What if a vampire suddenly lost its fangs?

Would it still be a vampire?

That’s the question at the heart of a major change in the largest charter school network in western Pennsylvania.

This week, staff at the Propel network of charter schools voted overwhelmingly to unionize.

So the money men behind the Allegheny County system of charter schools are probably wondering if they’re still investing in charter schools at all.

After all, when encumbered by the need to collectively bargain with employees, can a charter still do all its usual profitizing tricks?

Thursday, Propel teachers and other staff voted 236-82 to join the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA).

The drive took 9 months to achieve. Propel enrolls about 4,000 students at 13 schools in Braddock Hills, Hazelwood, Homestead, McKeesport, Pitcairn, Turtle Creek, Munhall, McKees Rocks and the North Side.

Though PSEA represents staff at about a dozen charters throughout the state, unionization is a rarity at charter schools.

And the reason is pretty obvious.

Charter schools are all about escaping the rules that authentic public schools have to abide by.

Though publicly financed, they are often privately operated.

They don’t have to be run by elected school boards. They don’t have to manage their business at public meetings. They don’t have to open their budgets to public review. Heck! They don’t even have to spend all the money they get from taxes on their students.

They can legally cut services and pocket the savings.

Nor do they have to accept every student in their coverage area. They can cherry pick whichever students they figure are cheapest to educate and those who they predict will have the highest test scores. And they can hide this discrimination behind a lottery or whatever other smoke screen they want because – Hey! The rules don’t apply to them!

I’m not saying every charter school does all this, but they all can. It’s perfectly legal to do so, and we rarely even see it happening until the school goes belly up and taxpayers are left paying the tab.

So how do unions change this system?

Most obviously, they put a check on the nearly limitless power of the charter operators.

Now you have to pay a living wage. You can’t demand people work evenings and weekends without paying them overtime. You have to provide safe working conditions for students and staff. And if you want to cut student services and pocket the difference, the staff is going to have something to say about that – AND YOU HAVE TO LISTEN!

How much will union power beat back charter bosses?

It’s hard to say. But there is no doubt that it will play a moderating influence.

And how much it does so may depend to a large degree on the individuals working at the school and the degree of solidarity they can exercise against their bosses.

One thing is for sure, with a union the gravy train is over.

Wall Street speculators often fawn over the charter industry because it’s possible to double or triple your investment in seven years.

This will probably not be the case in a unionized charter. And the impact of such a reality has yet to be felt.

Will the worst financial gamblers abandon school privatization because unions make it too difficult to make handfuls of cash? One can hope.

If it happened, the only charters left standing would be those created without profit as their guiding principle. The goal would really have to be doing the best thing for children, not making shadowy figures in the background a truckload of money.

Do such charter schools even exist? Maybe. With staff continuing to unionize, maybe there will be even more of them.

However, even if all of them become altruistic, there still remains a problem.

There still remains an authentic public school with which the charter must compete for limited funding.

Even a positive charter school that only does the best for its students still needs money to operate. And most districts barely have enough funding for one education system – certainly not two parallel ones.

This is a problem I don’t think unions can solve.

The state and federal government will have to find a better way to fund education. Relying on local property taxes to make up the largest share as we do in most parts of the country must come to an end.

But even if we figure out how to adequately, equitably and sustainably fund one education system, the presence of a charter school requires we do it twice.

Fiscal watchdogs may object to this as irresponsible, and one can certainly see their point.

However, in a country where we spend more on the military than the next ten nations combined, perhaps it isn’t so much to ask that we more than double spending on education.

Maybe there is something to be gained by having two parallel school systems. But there are certainly dangers.

Obviously the situation would be rife for de facto segregation. Charter schools already increase racial and economic segregation wherever these schools exist. However, if we regulated them to eliminate this risk, it is at least conceivable that these two systems could coexist.

It could certainly solve the problem of large class sizes by decreasing student to teacher ratios.

But will it?

Most of the people who work at charter schools are dedicated to their students and want them to succeed. They deserve every opportunity to thrive in a profession centered around children, not profit.

But can a system created to enrich the few ever be fully rehabilitated into one that puts children first?

When you defang a charter school, are you left with something harmless?

Or have you simply forced the beast to find other ways to feed?

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

A coalition of over 40 progressive organizations on Saturday rallied online and in person to support the PRO Act—legislation that would strengthen workers’ right to organize among other pro-worker provisions.

Groups behind the May Day actions include MoveOn, Indivisible, Democratic Socialists of America, and the Working Families Party.

The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act passed the House in March but has not yet faced a vote in the upper chamber, where it confronts the 60-vote legislative filibuster and no support from three Democrats—Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), and Mark Warner (Va.). 

The event description for an online rally Saturday calls the PRO Act “a sweeping overhaul of the rules of our economy that would empower workers and require real accountability when corporations try to take advantage of employees.” Speakers at the event included Democratic Reps. Kati Porter (Calif) and Jamal Bowman (N.Y.) and Thea Riofrancos, an organizer for Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) Green New Deal Campaign Committee.

Bowman framed the PRO Act as “a fight for a future of dignity for all workers—where workers have a say in what happens in the workplace; where they are treated as people, not as machines; and where their humanity takes precedence over at-all-costs productivity.”

“It is a way to fight back against the plantation capitalist system that is oppressing us all,” Bowman continued. “But it cannot be passed unless we fight. We were given a mandate to fight, consistently and relentlessly, for legislation just like this—so we need to be steadfast in our fight for the PRO Act, for the abolition of the filibuster, and for the values that can bring about a better tomorrow for ourselves, our kids, and our grandchildren.”

DSA is also boosting its call for the legislation, declaring in a video: “Workers made the world, now we will save it.”

The group has already pushed for the legislation with over 750,000 phone calls to voters and legislators in the states with holdout senators, DSA said in a statement Saturday. That effort has been worth it, the group said, attributing previous calls to Sens. Angus King (I- Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to having flipped their PRO Act opposition to support.

The trio of holdout senators were targeted of some of the in-person rallies Saturday:

The White House-backed (pdf) legislation has drawn support from a diverse range of groups and economists like those at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

In a fact sheet released in February, EPI summarized the proposal’s benefits:

The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act addresses many of the major shortcomings with our current law. Passing the PRO Act would help restore workers’ ability to organize with their co-workers and negotiate for better pay, benefits, and fairness on the job. Passing the PRO Act would also promote greater racial economic justice because unions and collective bargaining help shrink the Black–white wage gap and bring greater fairness to the workplace.

EPI also joined Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the AFL-CIO, and the National Employment Law Project this week in releasing a document that “examines the challenges of unionizing in the U.S. and explains how the PRO Act would be a corrective.”

Arvind Ganesan, business and human rights director at Human Rights Watch, put the legislation in the context of the coronavirus crisis.

“The Covid-19 pandemic cruelly exposed how severe inequality is in the United States, where many low-wage workers face hunger, suffer from inadequate healthcare, or risk losing their homes, while the affluent have recovered far more quickly and even thrived,” Ganesan said in a statement.

“Passing the PRO Act would be a major step toward tackling inequality by protecting workers’ rights,” he said, “a key element in a just and human rights-based recovery.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

The UK government has been accused of “using tactics reminiscent of the Trump era” after cutting millions in aid for family planning.

Boris Johnson’s government is set to slash its commitment to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) by 85% – from an expected contribution of £154m to just £23m – in an enormous blow for women and girls in the poorest countries where health services have already been decimated by COVID-19.

News of the cuts, which were announced earlier this week, has left aid leaders seething. “By breaking its manifesto commitments with tactics reminiscent of the Trump era, the UK government will undo years of progress and investment,” Alvaro Bermejo, the director general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

The IPPF said the loss of funding represents “one of the most significant funding losses for IPPF since 2017 when former US President Donald Trump reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, also known as the Global Gag Rule”, a policy that blocked US federal funding for non-governmental organisations providing abortion advice, counselling or referrals.

The IPPF, the UNPFA’s lead partner in providing family planning services, is set to lose out on £72m ($100m) as a result of the UK’s actions. Bermejo added this was “just another example of the UK government stepping back when it is needed most”.

Without additional funding, IPPF says it will be forced to close services in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Côte D’Ivoire, Cameroon, Uganda, Mozambique, Nepal and Lebanon, while services in an additional nine countries are under threat.

An internal memorandum sent to UNFPA staff, which openDemocracy has seen, says that no staff cuts are expected yet – but insiders say this will be hard to avoid.

“This will force many girls out of school and contribute to rises in unintended pregnancies, maternal deaths and unsafe abortions.”However, agency partners contracted to deliver services will be less fortunate. IPPF will have to cut at least 480 staff over the next 90 days.

Manuelle Hurwitz, IPPF’s director of programme delivery and capacity, warned that “millions of the world’s most vulnerable women and girls in some of the poorest and most marginalized communities will pay the price” for the UK government’s decision.

“The fallout will force many girls out of school before they are even 16 and further contribute to an increase in unintended pregnancies, a rise in maternal deaths and an increase in unsafe abortions,” said Hurwitz.

The UK’s contribution would have prevented “around 250,000 maternal and child deaths, 14.6 million unintended pregnancies and 4.3 million unsafe abortions,” according to UNFPA director Natalia Kanem.

Kanem described the UK’s “retreat from agreed commitments” as “devastating for women and girls and their families across the world”.

Unnecessary deaths

Rose Caldwell, CEO of Plan International UK, the global children’s charity described the decision as “shameful”, and would “result in the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands more women and girls during pregnancy and childbirth”.

“For decades, the UK has fought for the fundamental rights of women and girls to have control over their own bodies, and now is not the time to renege on our commitments,” said Caldwell.

“COVID-19 is fuelling a hidden pandemic of gender-based violence and we are likely to see a steep rise in early and unwanted pregnancies. This is already a leading cause of death for adolescent girls around the world, as well as one of the main reasons why girls drop out of school early.”

Urging the UK government to “come to its senses and reinstate funding for these vital services”, Caldwell added that “this is not the ‘Global Britain’ we want the world to see”.

Another programme set to lose out is WISH (Women’s Integrated Sexual Health), which delivers life-saving contraception and sexual and reproductive health services for women and girls in some of the world’s poorest and most marginalized communities.

“Just because there is a global pandemic, women’s needs don’t suddenly stop.”Since its launch in October 2018, WISH has prevented an estimated 11.7 million unintended pregnancies, 4.3 million unsafe abortions and 34,000 maternal deaths, according to IPPF.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

At a recent virtual J Street Conference, US Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren broke yet another political taboo when they expressed willingness to leverage US military aid as a way to pressure Israel to respect Palestinian human rights.

Sanders believes that the US “must be willing to bring real pressure to bear, including restricting US aid, in response to moves by either side that undermine the chances for peace,” while Warren showed a willingness to restrict military aid as a “tool” to push Israel to “adjust course”.

Generally, Sanders’ increasingly Pro-Palestinian stances are more progressive than those of Warren, although both are still hovering within the mainstream Democratic discourse – willingness to criticize Israel as long as that criticism is coupled with equal – if not even more pointed – criticism of the Palestinians.

Seraj Assi explained this dichotomy in an article published in Jacobin Magazine: “Sanders’ stance on Israel-Palestine could undoubtedly be more progressive. He has consistently voted in favor of US military aid to Israel, which subsidizes occupation, settlement expansion, and systematic violence against Palestinians. He still opposes the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign, signing onto an anti-BDS letter to the UN Secretary-General in 2017 and reiterating his opposition to BDS”, years later.

However, as Assi himself indicated, Sanders’ position on Palestine and Israel cannot be judged simply based on some imagined ideal, but within the context of the US’ own political culture, one in which any criticism of Israel is viewed as ‘heretical’, if not outright anti-Semitic.

Sanders’ influence on the overall Democratic political discourse is also palpable, as he has paved the way for more radical, younger voices in the US Congress who now openly criticize Israel, while remaining largely unscathed by the wrath of the pro-Israel lobby, mainly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Gone are the days when AIPAC and other pro-Israel pressure groups shaped domestic American political discourse on Israel and Palestine. Nothing indicates that the tide has completely turned against Israel, as this is nowhere close, yet. However, a decisive US public opinion shift must also not be ignored. It is this popular shift that is empowering voices within the Democratic Party to speak out more freely without jeopardizing their political careers, as was often the case in the past.

In order to decipher the roots of the anti-Israeli occupation, pro-Palestinian sentiments among Democrats, these numbers could be helpful. While Sanders, Warren and other Democratic officials who are willing to criticize Israel but vehemently reject BDS, the public within the Democratic Party does not hold the same view. An early 2020 Brookings Institute poll found that, among Democrats who had heard about BDS, “a plurality, 48%, said they supported the Movement, while only 15% said they opposed it.”

This indicates that grassroots activism, which directly engages with ordinary Americans, is largely shaping their views on the Movement to boycott Israel. Ordinary Democrats are leading the way, while their representatives are merely trying to catch up.

Other numbers are also indicative of the fact that the vast majority of Americans oppose pro-Israeli efforts to promote laws and legislations that criminalize boycotts as a political tool, as such laws, they rightly believe, infringe on the constitutional rights to free speech. Expectedly, 80% among Democrats lead the way in opposing such measures, followed by 76% independents, then 62% among Republicans.

Such news must be disturbing for Tel Aviv as it has heavily invested, through AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, in branding BDS or any other movement that criticizes Israel’s military occupation and systematic apartheid in Palestine, as anti-Semitic.

Israelis find this new phenomenon quite confounding. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been repeatedly criticized in the past, even by mainstream Israeli officials and media pundits, for turning Democrats against Israel by unabashedly siding with former President Donald Trump and his Republican Party against their domestic rivals. Hence, Netanyahu has turned the support of Israel from being a bipartisan issue into a Republican-only cause.

A February 2020 Gallup poll perfectly reflected that reality as it found that a majority of Democrats, 70%, support the establishment of a Palestinian State, in comparison with 44% Republicans.

The rooted support for Israel among establishment Democrats is too deep – and well-funded – to be erased in a few years, but the pro-Palestine, anti-Israeli-occupation trend continues unabated, even after the defeat of Trump at the hands of Democratic candidate, now President, Joe Biden.

The last year, in particular, was possibly difficult for the Israel lobby, which is unaccustomed to electoral disappointments. Last June, for example, the lobby painted itself into a corner when it rallied behind one of the most faithful Israel supporters, Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, depicting his opponent, Jamaal Bowman, as ‘anti-Israel’.

Bowman was hardly anti-Israel, though his position is relatively more moderate than the extremist one-sided views of Engel. In fact, Bowman had made it clear that he continues to support US aid to Israel and openly opposed BDS. However, unlike Engel, Bowman was not the perfect candidate whose love for Israel is blind, unconditional and ever-lasting. To the embarrassment of the lobby, Engel lost his seat in the US Congress, one which he had held for more than 30 years.

Unlike Bowman, Cori Bush, a grassroots activist from Missouri who has ousted the pro-Israel candidate, Congressman William Lacy Clay, has defended the Palestine boycott Movement as being a matter of freedom of speech, despite a relentless smear campaign describing her as ‘anti-Semitic’ for merely appearing in photos with pro-Palestinian activists. Last August, Bush – a black woman from a humble background – became US Representative for Missouri’s 1st congressional district, despite all pro-Israeli efforts to deny her such a position.

Indeed, it is important to acknowledge the role played by individuals in the undeniable shift within the American political discourse on Palestine and Israel. However, it is ordinary people who are making the real difference. While the Israel lobby still wields the dual weapon of money and propaganda, politically engaged grassroots activism is proving decisive in garnering American solidarity with Palestine, while slowly translating this solidarity into actual political gains.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

When we think back to the great achievements in American history, they are all tied together by the same story. Whether it was the creation of Medicare and Social Security or the success of the civil rights movement, the victories were won by the people and their elected representatives demanding both progress and justice, while rejecting the status quo.

Cleveland has a long tradition of being represented in Congress by Democrats who understand this lesson from history and do not just go along to get along. That is exactly the tradition we need right now.

“We need a representative in Congress who has the courage to ask for more than just half measures.”

Today, our city is at the center of America’s problem of poverty, inequality, deindustrialization, and racial inequity. That means we need to elect a congressperson who has both legislative experience working with Democratic leaders, and also the courage to push those leaders to do as much as possible to address the emergencies threatening our city, our nation, and our planet.

In President Biden’s first 100 days, progressives have pushed the Administration further towards our position while recognizing that the job is far from over.  The Administration has taken important steps on a number of issues, from introducing a larger recovery bill to expanding the definition of infrastructure to include caregiving and the recent decision to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 an hour. These are significant steps in a positive direction for the country.

The strength of the progressive movement nationwide—and the grassroots’ courage to ask for more—has pushed this administration further than what many of us expected. But we cannot accept these moves as enough—they are only the beginning.

Having represented our community on the city council and in the state legislature, I have balanced the job of both negotiating with my fellow Democrats and pushing them to be bold—and I know how tough a task it is to make real progress. But I also know that while some may be comfortable with maintaining the status quo, that is not acceptable. This community needs a Democratic representative who will work arm-in-arm with the Biden Administration and congressional leaders—and who will push them to deliver what we urgently need.

Cleveland is now the poorest large city in the country with nearly one-third of city residents living in poverty. Ohio’s 11th congressional district ranks in the top-ten nationally in child poverty, with nearly 60% of children living below 185% of the federal poverty line. Meanwhile, our region is continuing to lose jobs, as deindustrialization has decimated our local economy.

In light of that, we need a representative in Congress who has the courage to ask for more than just half measures—we need far-reaching initiatives like a federal jobs guarantee that will ensure all of our neighbors have the right to a good-paying union job.

Nearly 30 percent of workers nationwide, disproportionately Black and brown, make less than $15 an hour. Ohio’s minimum wage of $8.80 per hour is a starvation wage and is far too low for our people to reasonably survive while working full-time. We need a representative in Congress who has the courage to fight for a $15 minimum wage when members in our party are willing to accept less. Our neighbors deserve the dignity of a living wage.

Unionization rates, once sky-high in the industrial Midwest, have dropped significantly over the past few decades. Today only 13 percent of Ohio workers are represented by a union. While those in the pockets of big corporations are complicit in these companies’ extreme union-busting practices, we need a representative who will fight for workers’ rights to organize and improve working conditions. We must pass the PRO Act and deliver a real solution to big business efforts to limit worker power and line executives’ pockets.

During the pandemic, over 1 million Ohioans lost their employer-based health insurance, further demonstrating the ruthlessness of the American healthcare system. We need to push for universal healthcare, to ensure that no one is afraid of going bankrupt from seeing a doctor or changing jobs.

When it comes to civil rights and criminal justice, we need the same fighting spirit from our congressperson.

Republicans nationwide are proposing and passing deep cuts to voting rights, that will disproportionately impact Black and brown Americans who are already marginalized from the country’s voting system. Here in Ohio, reactionary Republicans have begun to lay the groundwork for a bill that would decimate voting laws. We must pass the For the People Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act to expand voting rights and provide oversight of states when they try to enact racist voting rules.

Black and brown people nationwide face a death sentence when they interact with police. It’s beyond time to move police away from responding to traffic stops, like the situation that led to a police officer killing Duante Wright. We must have a representative in Congress who will fight for these policies that will benefit our communities and divert funding from police to other social services proven to lower crime rates.

And finally, when it comes to our environment and the survival of future generations, we must recognize that climate change is an existential threat. Scientists say we only have a few years to stop irreparable damage to the planet—and our region is in particular danger of harm. That means we need a representative who is willing to fight for policies like a Green New Deal that will transform our economy and energy grids to save the planet.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by all of these crises. But giving up or accepting an inadequate status quo cannot be an option. In this election, we have an opportunity to continue voting for transformational change and to elect a representative who will always fight the good fight for our community, even when it is hard. Progressives have planted the seeds that have made the first 100 days of this Administration a positive step forward in delivering solutions for our many intersecting crises. And while it is important to acknowledge the accomplishments made, we must always have the courage to ask for more.

That is what I’ve done my entire life—and that is exactly what I will do in Washington.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

David Gelles, the New York Times reporter, likes to report about corporate plutocrats raking it in while stifling or endangering their workers. We’ve all seen those large advertisements by big companies praising the sacrifices of their brave workers during this Covid-19 pandemic. When workers ask for living wages, most of these bosses say “No” but take plenty of dough for themselves.

Gelles reports that Boeing, after its criminal negligence brought down two 737 MAX planes and killed 346 people, went into a corporate tailspin. The company laid off 30,000 workers and its sales and stocks plummeted as it reported a $12 billion loss. No matter, the new Boeing boss, David Calhoun, managed to pay himself about $10,500 an hour, forty hours a week, plus benefits and perks.

“Executives are minting fortunes, while laid-off workers line up at food banks,” writes Gelles. Carefully chosen Boards of Directors rubberstamp lavish compensation packages, as they haul in big money themselves for attending a few Board meetings.

It gets worse. Hilton Hotel had many rooms empty due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But CEO Chris Nassetta made sure his pockets weren’t empty. He was paid $55.9 million in compensation in 2020 or more than a million dollars a week!

Gelles goes on to report that with “the cruise industry at a standstill…,” the Norwegian Cruise Line, “doubled the pay of Frank Del Rio, its chief executive, to $36.4 million.” That is more than $700,000 per week. He must have worked overtime counting empty ships and red ink.

T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint got government antitrust approval with the assurance that more jobs would be created with cost savings. Instead, they’re starting layoffs while awarding CEO Mike Sievert over a million dollars a week. Sometimes, CEOs make more dollars from their company than the entire company itself makes in profits. Companies that lay off workers pay their top executives huge amounts, and still have the avarice to demand and get federal stimulus grants.

On March 22, the New York Times reported a new analysis by IRS researchers and academics about tax evasion by the richest 1% of U.S. households. Taken as a whole, these super-rich don’t even report a fifth of their income, according to this study. The ultra-wealthy get away with this heist by offshoring to tax havens and pass-through businesses. Adding to this unlawful evasion is their upper-class power over Congress to rig the tax laws so they can avoid even more taxes.

The Republicans, by starving the IRS budget and audit staff over the past decade, have aided and abetted enormous tax evasions. Curiously, the cowardly Democrats have not made this an issue in their campaigns against the GOP. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year are at stake.

Trump, of course, made matters worse. ProPublica found the IRS audited the poor at around the same rate as the richest Americans.

Big Corporations make out like no mere individuals. Earlier this month, the New York Times told its readers that The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) study revealed: “55 of the nation’s largest corporations paid no federal income tax on more than $40 billion in profits last year.” These companies even received $3.5 billion in rebates from the Treasury Department, so zany are the fine-print tax bonanzas.

Twenty-six corporations paid no federal income taxes since 2017, according to the ITEP study. These included Nike and FedEx.

Corporations get lots of these tax breaks by arguing before Congress that they need them to invest and create jobs. Repeatedly, these promises turn out to be false. Some have called them lies, citing profits totaling over 7 trillion dollars in the past decade being shredded in buybacks of the companies’ own stock.

Apple, whose quasi-monopoly reaps huge quarterly profits, just announced another $90 billion in stock buybacks. Apple doesn’t know what to do with its cash from vastly overpriced computers and iPhones. Apple, not surprisingly, pays very little in federal income taxes to Uncle Sam – despite the U.S. being the land of its birth and source of ample R & D corporate welfare paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

CEO Tim Cook, arguably the most miserly CEO plutocrat in America, turns a deaf ear to health, labor, and environmental specialists pleading with him to address the solid waste of its junked electronic products and pay its serf-labor in China a living wage. These two expenditures would not consume 10 percent of Apple’s enormous profits. To which Emperor Cook says no dice.

Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, Kimberly A. Clausing, a U.S. Treasury official, said according to the Washington Post, that while other wealthy nations typically raise roughly 3 percent of GDP through corporate taxes, in the United States that share fell to just 1 percent following the 2017 Trump tax cut−all while corporate profits, as a share of U.S. GDP, were setting records.

The usual progressive members of Congress issue denunciations of this whole corporate, ultra-rich tax escape racket. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans believe corporations pay too little in taxes, according to Gallup polling. Unfortunately, nothing happens in Congress to address this injustice.

When are the American people going to move on to Congress and their Big Boy paymasters? When the plutocratic class evades taxes, either there are fewer public services, more public deficits, or higher taxes on the middle class. As Joe Biden says – they must pay “their fair share.” People, use your civic muscle to make your members of Congress act and do it, now!

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Advocacy groups and politicians on Friday welcomed the Pentagon’s announcement that the Biden administration is canceling all barrier construction projects along the U.S.-Mexico border for which former President Donald Trump used emergency powers to divert billions of dollars in military funds.

“It’s time for Biden to work with Congress to rescind funding for all border wall construction and help border communities, Indigenous tribes, and land managers begin healing what’s been destroyed.”
—Laiken Jordahl, Center for Biological Diversity

The move comes after President Joe Biden, the day he took office, delivered on his campaign promise to suspend work on his predecessor’s infamous project; the president, in February, also terminated Trump’s emergency declaration and halted the flow of funding toward wall construction.

Deputy Pentagon spokesperson Jamal Brown said in a statement Friday that “consistent with the president’s proclamation, the Department of Defense is proceeding with canceling all border barrier construction projects paid for with funds originally intended for other military missions and functions such as schools for military children, overseas military construction projects in partner nations, and the National Guard and Reserve equipment account.”

“DOD has begun taking all necessary actions to cancel border barrier projects and to coordinate with interagency partners,” Brown said. “Today’s action reflects this administration’s continued commitment to defending our nation and supporting our service members and their families.”

Laiken Jordahl, borderlands campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, welcomed the announcement and urged the Biden administration to go even further.

“This long overdue reprieve is a huge step toward justice for people and wildlife in the borderlands. We’re grateful that the Biden administration has stopped this senseless destruction,” Jordahl said. “Now they must commit to restoring protected public lands and sacred sites, and tearing down sections of wall.”

“It’s time for Biden to work with Congress to rescind funding for all border wall construction and help border communities, Indigenous tribes, and land managers begin healing what’s been destroyed,” he added.

“Trump built 450 miles of new barriers during his term, much of it across the deserts and mountains of southern Arizona where his administration built along national forest land, wildlife preserves, and other federal property already under government control,” according to the Washington Post—which noted that his administration “built far less in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, the busiest area for border crossings and the epicenter to a major migration influx.”

As VICE reported in January, before Biden took office:

Several Indigenous nations who live along the U.S.-Mexico border have spoken out against wall construction and the resulting desecration of sacred sites, including graves. They also say the physical wall further separates them from their families and ancestral sites on opposite sides of the border.

“We know Border Patrol people are finding arrowheads and selling them to collectors,” said Juan Mancias, tribal chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, or Esto’k Gna. “We had an ex-Border Patrol agent return things he had found while he was in the field.”

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) on Friday accused Trump of “stealing money from the military for his border wall,” adding that “this reversal is a victory for Texas and the rule of law.”

Separately, the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday its “initial steps to protect border communities from physical dangers resulting from the previous administration’s approach to border wall construction.” According to a DHS statement, the Biden administration will use congressionally appropriated funds to:

• Repair the Rio Grande Valley’s Flood Barrier System: Construction under the prior administration blew large holes into the Rio Grande Valley’s flood barrier system to make way for a border wall. The flood barrier system had long provided low-lying regions of Hidalgo County, Texas, protection from catastrophic flooding, and these breaches have threatened local communities. DHS will start work to quickly repair the flood barrier system to protect border communities. This work will not involve expanding the border barrier.
• Remediate Dangerous Soil Erosion in San Diego: Improper compaction of soil and construction materials along a wall segment constructed by the prior administration is causing dangerous erosion along a 14-mile stretch in San Diego, California. DHS will begin necessary backfill projects to ensure the safety of nearby border communities. This work will not involve expanding the border barrier.

In a statement to the Post, Rep. Vicente González (D-Texas), whose district includes portions of the river levee, said that “it’s imperative that these structures are fixed prior to the hurricane season.”

The Hill reports that Rep. Raúl Girjalva (D-Ariz.), who represents a border district and chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, also celebrated the development.

“President Biden promised to not build one more foot of border wall under his watch, and I welcome this step by his administration to begin repairing the damage caused by border wall construction,” said Girjalva.

“The border wall has done nothing but militarize border communities, destroy precious environmental habitats, and desecrate Native American sacred sites,” he added. “After such abuses of power, canceling the contracts and repairing the environmental damage is the least we can do.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia bolstered his impedimentary pedigree on Friday by becoming the first Democratic senator to publicly oppose legislation that would make Washington, D.C. the nation’s 51st state.

D.C. statehood would not only end “taxation without representation” for the capital’s approximately 700,000 residents, it would also boost Manchin’s own party’s political fortunes as the city’s residents overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Following last week’s passage of the Washington, D.C. Admissions Act (H.R. 51) by the House of Representatives, voting rights advocates demanded the Senate follow suit.

However, despite having 51 votes in the upper chamber, the faltering foursome of Democratic caucus members—Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Independent Angus King of Maine, and Manchin—who oppose or have yet to signal their support for statehood-by-legislation pose a potentially mortal threat to D.C.’s hopes. 

From opposing the $15 federal minimum wage, higher corporate taxes, and the pro-democracy reforms of the For the People Act, to preserving the filibuster and the fossil fuel industry, Manchin has earned a reputation among progressives as an obstructionist to rival the most intransigent Republican. 

During a Friday morning press call, Manchin told reporters in his home state that he believes making the nation’s capital a state would require a constitutional amendment. Discussing H.R. 51, Manchin invoked former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in saying that the measure “complicates D.C.’s pathway to statehood.” The senator said:

Congress had three options to choose from back in 1961. They could either have D.C. statehood, they could have retrocession to Maryland… or they could have granted electoral votes to D.C…. Congress selected, at that time, option three… Kennedy said in 1963 that Congress and the states embodied this choice in the form of a constitutional amendment.

Hence, it is arguable that the choice can now be reconsidered only by means of another constitutional amendment. He said that we are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and it seems to me that’s who should be answering this question. Let the American people decide.

The people, according to a March poll by Data for Progress and Democracy for All 2021, support D.C. statehood. Over half (54%) of all survey respondents said they favored statehood, including 74% of Democrats, 51% of Independents, and 34% of Republicans. That is the highest level of support for the policy recorded to date.

“The people who elected President [Joe] Biden and Democrats in Congress recognize that making D.C. a state is critical to the fight for racial justice and civil rights in this country,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement after the poll’s publication. 

Last week, the White House formally endorsed D.C. statehood, with its Office of Management and Budget declaring the move “will make our union stronger and more just.”  

In a Friday Chicago Sun-Times opinion piece, civil rights icon, two-time Democratic presidential candidate, and longtime D.C. statehood supporter Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. argued that racism and Republican fear of losing power are behind opposition to making the district a state, and that doing so is a matter of fundamental fairness.

“The case for D.C. statehood is clear,” he wrote. “The nation was founded in protest against taxation without representation. D.C. residents are denied voting representation in the House and Senate.”

“The nation is shamed by military service without representation,” Jackson added. “D.C. residents have fought in wars going back to the Revolutionary War and yet have no representatives to vote in favor or against those wars. America, which claims to lead democracies across the world, denies the foundation of democracy to more than 700,000 citizens in the nation’s capital.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

The New York City Police Department decided this week to stop leasing a robotic dog from Boston Dynamics following a sustained outcry from residents and lawmakers, who denounced the use of the high-tech, four-legged device in low-income neighborhoods as a misallocation of public resources and violation of civil liberties.

When the NYPD acquired the K-9 machine last August, officials portrayed “Digidog”—the department’s name for the camera-equipped, 70-pound robot—as “a futuristic tool that could go places that were too dangerous to send officers,” the New York Times reported earlier this week.

Inspector Frank Digiacomo of the department’s Technical Assistance Response Unit said in a television interview in December: “This dog is going to save lives. It’s going to protect people. It’s going to protect officers.”

Instead—thanks to strong backlash from critics, including people who live in the Bronx apartment complex and the Manhattan public housing building where the robotic dog was deployed in recent weeks—the department is returning “Spot,” as Boston Dynamics calls the device, months earlier than expected.

According to the Times:

In response to a subpoena from City Councilman Ben Kallos and Council Speaker Corey Johnson requesting records related to the device, police officials said that a contract worth roughly $94,000 to lease the robotic dog from its maker, Boston Dynamics, had been terminated on April 22.

John Miller, the police department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, confirmed on Wednesday that the contract had been canceled and that the dog had been returned to Boston Dynamics or would be soon.

Miller told the Times that the police had initially planned to continue testing the K-9 machine’s capabilities until August, when the lease had been scheduled to end.

The robotic dog came under increased scrutiny in February, after it was deployed in response to a home invasion at a Bronx apartment building, as Common Dreams reported at the time.

“Robotic surveillance ground drones are being deployed for testing on low-income communities of color with under-resourced schools,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted in response. “Please ask yourself: when was the last time you saw next-generation, world class technology for education, healthcare, housing, etc. consistently prioritized for underserved communities like this?” 

And earlier this month, as Common Dreams reported, footage of the robotic dog walking through a Manhattan public housing building went viral, sparking additional outrage and prompting a city council investigation.

“Why the hell do we need robot police dogs?” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) asked at the time. 

While there are “people living in poverty, struggling to put food on the table, keep a roof over their head, take care of their kids, afford child care—all this going on, and now we got damn robot police dogs walking down the street,” Bowman lamented.

Bill Neidhardt, a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Bill de Blaiso, who urged the police department to reconsider its use of the robot following objections from residents and lawmakers, said he was “glad the Digidog was put down.”

“It’s creepy, alienating, and sends the wrong message to New Yorkers,” Neidhardt said.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Friday that he will head to Kentucky on Sunday, where he and potential 2022 U.S. Senate candidate Charles Booker will contrast their pro-working families agenda with the inimical policies and obstructive actions of  the state’s Republican senators—especially Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. 

“Working families are right now living in more desperation than at any time since the Great Depression,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in tweet inviting followers to the rally on May 2, the day after the Kentucky Derby, at PARC Plaza on South Sixth Street in Louisville in at 2:30 pm local time. 

In a press release announcing the event, Sanders said that “our country has an historic opportunity to address the long-standing crises facing the working families of Kentucky, Vermont, and the entire country.” He added:

We cannot go down the path of ‘trickle down economics’ where the rich become much richer while working families continue to struggle. Unlike Sen. McConnell, I believe that we need to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, guarantee healthcare to all Americans as a human right, lower the cost of prescription drugs, provide high-quality childcare for the children of this country, make college affordable for all, and significantly reduce student debt. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, we must also demand that large profitable corporations and the rich finally begin paying their fair share of taxes.

The Sanders team said in a message to supporters Friday afternoon that the chances of Booker winning in Kentucky are better than many people realize—but that organizing will be key. “Everyone expects progressives to lose in 2022, but if we fight early,” they said, “we’re going to shock them all.”

Booker is a former Democratic state representative who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020, falling less than three percentage points short of victory in his primary race against former Marine Corps fighter pilot Amy McGrath, who would in turn lose to McConnell by nearly 20 points in the November general election. 

While Booker hasn’t yet formally announced that he will try to oust Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is up for reelection in 2022, earlier this month he formed an exploratory committee.

“We will transform Kentucky—and Rand Paul, you know it too,” Booker says in a video announcing the move. 

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Several immigrant rights advocates were arrested by the U.S. Secret Service near the White House Friday after taking part in a public action organized by Movimiento Cosecha, aimed at holding the Biden administration accountable for “broken promises and insufficient action” for undocumented immigrants on his 100th day in office.

Undocumented immigrants traveled to Washington, D.C. from across the U.S. to take part in the demonstration, risking arrest and potential deportation. The protesters who were arrested were other community members who attended the action in solidarity, Movimiento Cosecha told Common Dreams. 

The demonstrators blocked traffic for six hours before the arrests began at the “Papers Not Crumbs” protest, where Movimiento Cosecha called on President Joe Biden to take urgent action to protect all 11 million undocumented people in the U.S., rather than focusing on passing “piecemeal legislation.” 

On Wednesday, the president called on lawmakers to pass legislation protecting undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children; to extend Temporary Protected Status to immigrants from countries that have experienced “man-made and natural-made violence and disaster”; and to establish a pathway to citizenship for immigrant farmworkers.

“How about everyone else? They’ve also been contributing to this country,” Gema Lowe, an undocumented immigrant and organizer with Movimiento Cosecha, told The Hill. 

Hector Morales, an undocumented immigrant who lives in Indiana, also risked arrest, which could potentially trigger deporation proceedings, in order to fight for his community.

“Undocumented immigrants have been waiting for decades for a pathway to citizenship. We refuse to let history repeat itself and sit on the sidelines, accepting promises from Democrats at face value.”
—Movimiento Cosecha

“The current legislation the Democrats are pushing only focuses on a small portion of undocumented immigrants,” said Morales in a statement. “Even though I would qualify under the current Dream and Promise Act, I am risking arrest today to tell President Biden that I won’t accept piecemeal bills that exclude and criminalize my own community members. I won’t accept these crumbs. We need permanent protection for all.”

Allies including Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK, attended the protest in solidarity with undocumented immigrants.

“No human is illegal!” tweeted CODEPINK. “We joined courageous undocumented immigrants and fellow comrades in D.C. today to protest Joe Biden’s failure to adequately address the U.S.’s broken and corrupt immigration system.”

Lowe noted that before Biden took office, he said he planned to send a legislative package to Congress which would include a pathway to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants. 

“Now he is ready to pursue a ‘piecemeal’ strategy instead that would exclude me and millions of others who have lived in this country for decades,” said Lowe. “We deserve better. That is why today I am willing to risk arrest, detention, and deportation to demand papers, not crumbs.”

On Saturday, Movimiento Cosecha is planning another mobilization of undocumented people across the country “to demand permanent protection, dignity, and respect.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday made clear that he supports lowering the eligibility age for Medicare and allowing the program to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies to cut the price of prescription drugs, policies that are being pushed by progressives advocacy groups and lawmakers—particularly Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders.

Despite growing demand for the Medicare eligibility and drug pricing reforms, President Joe Biden left the policies out of the American Families Plan he unveiled earlier this week, just before his first address to Congress. Schumer (N.Y.) discussed the healthcare policies, Biden’s infrastructure proposal, and a variety of other topics with writer Anand Giridharadas, for his newsletter The.Ink.

The potential changes to Medicare came up near the end of the interview:

ANAND: I want to talk about some parts of the big, bold agenda that have fallen to the wayside. The public option, which Biden advocated for…

CHUCK: Oh, yeah, Bernie Sanders and I agree on this. I believe we should be negotiating—we just talked about this at some length; he and I must talk almost every single day—Medicare negotiating with the drug companies and using that money to expand Medicare.

ANAND: And what about the reduction in the Medicare eligibility age or adding a public option?

CHUCK: Yeah, I’d be for either of those, both of those.

ANAND: And is that going to be brought to the floor?

CHUCK: Well, we’re going to push it. It’s too early. I want to pass the biggest, boldest bill that, of course, we can pass. And we’ve got to figure all that out. We’re going to try to fight hard to try to get these in the bill.

Although Biden’s American Families Plan—the second prong of his infrastructure proposal—notably includes massive subsidies for the private insurance industry while leaving out the Medicare changes, the president did say in his speech to Congress, “Let’s give Medicare the power to save hundreds of billions of dollars by negotiating lower drug prescription prices.”

“And, by the way, that won’t just… help people on Medicare; it will lower prescription drug costs for everyone,” Biden added. “And the money we save, which is billions of dollars, can go to strengthen the Affordable Care Act and expand Medicare coverage benefits without costing taxpayers an additional penny.  It’s within our power to do it; let’s do it now.”

The Hill reported Friday that “congressional Democrats such as House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (Ore.) say they might add measures to lower prescription drug prices when the American Families Plan moves through Congress.”

Sanders (I-Vt.) has publicly promised to keep fighting for an expansion of the program in terms of both eligibility and benefits, funded by the drug pricing reforms.

“My own view, as you know, is that we need a Medicare for All, single-payer system,” Sanders said in a Wednesday video. Citing estimates that allowing Medicare to negotiate with Big Pharma would raise $450 billion over a decade, he expressed hope that the U.S. could move toward universal care by lowering the eligibility age from 65 and improving the program’s benefits.

“It is outrageous that more than 50 years after Medicare was enacted, seniors still do not receive basic hearing, vision, and dental coverage. Many seniors are left unable to see because they can’t afford eyeglasses, unable to hear because they can’t afford hearing aids and have trouble eating because they can’t afford dentures,” Sanders said in an email to supporters Friday.

“It is the moment for a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress to do what the American people want. We must expand Medicare benefits and lower the age of Medicare eligibility. Using our majority to take this step is not only the right thing to do for the American people—it’s good politics as well,” he continued, urging those who agree to sign his petition.

Sanders also took aim at Big Pharma, saying that “the lobbying power of the big drug companies means they are ripping off the government and charging the American people any price they want. Not only that. Because of the power of the pharmaceutical industry, all Americans are forced to pay—by far—the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. This absurdity must end.”

“Negotiating drug prices is what every other major country on Earth does,” Sanders noted. “The Veterans Administration does it. Only Medicare is prohibited from taking this obvious step.”

Arguing that “this is the very definition of a win-win-win situation,” he added that “it’s almost insane to think that we would have to fight for these obvious steps. But we must.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON –

• Limit the use of drop boxes
• Add more identification requirements for those requesting absentee ballots
• Require voters to request an absentee ballot for each election, rather than receive them automatically through an absentee voting list
• Limit who could collect and drop off ballots
• Further empower partisan observers during the ballot-counting process

• Requiring at least 15 consecutive days of early voting
• Ensuring that early voting sites are open for at least 10 hours each day
• Requiring states to allow any eligible voter to cast their ballots by mail in federal elections standardizing no-excuse absentee voting nationwide
• Allowing voters to apply to vote by mail once and permitting them to carry over that request to future elections
• Requiring one secure absentee ballot dropbox per 20,000 residents
• Establishing automatic voter registration and same-day registration nationwide
• Requiring every state to create online systems where Americans can register to vote, update their registration information, and request their absentee ballots

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – The Florida State Legislature passed SB90 late Thursday night, a bill that makes voting by mail significantly more difficult, places unnecessary limits on ballot drop boxes, makes it harder to register to vote, and gives partisan poll watchers more power to challenge ballots. Governor Ron Desantis is expected to sign the bill into law Friday. The following is a statement from Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law:

“The anti-voter politicians who crafted and passed this bill had one clear objective in mind—undermine the freedom to vote of Black Americans and other communities of color, silencing their voices in our democracy. This is regressive legislation that will erect unnecessary barriers for eligible voters exercising their right to the franchise. 

“We are witnessing anti-voter politicians in Florida and across the country undo years of progress on expanding access to the ballot box—but we have a way to stop it. SB90, and the 361 other voter suppression bills that have been introduced this year in state legislatures across the country, make clear why we need the U.S. Congress to immediately pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For the People Act.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

As vaccinations against COVID-19 increase and with the CDC’s recently-released relaxed outdoor masking standards for vaccinated people, the U.S. appears to be inching towards normalcy. Meanwhile, many state legislatures across the country are working to ensure that one aspect of our society does not return to normal—by criminalizing protest. Clearly jarred by the power and the depth of the protests against systemic racism and against police brutality that erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis Police last year, right-wing, Republican-controlled state legislatures are passing laws specifically targeting dissent. At the same time, chillingly, many of these laws include provisions legalizing violence against protestors, granting immunity to people who drive their cars into crowds.

Robinson’s group is tracking these frightening legislative trends, with close to 100 anti-protest bills proposed nationwide and five already enacted since George Floyd’s murder.

“These are really extreme laws,” the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law’s Nick Robinson said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “For example, in Florida, if you’re with 25 or more people or you’re obstructing traffic, it becomes a felony and an aggravated riot, punishable by 15 years in jail….There’s five years in jail if you deface a monument. If you tag a Confederate monument, it’s a super serious charge under the Florida bill.”

Robinson’s group is tracking these frightening legislative trends, with close to 100 anti-protest bills proposed nationwide and five already enacted since George Floyd’s murder. Florida’s 61-page “Combating Public Disorder” bill, signed into law by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on April 19th, vastly expands the definition of ‘riot’ to just three people, and denies people arrested for ‘rioting’ release on bail until after their first court appearance. It gives the governor veto power over municipalities seeking a reduction in police department budgets, and shields from civil liability anyone accused of causing “personal injury, wrongful death, or property damage,” if those who they injure or kill were guilty of so-called “rioting.”

In Oklahoma, Republican Governor Kevin Stitt has just signed an anti-protest bill into law that protects drivers who injure or kill protesters by running into them with their cars from both civil and criminal prosecution.

“It’s declaring open season. It’s a hunting license,” Susan Bro said on Democracy Now! Her daughter, Heather Heyer, was killed on August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, while peacefully protesting against the violent, white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally. James Alex Fields Jr., a 24-year-old neo-Nazi, slammed his car into a crowd of anti-racist counter-protesters, killing Heather and injuring at least 35 others. Susan Bro now runs the Heather Heyer Foundation in her daughter’s memory, providing scholarships to students working for social justice.

Heather Heyer’s killer is currently serving two life sentences in prison. Susan Bro said she relives the lethal attack on her daughter every day:

“Heather’s friends were hurled into the air. The young gentleman whose shoe was seen dangling from the front bumper of the car as he retreats was Heather’s friend, Marcus Martin. He was two people behind her. He reached and moved [his fiancée] Marissa out of the way. He’s cried over and over that he could not get to Heather. And I’ve just said, ‘Marcus, you can’t help that.’ I have a photograph of the split second before he hits Heather. I have seen footage of him hitting Heather, but my brain will not absorb it, even now. To say that that is not criminal, that that is not an offense—since when do we allow the public to become judge, jury and executioner? Because that’s what this amounts to: Let’s go hunt protesters.”

The current slew of anti-protest laws follows similar legislation prompted by the massive, indigenous-led protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. Desperate to avoid similar mass protests, many states have enacted “pipeline protection” laws, criminalizing the type of nonviolent civil disobedience at the heart of the Standing Rock resistance . It isn’t only Republicans pushing these, either. Democratic Kansas Governor Laura Kelly recently signed a law banning trespassing near pipelines and other “Critical Infrastructure Facilities.” (Kansas is one of 16 states where Republicans hold a veto-proof majority in the state legislature.)

The AP reported that the Kansas bill “was introduced at the request of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers association.” Oil, gas, and other polluting industries and trade groups are driving many of these anti-protest laws, with help from the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

Protest has driven every significant social change in this country. The right to dissent is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. These dangerous anti-protest laws that are sweeping the country have to be resisted and overturned.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Throughout the pandemic, there’s been an outpouring of public support for essential workers. But this has largely excluded migrant women farmworkers, despite their vital role in keeping food on American families’ tables.

Monica Ramirez is working to change that.

“I’m the first generation in my family that didn’t have to work in the fields to make a living,” Ramirez told me. “So I was raised to be part of this movement and fight on behalf of my community.”

Many women farmworkers do not even have access to their own income. Employers will often officially enroll a male employee while his wife and children work off the books.

Ramirez founded Justice for Migrant Women after creating the first legal project in the United States dedicated to addressing gender discrimination against farmworker women. That legal project became Esperanza: The Immigrant Women’s Legal Initiative of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

She’s witnessed firsthand the inequalities in the agriculture industry that made migrant women farmworkers particularly vulnerable.

One in four farmworkers are women, but Ramirez said that studies on the health risks of pesticide exposure have typically focused only on men. On top of the risks pesticides pose to everyone, hundreds of thousands of women farmworkers face particular threats to their reproductive health and to their children. Pesticides have been linked to poor birth outcomes, congenital anomalies, developmental deficits, and childhood tumors.

Current federal safeguards to address these inequalities are inadequate, according to Ramirez and other farmworker advocates. In many cases, the federal government isn’t even collecting the data it would need to strengthen those protections.

The National Agricultural Worker Survey, conducted by the Department of Labor, collects demographic, employment, and health data in face-to-face interviews with farmworkers throughout the country. But it doesn’t disaggregate its data by gender, which makes policymaking and advocacy difficult.

“When we don’t know the real experiences of women migrant farmworkers,” said Ramirez, “it makes it even more challenging for us to do the work to try and improve those conditions.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Labor Survey also fails to make gender data available to the public. The survey is used to produce the annual Farm Labor Report which, among other things, helps establish wages under the H2-A temporary agricultural worker program.

Without gender-specific information, it is difficult to understand the full scope of the gender wage gap among migrant farmworkers, which in turn makes it difficult for organizers to mobilize around specific demands.

Ramirez managed to obtain the USDA’s raw survey data and disaggregated it herself, finding the wage gap between men and women farmworkers to be about $5,000 annually.

But even this understates the disparities, since many women farmworkers do not even have access to their own income. Employers will often officially enroll a male employee while his wife and children work off the books.

“This is beneficial to the employer because they pay fewer taxes and benefits, but for the women it’s really terrible,” said Ramirez. “They of course should be entitled to their own wages, but this also makes it incredibly difficult for them to leave an abusive relationship or prove to immigration authorities that they work.”

Other priorities for Ramirez’s group include reforming the immigration system, addressing violence against women, and instituting mandatory workplace health and safety guidance—a demand which became even more urgent as migrant farmworkers were left out of some federal COVID-19 relief programs.

Ramirez believes transformative change will come when stories of inequality motivate others to fight for someone they do not know.

“In order to change things,” she says, “everyday people who have never worked a day in the fields will need to link arms and call for change alongside migrant women. And that can’t happen if people don’t have a clear picture of these women’s reality.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

As the calendar moves from April 22nd to May 1st, something significant is coming into view. Unions, working class organizations and activists in North America increasingly are leading the transition to a climate-safe economy.

Independently organized gatherings and protest actions coordinated through a new website, through the Labor Network for Sustainability, via the Greens, and among the unions of the North American Solidarity Project, show the possibility of a big win.

Framing this emerging wave of working class climate organizing is a “Declaration of the 2020s” issued by a network of twenty organizations united via EarthDayMayDay.org:

The Decisive Decade: Winning a World in Which Working People Thrive

This is the decisive decade. None of us can afford to wait for others to act. By 2030 we will be on our way to a global economy that provides a good life for all on a living planet. Or we will be on an irreversible path to global misery through ecological collapse. After a generation of warnings, amid mounting harms, continuing to rely on the powerful few to save us is an unacceptable mistake.

The great majority, our diverse and global multiracial working class—employed and unemployed, people of color and white, urban and rural, North and South, young and retired, Indigenous people and those on the front lines—must decide together. If we don’t, global climate systems and global capitalism will decide for us.

We can win real democracy and change how we relate to each other and the world around us by immediately shifting to a stable and democratic energy grid, one providing 100% clean, renewable power. We can tread lightly on our planet by employing sustainable, green technologies and practices. In the process, and through our solidarity and unions, we will achieve full employment, meaningful incomes, high quality services, and dignified lives for all. With this economic conversion will come the huge gains needed to protect workers and communities in a just transition, to end personal and colonial debt, and to heal our most injured communities.

We can win real democracy and decide together to free ourselves from the endless and illegal wars that drive millions to flee our homes. We can replace the policing of people with a global system of collective security and world citizenship. We can make corporations and government institutions democratically accountable to workers, communities, and our common society.

We have the power to decide. At work we have the economic power—if we withhold it. In our numbers we have the social power—if we mobilize it. In our traditions, minds and hearts we have the cultural power—if we unleash it. Because these ten years belong to the future, to children, and to the next generations, we pledge to hold nothing back.

This declaration and the many Earth Day to May Day actions that give life to it are significant and important. A part of their significance is that they are happening despite the worst global pandemic in a century. Indeed, many of the leaders of these efforts are workers on the frontlines of the Covid-19 crisis.

Also significant is that these actions are upping the ante despite the fact that parts of the Green New Deal agenda have already been adopted by the Biden administration. That is notable given the historical tendency of social movements to back off in the early days of an incoming Democratic Congress and White House.

But beyond its significance, Earth Day to May Day 2021 is also vitally important. The Declaration of the 2020s is correct. We are out of time. The idea that the global working class can put all of our eggs in the White House basket is a terribly dangerous one. We can’t. We know that. Transitioning to an economic system we can live with is going to take working class knowhow. Making it happen fast enough will take workplace and economic stoppages and a scaling up of mass action beyond anything we’ve already seen.

The good news on this May Day is that we’re on our way. The fact that there are not one, two, three, but actually four separate sets of networks coordinating labor-climate actions from April 22 through May 1st tells us something. This wave has been building momentum for some time.

The 1970s-1990s jobs and environment coalitions led to the “Teamsters and Turtles” alliance in the streets of the Seattle 1999 WTO uprising. Wisconsin’s Earth Day to May Day coalitions of the 1990s-2000s led directly to the Wisconsin Uprising and the joining of American workers with the global anti-austerity protest wave of 2011. And the climate justice organizing of the early 2010s grew in the People Climate March, climate convergences, and then the global youth climate strikes of recent years. All of these, together, made Earth Day to May Day an obvious project for multiple generations of organizers who share a common agenda.

Working people will save our home. Elon Musk can go to Mars. Like James Connolly said a century ago, “Our demands most moderate are: We only want the Earth.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

As President Biden reaches the 100-day mark of his first term, we can discern two prominent features of the new administration. 

The first is that, when it comes to non-defense spending in the federal budget and non-defense related appointments, progressives have been pleasantly surprised. Biden’s Covid relief bill, the American Rescue Plan, included growth in a slew of social programs, from expanded unemployment insurance to a beefed-up child tax credit, direct temporary payments, and assistance for food and housing. The people advising Biden in the White House include Cecilia Rouse, Bharat Ramamurti, Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey, who have demonstrated support for a progressive economic direction. 

And, the administration has been subject to pressure from Democrats in the Senate on a variety of matters relating to foreign policy. Examples include pleas for relaxation of intellectual property rights that are hampering India’s ability to cope with an explosion of Covid-19 cases, and calls to withdraw support for Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of Yemenis. That is not to say Biden has yet to move much beyond the Obama administration, only that the pressure from Democrats is now coming from the left, not just the center.

Before Biden took office, these developments might have seemed less plausible in light of the narrowness of the Democrats’ majorities in both the House and the Senate, but that narrowness has proven to come with some offsetting influences. 

Holding a razor thin majority in the Senate has promoted unity and discipline in the Democrats’ caucuses, which tend to afford centrist Democrats less leeway to perform their traditional rites of conservative independence. The fact that Republicans retain strong institutional support from the Supreme Court, Trump’s federal judges, the Electoral College and gerrymandered state legislatures has made the political stakes clear, illustrating that Democrats cannot afford to lose another election. This has helped motivate Biden’s party to undertake action that under other circumstances might have been written off as too bold or moving too fast. 

Yet despite their structural advantages, it’s also the case that Republicans have weakened their position in two ways. By indulging the riotous (and deeply discrediting) demonstration at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, as well as the patently absurd noises coming out of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and their co-thinkers, the GOP has proven itself a party more interested in extremism than governing. The other self-inflicted wound is that, by indicating no interest at all in any sort of bipartisan deals on legislation, Republicans have just encouraged Democrats to go their own way. Why pretend to seek compromise with those who a) condone lunacy, or b) betray no interest in compromise?

The pretty good

The upshot for progressives in all this has been a lot of good stuff in the non-defense component of Biden’s federal budget, including the embrace of a children’s allowance, and all manner of other initiatives in the name of pandemic relief and economic stimulus, with hardly a whisper about the formerly feared specter of the national debt. Biden’s proposed budget includes increases for education, social services, science and the environment. And his infrastructure proposals, the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan, contain a host of progressive priorities, from investments in affordable housing to paid family leave.

For all the welcome empirical research by economists on the minimum wage, non-competitive labor market conditions, unionization and the absence of a link between deficit spending and inflation, there is no parallel rise of a theoretical leadership.

These shifts to the left haven’t been borne solely out of a personal transformation by Biden. Rather, tireless organizing by progressive groups outside the halls of power has helped pull the administration toward bolder action, especially on issues around climate. And a leftward tilt within the Democratic caucus on economics, led by progressives such as Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, has helped spur the administration’s openness to big spending packages. 

The expansion of deficit spending tends to give rise to tight labor markets, which is the source of upward pressure on wages. I’ve argued before that this is the most important issue in public policy. What does a tight labor market look like? It looks like employers complaining about an inability to attract job applicants. It looks like bosses offering people bonuses just to show up for job interviews. Both of these dynamics are now coming into play. Workers of course need other help too, especially in the realm of union organizing rights as would be provided by the PRO Act, but this is still a very good development. 

The openness to deficit spending reflects an important turn in thinking about economic policy. For those interested in the underlying, arcane theoretical issues involved, John Jay College Associate Professor of Economics Josh Mason wrote a well-regarded review of the subject. In a nutshell, the new turn in policy reflects a de-emphasis on ​“supply-side” factors such as labor force participation and savings, towards more attention to the ​“demand side,” which simply means spending by households, governments and business firms. When the economy is below full employment—and it is still way below it—more spending begets still more spending, along with employment.

My qualification to the enthusiasm on the Left is that there has yet to be a parallel revolution in economic theory. As John Maynard Keynes said in his landmark ​“General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,” economic theory from obscure scribblers eventually ends up in the mouths of those with actual responsibilities for policymaking—so it matters. 

For all the welcome empirical research by economists on the minimum wage, non-competitive labor market conditions, unionization and the absence of a link between deficit spending and inflation, there is no parallel rise of a theoretical leadership. The New York Times‘ columnist Paul Krugman, scourge of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns, ain’t it. He is often on progressives’ side, but is usually bringing up the rear. The so-called Modern Monetary Theory is successful as an academic school of thought, but its tribunes have yet to be welcomed into the new administration. The vacuum in theoretical leadership means that in the future, we could again be plagued with the same bad arguments about the perils of deficits.

The not so good

On foreign policy, the pickings for progressives are slimmer. In a recent interview, thinker Noam Chomsky, who has a strong reputation for being right about basically everything, described the current posture of the Biden administration as ​“dangerous.”

Two of the most important issues now facing the country are: re-entering the nuclear deal with Iran to prevent a nuclear catastrophe, and waging a full-court press on behalf of India and under-developed countries as they struggle with the still raging pandemic.

Democratic leaders would have to be fools to fail to realize that if they don’t deliver the goods, their party could be consigned to permanent minority status. Similar collapses at the state level would follow, and the United States would be a very different place. While Biden has promised to reinstate the agreement with Iran, the administration appears to be slow walking the process, evidently for the sake of gaining some advantage. The case for pressuring Iran on ​“weapons of mass destruction”—shades of the Iraqi campaigns of the 1990s carried out by another Democratic president— was always fallacious. The concern was never really over any threats to use such weapons against the United States, which would lead to Iran’s annihilation—something the Iranian government could not fail to understand. Rather, it has been about curbing Iran’s political sway in the region, for the sake of Israel and other U.S. allies.

The situation in India, with the virus rapidly spreading and deaths skyrocketing, might be likened to a potential holocaust. Some might blanch at that expression, but when potentially tens of millions of lives are at risk due to policy misfeasance (Trump), malfeasance (the Modi régime), and nonfeasance (Biden), I fail to see how the language could be too strong.

Former President Trump’s protectionist instincts led him to embrace policies that hampered exports of vaccines to countries such as India. 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, has held mass rallies shirking the need for social distancing, and his government has forced Twitter to censor criticism of his policies.

Biden has been susceptible to Trump’s vaccine hoarding impulses as well, though he has lately shown some flexibility, allowing the shipment of certain Covid-19 treatments and materials to India. There is still much more to do in the matter of intellectual property restrictions that constrain vaccine production and distribution outside of the United States.

In our own hemisphere, the Biden administration has shown a stubborn insistence on supporting an unelected leader of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, over the democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro. Biden’s moves so far also show little sign of a thaw in relations with Cuba, displaying some retreat from the Obama administration. 

Still, there are some glimmers of hope. Some action has been taken to curb Saudi Arabia’s bombardment of Yemen, though the administration could go further to stop the war. Biden announced a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan (albeit by September). And there is the shift mentioned above in commitment to come to the aid of India, with Biden promising to deploy additional supplies to the country including therapeutics, test kits and ventilators.

When it comes to Biden’s defense budget proposal, the fact that it includes an increase means it’s a step in the wrong direction. However, an increase of 1.6% (as Biden proposes) is what advocates of non-defense spending describe as ​“flat funding,” i.e. given expectations of modest inflation, it amounts to little or no real increase. What’s really at issue is not a misguided increase—it’s a failure to cut the defense budget.

Then there’s the issue of immigration, where Biden has disappointed many progressives by failing to rescind all Trump-era restrictions, and not opening the border to more migrants, while also keeping the current broken system in place. We should expect more pressure on the administration to ramp up from activists in the coming months. 

What lies ahead

In general, our narrow escape from the threat of a neo-fascist consolidation of power has, so far, brought greater returns than expected. It could hardly be otherwise. Democratic leaders would have to be fools to fail to realize that if they don’t deliver the goods, their party could be consigned to permanent minority status. Similar collapses at the state level would follow, and the United States would be a very different place. 

For now though, we have some space to breathe, even as more fights loom. Time in this struggle is limited, so none should be wasted.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

In the Frontline documentary “Growing Up Poor in America,” 13-year old Ohioan Shawn and his mother and baby sister were subsisting on $885 a month in benefits during the early days of the pandemic—half in food stamps and half in rent assistance for their trailer. Shawn’s mother had been diagnosed with kidney disease, yet still had to risk exposing herself to COVID-19 by “working off” hours required to receive her benefits at the local Salvation Army. Shawn tried his best to help at home as a so-called “brother-father” to his younger sibling. This included taking her to get free lunches for school-age kids at McDonald’s. “To climb out of poverty is probably a really hard struggle,” Shawn says in the course of the documentary, but he remains hopeful about his future. Shawn is one of the many children in the U.S. living in poverty, which has only been exacerbated by the pandemic.

The Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is a complex legislative prescription for the economic hardship COVID-19 has inflicted on families like Shawn’s. The plan aims to affect a massive economic recovery by putting more money into the hands of more Americans in need. It provides:

• A one-time, $1,400 per person/$2,800 per couple economic impact payment (with an added $1,400 for each dependent)
• A 25-week extension of the enhanced unemployment benefits, providing an added $300/week
• An expanded tax credit worth up to $3,600 for every child under age 6, and $3,000 for children between 6 and 17, to be paid out over the course of 2021
• Increases in both SNAP and WIC benefits to enable more household food purchases
• Greater ease in accessing EBT funds for school-age children during public health emergencies

These legislative provisions could have a profound impact on the landscape of American poverty, particularly child poverty, after more than a year of an unprecedented health crisis.

The Center on Social Policy at Columbia University has estimated that the American Rescue Plan will cut the child poverty rate by as much as 56% this year, which would affect children of all races. The poverty rate for Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous children, who are disproportionately affected by both poverty and COVID-19, would decline by 52%, 45% and 61% percent, respectively. However, as the Children’s Defense Fund’s Director of Poverty Policy, Emma Mehrabi, cautions, “Th[is] data will only live up to its projections if families—especially the hardest to reach—know about the benefits [offered through the plan] and can easily access them. So we need to make sure that families and communities on the ground are aware of this program, and we need to work aggressively to get them signed up.”

Payments in support of children have appreciably reduced child poverty in real time, but have also produced more benefits.

The plan’s newly liberalized child tax credit (CTC), which is a cash transfer that can be spent as parents and caregivers determine, has been receiving a lot of media coverage because of its transformational potential. The plan’s CTC is fully refundable, such that it will benefit 93% of the parents of American children, or 69 million people. Before the legislation, the poorest 10% of children did not receive any benefit from the CTC and about 25% received only a partial benefit. Many of the children whose families were excluded from the original CTC were the children of single parents, Black and Hispanic children, and children who live in rural areas.

Effectively, parents who receive the CTC under the Rescue Plan are getting a small taste of what it would be like to have a guaranteed minimum income to support their children. According to a recent UNICEF report, at least 23 countries guarantee a minimum income for families with children. Canada, for example, provides a scaled yearly benefit to any Canadian residents primarily responsible for the care and upbringing of a child under its Canada Child Benefit program. The current iteration of these payments has its roots in “Family Allowances” that were introduced in the country after World War II. Germany also offers families a monthly stipend (kindergeld) paid from birth through at least age 18—and extended through age 25 should a child pursue higher education or vocational training.

Payments in support of children have appreciably reduced child poverty in real time, but have also produced more benefits. For instance, in Canada, research has shown that children with a guaranteed income improved their performance in school, had better health outcomes, and earned more income as adults. Likewise, the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, which provided $500 a month, no strings attached, to 125 low-income families for two years, demonstrated that regular payments to families can significantly reduce income volatility, and lead to improved physical and mental health and more full-time employment opportunities.

While extending cash aid to more American families in need has its benefits, it has not been without controversy in the past. The United States federal government largely moved away from cash assistance after the New Deal and the burgeoning prosperity of post-World War II. President Lyndon Johnson, invoking the idea of the Great Society for the first time, articulated a war on child poverty in his 1964 speech at Ohio University. He envisioned “a society where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled.” However, LBJ’s top economic adviser, Walter Heller, advised against implementing a minimum family income as part of the administration’s ensuing War on Poverty. As Joshua Zeitz explains in Politico, Heller believed that such a strategy was not only cost-prohibitive, but that it would “leave the roots of poverty untouched and deal only with the symptoms.”

Moral and ethical obligations aside, child poverty is expensive.

Accordingly, the Johnson administration opted for a combination of educational, workforce training, medical care, and food assistance programming. This was how the Food Stamp program (now SNAP), Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start were launched, as well as an expansion of the already-existing Social Security. Woven together, these programs created a social safety net in this country for our most vulnerable. Initially, Zeitz notes, these programs had a marked impact on the national poverty rate, which decreased by 42% between 1964 and 1973, and they remain important today. But ultimately, the decline in the poverty rate began to level off.

Compounding this deceleration of the poverty decline, subsequent presidential administrations invoked the idea of deserving versus undeserving poor. Ronald Reagan condemned “welfare queens” and “con artists” who enriched themselves on the back of the federal government. President Bill Clinton enacted the 1996 “welfare reform” supported by then-U.S. Sen. Biden. “Personal responsibility” became more than a catchphrase; it became the rationale for withholding government benefits to many children and adults living in poverty in America. Unfortunately, the legacy of this welfare reform bill was that it increased poverty and further marginalized the unemployed. And instead of viewing poverty as a societal indictment, many Americans still view it more as an individual moral failing.

In 2021, the detrimental and far-reaching economic impact of the pandemic has created an opportunity for the federal government to reconsider its traditional responses to poverty and joblessness. American businesses were devastated, whole industries were endangered, and many individuals were left struggling to pick up the pieces, save their homes, and put food on the table. In response, the government’s outlook on poverty may be beginning to shift, such that socioeconomic forces and not individual initiative are highlighted as the root cause. “We need to be very clear here that the systemic issues with poverty—the racial disparities and the racial wealth gap—didn’t just create themselves. Lawmakers have divested in communities of color and put up barriers to [their] well-being,” said Mehrabi.

While the American Rescue Plan is a vital first step, it will not by itself lift children in America out of poverty. The first important obstacle to the plan’s efficacy is its temporary nature: the extra assistance offered now expires after this year unless Congress acts. Without an extension of the CTC, child poverty is projected to double in 2022. The Biden administration has recently backed away from pursuing permanency, and is instead opting to push an extension of the CTC—a path it feels is more realistic given Senate gridlock.

Second, the cash transfers in combination with more poverty-alleviating measures would have an even more aggressive impact on ending child poverty. For instance, Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy studied the impact that refundable tax credits would have alongside an expansion of the Housing 8 Voucher Choice Program. Other key poverty-alleviating measures that would complement the CTC include free school meals for all children, baby bonds, and building and preserving affordable homes through investment in the National Housing Trust Fund. The USDA has just taken another crucial step in the right direction by extending free universal school lunch until the end of the 2022 school year.

Third, current gaps in the assistance are extended through the American Rescue Plan. For example, the 2017 Trump tax law rendered 1 million undocumented children from low-income working families ineligible for the CTC because they lack SSNs. Reversing this restriction would broaden the measure’s impact so that all children with ITINs may benefit.

Moral and ethical obligations aside, child poverty is expensive: an estimated $800 billion to $1.1 trillion annually in health expenditures, lost productivity, and higher crime. Why not spend that money investing in children such as Shawn?

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Progressive observers of United States foreign policy in Latin America were unsurprised yet still expressed alarm Thursday over details in a new report from the U.S. Agency for International Development that shows the Trump administration’s humanitarian aid to Venezuela was at least partially motivated by a desire for regime change in Caracas.

“You didn’t need to be a genius to see the U.S. was trying to force a dramatic confrontation, rather than trying to efficiently help needy Venezuelans.”
—Vincent Bevins, journalist

The report (pdf) published earlier this month by the USAID inspector general’s office states that “the U.S. government’s key foreign policy goals” in Venezuela following President Nicolás Maduro’s 2018 reelection were to “increase pressure on Maduro to step down” and “support Guaidó’s legitimacy as the interim president,” a reference to the unelected opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who has also received a show of support from President Joe Biden. 

“Accordingly, USAID prioritized aid to the Venezuelan people in coordination with the interim president, including issuing in-kind grants to distribute humanitarian commodities inside Venezuela,” the report says. This included supporting an unnamed Venezuelan NGO perceived as aligned with U.S. foreign policy objectives despite not knowing “whether the organization had the capacity to comply with USAID’s legal and financial requirements.”

The IG investigation found that out of 368 metric tons of humanitarian aid designated for delivery to Venezuela by the agency, only eight metric tons arrived in the country, with the rest going to Colombia and Somalia. Aid that was sent to Venezuela arrived in military transport planes, a move the report says “was not justified by operational needs as commercial transportation was available and less expensive.” 

The report also acknowledges that the failed February 2019 aid convoy organized by U.S. special representative Elliott Abrams—whose history in the region includes using humanitarian aid flights to arm Contra terrorists in Nicaragua and covering up massacres committed by U.S.-backed death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador—”contributed to a tense environment for humanitarian assistance funded by or associated with the U.S. government, as the Maduro regime publicly rejected pre-positioned commodities and initiated security crackdowns in Venezuela.”

Additionally, it states that USAID’s own officials determined that food aid purportedly sent to alleviate child hunger “was unnecessary because the nutritional status of Venezuelan children did not warrant its use at the time.” 

USAID, “concerned that the United Nations supported the Maduro regime,” also minimized funding for U.N. agencies even though some of them “had infrastructure in Venezuela to deliver humanitarian commodities.” 

This, at a time when a combination of increasing U.S. economic sanctions, corruption and mismanagement, low oil prices, and natural disasters reversed some of the tremendous progress made by the Bolivarian Revolution—which began with former President Hugo Chávez and continued under Maduro—in improving the lives of poor Venezuelans. 

The new report surprised few seasoned observers of the more than 100-year history of U.S. meddling in Venezuelan affairs, a timeline that includes hundreds of millions of dollars in USAID funding—including nine-figure spending on groups opposing the Bolivarian Revolution. Still, the USAID IG report raised eyebrows.

“This was incredibly obvious at the time, but it’s shocking to see the details,” said U.S. journalist and author Vincent Bevins of the report’s contents.

USAID itself has a long history of foreign interference and subversion around the world. The agency funded death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala’s genocidal army during the 1980s, the forced sterilization of Indigenous Peruvian women in the 1990s, Laotian heroin traffickers during the Vietnam War—to name but a handful of examples. USAID operatives also taught torture and democracy suppression to security forces in Latin American dictatorships including Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s. 

More recently, USAID in 2010 launched a social media campaign with the goal of sparking civil unrest against the Fidel Castro-led government in Cuba. Around the same time, the agency infiltrated Cuba’s burgeoning hip-hop scene in a bid to foment a youth uprising.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

From Arkansas’ near-total ban on abortion to a trio of “cruel and unnecessary” laws enacted in Oklahoma earlier this week, state lawmakers have pushed through an “unprecedented” number of anti-choice restrictions this year, according to an analysis released Friday.

“The current barrage of coordinated attacks must be taken seriously as the unprecedented threat to reproductive healthcare and rights that it is.”
—Elizabeth Nash, Guttmacher Institute

The policy analysis from the Guttmacher Institute, which focuses on reproductive health and rights, concludes that 2021 is on track to be “the most damaging anti-abortion state legislative session in a decade—and perhaps ever.” Several of this year’s measures are abortion bans “designed to directly challenge Roe v. Wade and the U.S. constitutional right to abortion.”

“Since January, there have been 536 abortion restrictions, including 146 abortion bans, introduced across 46 states (all counts current as of April 29, 2021). A whopping 61 of those restrictions have been enacted across 13 states, including eight bans,” write Guttmacher’s Elizabeth Nash and Lauren Cross. “To put those figures in context, by this time in 2011—the year previously regarded as the most hostile to abortion rights since Roe was decided—42 restrictions had been enacted, including six bans.”

Between Monday and Thursday of this week, “28 new restrictions were signed into law in seven states—almost half (46%) of the restrictions passed so far in 2021. This was the highest number of new restrictions signed in a single week in at least a decade,” the analysis says, pointing to measures in Arizona, Idaho, Montana, and Oklahoma.

The analysis adds that “a disturbing record was set this week: With its enactment of a new restriction on abortion clinics, Arkansas has now enacted 20 restrictions in 2021, tying Louisiana’s 1978 record for the most restrictions in a single year.”

“Looking ahead, abortion rights continue to face an all-out assault,” the experts warn. “Among the most concerning states this week are Texas (where 17 restrictions have passed at least one chamber) and Oklahoma (where a conference committee is considering additional restrictions on medication abortion).

The vast majority of restrictions enacted so far were in states Guttmacher already considers hostile or very hostile toward abortion rights—and that “is no accident,” according to Nash and Cross. They note that “the 2021 abortion restrictions largely build on earlier ones, as each additional restriction increases patients’ logistical, financial and legal barriers to care, especially where entire clusters of states are hostile to abortion.”

“As our earlier analysis predicted, state policymakers are testing the limits of what the new U.S. Supreme Court majority might allow and laying the groundwork for a day when federal constitutional protections for abortion are weakened or eliminated entirely,” the analysis explains. The future of Roe was a key concern when former President Donald Trump announced Justice Amy Coney Barrett as his third appointee to the court last year.

While a partial or full reversal of the high court’s landmark 1973 ruling would impact the rights of all people who are capable of becoming pregnant, the experts emphasize that “the damage would fall heaviest on people already marginalized and oppressed by structural inequities, including people with low incomes, people of color, young people and LGBTQ people.”

“We’re seeing right-wing ideologues engaging in a shock and awe campaign against abortion rights as part of a large and deliberate attack on basic rights that also includes a wave of voter suppression laws and attacks on LGBTQ people,” said Nash, the institute’s principal policy associate, in a statement to The Hill.

“The current barrage of coordinated attacks,” she added, “must be taken seriously as the unprecedented threat to reproductive healthcare and rights that it is.”

In response to the latest wave of reproductive rights rollbacks, Nash and Cross urge state policymakers, the Biden administration, and Congress to “safeguard the right to abortion, including through passage of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would establish federal statutory abortion rights for providers and patients against state restrictions and bans.”

The bill was introduced in May 2019 by five Democrats, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who said at the time “as extremist lawmakers viciously attack women’s reproductive rights in statehouses across the nation, the Women’s Health Protection Act has never been more urgent or more necessary.”

“This issue is about more than women’s healthcare, it’s about human rights—all our rights,” said Blumenthal. “The Women’s Health Protection Act will ensure women have access to safe and legal abortions, regardless of their zip code. It reaffirms what the Supreme Court and a majority of Americans have declared: Women have a constitutional right to control their own body and make their own choices, without abhorrent political overreach that has no basis is medical science or the Constitution.”

President Joe Biden’s first 100 days have already featured some victories for reproductive rights advocates—including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration lifting a restriction on accessing abortion medication during the coronavirus pandemic and the president rescinding the global gag rule. Federal lawmakers have also introduced legislation to end the Helms and Hyde amendments.

However, reproductive justice advocates have called on policymakers at all levels to go even further. On the 48th anniversary of the Roe decision in January, progressive lawmakers and advocates elevated calls to #ReimagineRoe and treat the ruling as a floor rather than a ceiling for rights and healthcare.

In a joint statement issued amid those demands, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made clear that their administration “is committed to codifying Roe v. Wade and appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe.“

“We are also committed to ensuring that we work to eliminate maternal and infant health disparities, increase access to contraception, and support families economically so that all parents can raise their families with dignity,” the pair said. “This commitment extends to our critical work on health outcomes around the world.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

The third round of coronavirus relief checks, which have been sent to 159 million households so far, were directly linked to an historic rise in household income, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal.

Household income rose 21.1% in March after President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package into law, following months of stonewalling by Republicans, who spent much of 2020 claiming that additional aid to help families struggling to pay for housing and other necessities was unaffordable.

The immediate rise in household income from the previous month represented the largest increase since 1959, the Journal reported, citing data from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

“This is what happens when you opt for investing in working people over trickle-down economics,” said the grassroots organization Tax March.

The report follows two studies conducted last year after the first round of relief checks were shown to markedly alleviate poverty—illustrating the fact that “poverty is a policy choice,” according to advocacy group People for Bernie.

The new data regarding the latest round of checks shows “the fiscal stimulus was a roaring success,” tweeted CNBC reporter Carl Quintanilla.

Households were promptly able to save significantly more money following the release of the checks, with the rate of personal savings increasing from 13.9% in February to 27.6% in March, according to the Journal.

Spending rates also saw the largest month-to-month increase since last summer, rising by 4.2%. 

“Stimulus checks work,” tweeted Baltimore attorney Katelynn Brennan. 

As NBC News reported earlier this month, a plurality of households have been spending their relief checks on groceries, rent, and other necessities. Forty-five percent of respondents to a survey by Bankrate.com said their checks went to monthly bills, while 32% said they were using them to pay down debts.Just 13% reported they were using the money for discretionary spending.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters that while higher rates of spending could drive inflation in the coming months, “an episode of one-time price increases as the economy reopens is not the same thing as, and is not likely to lead to, persistently higher year-over-year inflation into the future.”

“Indeed, it is the Fed’s job to make sure that that does not happen,” Powell said.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

In evaluating the first 100 days of Joe Biden’s presidency, many progressives are singing the president’s praises. During a virtual town hall, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that Biden “exceeded expectations that progressives had.” Professor Jeffrey Sachs claimed Biden is on his way to becoming “the most transformative president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Sure enough, on the domestic front, these 100 days have brought some exciting initiatives ranging from significant COVID economic relief and the vaccine rollout to massive infrastructure plans and serious proposals to address the climate crisis.

On the foreign policy front, however, many progressives are surprised and disappointed at how little has changed. There are bright spots, such as calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, extending the U.S.-Russia START treaty for another five years, rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, lifting sanctions Trump had imposed on International Criminal Court officials, and restoring aid to the dispossessed Palestinians.

The American people are ready for a new foreign policy centered on cooperation, peace and diplomacy, especially in the face of the pandemic and the global climate crisis that demands a unified commitment to reduce greenhouse gases.

But the pluses are few and even then, often compromised. In the case of Afghanistan, for example, adhering to the May 1 deadline negotiated by the Trump administration would have led the Taliban to continue peace talks and made the withdrawal easier. And while the Biden administration does seem determined to take the U.S. back into the Iran nuclear deal, it has dragged its feet, giving time for opponents to organize and making negotiations more difficult.

Among Biden’s greatest disappointments for progressives are:

–the proposed $753 billion national security budget, a 1.6 percent or $13 billion increase over the last budget enacted under the Trump’s administration, instead of the 10 percent decrease that many progressives are advocating;

–the inclusion of billions in Biden’s military budget for new nuclear weapons, part of a $1.7 trillion dollar “nuclear modernization plan” that flies in the face of the newly forged Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, signed by 50 countries to declare nuclear weapons illegal;

–the refusal to lift thousands of onerous sanctions on countries including Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea and Syria that are impeding importation of food and COVID relief to ordinary people, and are especially cruel during a pandemic;

–the hoarding of vaccine technology and failure to support the TRIPS waiver, which would temporarily waive intellectual property barriers and allow countries to locally manufacture COVID-19 vaccine and treatment technology, at the WTO;

–the authorization of massive weapons sales to two countries, Saudi Arabia and UAE, responsible for much of the destruction of Yemen. This is happening despite Biden’s campaign promise that the U.S. would no longer support the war on Yemen;

–the incendiary rhetoric and potential for military conflict against China and Russia as the Pentagon sends warships into the South China Sea and increases troop deployments on Russia’s western border;

–the continuation of unconditional support to Israel, despite growing calls for an even-handed policy that places conditions on U.S. aid to Israel and recognizes the rights of Palestinians, including an end to home demolitions, settlement expansion, and child detentions by Israeli authorities;

–the continuation of the failed Trump policy of recognizing the unelected Juan Guaido as interim President of Venezuela to undermine the government of twice-elected President Nicolás Maduro;

–maintenance of Trump’s additional sanctions and blockade of Cuba instead of returning to the Obama administration’s normalization policies;

–the failure to appoint a special envoy to oversee release, resettlement or civil trial of the remaining 40 Guantanamo prisoners, transfer appropriate prisoners and close the prison in Guantanamo, Cuba.

The American people are ready for a new foreign policy centered on cooperation, peace and diplomacy, especially in the face of the pandemic and the global climate crisis that demands a unified commitment to reduce greenhouse gases. That’s why it is so disappointing that Biden is, for the most part, continuing Trump’s bullying, militaristic policies on the global scene. And that’s why many anti-war organizations and activists will continue to push the administration to improve its foreign policy record in the next 100 days, while also urging Congress to reject Biden’s increased military budget.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Hawaii is poised to become the first U.S. state to declare a climate emergency after the Legislature’s adoption Thursday of State Senate Concurrent Resolution 44.

The bill “acknowledges that an existential climate emergency threatens humanity and the natural world, declares a climate emergency, and requests statewide collaboration toward an immediate just transition and emergency mobilization effort to restore a safe climate.”

It calls on the state to commit to “a just transition toward a decarbonized economy that invests in and ensures clean energy, quality jobs, and a statewide commitment to a climate emergency mobilization effort to reverse the climate crisis.”

The passage was welcomed by Hawaii Climate & Environmental Coalition member 350 Hawaii, which declared on its Facebook page: “We are the ones the future generation is counting on.”

“Hawaii is the first state to join a movement largely led by cities and counties to declare a climate emergency which reflects the commitment our state Legislature continues to make to address the causes and the impacts of climate change,” state Rep. Lisa Marten (D-51), who led the House version of the measure, said in a statement. 

According to the Climate Mobilization Project, such declarations have been made by over 1,900 jurisdictions worldwide, including 144 within U.S. 24 states. Climate emergency declarations have previously been made by the Hawaii Island Council and Maui County Council .

Dyson Chee, advocacy director for the Hawaii Youth Climate Coalition, another member of the Hawaii Climate & Environmental Coalition, also hailed the resolution’s passage, saying that “climate change is an emergency that needs to be dealt with accordingly.”

“Every day we wait to take action is another day lost. The climate crisis is a clear and present threat for both current and future generations,” said Chee.

At the federal level, President Joe Biden is facing calls to declare a climate emergency.

In February, Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) joined with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in introducing the National Climate Emergency Act of 2021, which calls for investment in “large scale mitigation and resiliency projects” that advance “a racially and socially just transition to a clean energy economy.”

“Our country is in crisis and, to address it, we will have to mobilize our social and economic resources on a massive scale,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the time. “If we want to want to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past—if we want to ensure that our nation has an equitable economic recovery and prevent yet another life-altering crisis—then we have to start by calling this moment what it is, a national emergency.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

President Joe Biden has made no secret of his admiration for Franklin D. Roosevelt. He’s even given a painted portrait of FDR the most prominent place of honor in the White House Oval Office. A bit more significantly, Biden has just announced the most ambitious gameplan—since FDR’s New Deal—for enhancing the well-being of working Americans and trimming the incomes of America’s super rich.

Has Biden, with this gameplan, definitively reached FDR-like levels on the political daring meter? Has his administration now earned something close to Rooseveltian stature? That all depends—on how we answer just one more question: Just how bold does Biden’s new tax-the-rich plan actually happen to be?

This observer’s answer: Much bolder than the numbers—at first glance—might seem to suggest.

Let’s start by going back to FDR’s last year in office, the 12 months before he passed in 1945. At that point in time, the nation’s most awesomely affluent faced a 94 percent tax on their ordinary income over $200,000, earnings that would equal a little more than $2.9 million in today’s dollars.

The new Biden tax plans ends the most basic of our tax code’s breaks for the ultra rich: the preferential treatment they get on the income from their wheeling and dealing. And the ending of this preferential treatment would be a big deal indeed.

Tax brackets below that $200,000 back then also carried stiff rates. One example: Affluents in FDR’s last year paid a 78 percent tax on income between $50,000 and $60,000, the equivalent of between $736,000 and $883,000 today, and every income bracket between $60,000 and $200,000 sported a progressively higher tax rate.

The tax rates the Biden administration has just proposed come nowhere near those 90-plus or even 70-plus Rooseveltian rates. If Congress goes along with the Biden plan, any personal income over $400,000 from employment or the ownership of a business will just face a 39.6 percent tax, a rate only up slightly from the current 37 percent.

But what seems a huge gap between New Deal-era tax rates on high incomes and what the Biden administration is proposing starts shrinking big-time when we toss capital gains—the dollars the rich make buying and selling stocks and bonds, property, and other assets—into the picture.

In 1945, at the end of the Roosevelt administration, the nation’s deepest pockets paid a 25 percent tax on their capital gain windfalls. Today’s really rich currently face a capital gains tax that tops off at 20 percent. For households making over $1 million in annual income, the Biden plan would raise the top capital gains tax rate to 39.6 percent, the same top rate that applies to earnings from employment.

In other words, the new Biden tax plans ends the most basic of our tax code’s breaks for the ultra rich: the preferential treatment they get on the income from their wheeling and dealing. And the ending of this preferential treatment would be a big deal indeed. In 2019, 75 percent of the benefits gushing in from the capital gains tax break went to America’s top 1 percent.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 51, a bill that would make Washington, D.C., the 51st state of the union. It finally would end the denial of voting representation to its more than 700,000 residents, the majority of whom are Black or Brown.

The bill was passed 216-208, with Democrats voting unanimously and Republicans offering not one vote. That led the media to declare the bill dead on arrival in the Senate, where it could be passed by a majority but derailed by a filibuster that would require 60 votes. Republicans have announced that they are prepared to filibuster the bill and block the majority from passing it.

D.C. is not too small to be a state. It has more citizens than Vermont and Wyoming, and about as many as Alaska.

Once more, legislation guaranteeing basic civil rights is threatened by a minority employing the filibuster, the favored instrument used to block civil rights legislation and sustain segregation for decades. Only this time Republicans, once the party of Lincoln, have taken up the mantle of the plantation Democrats of the Old South.

The case for D.C. statehood is clear. The nation was founded in protest against taxation without representation. D.C. residents are denied voting representation in the House and Senate. The nation is shamed by military service without representation. D.C. residents have fought in wars going back to the Revolutionary War and yet have no representatives to vote in favor or against those wars. America, which claims to lead democracies across the world, denies the foundation of democracy to more than 700,000 citizens in the nation’s capital.

D.C. is not too small to be a state. It has more citizens than Vermont and Wyoming, and about as many as Alaska. Those states, of course, are overwhelmingly white. D.C. would have the largest proportion of African Americans of any state. There are no constitutional obstacles to making D.C. a state. The Constitution calls for Congress to control the seat of government. The new bill defines the seat of government as including Capitol Hill, the White House, the National Mall and connecting property, drawing the state from the remaining areas.

Historically, voting by D.C. residents—even for local officials—has been suppressed because of racism. In the 1870s, at the same time the South was beginning to suppress Black votes and construct what became the American version of apartheid, Southerners in Congress moved to strip District residents of the vote for fear of Blacks. This isn’t disputed.

As segregationist Sen. John Tyler Morgan of Alabama explained in 1890, “In the face of this influx of Negro population from the surrounding States, [Congress] found it necessary to disenfranchise every man in the District of Columbia … in order thereby to get rid of this load of Negro suffrage that was flooded in upon them. That is the true statement. History cannot be reversed. No man can misunderstand it.”

And racism propels the opposition today. Across the country, Republicans are mobilizing in state after state to make it more difficult to vote in ways that disproportionately impact minority voters. Rather than seeking to win the votes of Black and Brown voters, they choose instead to find ways to impede their ability to vote. Filibustering against D.C. statehood is simply the most extreme expression of this campaign of voter suppression.

Their real objection is that it is too Black and Brown and likely will elect two Democratic senators and a Democratic member to the House.

Republican legislators toss out all sorts of objections to D.C. statehood—it’s too small, too urban, lacks manufacturing, doesn’t have a landfill. But their real objection is that it is too Black and Brown and likely will elect two Democratic senators and a Democratic member to the House. D.C. residents tend to be more affluent and better educated. You would think that they would be prime targets for Republican appeals. And they would be, except that the residents are disproportionately Black and Brown, and the modern-day Republican Party has made itself into the party of racial division.

The opposition to D.C. is mirrored in the opposition to statehood for Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, but, as a territory, have no right to vote. They too pay taxes and serve in the military. Puerto Rico, with 3 million citizens, is even larger than the District. Most Americans support Puerto Rican statehood. But Republicans fear that, since Puerto Ricans are largely people of color, they will tend to elect Democrats. Once more racism stands in the way of democracy.

In 1988 when I ran for president, I called for statehood for the District and for Puerto Rico. I also called for the U.S. to end its support for apartheid in South Africa and demand that Nelson Mandela be freed. Since then, Nelson Mandela was freed and became the leader of his country, leading a peaceful transition from apartheid. Historic change is possible. Yet in the U.S., the citizens of the District and of Puerto Rico remain deprived of representation. And the right to vote is once more under siege across the country.

This summer, the Senate will convene a hearing on D.C. statehood. The White House has strongly issued its support. If Republicans continue to employ the filibuster to block the vote, it is time for Democrats to suspend the filibuster, just as Republicans did to drive confirmation of their Supreme Court nominees to lifetime appointments. The tricks and traps of our segregationist past should no longer stand in the way of simple democracy for the citizens of the District of Columbia.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Healthcare activist Ady Barkan on Thursday urged President Joe Biden to make good on the promise he made last year to share Covid-19 vaccine technology with the world and not let intellectual property restrictions obstruct the global mass production of vital doses.

“If the U.S. discovers a vaccine first, will you commit to sharing that technology with other countries? And will you ensure there are no patents to stand in the way of other countries and companies mass-producing those life-saving vaccines?” Barkan, a well-known Medicare for All advocate, asked then-Democratic presidential nominee Biden during an interview last July.

“Absolutely, positively,” Biden responded. “This is the only humane thing in the world to do.”

And yet, as president, Biden has so far refused to support a motion at the World Trade Organization—led by India and South Africa and backed by more than 100 countries—to suspend coronavirus-related intellectual property rights for the duration of the pandemic so that tests, treatments, and vaccines can be mass-produced globally.

Unlike his predecessor in the White House, Biden has joined and contributed to COVAX, but global health campaigners have argued that the United Nations-backed program to boost vaccine distribution in impoverished countries doesn’t address the fundamental injustice of Big Pharma’s monopoly control over vaccine knowledge and technology, which is a barrier to increased production.

According to public health experts, approving the vaccine patent waiver proposal at the WTO and investing in ramped-up vaccine manufacturing around the world are necessary to beat Covid-19—which they stress is a global problem, not a national one.

“Mr. President, you and I are both safe from this deadly pandemic because we could get the vaccine,” Barkan said in a video shared Thursday on social media. “But billions of families around the world aren’t as lucky as you and me.”

India, for example, is currently being ravaged by Covid-19, where less than 2% of its population has been fully vaccinated. Of the just over 1 billion doses that have been administered worldwide, only 0.2% have gone to people in low-income countries, compared with 83% that have been given to people in high- and upper-middle-income nations. In the absence of a vaccine patent waiver and expanded production, much of the Global South won’t be inoculated until 2023 at the earliest.

The staggering gap between the number of doses administered in rich and poor countries—a manifestation of inequality that critics have dubbed “vaccine apartheid”—threatens to prolong the pandemic everywhere, resulting in the preventable suffering and deaths of potentially millions of people as well as trillions of dollars in avoidable economic losses.

That’s why a majority of the world’s countries; hundreds of civil society organizations in the U.S. and abroad; World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus; multiple Nobel prize-winning economists; scores of former heads of government; and dozens of Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate are demanding a “people’s vaccine” as opposed to a profit vaccine.

As Barkan said, inoculating the entire world “is the only way that we can prevent the development of vaccine-resistant coronavirus variants.”

“When I asked you last year if you would change the global rules for vaccines, you did not hesitate, equivocate, or mince your words,” Barkan noted.

Last July, Biden said that “the answer is yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

“And it’s not only a good thing to do, it’s overwhelmingly in our interest to do it as well,” Biden added. This is well-understood throughout the U.S. where, according to recent polls, anywhere from 60% to 70% of the public wants the president to end Washington’s opposition to the vaccine patent waiver and force Big Pharma to share its formulas and blueprints with manufacturers around the world.

Alluding to the upcoming meeting of the WTO, where the body’s 164 member nations will decide the fate of the vaccine patent waiver by a consensus vote, Barkan on Thursday told the president that “May 5 will be your moment, America’s moment, to steer us down a more just and humane path.”

“Governments from around the globe will gather,” said Barkan. “They will ask America to waive the rules that are blocking them from making enough vaccines to protect their people.”

As Barkan said, “American innovation has delivered health and safety to the people of this country.”

“But,” he noted, “billions of people have been excluded. Their dreams are no less real than ours. Their love is no less strong. Their lives are no less worthy.”

“Because they live somewhere else, because they have less money, because the international laws are unfair, and because the pharmaceutical companies are so greedy, millions more people may die of this disease,” he added. “You know that this is wrong.”

“In a few days, at the WTO meeting, all eyes will be on America,” Barkan said. “We will decide the answer to the world’s plea.”

“What kind of leadership will we display?” he asked. “The answer, Mr. President, is up to you.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

After neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, North Carolina, and then President Donald Trump responded by saying there were “good people on both sides,” people who abhor white supremacism stood up, took notice, and condemned the marchers. Anti-racists would be wise to do the same about the far-right march that took place last week in Jerusalem.

The situation in Jerusalem began with clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces over restrictions placed on the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City. Then, in response to TikTok videos showing two Palestinian youths slapping an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man, the far-right Jewish group Lahava called for a “demonstration of national dignity.” Leaked WhatsApp messages revealed calls to lynch Palestinians.

As the Jewish-Israeli extremists marauded through the streets on Thursday, April 22, Israeli forces fired rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinian counterprotesters. The remarks of a young orthodox Jewish girl went viral on social media. “I don’t want to burn your villages, I just want you to leave and we’ll take them” she said. On her shirt was a sticker reading “Rabbi Kahane is right.” Kahane’s group was placed on the US terror list in 2004.

105 Palestinians were injured, twenty-two requiring hospitalization. Twenty Israeli police officers were also injured. The next morning, Israel’s Internal Security Minister Amir Ohana released a statement condemning “attacks by Arabs.” He said nothing of the violence committed by Jews.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price condemned the “rhetoric of extremist protestors.” However, the US embassy in Jerusalem’s statement that they were “deeply concerned” declined to weigh in on the issue of Jewish extremism.

Avi Mayer of the American Jewish Committee tweeted: “The individuals perpetrating it are as foreign to me and my Judaism as are skinheads, white supremacists, and other racists around the world.” But those who chanted “death to Arabs” in Jerusalem are a normalized, accepted part of Israel’s government.

Members of Lehava, the group that organized the extremist march in Jerusalem, are followers of Kahanism, a Jewish supremacist ideology based on the views of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Inspired by Kahane, in 1994, Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians in the West Bank Ibrahimi mosque. As recently as 2014, three members of Lehava were charged with setting fire to an integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish school.

In 1988, the Kach party was banned from running for the Israeli Knesset. In 2004, the US State Department labeled Kach a terrorist organization. However, the Kahanist movement has recently made its way back into Israel’s government where it is being met with open arms.

During Israel’s recent election, Netanyahu, willing to do anything to hold onto his prime ministership, encouraged voters from his own Likud party to cast their ballots for the anti-Arab Religious Zionism slate, which included the Kahanist-inspired Otzma Yehudit party, so that they could make it over the election threshold. Religious Zionism won six seats, bringing Kahanism back into Israel’s Knesset for the first time since the 1980s.

As Netanyahu is proving unable to form a coalition, attention is now turning towards Naftali Bennett, the next most likely candidate to become Israel’s prime minister.

In 2016, Bennett called Israelis to be willing to “give our lives” to annex the West Bank”, evoking the Kahanist view that terrorist acts against Palestinians are a patriotic act of martyrdom. Bennett’s negotiations as he hopes to form a government, have included meetings with Religious Zionism.

Such statements as Bennett’s call for violence have surely led to increased levels of unrest in the Holy Land. After last week’s extremist march in Jerusalem, clashes continued between Palestinian protestors and Israeli forces. In addition, rockets were launched from Gaza and the Israeli military responded with bombings, Finally, on Sunday, April 25, in order to deescalate the situation, Israel’s police commissioner ordered the barricades at Damascus Gate be removed.

Though the situation in Jerusalem has now calmed, the floodgates of Jewish extremism have already been flung wide open.

The neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville and Trump’s response rightfully alarmed the world. Though Trump has been ousted from office, we all know that the violent racist movement that blossomed during his presidency did not begin with him and is far from gone. We would be wise in the aftermath of last week’s “death to Arabs” march in Jerusalem to also speak out against Kahanism in Israel.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Today, the Biden administration celebrates its 100th day in office. Since taking office, President Biden has introduced an exceptionally ambitious tax agenda, proposing plans to rewrite the tax code that will finally force millionaires, billionaires, and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. 

In its first 100 days, the Biden Administration has proposed plans to:

• Increase taxes on high income earners from 37 percent to 39.6 percent 
• Increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent 
• Work with countries across the world to implement a global minimum tax rate 
• Increase the capital gains tax on income earners making $1 million dollars from 20 percent to 39.6 percent 
• Eliminate the stepped-up basis
• Beef up IRS enforcement on millionaires and corporations 

“In the last 100 days I have been optimistic to see the Biden Administration go all in on making our tax system more fair—exactly what this country needs,” said Morris Pearl, former managing director at Blackrock, Inc., Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, and co-author of Tax the Rich!, “Regardless of how the other side is spinning it, these tax increases would affect only the wealthiest Americans and profitable corporations. In the last 100 days the Biden administration has shown a willingness to usher in a new, better vision for what our tax code should look like, one that shrinks inequality instead of contributing to it.

Trickle-down economics has never worked. It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up instead. It is time for Congress to enact this new vision for our tax code— It’s time to tax the rich.”

If President Biden accomplishes most of the items laid out in his proposed tax rewrite, he will go down as one of the strongest champions of economic and tax reform the Oval Office has ever seen. Taxing our richest citizens and corporations is not the only thing we need to do to solve the significant challenges facing our country, but it is not optional. The Biden administration gets it. The Patriotic Millionaires applaud the administrations for its efforts in the first 100 days and look forward to working with the administration and members of Congress to enact this bold new tax vision over the next 100 days. 

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

A Canadian regulatory agency on Thursday granted a request by the operator of the government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline to keep its insurers hidden from public view, a decision environmentalists said is a “dangerous precedent” and yet another reason to shut the dirty energy project down immediately.

“A project which can only be insured secretly has lost its social license to operate,” Sven Biggs, Canadian Oil and Gas Program director at Stand.earth, said in a statement. “The fact that Trans Mountain is struggling to obtain adequate insurance makes clear that this pipeline system is too risky, and the Canadian government must shut it down and cancel the expansion project.”

“These insurers can’t hide. Any company that refuses to rule out insuring tar sands extraction and pipeline projects is complicit in Indigenous rights violations.”
—Kanahus Manuel, Tiny House Warriors

The Canada Energy Regulator (CER) said in a ruling Thursday that it accepts Trans Mountain Corporation’s argument that unveiling the names of companies insuring the pipeline project would “prejudice its competitive position” and harm “its ability to obtain adequate insurance at a reasonable price.”

“Trans Mountain has satisfied the requirements for confidentiality,” CER said in its decision (pdf), which applies only to the existing pipeline and not the ongoing expansion.

Charlene Aleck, spokesperson for Tsleil-Waututh Nation Sacred Trust Initiative, which opposes the pipeline, said in a statement that “by making the certificate of insurance confidential and removing a layer of transparency, the CER has reduced the options for Tsleil Waututh Nation to assert our inherent and constitutionally protected Aboriginal rights and fulfill our sacred obligation to protect and steward our territory.”

“After all these years of regulatory process, including sharing our own independent assessment, grounded in our Indigenous own laws, the CER continues to undermine our sovereignty,” Aleck added. “This is not reconciliation.”

In the wake of Thursday’s decision, a coalition of Indigenous communities and climate organizations is planning to intensify its pressure campaign targeting insurance companies that have not ruled out backing the Trans Mountain pipeline, including AIG, Liberty Mutual, and Energy Insurance Limited.

Under pressure from environmentalists, Zurich Insurance Group AG dropped its coverage of the Trans Mountain pipeline last year.

“These insurers can’t hide. Any company that refuses to rule out insuring tar sands extraction and pipeline projects is complicit in Indigenous rights violations,” said Kanahus Manuel, a Secwepemc and Ktunaxa land defender with the Tiny House Warriors. “By not dropping Trans Mountain, insurers are also making a misguided business decision. Our presence and our assertions of Indigenous jurisdiction and territorial authority to our lands represent major risks to the construction and financial liability of the expansion project.”

In 2018, the government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline—which carries around 300,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Alberta to the Vancouver area—from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion (CAD) in an effort to rescue the project from financial struggles and complete a major expansion.

Elana Sulakshana, energy finance Campaigner with Rainforest Action Network, said Thursday that “hiding the details of Trans Mountain’s insurance certificate will do nothing to address the very real problems this pipeline faces: lack of consent from Indigenous communities, decaying infrastructure, mounting costs, and a massive carbon footprint.”

A paper published last month by a team of researchers at Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management estimates that Canada is set to lose an estimated $11.9 billion from the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project due to soaring construction costs and national climate policies aimed at reducing demand for oil.

“Despite today’s ruling in favor of secrecy,” said Sulakshana, “we will only increase our demands on insurance companies to publicly state that they will cut ties with Trans Mountain and all tar sands projects.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.