s assault on disability benefits mounts.
She will use her spring spending statement next week to unveil a fresh austerity programme as the government continues to rule out tax rises on the wealthy as an alternative.
Despair is turning to anger among backbench Labour MPs and trade unions at the government’s course, which is already seeing Labour plunge to record lows in the opinion polls.
Ms Reeves’s death-wish economics come as official statistics showed joblessness increasing, including among young workers.
Unemployment is up by 0.1 per cent, with a youth unemployment rate of 12.9 per cent.
Commenting on the figures, Public and Commercial Services union general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “The labour market figures today highlight the cruelty of the government’s reforms to disability benefits.
“Unemployment is rising, and the wider measure of underemployment is now at 4.75 million with only 816,000 vacancies in the economy — meaning there are already nearly six people chasing every vacancy.
“Those figures exclude disabled people currently deemed unable to work or with only limited capacity for work.
“The reality is that the government’s proposals will not help disabled people off of benefits and into work, but off benefits and into deeper poverty.”
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during a reception to celebrate St Patrick’s Day at 10 Downing Street, London, March 19, 2025
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[T]he Starmer-Reeves agenda is entirely dictated by the needs of finance capital, mediated through the Treasury and the military.
There is no question, of course, of arms spending being affected by this renewed austerity — on the contrary it is slated to carry on rising for the next decade. Critics of the welfare cuts should not be reticent about making this connection.
Trying to protect spending on services without challenging this renewed militarism hands the Starmerites a free pass by allowing a key argument to go unchallenged.
Starmer’s priorities have a mounting number of victims. Again in Commons questions, Northern Ireland social democrat Colum Eastwood identified one, a deeply disabled constituent able to access benefits under the Tories but now facing destitution as her personal independence payments are withdrawn.
Eastwood then asked the key question. Given all that — what is the point of Labour?
It is a question millions across the country, including many who voted Labour last July, are now asking. This is governance in the interests of capital, not labour by any stretch.
The left in Labour must transition from protest to action against the government if there is to be any positive answer to Eastwood’s question. Issuing statements is not enough if Starmer and Reeves can continue to count on votes in Parliament and canvassers in the country for their anti-worker programme.
Absent that fighting approach, the logical conclusion must be that something new, articulating the values of socialism, is needed.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.
Federal employees rally in support of their jobs outside of the Kluczynski Federal Building on March 19, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. The rally was organized by the National Treasury Employees Union to voice concerns about the mass firing of federal workers by the controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which is led by billionaire businessman Elon Musk. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Time is short during a fascist takeover attempt. And Trump and Musk are moving at breakneck speed. The stakes could not be higher.
At what junctures do Elon Musk and Donald Trump, each proceeding from a distinctive starting point, forge a new and hyper-dangerous coalition? Well, the Afrikaner refugee joins an extreme version of neoliberalism to a fascist drive to state takeover, and the fascist orange man, who demands unfettered state power and loves tariffs, nonetheless caters to neoliberal drives to concentrate wealth, income, and power even more extremely at the highest reaches of society. Together, they pursue what is best called oligopolistic fascism.
What’s more, while both may have once believed the old Friedrich Hayek story of how market deregulation secures a robust economy of steady growth, each displays active signs today of no longer believing the very ideology he pedals. Musk does so through his project of planetary escapism and his obsession with driving Inspector Generals from governmental institutions; Trump does so through his constant lies and belligerent demonization of vulnerable people who disagree with him. Indeed, each contains within himself a minor voice sliding into the major voice of the other. They both now believe that the old order that has sustained their extreme privileges can now only be protected by fascist means.
So, let’s define our terms a bit more closely. Neoliberalism was a market theory, most prominently developed by Friedrich Hayek in the 1960s and 1970s as a series of rejoinders to a Keynesian model of growth and social welfare. Neoliberalism promised rapid and sustained economic growth, if the state would radically reduce regulation of private corporations, subsidize them whenever needed, severely limit the power of labor unions, create a court system committed to neoliberal jurisprudence, and, most importantly (and too often less noted by critics), install a national ideology of regular individuals committed to a market regime–a national ideology saturating schools, unions, churches, the government, the media, think tanks, and universities.
In this ideology each individual and institution sees itself as first and foremost a participant and beneficiary of a privately owned market economy. Hayek himself emphasized these themes in his neoliberal social philosophy, a social philosophy that included an economic theory but extended well beyond it to include all other social and state institutions. This all found elaborate expression, for instance, in his 1970 book Rules and Order. In it he emphasizes how the Supreme Court must set rules beyond the powers of legislative revision to nurture the sinews of a neoliberal economy. And he says a neoliberal ideology “may well be something whose widespread acceptance is the indispensable condition for most of the particular things we strive for.” (Rules of Order, p. 58). He knew that minority groups who refused or could not imbibe this ideology had to be controlled by other means. A neoliberal regime along Hayek’s lines, then, is one in which the prison population grows.
In fact the neoliberal order in the United States, supported actively by neoliberal Supreme Court justices, has pushed previously unheard of wealth concentrations to the top of the social hierarchy; supported a unitary President; increased economic insecurity for workers, the poor and mid-level professionals; encouraged hi-tech, super-rich bros to pour vast amounts of money into right wing electoral campaigns; restricted state efforts to fend off climate change and help the poor; and supported media gaslighting to deny the contributions a neoliberal economy makes to accelerating climate wreckage and periodic crises. You can take the 2008 economic meltdown, during the G. W. Bush administration, to be a notable instance of the latter.
What about fascism? Well, fascist movements seek to secure capitalist states by new means during hard times. This was true even in the most extreme instance, when Hitler in Nazi Germany protected large private industrialists as he attacked Jews, social democrats, labor unions, homosexuals, the Romani, and communists. In Mein Kampf, the Jews were defined to be the “red thread” that tied them, social democrats and communists together in one phalanx. To attack the Jews was thus to attack these other organizations and movements too. The regime was inaccurately called “National Socialism”; a closer label would be “National Capitalism,” an economic regime of private profit in which a fascist state became the key definer and regulator of life.
How does a distinctive aspiration to fascism proceed today? It does so by promulgating “big lies” to mobilize hatred in its base; fostering an extreme version of white, Christian nationalism; ransacking state regulatory institutions; intimidating the media, courts, unions, localities, and universities; engaging in coups; mobilizing private militia to intimidate vulnerable elements of the populace; treating immigrants of color to be inferior and “vile” people; and joining with other autocratic states to weaken democracy and promote oligarchical rule. Indeed, today Trump treats immigrants of color and their liberal supporters to be the red threads tying all his enemies together. And he never acknowledges how the very anti-climate policies he promotes accelerate the desperate marches from South to North that he castigates so fervently.
As I previewed in a 2017 book, Aspirational Fascism, Trump has profound fascist aspirations, displayed prominently today in promulgating a battery of big lies, fostering a violent coup attempt after he lost an election, aligning with Putin in foreign policy, pardoning all those who participated in his 2021 violent coup attempt, attacking universities, insisting upon the hegemony of a unitary president who sidelines Congress, the states and (increasingly) courts, and unleashing Musk to reshape the state.
What draws Musk and Trump so closely together now?
Well, Musk shows signs of losing faith in the neoliberal ideology that informed his thinking hitherto, while continuing to deploy it strategically to clean out the federal government of officials—the “Deep State”—who could expose fraud and regulate corporate excesses. To take one instance, he has moved from an earlier stance of concern about accelerating climate wreckage to saying, even as he knows better, that climate change is real but moving at a very slow pace. Even after more extreme hurricanes, the Los Angeles wildfires, and other destructive events.
And Trump, who knew in fact that he had lost the 2020 election, has joined belligerently the project of heaping more and more wealth on the extremely wealthy at the expense of those working and middle class white nationalists who provide a key portion of his political base. The tax cut for the rich he is pushing through Congress shows that. He may well think he will not need to cater to that portion of his base so much, after he has silenced the media, universities, unions, progressive churches, and Democratic Party. He has already silenced critical Republicans and high rolling donors.
What about white working- and middle-class members of the Trump/Musk base? They have displayed signs not so much of believing all the Trumpian lies peddled to them as embracing the lies because of the ways they unsettle liberal elites on both coasts and activate racist impulses already there. Not too many Trump supporters believed the ugly story about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats. They merely loved to hear and repeat the story. That is why intense media efforts to expose Trump’s lies have not penetrated the armored base. That protective armor itself was forged during a period when the democratic left had lost touch with the needs and insecurities of those constituents, while focusing only on their ugly racist and misogynist tendencies. In fact, curtailments of racism and misogyny need to be pursued in tandem with reductions in class inequality, if either agenda is to succeed. But it remains to be seen whether Democrats can learn this lesson.
Today, the neoliberal/fascist nexus is taking another turn. While it focuses white working class attention on violent immigrant deportations, it also plans to weaken Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security severely, perhaps even to destroy them. Why? To give yet another huge tax break to the superrich who also finance their campaigns. Increasing numbers of the old base are now beginning to see through this scam by the scammer they used to love. It turns out the “Deep State” contains many essential services and protections, now on the block.
The Trump/Musk team hopes to complete dismantling and then reordering the Deep State before the base catches on. Then, once the media, universities and liberal donors have been intimidated sufficiently, it will be too late to protest effectively. That is the plan.
The urgent task today is to expose this nexus and its plan at every turn, in every possible venue, and by all democratic means necessary, from publicity to protest to electoral mobilization. For time is short during a fascist takeover attempt. And Trump and Musk are moving at breakneck speed. The stakes could not be higher, nor the urgency more acute.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
A woman walks into a Social Security office in Houston, Texas on July 13, 2022. (Photo: Mark Felix for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“One has to ask why the world’s richest man—who has received in the tens of billions of dollars in federal contracts—is targeting the agency that helps so many Americans keep their heads above water,” said one advocate.
The Trump administration aims to “ultimately collapse the system” that allows tens of millions of Americans to collect their earned Social Security benefits each month, said one leading advocate for the system Wednesday after officials announced a major change to the Social Security Administration.
Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek claimed the agency needs to “identity-proof” Social Security beneficiaries as he told reporters that millions of people will now be required to verify their identities using an online system—and will have to provide documentation at local field offices if they’re unable to use the SSA website’s verification system.
The change is set to take effect March 31 and comes as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, his billionaire ally whom he named to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) with the aim of slashing government jobs and spending, have baselessly claimed that the Social Security system is riddled with fraud and sends benefits to millions of deceased Americans and to undocumented immigrants.
A source at the SSA told Judd Legum, author of the newsletter Popular Information, that there are “no significant concerns about fraud at intake” and said the change is aimed at creating “additional hurdles to filing claims and [overwhelming] the system.”
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, noted that for decades, senior citizens and people with disabilities who rely on Social Security payments have been able to verify their identities over the phone when applying for benefits.
“The new process would force seniors and people with disabilities to navigate a needless technical hurdle in applying for their earned benefits. If these claimants (who do not always have computers or smartphones, reliable internet service, or the technical skills to complete the process online) cannot verify their identity online, they would have to call SSA via the already overburdened phone line to set up an appointment, and travel in person to an SSA field office,” said Richtman.
“The combination of fewer workers, fewer offices, and a massive increase in the demand for in-person services could sabotage the Social Security system.”
With DOGE pushing to cut 7,000 jobs within the SSA and close at least 47 regional and local field offices, the change would particularly harm the ability of people in rural areas, with mobility limitations, and with limited internet access to obtain their monthly benefits.
“The combination of fewer workers, fewer offices, and a massive increase in the demand for in-person services could sabotage the Social Security system,” said Legum, who reported on the SSA memo on Monday.
Doris Diaz, the SSA acting deputy commissioner for operations, is among those who have warned Dudek against forcing seniors to verify their identities online, saying the change would cause longer wait and processing times and would send an estimated 75,000-85,000 beneficiaries to increasingly understaffed field offices per week.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, which works to counter right-wing claims about Social Security and lobbies to strengthen the system, told Common Dreams that “despite Leland Dudek’s claims, the only thing putting the American people’s personal Social Security data at risk is that Dudek turned it over to DOGE operatives.”
The new plan “will make it far harder for the American people to claim their earned benefits. It could even cause major delays, and ultimately collapse the system, by overwhelming the field offices,” said Altman.
“It is part of what appears to be an ongoing effort to cause Social Security to collapse,” she added.
Richtman said that the only “rational conclusion” regarding the coming change in SSA operations is that Trump and Musk want to “undermine public support for Social Security by rendering the SSA dysfunctional, so that the program can be squeezed for cash, cut, and privatized.”
“Intentionally erecting obstacles for the people who’ve earned these benefits (and who pay for SSA operations with every paycheck) betrays at the least an indifference—and more likely, an outright hostility—to the elderly, people with disabilities, their families, and survivors who rely on Social Security,” said Richtman. “One has to ask why the world’s richest man—who has received in the tens of billions of dollars in federal contracts—is targeting the agency that helps so many Americans keep their heads above water financially.”
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
