This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“This law would not be needed if we had an everyone covered for everything, zero copay, federal single-payer healthcare system paid for by fair taxes.”
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The ruling “effectively legitimizes launching an hours-long barrage of freezing water, explosives, and highly dangerous munitions into a crowd of demonstrators.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“There are over 700 lobbyists representing for-profit military contractors in D.C., and this redistribution of wealth is why they’re there.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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AFSCME District Council 33 is supporting Paul Prescod for Pennsylvania’s 8th Senate District because “we know he will fight for us,” said union president Ernest Garrett.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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AFSCME District Council 33 is supporting Paul Prescod for Pennsylvania’s 8th Senate District because “we know he will fight for us,” said union president Ernest Garrett.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“By ending work requirements in many states, Biden is erasing one of Trump’s cruelest legacies.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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After Biden said he wishes he “had thought about ordering” 500 million Covid-19 tests “two months ago,” it was revealed that his team rejected a plan to scale up at-home testing before the holidays.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“I’m literally stuck in this damn van without a safe place to go with a tornado on the ground!”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“We anticipate an increase in hospitalizations, an increase in deaths, and an increase in the burden on the healthcare system over the next couple of months.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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The relationship between “high union density and higher household incomes, access to healthcare and paid leave, and fewer voting restrictions highlights the importance of protecting the right of workers to organize.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Allowing Pfizer and Moderna total control over mRNA production and allocation has been disastrous for global vaccine access,” a health justice coalition told the Biden administration.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Plants and wildlife are going extinct at an unprecedented rate, and it’s way past time for our elected leaders to take bold action to protect our planet and all its inhabitants.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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As the executive branch’s power to authorize military activities has metastasized under four administrations since 9/11, oversight of “counterterrorism operations” across the globe has crumbled.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“This new Arctic record is one of a series of observations… that sound the alarm bells about our changing climate.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“What we’re seeing is already enough to be worried about,” said one researcher.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“The Biden administration’s official position is that they were forced to conduct this sale by the court,” said one activist. “But we’ve done our homework and we know that is not true.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“One must ask who would have benefited from the Park Savoy shelter if it hadn’t been stalled for this many years,” one advocate said of the converted hotel, which was supposed to open in 2018.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“We still need 60 votes to raise the minimum wage, end voter suppression, and save our democracy?” asked one critic. “Kinda like the filibuster is just there to protect the wealthy and powerful.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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It “would be incredibly destructive for everyone at the university” if administrators follow through on their threat to fire graduate student workers who continue to strike for a living wage and healthcare, said one participant.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“This is the sixth year in a row that CPJ has documented record numbers of journalists imprisoned around the world.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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Far-reaching cancellation enacted by Biden could add more than $173 billion to the nation’s GDP in 2022 alone.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Do we want America to stand for fairness or to be just another spot for billionaires’ buried treasure?” asked Rep. Bill Pascrell.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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One critic called the proposal, which describes green investment policies as a form of “energy discrimination,” a “desperate attempt by fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists to maintain their profits.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“The reason that we proposed these requirements is that we know they work, and we are confident in our ability, legally, to make these happen across the country,” the White House said in response.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“We are not going to let bank CEOs ignore the deadly consequences of their actions.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Dec. 6, 2021. It is shared here with permission.
While rising gasoline prices have adversely affected millions of working people in the U.S., the world’s biggest fossil fuel corporations have benefited immensely, raking in a combined $174 billion in profits during the first nine months of this year.
In the third quarter of 2021 alone, two dozen of the most profitable oil and gas companies—a group that includes Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, and Chevron—recorded $74.9 billion in net income, according to an analysis released Monday by the watchdog group Accountable.US.
Big Oil’s soaring profits come as “gasoline prices have hit a seven-year high in the U.S. due to the rising cost of oil, with Americans now paying about $3.40 for a gallon of fuel compared with around $2.10 a year ago,” The Guardian reported.
Warning that higher gasoline prices are detrimental to the pocketbooks of low-income households, the administration of President Joe Biden has on more than one occasion, including during COP26, urged the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to ramp up production—an unsuccessful effort denounced by climate justice advocates, who say that such demands undermine calls to transition swiftly from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
“Oil corporations are reveling in their massive profits and using that money for their real priorities: stock buybacks and lining shareholders’ pockets.”
Accountable.US reportFollowing a coronavirus-driven decline in drilling, fossil fuel corporations in the U.S. have also been reluctant to increase supply despite growing consumer demand, prompting the Biden administration last month to order the release of 50 million barrels from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a bid to reduce costs at the pump.
Big Oil is “taking advantage of bloated prices, fleecing American families along the way,” Accountable.US says in its new report. “Rather than taking steps to lower prices, oil corporations are reveling in their massive profits and using that money for their real priorities: stock buybacks and lining shareholders’ pockets.”
“Americans looking for someone to blame for the pain they experience at the pump need look no further than the wealthy oil and gas company executives who choose to line their own pockets rather than lower gas prices,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said in a statement.
Most of the 24 fossil fuel corporations analyzed by the watchdog group shower their CEOs with annual compensation packages that surpass $10 million dollars, and 16 of them raised their dividend at least once in 2021.
Accountable.US found that 11 oil and gas companies gave a total of $36.5 billion in payouts to shareholders this year. In addition, a dozen bought back over $8 billion worth of stock, with plans to purchase even more in future quarters.
As The Guardian pointed out, “A glut of new oil drilling has made the U.S. awash with oil in recent years,” transforming the country into a major exporter of fossil fuels but keeping prices low, much to the chagrin of investors.
The unwillingness of oil and gas companies to boost production “has been driven by investor sentiment,” Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told CNN last month. Wall Street, she said, doesn’t want producers “to spoil the party” by expanding supply.
Notably, the oil and gas companies that have been disregarding Biden’s pleas to increase production are part of the same industry that resisted his now-defunct moratorium on new fossil fuel leasing on public lands and waters.
“It’s not the government that is banning them from drilling more,” Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James, told CNN last month. “It’s pressure from their shareholders.”
Progressives, meanwhile, have argued that Biden can and should pursue solutions to higher energy costs that don’t rely on increasing the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, which pollute the atmosphere with planet-heating emissions and deadly smog.
As political economist and Green New Deal proponent Robert Pollin explained in a recent interview, the federal government has the capacity to subsidize energy costs to guarantee affordable transportation and heating for all.
With energy prices expected to skyrocket this winter, Pollin argued that congressional lawmakers should make it a priority to keep expenses low for working families—not by strong-arming OPEC or Big Oil into boosting supply but by providing rebates that will help people “absorb the increased cost of energy.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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“Older Americans will not win these fights alone; we want to back up younger leaders,” said Bill McKibben, founder of a new group for organizers over 60. “But these fights won’t be won without us either.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“There may have been serious violations of securities laws during the proposed merger of Digital World Acquisition Corp. and Trump’s media company,” said the Massachusetts Democrat.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Americans looking for someone to blame for the pain they experience at the pump need look no further than the wealthy oil and gas company executives who choose to line their own pockets.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“There were a lot of things that could have been so simple to prevent,” the Oakland County prosecutor said of the mother and father now being sought by law enforcement.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.