This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Remembering and celebrating John Lewis today is important,” said Rep. Cori Bush. “Abolishing the filibuster to secure the right to vote for everyone is how we must protect his legacy.”
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“We are living through a climate catastrophe,” said Rep. Jamaal Bowman. “We have to redesign our economy to respond to the current crisis and to ensure it doesn’t get much, much worse.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“If Sen. Manchin and the rest of the Senate approve the ‘reconciliation bill’ then we will approve their bipartisan bill. But if they try to strip immigration reform, child care, climate action, etc., then we’re at an impasse,” said the New York Democrat.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Mass infection is not an option,” experts said of the Tory government’s “dangerous and unethical” reopening plan.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“As long as Germany withholds its approval of the TRIPS waiver,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, “it threatens the lives of millions of people around the world and our ability to crush the virus.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Joe Manchin is lying to us about climate change to protect his annual profits and the wealth of his family.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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The social media giant said that in the second half of 2020, the accounts of nearly 200 verified reporters and news outlets worldwide faced 361 legal demands to remove content—a 26% increase from the first half of the year.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“We cannot afford any more deaths at the hands of vaccine nationalism and pharma monopolies,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky. “We need shots in arms and we need them now.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“He has to come out, explicitly, unequivocally, for overturning the filibuster in order to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Instead of funding non-polluting alternatives, it throws public money at expensive, unproven technologies that will allow the fossil fuel industry to continue poisoning frontline communities and trashing the planet.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Democracy versus autocracy is the battle of our time,” said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“We still don’t know the full extent of toxic chemicals that companies are using in their fracking operations. Why is the EPA allowing them to poison our communities without consequence?”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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A report released Friday by Data for Progress and Evergreen Action shows that an infrastructure package with $2.6 trillion in climate investments would create 26 million green jobs over a decade—contributing to a post-pandemic economic recovery that advances renewable energy and environmental justice.
The groups’ new report explains how, by following the recommendations outlined in their “Clean Jumpstart 2021” plan, congressional Democrats can deliver on President Joe Biden’s campaign pledge to put millions of Americans to work building “modern, sustainable infrastructure and an equitable clean energy economy.”
There is considerable overlap between the Biden administration’s American Jobs Plan, which proposes spending roughly $2.3 trillion over eight years to upgrade the nation’s physical and social infrastructure, and the Clean Jumpstart 2021 roadmap, which calls for investing the same amount in half the time.
After progressives in March argued that the White House’s initial proposal was “woefully inadequate” and demanded $10 trillion worth of investments over a decade to expedite the shift from dirty to clean energy, Biden spent months pursuing a so-called bipartisan compromise, which resulted in a deal amounting to less than $600 billion. Climate justice advocates have characterized the plan as unacceptable given its disregard of the climate emergency and penchant for privatization.
Data for Progress and Evergreen Action’s new policy memo estimates that spending $2.6 trillion on decarbonizing the economy, similar to the level of climate investment Biden originally called for in the American Jobs Plan, “would create an average of 2.6 million jobs annually for 10 years—including more than one million jobs per year in employment working directly toward the Biden administration’s policy goals, and more than 1.5 million jobs along supply chains and in communities due to increased spending.”
According to the report, lawmakers can expect to see massive job creation every year over the next decade if they adhere to the 39 policy priorities provided in the Clean Jumpstart 2021 plan. That includes average annual additions of:
363,000 jobs in clean energy deployment;
1.3 million jobs in green infrastructure;
311,000 jobs in clean and competitive manufacturing;
232,000 jobs in agriculture and natural resources;
161,000 jobs in technology innovation; and
262,000 jobs in supporting workers and communities.
“The strength of the June jobs report speaks to the outstanding success of Biden’s American Rescue Plan,” said Marcela Mulholland, political director at Data for Progress. “Now, he must build on that progress and secure a prosperous economic future by initiating a Clean Jumpstart.”
“This bold, progressive plan would create a record 2.6 million jobs in the clean manufacturing and innovation [sectors] of the future” each year, on average, for a decade, Mulholland added, which is “why Congress must adapt a Clean Jumpstart into its version of the infrastructure package.”
The report comes amid a recent spate of extreme weather, including a deadly, climate crisis-driven heatwave in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia that made last month the hottest June in North America in recorded history, as well as a “firenado” in California and flooding in New York City, caused by Tropical Storm Elsa and resulting in the inundation of the city’s subway system.
“I have been told that combating climate change is expensive,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said Friday. “Compared to what?”
Notably—in response to the $579 billion “bipartisan” package that has been endorsed by the White House but includes hardly any climate funding—Sanders, along with more than a dozen other senators, have “stepped up and said no climate, no deal,” as Leah Stokes, associate professor of political science at University of California, Santa Barbara, explained earlier this week.
Progressives are attempting to remedy the compromise proposal’s glaring omissions with a separate multitrillion-dollar bill—which includes aspects of the American Jobs Plan, the American Families Plan, and more—that will move through the budget reconciliation process.
According to Sam Ricketts, co-founder and senior advisor for Evergreen Action, “This report makes it clear: Congress has the opportunity to create millions of good-paying jobs in the clean energy economy right now. With the right investments today, we can create up to 26 million jobs over the next decade, by prioritizing climate in the infrastructure package.”
Moreover, if federal lawmakers follow the example being set by state and local policymakers, “the clean economy revolution will be unionized,” according to another report released this week by the Center for American Progress.
Ricketts, who earlier this year co-authored a piece with Stokes on the importance of a national clean electricity standard, said Friday that “the vision behind the Clean Jumpstart 2021 is the same vision that animates the American Jobs Plan: bold clean energy standards, robust public investments, and environmental justice.”
In March, Data for Progress found that a majority of likely voters across party lines want the federal government to subsidize the transition to a greener economy, including “investments to upgrade aging water infrastructure, funding to help small farmers expand sustainable farming practices, the creation of a new Climate Conservation Corps, and a GI Bill for fossil fuel workers.”
Referring to the new policy memo, Ricketts said that “as this report shows, Biden’s climate agenda is not only wildly popular, it would boldly transform our economy for the better.”
“Congress,” he added, “must stand firm and go big on climate, jobs, and justice.”
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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“When will factories stop locking in workers in unsafe conditions?” asked one activist.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Amid a climate emergency that is wreaking havoc on communities across the globe, the path to a livable future demands new internationalism rooted in global cooperation, resource sharing, and solidarity,” the coalition told the White House and Congress.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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While this week’s assassination has intensified Haiti’s political turmoil, progressives have emphasized that the ongoing crisis is inseparable from long histories of French and U.S. imperialism and warned against further Western interventions in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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The Miami Tenants Union said the Florida governor’s position virtually ensures that “Surfside will not be an isolated incident.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“Offshore fracking threatens Gulf communities and wildlife far more than our government has acknowledged,” said one researcher. “To protect life and our climate, we should ban these extreme extraction techniques.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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“This was the hottest June on record. Until next year, and the year after that, and the year after that—unless we address the climate crisis.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.
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In a move that progressives described as unsurprising yet outrageous, TC Energy Corporation, the Canadian company behind the now-defunct Keystone XL pipeline, is seeking more than $15 billion in compensation from the United States government, which it has accused of violating free trade obligations by blocking further development of the tar sands oil project.
“America didn’t want your pipeline. You took the risk. Taxpayers are not going to pay $15 billion for your failed and risky investment. You lost. This is how capitalism works.”
Jane Kleeb, Nebraska Democratic PartyAfter President Joe Biden rescinded the Keystone XL permit on the first day of his term, TC Energy announced last month that the pipeline is officially dead, marking a huge victory for the climate movement following a decade of organizing.
“To recover economic damages” stemming from the Biden administration’s cancellation of the project, the fossil fuel giant on Friday filed a Notice of Intent with the US State Department to initiate a legacy North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) claim under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
TC Energy’s decision to sue the US government was denounced by Jane Kleeb, an advocate for progressive rural policies and chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, who called it “disgusting yet predictable.”
Arguing that “this is how capitalism works,” Kleeb said the Calgary-based corporation—not US taxpayers—should be responsible for bearing the costs of the failed investment. It was TC Energy, after all, that “took the risk,” said Kleeb. She added that the company “lost” when the US rejected its pipeline.
TC Energy reportedly took a $2.2 billion hit last month when it formally pulled the plug on Keystone XL. In addition, the Alberta government, which had invested public money in the project, was liable for $1.3 billion when the pipeline was terminated.
Just days after Biden revoked the Keystone XL permit in January, Kyla Tienhaara, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Queen’s University, warned that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was “scrambling for a way to recoup some of Alberta’s losses,” and he viewed NAFTA as “offering some hope.”
According to Tienhaara:
The former North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) contained a chapter on investment that allowed foreign investors to sue governments in international arbitration. The owner of Keystone XL—TC Energy (previously TransCanada)—used NAFTA to launch a US$15 billion lawsuit in 2016 after President Barack Obama canceled the project.
At the time, some legal experts thought the company had a reasonable chance of winning. We will never know, because the case was dropped when President Donald Trump indicated he was willing to let the project proceed.
This time may be different if TC Energy chooses to proceed with a claim. NAFTA has been replaced by a new agreement—the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Unlike NAFTA, USMCA does not permit Canadian investors to sue the US government (or American investors to sue the Canadian government).
Because investments in the Keystone XL pipeline predate USMCA, TC Energy’s lawsuit is still able to invoke NAFTA’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause, which allows foreign investors to sue governments for profits that are “lost” due to regulatory interventions.
However, Tienhaara wrote, “TC Energy’s claim may now be weaker because the permit issued by the Trump administration explicitly stated that it could be rescinded, essentially at the president’s whim.”
“Nevertheless,” she added, “many investors have proceeded with claims on the basis of much weaker cases. Investors bet on positive outcomes in arbitration, as much as they bet on governments not taking action to halt catastrophic climate change. This is because the anticipated rewards, in both instances, are high.”
While lamenting the fact that legacy NAFTA claims are permitted until 2023, Canadian environmentalist and human rights activist Maude Barlow, a leading proponent of equitable access to water around the globe, rejoiced that USMCA does not allow ISDS claims.
TC Energy’s announcement of its lawsuit came amid a deadly heat wave in British Columbia and the US Pacific Northwest and just before an underwater gas pipeline burst in the Gulf of Mexico, setting the ocean on fire.
Journalist Emily Atkin on Sunday told CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter that policymakers are failing to treat the climate crisis “like the planetary emergency that it is.”
While Biden received praise for playing a decisive role in ending the Keystone XL project, the president has yet to exercise his authority to revoke permits for the Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines. Last month, his administration approved an expansion of Line 3 despite opposition from climate justice campaigners and warnings from scientists who have described the tar sands project as a “climate time bomb.”
The post ‘Outrageous’: Canadian company behind Keystone XL files $15 billion claim against US for canceled pipeline appeared first on The Real News Network.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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In a move that progressives described as unsurprising yet outrageous, TC Energy Corporation, the Canadian company behind the now-defunct Keystone XL pipeline, is seeking more than $15 billion in compensation from the United States government, which it has accused of violating free trade obligations by blocking further development of the tar sands oil project.
After President Joe Biden rescinded the Keystone XL permit on the first day of his term, TC Energy announced last month that the pipeline is officially dead, marking a huge victory for the climate movement following a decade of organizing.
“To recover economic damages” stemming from the Biden administration’s cancellation of the project, the fossil fuel giant on Friday filed a Notice of Intent with the U.S. State Department to initiate a legacy North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) claim under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
TC Energy’s decision to sue the U.S. government was denounced by Jane Kleeb, an advocate for progressive rural policies and chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, who called it “disgusting yet predictable.”
Arguing that “this is how capitalism works,” Kleeb said the Calgary-based corporation—not U.S. taxpayers—should be responsible for bearing the costs of the failed investment. It was TC Energy, after all, that “took the risk,” said Kleeb. She added that the company “lost” when the U.S. rejected its pipeline.
TC Energy reportedly took a $2.2 billion hit last month when it formally pulled the plug on Keystone XL. In addition, the Alberta government, which had invested public money in the project, was liable for $1.3 billion when the pipeline was terminated.
Just days after Biden revoked the Keystone XL permit in January, Kyla Tienhaara, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Queen’s University, warned that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was “scrambling for a way to recoup some of Alberta’s losses,” and he viewed NAFTA as “offering some hope.”
According to Tienhaara:
The former North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) contained a chapter on investment that allowed foreign investors to sue governments in international arbitration. The owner of Keystone XL—TC Energy (previously TransCanada)—used NAFTA to launch a US$15 billion lawsuit in 2016 after President Barack Obama canceled the project.
At the time, some legal experts thought the company had a reasonable chance of winning. We will never know, because the case was dropped when President Donald Trump indicated he was willing to let the project proceed.
This time may be different if TC Energy chooses to proceed with a claim. NAFTA has been replaced by a new agreement—the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Unlike NAFTA, USMCA does not permit Canadian investors to sue the U.S. government (or American investors to sue the Canadian government).
Because investments in the Keystone XL pipeline predate USMCA, TC Energy’s lawsuit is still able to invoke NAFTA’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause, which allows foreign investors to sue governments for profits that are “lost” due to regulatory interventions.
However, Tienhaara wrote, “TC Energy’s claim may now be weaker because the permit issued by the Trump administration explicitly stated that it could be rescinded, essentially at the president’s whim.”
“Nevertheless,” she added, “many investors have proceeded with claims on the basis of much weaker cases. Investors bet on positive outcomes in arbitration, as much as they bet on governments not taking action to halt catastrophic climate change. This is because the anticipated rewards, in both instances, are high.”
While lamenting the fact that legacy NAFTA claims are permitted until 2023, Canadian environmentalist and human rights activist Maude Barlow, a leading proponent of equitable access to water around the globe, rejoiced that USMCA does not allow ISDS claims.
TC Energy’s announcement of its lawsuit came amid a deadly heat wave in British Columbia and the U.S. Pacific Northwest and just before an underwater gas pipeline burst in the Gulf of Mexico, setting the ocean on fire.
Journalist Emily Atkin on Sunday told CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter that policymakers are failing to treat the climate crisis “like the planetary emergency that it is.”
While Biden received praise for playing a decisive role in ending the Keystone XL project, the president has yet to exercise his authority to revoke permits for the Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines. Last month, his administration approved an expansion of Line 3 despite opposition from climate justice campaigners and warnings from scientists who have described the tar sands project as a “climate time bomb.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Progressive advocates celebrated the U.S. House’s passage Friday of a resolution to reinstate federal regulations on methane pollution, while also emphasizing that confronting the climate emergency requires implementing stronger safeguards.
The resolution reversed the Trump administration’s rollback last August of the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules governing oil and gas companies’ emissions of the potent greenhouse gas.
Twelve House Republicans joined Democrats in the chamber to pass a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution in a 229-191 vote. Because the Senate approved its version of the filibuster-proof measure in April, the resolution now heads to the White House, where President Joe Biden is expected to sign it.
“Friday’s vote brings us one step closer to undoing the Trump administration’s reckless assaults on vital climate and public health protections,” Sierra Club deputy legislative director Mahyar Sorour said in a statement. “Now it is up to President Biden to sign this measure into law, and to build on these safeguards by instructing the EPA to act immediately to cut methane pollution from both new and existing oil and gas operations by 65% by 2025.”
Given that the EPA’s 2016 methane pollution safeguards only applied to newly permitted sources, Earthworks argued that “simply reinstating the Obama-era rules would not be enough for the Biden administration to meet climate goals.” The environmental justice organization added that even if the Obama-era rules “were applied to existing sources,” they “would only cut methane pollution by 20%.”
Although Biden and EPA Administrator Michael Regan have pledged to enact regulations that are stronger than those imposed during the Obama administration, they have yet to commit to “specific methane reduction goals,” Earthworks noted.
Echoing her Sierra Club colleague, Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel said in a statement that “now that Congress has done its part to undo four years of reckless Trump administration neglect of America’s methane gas pollution problem, the Biden administration must do its part.”
Like Sorour, Pagel said that “Biden should direct the EPA to use the full power of the Clean Air Act to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas by 65% by 2025.”
Sorour, for her part, added that “there’s no time to waste. The urgency of the climate crisis demands these aggressive emissions reductions now.”
The US House just voted to #CutMethane pollution from #oilandgas by restoring Obama-era rules.
Good news, but it's step 1.
Step 2 is @POTUS directing @EPA to use the Clean Air Act to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas by 65% by 2025.https://t.co/aiR2Fnwez7
— Earthworks (@Earthworks) June 25, 2021
Methane, the main component of fracked gas, is 87 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of creating a greenhouse effect, the Sierra Club pointed out.
Despite pandemic-driven shutdowns in 2020, methane emissions reached record highs last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found. Moreover, recent research shows that the U.S. oil and gas industry has been leaking more methane than previously thought, meaning that greater amounts of the GHG have been discharged into in the atmosphere than earlier estimates would suggest.
As Common Dreams reported last year, former President Donald Trump’s policy changes at the EPA made it easier for fossil fuel corporations to ignore methane leaks. While oil and gas companies will once again be responsible for detecting and fixing leaks after Biden signs the CRA resolution restoring Obama-era standards, climate experts have stressed that more must be done to immediately curb methane pollution.
Last month, the United Nations Environment Programme released a report drawing attention to the “absolutely critical” necessity of drastically slashing global methane emissions in order “to rapidly reduce the rate of warming and contribute significantly to global efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C.”
So far, congressional Democrats are “three for three” when using CRA resolutions to overturn Trump’s deregulatory agenda.
“Friday’s successful passage of the CRA resolution to repeal the Trump-era methane rule caps a successful effort by the majority to use the CRA to undo the deregulatory damage of the Trump administration,” Matt Kent, regulatory policy associate for Public Citizen, said in a statement.
In addition to approving the measure restoring the EPA’s 2016 methane pollution safeguards, the House this week followed the Senate’s lead by passing a resolution to undo Trump’s “harmful deregulatory actions” at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as another to nullify a Trump-era rule that enabled predatory lenders to avoid state usury laws, Kent noted.
“Taken together,” Kent continued, “these resolutions will make real improvements to air quality, racial justice in the workplace, and consumer financial protection.”
“The CRA is an imperfect tool for addressing the Republican assault on public protections,” he added, “but the willingness to use it represents an acknowledgement that bold action is needed to address Trump’s uniquely dangerous deregulatory legacy.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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While a majority of U.S. adults still have more positive than negative perceptions of capitalism, less than half of the country’s 18 to 34-year-olds view the profit-maximizing market system favorably, and the attractiveness of socialism continues to increase among people over 35, according to a new poll released Friday.
The online survey, conducted June 11-25 by Momentive on behalf of Axios, found that 57% of U.S. adults view capitalism in a positive light, down from 61% in January 2019, when the news outlet first polled on these questions. Then and now, 36% are critical of the exploitation of the working class and the environment by the owning class.
Perceptions of capitalism have remained consistent among adults ages 35 and older, meaning that the system’s dwindling popularity is driven by the nation’s young adults. According to the poll, 18 to 34-year-olds today are almost equally likely to hold a negative opinion of capitalism as a positive one (46% vs. 49%). Just two years ago, that margin was 38% vs. 58%.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the severity of the climate emergency, capitalism is particularly unpopular among 18 to 24-year-olds, with negative views outweighing positive views by a margin of 54% to 42%.
Even young Republicans appear to be changing their views. Whereas 81% of Republicans and GOP-leaners between the ages of 18 and 34 perceived capitalism positively in 2019, that figure has plummeted to 66% in 2021.
Just half of younger Americans now hold a positive view of capitalism — and socialism's appeal in the U.S. continues to grow, driven by Black Americans and women, according to a new Axios/Momentive poll. https://t.co/vOQSBsCehy
— Axios (@axios) June 25, 2021
Between the January 2019 poll and the latest survey, the world has been rocked by severe public health and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Jon Cohen, the chief research officer for Momentive, predicted that “the pandemic is sure to have lasting impact for decades to come.”
As a result of the deadly catastrophe that has unfolded over the past year and a half, Axios argued, millions of Americans have been forced “to re-evaluate their political and economic worldview.”
The news outlet attributed shifting views to two factors. First, the coronavirus crisis exposed profound injustices in the U.S. and globally. And second, government responses to the calamity demonstrated the extent to which state intervention has the potential to mitigate or exacerbate hardship.
Although 52% of Americans still take issue with socialism, the percentage of U.S. adults with favorable views of socialism increased from 39% in 2019 to 41% in 2021. While positive perceptions of socialism dipped slightly among young adults — from 55% two years ago to 51% now — that decline was offset by an increase in the number of adults over the age of 35 who view socialism in a positive light.
Socialism is especially appealing to Black Americans (60% now vs. 53% in 2019) and women (45% now vs. 41% in 2019), two groups that would benefit disproportionately from the downward redistribution of resources and power. Less than half of women in the U.S. (48%) view capitalism in a positive light, down from 51% two years ago. It is worth noting that working-class mothers have been hit particularly hard by the ongoing economic crisis, in large part due to a lack of affordable child care.
Deciphering the meanings of “capitalism” and “socialism” can be difficult, given that both are abstractions being interpreted by Americans through the highly distorted lens of more than a century of pro-capitalist and anti-socialist propaganda.
Looking beyond those terms, the survey found that 66% of U.S. adults want the federal government to implement policies to reduce the worsening gap between rich and poor. That’s up from 62% in 2019, which is before the nation’s 660 billionaires saw their combined fortunes surge by more than $1.1 trillion amid a devastating pandemic.
Two years ago, just 40% of Republicans under 35 said the government should pursue policies that close widening gulfs in income and wealth. Today, 56% of people in that group want lawmakers to curb inequality.
“Politicians looking to attack opponents to their left can no longer use the word ‘socialist’ as an all-purpose pejorative,” noted Axios. “Increasingly, it’s worn as a badge of pride.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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This story originally appeared on Common Dreams on May 19, 2021, and is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders on Wednesday introduced the Audit the Pentagon Act of 2021, which would require the Department of Defense to do starting in 2022 something unprecedented in its history: pass a full independent audit.
“Taxpayers can’t afford to keep writing blank check after blank check for the Pentagon to cash.”
—Sen. Ron Wyden
“The Pentagon and the military industrial complex have been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement for decades. That is absolutely unacceptable,” the Vermont Independent said Wednesday in a statement.
“If we are serious about spending taxpayer dollars wisely and effectively, we have got to end the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only agency in the federal government that has not passed an independent audit,” he added. “The time is long overdue for Congress to hold the Defense Department to the same level of accountability as the rest of the government. That is the very least we can do.”
Federal agencies have been mandated by Congress to comply with annual audits by the Government Accountability Office since 1990.
Under the bill (pdf)—which is co-sponsored by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) and comes one week after Sanders led a hearing on waste and fraud at the Pentagon—each branch of the military and office of the DoD that fails an independent audit would return 1% of its annual budget to the Treasury.
That could amount to a substantial sum of money, given that the Pentagon receives hundreds of billions of dollars in funding each year despite ample evidence of its widespread accounting abuses. Last month, President Joe Biden proposed a $715 billion budget for the Pentagon for fiscal year 2021—an increase from the current $704 billion level approved by Congress under former President Donald Trump.
Since then, Biden has faced backlash from progressives who have called for reallocating a portion of those funds in order to better meet social needs rather than further pad defense contractors’ bottom lines.
As Sanders’ office noted, the Defense Department remains the only federal agency in the U.S. that has been unable to pass an independent audit, despite the fact that the Pentagon gobbles up more than half of the nation’s discretionary budget and controls assets in excess of $3.1 trillion, or roughly 78% of the entire federal government.
The Costs of War Project recently estimated that the U.S. has spent $2.26 trillion on military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the 2001 U.S. invasion, which marked the beginning of a two-decade-long war that has killed at least 241,000 people.
Meanwhile, according to Sanders’ office:
In 2011, the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan concluded that $31-60 billion spent in Iraq and Afghanistan had been lost to fraud and waste. In 2015, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported that the Pentagon could not account for $45 billion in funding for reconstruction projects. In 2018, an audit conducted by Ernst & Young for the Defense Logistics Agency found that the Pentagon could not properly account for some $800 million in construction projects
[…]Congress has appropriated so much money for the Defense Department that the Pentagon does not know what to do with it. According to the GAO, between 2013 and 2018 the Pentagon returned more than $80 billion in funding back to the Treasury. And, over the past two decades, virtually every major defense contractor in the U.S. has paid billions of dollars in fines and settlements for misconduct and fraud—all while making huge profits on those government contracts.
The U.S. spends more on its military than the next 12 countries combined, and, according to Sanders’ office, “about half of the Pentagon’s budget goes directly into the hands of private contractors.”
Sanders’ office stressed that the nation’s massive military spending occurs in a context in which “half of our people are struggling paycheck to paycheck, over 40 million Americans are living in poverty, and over 500,000 Americans are homeless including roughly 40,000 veterans.”
In a statement, Wyden said that “taxpayers can’t afford to keep writing blank check after blank check for the Pentagon to cash.”
“If the Department of Defense cannot pass a clean audit, as required by law, there ought to be tough financial consequences,” he added.
The post Sen. Sanders wants to audit the Department of Defense appeared first on The Real News Network.
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As Senate Republicans prepare to unveil their much slimmer infrastructure counter-proposal this week during meetings with President Joe Biden, roughly five dozen congressional Democrats are urging party leaders to ignore the GOP’s demands for a narrow package and instead embrace progressives’ calls for rapidly making robust and comprehensive investments to improve life for working people in the U.S.
In a letter sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday, nearly 60 House Democrats—led by Congressional Progressive Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) but including a cross section of the party—wrote that the infrastructure framework unveiled last month by the Biden administration “made a compelling case to the American people that government can and should be a force for good in this country.”
Nonetheless, the Democratic lawmakers, who are currently developing “Build Back Better” legislation in the House, advocated for a national infrastructure plan that is bigger, broader, and enacted as quickly as possible—with or without the support of congressional Republicans.
“While bipartisan support is welcome, the pursuit of Republican votes cannot come at the expense of limiting the scope of popular investments,” wrote the lawmakers.
Echoing points made last week by climate justice advocates who criticized Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer for engaging in “performative negotiations” with GOP leaders, the House Democrats stressed in their letter that “widespread climate denial among Republican lawmakers poses a threat to… bold, necessary action on climate.”
Moreover, they wrote, Republicans also enacted former President Donald Trump’s “massive tax giveaway—80% of which accrued to the wealthy and large corporations—and will likely remain a major obstacle to any opportunities to secure fair, progressive tax revenues to curb income and wealth inequality.”
Indeed, as Common Dreams reported last month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has already vowed to oppose Biden’s $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan—the White House’s framework for improving the nation’s physical and social infrastructure—as long as the spending proposals include even modest tax hikes on the richest Americans and corporations, which they do.
“Furthermore,” the House Democrats wrote in their letter, “Republicans have consistently opposed the high-road labor and equity standards that President Biden rightly included in the American Jobs Plan to ensure the creation of high-paying union jobs with benefits, equitable hiring for women [and] people of color, and investments in Indigenous and marginalized communities that have endured decades of underinvestment.”
“On a host of priorities that can be delivered by this Congress, the trade-offs for Republican votes are stark,” the lawmakers added. “We ask that you work with the White House to prioritize transformative legislation that our voters were promised, which may require reforming or even eliminating the Senate filibuster as well as wielding the full powers available of the presidency, vice presidency, and relevant federal agencies to achieve these goals.”
As ABC News, which first obtained the House Democrats’ letter, reported Tuesday, “Biden also appears to be pursuing a multi-track strategy on infrastructure legislation that could involve a more measured initial compromise with Republicans on funding for roads, bridges, airports and broadband, followed by a larger package that Democrats could pass with 50 votes in the Senate using the budget reconciliation process.”
Warning against this approach—which is also favored by conservative Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—the House Democrats wrote that “we believe that robust legislation comprising the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan must be enacted as rapidly as possible, preferably as a single, ambitious package combining physical and social investments hand in hand.”
“Physical and human infrastructure needs are inextricably linked,” the lawmakers noted. “People—especially women and people of color, who have suffered disproportionate job losses during this recession—cannot get back to work without child care, long-term care, paid leave, or investments in education and job retraining. This human infrastructure cannot be secondary to the physical infrastructure needs or languish under Republican obstructionism.”
As for the size of the infrastructure package, the lawmakers pointed out that the president’s initial proposals pale in comparison to the $7 trillion figure put forward by Biden on the campaign trail.
Biden’s campaign proposal to invest approximately $7 trillion in health, clean energy, infrastructure, and child care, the lawmakers noted, is much closer in ambition to the roughly $10 trillion THRIVE Act, which seeks to create 15 million good-paying union jobs, reduce racial inequality, and cut climate pollution in half by 2030. Introduced last month, the THRIVE agenda is co-sponsored by more than 100 members of Congress and endorsed by over 250 labor, racial justice, and environmental groups.
“Given the scale of our unemployment, caregiving, healthcare, climate, and inequality crises; the historically low cost to make the necessary investments our country needs; and the singular governing opportunity presented to us, we urge our colleagues in Congress to pursue a larger upfront investment that truly meets this historic moment,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to Pelosi and Schumer, suggesting that the THRIVE Act represents a solid infrastructure plan.
Emphasizing their eagerness to enhance their constituents’ daily lives and “strengthen their faith in a government that works for working people, an economy that provides security and opportunity to all, and a planet that their children and grandchildren can enjoy for generations to come,” the House Democrats told Pelosi and Schumer that they “hope to work with you and our committee chairs to develop a rapid legislative timeline to enact an ambitious and comprehensive proposal before the August recess.”
This story first appeared at Common Dreams.
This post was originally published on In These Times.
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This story originally appeared on Common Dreams on May 11, 2021, and is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
As Israel continues its deadly assault on Palestinians throughout the occupied territories, a new analysis released Monday night shows that if congressional lawmakers in the U.S. approve the federal budget unveiled last month by President Joe Biden, the nation would give $1.3 billion more to the Israeli military than to the global climate response.
Although Biden has yet to release his official budget request for FY2022, he shared a preview, which was heavily criticized by progressives.
In his analysis, Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, cited two excerpts from the White House’s spending proposal (pdf):
- “The discretionary request meets the climate emergency head-on, providing $2.5 billion for international climate programs.” (p. 25)
- “The discretionary request fully funds U.S. commitments to key allies in the Middle East, including Israel.” (p. 26)
As Semler explained: “‘Fully funds U.S. commitments to… Israel’ includes giving the apartheid state $3.8 billion in annual military aid—$3.3 billion in ‘base’ bilateral security assistance plus another $500 million for missile defense systems—as outlined [in] the 10-year MOU the Obama-Biden administration reached with Israel in 2016.”
In response to the analysis, Left Flank Veterans, a group of anti-war veterans, said Biden’s spending priorities indicate that the president thinks “preserving apartheid is more important than fighting climate change.”
Semler wrote that “per the Paris accord (and science), U.S. financial contributions to the global climate response should be orders of magnitude higher.”
Basav Sen, Climate Justice Project director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), recently told Common Dreams that Biden’s pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of this decade “is far from enough,” and encouraged the administration to “commit to paying our fair share for climate mitigation and adaptation in the Global South,” calling current commitments “woefully insufficient.”
“This isn’t charity, this is responsibility,” he explained. “As the world’s largest cumulative greenhouse gas polluter, we owe this to Global South countries who are facing serious consequences of climate change even though they’ve contributed so little to its causes.”
According to a recent analysis of “fair share” climate policies conducted by Friends of the Earth, ActionAid, and the Sunrise Movement, the U.S. should reduce its carbon pollution by 70% compared to 2005 levels by 2030, contribute at least $8 billion to the United Nations Green Climate Fund, and provide up to $3 trillion for green economic recovery and no-strings-attached debt relief in impoverished countries.
“Per international human rights law,” Semler continued, “U.S. military aid to Israel should be zero.”
Two weeks ago, Human Rights Watch released a report, based on over two years of research and documentation, that says the Israeli government’s systematic oppression of Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territories amounts to crimes of apartheid and persecution.
Progressives in recent days have denounced the Biden administration for refusing to condemn Israel’s deadly airstrikes on Gaza and for failing to hold Israel accountable after its security forces invaded the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound to attack peaceful worshipers, which was part of a broader assault on Palestinians who are protesting settlers’ attempts to expel Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem.
“That Biden is prepared to fail so spectacularly on both [mitigating the climate emergency and opposing potential war crimes] warrants a unified response from the Congressional Progressive Caucus about what they plan to do once Biden drops his official budget request,” Semler added.
Lindsay Koshgarian, the program director of the National Priorities Project at IPS, told Common Dreams on Tuesday that “the sum of $2.5 billion in international climate aid, compared to more than $3 billion in military aid to a single country, would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.”
“These are the budget priorities of the past,” Koshgarian added. “There’s an opportunity right now for the U.S. to put its money where its mouth is. Can we invest more to save the world than we invest in arming it? Can we value human rights enough that we restrict our dollars from subsidizing human rights abuses like the system of apartheid and forced evictions happening today in Israel?”
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This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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More than 200 Palestinians were wounded and at least one partially blinded over night in East Jerusalem when Israeli police fired rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades at thousands of people who were protesting Israeli settlers and security forces’ ongoing effort to dispossess Palestinians of their land in the occupied territory.
Israel’s violent oppression of Palestinians, which has intensified in recent days, continued Saturday.
“What’s happening in Jerusalem and Palestine more broadly is not a ‘clash’ or a ‘scuffle,’ but a state-sanctioned campaign of Israeli violence against Palestinians,” the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) said Saturday. “To pretend otherwise is to minimize the horrors we are witnessing.”
As Al Jazeera reported, several hundred riot gear-clad Israeli police officers deployed to the Al-Aqsa mosque on Friday night, where 70,000 Muslims had gathered at Islam’s third-holiest site for the last Friday prayer of Ramadan. Thousands of worshippers stayed to demonstrate against Israel’s attempted expulsion of Palestinians from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
According to Al Jazeera, Israeli security forces opened fire on Palestinians at Al-Aqsa and throughout the city on Friday night, shooting people with rubber-coated steel bullets and using stun grenades on crowds that were armed with no more than shoes, chairs, and rocks.
The Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service said Saturday that at least 205 Palestinians had been injured, mostly from rubber-coated rounds and shrapnel from stun grenades. Of the wounded, 88 were hospitalized, including one victim who lost an eye, two with serious head trauma, and two with fractured jaws.
Red Crescent: 163 Palestinians have been injured, 23 hospitalized as Israelis fire sound bombs and tear gas inside the Al Aqsa Mosque compound pic.twitter.com/eb0RbGSNW1
— لينة (@LinahAlsaafin) May 7, 2021
While Israeli settlers, with state support, have been seizing property in East Jerusalem — conquered by Israeli troops during the 1967 Six Day War and unlawfully occupied ever since — for decades, their violent methods of displacement have recently come under increased scrutiny from a handful of U.S. lawmakers who have joined progressive advocates in calling for the defense of Palestinians’ human rights, as Common Dreams reported this week.
The Jerusalem municipality is planning to demolish 100 buildings, home to 1,550 Palestinians, in the neighborhood of Al-Bustan to build a biblical theme park. In Sheikh Jarrah, meanwhile, Israeli settlers are trying to push 169 Palestinians from a dozen families out of their homes. The United Nations on Friday described the forced evictions, ordered by an Israeli court, as a violation of international law and potential war crime.
Israeli police fired at Palestinian protesters yesterday at Al-Aqsa Mosque. More than 200 people were injured. Protesters were showing support for Palestinian families facing eviction in occupied East Jerusalem.
The @UN has called Israel's forced evictions a potential war crime. pic.twitter.com/1cLPlAuxJ6
— AJ+ (@ajplus) May 8, 2021
Bashar Mahmoud, a 23-year-old protester from the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Issawiya told Al Jazeera that “if we don’t stand with this group of people here, [evictions] will [come] to my house, her house, his house and to every Palestinian who lives here.”
The news outlet noted that Israel’s Supreme Court will hold a hearing Monday on the eviction of four Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah by the Nahalat Shimon settler organization.
On Saturday, the IMEU shared a video depicting Israeli security forces blocking a major highway to prevent Palestinians from traveling to Al-Aqsa for Laylat al-Qadr, the holiest night of the year for Muslims. Undeterred, many began walking to the mosque, while others reportedly “forced the roads open.”
Later on, however, Israeli police once again began attacking Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, according to a video shared by Mohammed el-Kurd, a Palestinian resident of the neighborhood. Additional footage shows Israeli security forces unleashing stun grenades on Palestinians in other parts of occupied East Jerusalem.
Israeli forces have gone mad in Sheikh Jarrah, beating everyone in sight, demolishing the solidarity tents, using excessive force… Impunity breeds fascism.
the Occupation knows it will not be held accountable by a complicit international community. #SaveSheikhJarrah pic.twitter.com/QlVkHCSegr
— mohammed el-kurd (@m7mdkurd) May 8, 2021
People “are bracing for more violence in the coming days,” Al Jazeera reported. As the news outlet explained:
Sunday night is “Laylat al-Qadr” or the “Night of Destiny,” the most sacred in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Worshippers will gather for intense nighttime prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Sunday night is also the start of Jerusalem Day, a national holiday in which Israel celebrates its annexation of East Jerusalem and religious nationalists hold parades and other celebrations in the city.
Palestinians fear more settler and police violence as Israelis gear up to celebrate “Jerusalem Day” on Sunday night and Monday, when Israelis celebrate Israel’s occupation of the holy city. Settlers typically maraud through the Old City on “Jerusalem Day,” terrorizing families. pic.twitter.com/bfE969VgjZ
— IMEU (@theIMEU) May 8, 2021
In addition, the Israeli Supreme Court’s verdict on the potential evictions of dozens of Palestinians is expected to be handed down Monday.
The IMEU on Friday said that “Israel’s violence has a clear purpose: ethnically cleanse Jerusalem of Palestinians to allow Israeli settlers to take over Palestinian homes.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — who is leading a petition calling on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to “uphold international law and demand an end to Israel’s illegal evictions of Palestinians, demolitions of Palestinian homes, and theft of Palestinian land” in East Jerusalem — said Saturday that “this is apartheid, plain and simple.”
“Too many are silent or dismissive as our U.S. tax dollars continue to be used for this kind of inhumanity,” she added.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Pushing back on the right-wing narrative about the reason for real or perceived labor shortages in some markets nationwide, progressives on Friday told corporations that if they want to hire more people, they’ll need to start paying better wages.
Soon after the Labor Department released its April jobs report, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce blamed last month’s weak employment growth on the existence of a $300 weekly supplemental jobless benefit and began urging lawmakers to eliminate the federally enhanced unemployment payments that were extended through early September when congressional Democrats passed President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan.
“No. We don’t need to end [the additional] $300 a week in emergency unemployment benefits that workers desperately need,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in response to the grumbles of the nation’s largest business lobbying group. “We need to end starvation wages in America.”
“If $300 a week is preventing employers from hiring low-wage workers there’s a simple solution,” Sanders added. “Raise your wages. Pay decent benefits.”
According to the Chamber’s analysis, the extra $300 unemployment insurance (UI) benefit results in roughly one in four recipients taking home more pay than they earned working.
In response to that claim, Sanders’ staff director Warren Gunnels said: “If one in four recipients are making more off unemployment than they did working, that’s not an indictment of $300 a week in UI benefits. It’s an indictment of corporations paying starvation wages.”
“Raise your wages and benefits or flip your own damn burgers and sweep your own damn floors,” Gunnels added.
Other progressives like former labor secretary Robert Reich and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) also chimed in.
This is not complicated. If you can’t afford to pay your employees a living wage, you do not have a viable business model.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) May 7, 2021
Fun fact: the US Chamber of Commerce is a secretive business lobby that supported a $3M effort to primary me out of office last year bc I stand up to Wall Street. (They lost
) Wal-mart was outed as a secret client.If UI > wages, the solution is to actually pay a living wage. https://t.co/04C2pCEZsY
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 7, 2021
“We do not have a shortage of willing workers in this country,” Morris Pearl of the Patriotic Millionaires said in a Friday afternoon statement responding to the Chamber. “We have a shortage of employers who are willing to pay workers enough to live.”
“Claiming that today’s disappointing jobs report is a result of expanded unemployment insurance is nothing more than a cruel tactic to pressure the administration into helping companies that they represent to continue to underpay and exploit their workforce,” Pearl continued. “Our leaders are supposed to be helping to increase wages for low paid workers, not helping employers to keep wages down.”
“Instead of blaming struggling workers,” Pearl continued, “large corporations that do not pay their employees a liveable wage… should take this moment to self-reflect. Maybe — just maybe — paying their workers more than starvation wages would incentivize workers to reenter the workforce.”
Writing for Jacobin earlier this week, Sandy Barnard noted that another overlooked factor is the increased morbidity rates among food and agricultural workers, which increased more than any other occupation during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a recent study from the University of California–San Francisco.
“Living, breathing people… have decided they do not want to risk their lives for $7.25 per hour and no health benefits,” Barnard wrote.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) responded to the Chamber’s call for an end to enhanced unemployment benefits by arguing that “the interests of big business are at war with the interests of the working class.”
“They will spend millions of dollars to take $300 a [week] away from you and your family, to force you to work for them for pennies,” she added. “Their greed has no bounds.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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The largest union of coal miners in the U.S. announced Monday that it would accept a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy as long as the federal government takes care of coal workers through the provision of green jobs and income support for those who become unemployed.
“There needs to be a tremendous investment here,” said Cecil E. Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) International. “We always end up dealing with climate change, closing down coal mines. We never get to the second piece of it.”
Ahead of a press conference outlining the UMWA’s approach to addressing the climate emergency in a way that improves rather than diminishes the well-being of workers in the dirty energy sector, Roberts said in a statement that “energy transition and labor policies must be based on more than just promises down the road. We want to discuss how miners, their families, and their communities can come out of this transition period and be certain that they will be in as good or better shape than they are today.”
“Much of the coal-producing areas of Appalachia and elsewhere are already in bad economic shape,” said Roberts. “Washington has taken little action to address it over the past decade. That must change.”
“As we confront a next wave of energy transition,” he added, “we must take steps now to ensure that things do not get worse for coal miners, their families, and communities, but in fact get better.”
Wow. The United Mine Workers of America are coming out in favor of a just transition program.https://t.co/dsMJx9ozpT
— Jonah Furman (@JonahFurman) April 19, 2021
The UMWA plan “calls for the creation of new jobs in Appalachia through tax credits that would subsidize the making of solar panel and wind turbine components, and by funding the reclamation of abandoned mines that pose a risk to public health,” the New York Times reported. “The union wants the federal government to support miners who lose their jobs through retraining and by replacing their wages, health insurance, and pensions.”
Political commentator Anand Giridharadas described the UMWA’s demand for a just transition as “excellent, and a testament to the work of activists and leaders who were called radicals and dismissed — and who will be vindicated by history before long.”
That sentiment was echoed by Evan Weber, co-founder and political director of the Sunrise Movement, who attributed the coal miners’ newly expressed openness to renewable energy as the product of collaborative organizing by labor and environmental justice advocates.
Hard to overstate how big of a deal this is.
Props to @MineWorkers for leaning in, and to the labor & enviro organizers who made this shift possible.
Announcement made with @Sen_JoeManchin at their side, as he also backs PRO ACT. Big day for WV workers!https://t.co/AQENPh8hs9
— Evan Weber
(@evanlweber) April 19, 2021This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Japan announced a plan to dump over 1.2 million tons of contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. read now…This post was originally published on Independent Australia.