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Author: Sharon Zhang

  • Sanders Urges Biden to Cancel All Student Loans After Biden Announces Freeze

    Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to striking Kellogg's workers in downtown Battle Creek, Michigan, on December 17, 2021.

    After the Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it is extending the federal student loan payment pause, progressive lawmakers are encouraging the president to take further action by cancelling student debt.

    Debt advocates and lawmakers have been pressuring Joe Biden to follow through with his campaign promise to cancel up to $10,000 of student debt per borrower, some of them urging him to forgive student loans altogether. These calls were amplified after the administration announced that it would be extending the payment freeze for another 90 days, until May 1 – a decision that debt cancellation advocates say was largely influenced by public pressure.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) praised the extension on Wednesday. “I applaud President Biden for once again pausing federal student loan payments for 45 million Americans,” he said. “Now let’s cancel it. All of it.”

    The Vermont senator has long advocated for the cancellation of all federal student debt and included the measure in his platform during his 2020 presidential run. Sanders’s stance is more radical than that of other debt cancellation advocates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), who have urged Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in debt.

    While this would eliminate all debts for a vast majority of borrowers, it would still leave many borrowers – often those with the most dire need for cancellation – with a large burden to bear. Roughly 6 percent of borrowers owe $100,000 or more in student loans, meaning that a plan to cancel about $50,000 in debt would still leave millions of borrowers with tens of thousands of dollars to pay off.

    But either proposal would be more impactful than Biden’s promise to cancel up to $10,000 in debt per borrower – and also more impactful than cancelling no debt, which is what Biden has done so far.

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) also celebrated the extension. “Thank you!” she wrote. “Next step: cancellation.”

    “This is what happens when we all come together to raise our voices,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) said, praising debt advocates for putting continued pressure on Biden. “Extending the student loan payment pause is a HUGE step forward that will help people get through this pandemic. Now let’s keep pushing until [Biden] cancels student loan debt.”

    Warren, Schumer and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who have been leading an ongoing effort to pressure Biden on loan forgiveness, issued a joint statement on the Biden administration’s decision. “Extending the pause will help millions of Americans make ends meet, especially as we overcome the Omicron variant,” they said. “We continue to call on President Biden to take executive action to cancel $50,000 in student debt, which will help close the racial wealth gap for borrowers and accelerate our economic recovery.”

    Indeed, data finds that Black and other non-white borrowers have been disproportionately affected by the student loan crisis. The Brookings Institute found that the average white graduate owes $28,006 in student loans four years after graduation, while the average Black borrower owes $52,726 – nearly double that of white graduates. Debt cancellation could help close the racial wealth gap; a recent report from the Roosevelt Institute found that cancelling up to $50,000 per borrower could increase the wealth of Black Americans by a whopping 40 percent.

    Financial assistance in the form of debt cancellation is especially urgent right now, as many families are about to lose a crucial safety net in the midst of yet another wave of the pandemic. The child tax credit program – which was expanded as part of the COVID stimulus packages – was crucial in reducing child poverty this year. But the last payment of the program went out recently, and thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and his staunch opposition to the program, poverty rates may go back up as the program expires.

    Advocates say this makes debt cancellation all the more necessary, as it could help bolster the wealth of lower- and middle-income families as COVID continues to rock the economy. “The administration must now deliver on the President’s promise to cancel student debt, and lower costs for families at a time of tremendous health and economic uncertainty,” wrote the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “We need to continue our economic recovery and quest for racial justice.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Manchin’s PAC Raked In Corporate Donations Just Before He Axed Build Back Better

    Sen. Joe Manchin speaks during an event with the Economic Club of Washington at the Capitol Hilton Hotel on October 26, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    This past fall, as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) worked to gut Democrats’ marquee Build Back Better Act – which he would later kill – his political action committee received an influx of donations from huge corporations, some of which would have been directly impacted by proposals in the bill.

    New Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings reviewed by CNBC show that in October and November, Manchin’s PAC received a total of 36 contributions from corporations, a spike from previous months.

    In October, the leadership PAC Country Roads received over $150,000 in donations from donors like Verizon and Wells Fargo. It also raked in cash from PACs affiliated with the coal and mining industries, to which Manchin is closely tied.

    A month later, the PAC received donations ranging from $2,500 to $5,000 from influential financial giants American Express and Goldman Sachs. It also saw contributions from natural gas company CNX Resources and health insurance companies UnitedHealth Group and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

    Meanwhile, Manchin’s PAC got a contribution from Lockheed Martin as the Senate was considering a massive defense budget of $778 billion, which Manchin voted to pass with no objections, despite his supposed concerns about government spending.

    October and November were critical months for negotiations on the Build Back Better Act. In October, Manchin succeeded in getting the White House to slash the bill’s price tag of $3.5 trillion over ten years, even though the bill would have been fully paid for. That same month, he got the centerpiece of the bill’s climate proposals, which would have been the main driver of climate emission reductions, slashed from the legislation. Soon after, he issued an ultimatum to progressive lawmakers, forcing them to cut at least one of the bill’s provisions aimed at helping families.

    November was similarly eventful for the legislation. Some conservative House representatives insisted that the bill contain a lightening of the state and local tax (SALT) cap, which allows people to deduct state tax bills from their federal taxes.

    Conservative Democrats advocated for cutting the cap altogether, which would have provided tax breaks nearly exclusively for the rich; even in its watered-down form, the proposal is still a handout to millionaires looking to dodge taxes. The House passed the bill in November, sending the soon-to-be-doomed legislation to the Senate.

    Earlier this week, Manchin announced that there is no path for him to support the Build Back Better Act going forward – and suggested that there never was one to begin with – effectively killing the bill, which needs all 50 Democratic senators’ votes to pass. This a huge blow to Democrats and to families who have been relying on financial assistance like the child tax credit or looking forward to provisions like paid sick leave.

    This is also a devastating blow to the global community, as the reconciliation bill is Joe Biden’s last chance to take meaningful action on the climate crisis before Republicans are likely to take the majority in at least one chamber of Congress in 2022. The U.S. plays an outsized role in perpetuating the climate crisis, which research finds contributes to millions of deaths around the world each year.

    It’s unclear why Manchin would make this drastic move, especially after he had such an enormous hand in shaping the legislation. Certainly, his party only stands to lose by failing to deliver on the centerpiece of Joe Biden’s agenda, named after his administration’s premier slogan. Some commentators have speculated that Manchin could be planning a presidential run; others have noted that he is basking in the power, attention and donations he is receiving as he subverts his own party, including contributions from right-wing sources that are funded by the Koch network.

    While campaigns and PACs aren’t required to disclose specific reasons for donations in their FEC filings, many of the corporations that donated to Manchin’s PAC – if not all of them – have a vested interest in killing the Build Back Better Act. Any legislation that would have incentivized renewable energies would have hurt coal and fossil fuel companies’ bottom lines, while a corporate minimum tax would have forced companies that often dodge paying federal income taxes to pay a minimum rate of 15 percent.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Facing Scrutiny, Biden Administration Extends Student Loan Pause Until May

    Activists hold festive signs calling on President Biden to cancel student debt and not resume student loan debt while musicians play joyful music, greeting the White House staff as they arrive to work on December 15, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced that it is extending the pause on student loan payments through May 1 – a sharp reversal of its previous stance, likely due to increased pressure from debt cancellation advocates as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 sweeps the U.S.

    “We know that millions of student loan borrowers are still coping with the impacts of the pandemic and need some more time before resuming payments,” President Joe Biden said in a statement announcing the 90-day extension.

    Payments were previously set to restart on February 1. When the Education Department last lengthened the payment freeze in August, the agency said that it was the “final extension.” Earlier this month, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that “a smooth transition back into repayment is a high priority for the administration.”

    Psaki’s statement sparked fury from progressive lawmakers and debt activists who have been pressuring Biden to take action on student debt relief since he took office – whether in the form of a pause extension, loan forgiveness or both.

    Debt cancellation advocates celebrated the Biden administration’s move on Wednesday, and amplified their calls for further action.

    “This is a major win for 45 million student debtors and their families,” Debt Collective spokesperson Braxton Brewington said in a statement. “Next, the Biden administration should permanently relieve this financial burden on families and the economy by using his executive authority to eliminate all federal student debt.”

    Progressive lawmakers also celebrated the extension. “Extending the student loan payment pause is a major relief for millions of Americans during this pandemic. I appreciate everyone who organized and pushed President Biden to take action, and I’m grateful he listened to our call,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). “Next, [Biden] should #CancelStudentDebt.”

    Representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) and Mondaire Jones (D-New York) also called on Biden to cancel student debt.

    On the campaign trail, Biden promised to cancel up to $10,000 in debt for each borrower – but even though legal experts, debt advocates and potentially even an unreleased memo from his own Education Department have said that the president has the legal authority to cancel student debt with only the power of the executive branch, he has so far refused to do so. Instead, his administration has been shifting the blame onto Congress to absolve itself from responsibility.

    According to Insider reporter Ayelet Sheffey, Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview set to air on Sunday that the administration must “figure out how we can creatively relieve the pressure that students are feeling because of their student loan debt” in anticipation of the 2022 midterm elections. Early midterm predictions are looking bleak for Democrats, and sapping income from millions of borrowers after promising to take action on the issue will likely only make their chances worse.

    For many borrowers, debt relief has been growing more urgent by the day. A recent report done on behalf of Warren and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), leading advocates for student debt relief, found that restarting payments will cause borrowers to collectively lose $85 billion a year. According to estimates by the Federal Reserve, borrowers hold $1.75 trillion in debt in total, making student loan debt an enormous burden on the economy.

    Survey data from the Student Debt Crisis Center found that the vast majority of borrowers – about 89 percent – say they aren’t prepared for payments to restart, with many survey respondents reporting that payments would take away a third or even half of their income.

    With only a 90-day extension, the pressure is still on for many people with loans. But the extension of the payment pause may temporarily lighten the financial load for families who are also facing the end of the expanded child tax credit due to Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-West Virginia) unceremonious killing of the Build Back Better Act.

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said on Instagram on Tuesday that public pressure on student loans is working to help sway the administration. “They were IRONCLAD about restarting payments in Jan as recently as a week ago,” she pointed out.

    Lawmakers and advocates had increased their calls for Biden to take action on student debt after a spokesperson for the Education Department hinted that the administration was considering the extension this week. “Today would be a great day for President Biden and Vice President Harris to #CancelStudentDebt,” Schumer wrote on Twitter. Democrats like Sen. Jeff Merkley (Oregon) and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (New York) also emphasized the urgency of debt forgiveness.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Warren Slams Grocers for Raising Prices While Raking in Profits

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks during a hearing in the Dirksen Building on December 7, 2021.

    As corporations blame inflation for steadily rising prices as the pandemic continues to rock the economy, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is calling out big grocers for charging customers more while padding executives’ pockets.

    Warren sent a letter to CEOs of big grocery chains on Monday detailing her concern over rising prices and questioning whether or not the companies are taking steps to protect consumers rather than trying to fleece them to increase their profit margins.

    Though these companies have reported profits that have increased precipitously in recent months, “it appears that rather than defraying costs for consumers or providing hazard pay to essential frontline workers, these profits have gone directly into the pockets of executives and shareholders,” Warren wrote. The letters were sent to CEOs of Kroger, the largest grocery chain in the country, Publix and Albertsons, all of which have reported high profits in comparison to pre-pandemic levels.

    As the lawmaker points out in her letter, these large grocers seem to revel in their current ability to take advantage of consumers. Experts say that stores are purposely raising prices higher than the cost of inflation to increase profit margins. “A little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said in a call with investors in June.

    “Although the producer price index released earlier this week did show a rise in wholesale prices, this is clearly not the whole picture,” Warren wrote in her letter. “Behind the scenes, grocery chains have reassured investors that only consumers would be hurt.” She lists a series of questions for the corporations to answer by January 7, asking them to detail price changes for each department, profits made during the pandemic and worker pay policies.

    Grocery bills for consumers have increased by over 6 percent over the past year, according to Consumer Price Index data, squeezing families for extra cash as they struggle with economic hardships. According to Census Bureau data, nearly 20 million adults in the U.S. live in households that are struggling to get enough to eat as of October.

    Meanwhile, Kroger made $2.6 billion in 2020, up 5.6 percent from 2019, and their adjusted earnings as of the third quarter of this year are up 9.9 percent over the same period last year. Albertsons tripled its net income from 2019 to $1.89 billion in 2020. And Publix increased its net earnings for the third quarter by 13.9 percent over last year.

    “Large grocers are blaming high food costs on inflation, but it’s time to talk about how they’re using every opportunity to rake in profits, reward executives and big shareholders while driving up prices even more,” Warren said in a statement.

    “These companies made record profits during the pandemic and when faced with the choice to retain lower prices for consumers, and properly protect and compensate their workers, they greedily granted massive payouts to top executives and investors,” she continued. “They need to answer for these actions.”

    The disparity between executive and worker pay has been especially stark at Kroger, where CEO McMullen’s compensation package jumped by over 45 percent to a total of $20.6 million in 2020. But, as McMullen enjoyed his extra $6.4 million, typical worker pay at Kroger dropped by 8.1 percent, with median pay dropping by over $2,000.

    These same workers suffered through dangerous conditions as they worked frontline jobs during the pandemic. As the company hailed its grocery workers as “heroes,” it cut hazard pay early in the pandemic while pursuing over $1 billion in stock buybacks in 2020.

    Some of the large grocers’ price raises have caused potential legal concerns. Consumers have filed a lawsuit in Texas, for instance, against Kroger, Albertsons, and other grocers for allegedly price gouging early in the pandemic, nearly tripling the price of eggs.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Kellogg Strike Ends After 11 Weeks as Workers Approve New Contract

    Striking Kellogg's workers listen to Sen. Bernie Sanders speak in support of their cause in downtown Battle Creek, Michigan, on December 17, 2021.

    Kellogg union members have approved a new five-year contract with the company, marking an end to an 11-week strike. About 1,400 workers have been on strike since October 5, sparking boycotts of the cereal company’s products as it threatened to permanently replace the striking workers.

    According to the union, the new contract contains no concessions from the workers and no permanent two-tier employment system allowing Kellog to offer lower wages and benefits to new employees – one of the primary sticking points for striking workers. The agreement also boasted of wage increases and cost-of-living increases in the first year of the contract.

    The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) praised the contract on Tuesday.

    “Our striking members at Kellogg’s ready-to-eat cereal production facilities courageously stood their ground and sacrificed so much in order to achieve a fair contract. This agreement makes gains and does not include any concessions,” said BCTGM International President Anthony Shelton in a statement. “From picket line to picket line, Kellogg’s union members stood strong and undeterred in this fight, inspiring generations of workers across the globe.”

    American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President Liz Shuler praised workers for fighting for the gains in the contract. BCTGM is affiliated with AFL-CIO.

    “The decision to strike is never an easy one. It takes an incredible amount of courage & tenacity. But strikes work,” Schuler wrote on Twitter. “There is no tool more powerful than our ability to withhold our labor. And there is power in a union.”

    Workers have taken particular issue with a two-tier system that allows the company to offer lower wages and inadequate benefits to newer hires, with little chance for upward movement. The system had been set in place in the contract with workers in 2015, and the company at the time had promised that employees in the second tier would have room for growth.

    Instead, the company seems to be limiting the number of employees who are able to see growth in wages and positions; as Jarod Facundo reported for The American Prospect, 15 employees have retired at the company’s Battle Creek, Michigan, plant since the adoption of the 2015 contract, but only one employee has moved up to a “legacy” status with higher pay.

    The new contract offers a way out of the lower tier, according to HuffPost’s Dave Jamieson, by automatically advancing workers who have been at the company for 4 years and then capping other advances at 3 percent of the workforce each year. This is better than the original contract offered by the company, which didn’t expand opportunities for growth, but it does not succeed in eliminating the system of a two-tiered workforce for the same jobs.

    Trevor Bidelman, president of BCTGM Local 3G representing workers in Battle Creek, told HuffPost that he believed that Kellogg’s threat to permanently replace striking workers was a way of forcing the union’s hand on the issue and that the contract was still not in a place that some members would have preferred it to be. Emphasizing his pride in the workers for the strike, Bidelman said, “The replacement threat was really the biggest piece” in turning out workers to vote for the contract.

    Indeed, though the legality of Kellogg’s threat could be questionable, it appeared to have worked for the company as a tactic to get workers to approve the new contract. The company has been facing increasing pressure from the public over the strike, facing a boycott and an online campaign to bog down its job application system to prevent it from hiring replacements.

    The workers’ strike had also garnered the support of lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who traveled to Battle Creek on Friday to rally with striking workers. “You’re sending a message not just to Kellogg’s, but to every corporate CEO in this country,” Sanders said in a speech. “You’re saying that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, you’ve got to give workers a fair shake.”

    Criticizing the divisive two-tier system, Sanders said that the company should offer a fair contract, saying “If you love America, you love the workers.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ocasio-Cortez and Warren Pressure Amazon to Explain Its Role in Tornado Deaths

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attends a press conference during COP26 on November 10, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland.

    Progressive lawmakers are seeking answers on Amazon’s role in deaths caused by a warehouse collapse earlier this month after reports emerged showing that the company didn’t allow employees to leave even when a tornado was about to strike.

    In an effort led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Cori Bush (D-Missouri), lawmakers have demanded that Amazon explain “what happened at your Edwardsville warehouse and whether your policies may have contributed to this tragedy.”

    On December 10, a string of tornadoes tore through parts of the South and Midwest. One of these tornadoes ripped through an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, causing it to collapse and killing six workers.

    Reports released after the collapse put the company’s policies under scrutiny. Texts sent that night from Larry Virden, one of the workers who died, suggested that managers weren’t allowing employees to leave when it was clear that there would be a window of safety before the tornado hit. Workers at other warehouses noted that a company policy banning employees from having phones at work might have put lives in danger, and that the company didn’t adequately prepare workers for emergencies, if at all.

    In their 10-page letter to Amazon, the Democrats seek answers to a long list of questions about Amazon’s safety policies, requesting a response no later than January 3. The letter includes questions about the company’s inclement weather and phone policies, and asks the company to provide details on previous deaths that have happened on site.

    The letter was signed by 23 members of Congress, including Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan).

    The letter points out that Amazon has a long history of perpetuating unsafe conditions for their workers. “Amazon profits should never come at the cost of workers’ lives, health, and safety,” the lawmakers wrote. They then praised the investigation into the collapse by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

    “With atrocious conditions for workers, including constant surveillance and intolerance for bathroom breaks during grueling, 11-hour shifts, Amazon literally grinds down the bodies of its workers,” the lawmakers continued. “These are just the everyday costs of Amazon’s inhumane business model. As the Edwardsville tragedy shows, the stakes are even higher in emergencies.”

    During Hurricane Ida in September, for instance, the company kept a New York warehouse open as the city flooded; in past years, the company has kept warehouses open and made delivery drivers stay on their routes during extreme weather events, despite the dangers posed to the workers. During a record heat wave in the West earlier this year, warehouses stayed open even as workers complained about rising temperatures, including at one facility where the temperatures reportedly reached nearly 90 degrees.

    These problems are underscored by the fact that Amazon has been accused of union busting for years, raising concerns that its workers don’t have the collective power to demand safer working conditions. In their letter, Congress members condemned the company for its anti-union efforts, calling the deaths on December 10th “a sobering reminder of how dangerous it is when workers are denied collective bargaining power.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Manchin Suggests He Was Never Planning to Support Reconciliation Bill Proposals

    After announcing his opposition to Democrats’ Build Back Better Act, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) explained in an interview on Monday that he never planned on compromising with fellow Democrats to support crucial portions of the bill – and that he preferred instead to essentially axe the bill altogether.

    On West Virginia MetroNews’s “Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval,” Manchin said that he has “been way far apart philosophically” from fellow Democrats who pushed to lower the price of prescription drugs and provide financial assistance to families via the expanded child tax credit and other potentially transformative proposals.

    Though he claims to have supported tax reforms and prescription drug proposals, Manchin said that in the end, it was a personal conflict with White House staff that pushed him to kill the legislation, which could have helped reduce poverty and set the country on track to finally address the climate crisis. But he refused to say why he killed the bill, continuing his months-long pattern of obfuscating his motivations, despite his position as a powerful public official.

    Instead, Manchin pinned the responsibility for the bill’s demise on the White House. “They know the real reason what happened. They won’t tell you and I’m not going to,” he said. “It’s not the president, it’s the staff. And they drove some things and they put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable and they know what it is and that’s it.”

    The conservative lawmaker went on to criticize his fellow Democrats for trying to gain his favor on the bill, suggesting that protesters who confronted him over his opposition were working to change his mind on behalf of the Democratic Party.

    “I knew where they were and I knew what they could and could not do. They just never realized it because they figured, surely to God we can move one person, surely we can badger and beat one person up, surely we can get enough protesters to make that person uncomfortable enough,” he said.

    “Well, guess what? I’m from West Virginia. I’m not from where they’re from, and they can just beat the living crap out of people and think they’ll be submissive, period,” he continued, dismissing the fact that some of the protesters he faced are from West Virginia. He has also brushed over polling that has found that a majority of likely voters in his state support the bill, including 90 percent of West Virginia Democrats.

    As a workaround to his own opposition, Manchin said that the Senate should break up the bill and work it through committees instead – despite knowing full well that almost none of the bill’s provisions would pass the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

    Though Manchin didn’t say much about the contents of the bill during the interview, he did take particular issue with the child tax credit expansion, which has contributed to a sharp reduction in child poverty since it was implemented last year. The lawmaker suggested that people making between $200,000 and $400,000 shouldn’t be receiving the tax credit, ignoring that the income cap for single earners for the tax credit is $240,000, with people making above $75,000 receiving smaller amounts.

    Supporters of the Build Back Better Act have expressed frustration that Manchin is killing the bill while also refusing to be held accountable for the reasons why.

    On Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) pointed out that progressives have been saying for months that Manchin was never going to support the bill unless Democrats had leverage over him, likely in the form of the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

    “When we suggested this months ago, people were outraged, accused us of insulting people’s character, called us disruptive, etc.” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “Capitol Hill is full of folks who convince themselves they’re three steps ahead by rationalizing to themselves why the obvious isn’t true.” She then called on President Joe Biden to use his executive authority to take action on measures that Congress won’t address.

    Manchin said during the interview that he reached his “wit’s end” on the bill – but regardless of how fed up Manchin is with negotiations, the public, especially the lower- and middle-income people that the bill would help, are quickly approaching potential crises.

    The end of expanded child tax credits would also mean the end of its poverty-reducing effects, economists warn. Meanwhile, student loan payments are scheduled to restart at the beginning of February. “Working families could lose thousands of $/mo just as prices are rising,” Ocasio-Cortez pointed out on Twitter.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Manchin Says He Opposes Sick Leave Because People Will Use It for Hunting Trips

    Joe manchin looks up at an elevator while surrounded by reporters

    Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) evidently told colleagues in the Senate that he opposes universal paid sick time because he thinks workers would pretend to be sick in order to go on hunting trips – despite the fact that the country just hit a tragic milestone of 800,000 deaths due to COVID-19.

    The news comes just after Manchin announced on “Fox News Sunday” that he is officially killing the Democrats’ reconciliation bill, which includes a proposal for universal paid sick leave along with critical provisions to expand the social safety net, lower prescription drug costs and address the climate crisis. Manchin is blocking the bill even though he had an enormously outsized hand in shaping it, negotiating with his Democratic colleagues and stonewalling them over the legislation for months.

    While Manchin has publicly complained about the price of the reconciliation bill, his private gripes are targeted directly at poor and working class Americans, Huffpost reported.

    Manchin has previously expressed his opposition to implementing universal paid leave by saying that the government should impose a work requirement on such measures. But by definition, having paid leave from a job requires a person to have a job to begin with.

    The U.S. is the only wealthy country in the world that doesn’t guarantee its workers paid family and medical leave. Research finds that of the 25 percent of private industry workers with the lowest wages, over half aren’t even allowed unpaid sick leave; among the workers paid within the lowest 10 percent of wages, 70 percent don’t have unpaid sick leave. This forces some workers to go to work ill, potentially spreading the illness to coworkers and the public.

    Even before the pandemic, it would be absurd to believe that workers don’t deserve paid sick leave because of the possibility that they may fake illness to get time off. For decades, conservatives have argued against every form of government assistance by claiming that a small portion of people may use the assistance for non-authorized reasons – but in reality, the benefits of these programs far outweigh the supposed negative impact of fraud.

    The food stamp program, for instance, helps feed tens of millions of people across the country. Fraud happens so infrequently that it’s nearly completely negligible, and evidence-based criticisms of the program say that the program is actually not big enough.

    Manchin’s statement is especially cruel in the midst of a pandemic that is currently killing an average of nearly 1,300 Americans a day. COVID is surging partially because many frontline workers don’t have the option to stay home even if they contract the virus – meaning that conditions are rapidly worsening just as people are gathering for the holidays.

    According to HuffPost, Manchin has also complained about the possibility of Congress extending the child tax credit, a measure that has lifted millions of kids out of poverty since it was implemented. The lawmaker’s opposition to expanding the credit is based on his belief that poor families may spend the money on what he considers the wrong things; in other words, Manchin believes that he knows more about the needs of families who have been struggling to survive since the pandemic than the families themselves.

    Meanwhile, the Senate just began winter recess this weekend and won’t reconvene until January 6, leaving Manchin – who is worth an estimated $7.6 million – with nearly three weeks of paid leave to do whatever he pleases.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Kellogg Says It Has Tentative Deal With Union as It Faces Mounting Pressure

    Kellogg's Cereal plant workers demonstrate in front of the plant on October 7, 2021, in Battle Creek, Michigan.

    With 1,400 cereal plant workers in the midst of their 11th week of striking, Kellogg Company says that it has reached a tentative agreement to end the strike. The union is expected to vote on the new agreement by Monday.

    The Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union has not yet put out a statement about the agreement, and workers rejected a deal just two weeks ago. As the company faces mounting pressure from the public and progressive lawmakers, however, it is hopeful that the new agreement will satisfy the union.

    However, the company’s latest offer fails to get rid of a two-tier employee structure that allows the company to pay new workers less and offer fewer benefits. That lower tier currently applies to about 30 percent of employees. Striking workers have said that getting rid of this structure is a top priority for them, and soundly rejected a previous tentative agreement from the company that also failed to remedy this concern.

    Shortly after workers struck down that deal, the company made a drastic move: It announced plans to permanently replace the 1,400 striking workers, a move that labor advocates and striking workers said showed the company’s bad faith in negotiations that have been going on for over a year.

    Kellogg has been facing a boycott since early October, when workers began striking. This move intensified calls for a boycott and inspired people on the “antiwork” subreddit to flood the company’s online job portal, spamming the website and causing it to crash multiple times, according to users of the forum.

    Influential lawmakers have called attention to the company’s union-busting efforts. President Joe Biden condemned the company’s decision to replace striking workers, saying that he was “deeply troubled” by the move and that it is “an existential attack on the union.”

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), meanwhile, is travelling to Battle Creek, Michigan on Friday to rally with the workers and stand up to Kellogg’s “corporate greed.” In October, he led a letter signed by six Democratic senators to Kellogg’s CEO signaling their staunch support of the striking workers.

    “Kellogg’s workers made the company BILLIONS during a pandemic by working 12-hour shifts, some for more than 100 days in a row. But Kellogg’s is now choosing corporate greed over the workers they once called ‘heroes,’” Sanders said in a tweet.

    Indeed, workers have reported having to work 80-hour weeks with few days off. “We don’t have weekends, really. We just work seven days a week, sometimes 100 to 130 days in a row,” Trevor Bidelman, president of the Battle Creek plant’s local, told The Guardian. “For 28 days, the machines run, then rest three days for cleaning. They don’t even treat us as well as they do their machinery.”

    The company has vilified its striking workers, saying their demands for better pay and equal treatment for all employees are unrealistic. However, the company has posted high profits as the pandemic has driven up demand, and the company’s CEO received a massive compensation package of over $11.6 million in the fiscal year ending in 2021. This is 279 times the median employee pay at the company.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • bell hooks, Black Feminist Scholar and Intellectual Giant, Has Died

    Author and cultural critic bell hooks poses for a portrait on December 16, 1996, in New York City.

    bell hooks, a colossus of Black feminist thought, died on December 15 in her home in Berea, Kentucky. Her writings are foundational to contemporary movements for justice and have opened countless doors in radical thought on race, class, gender, and other forms of oppression.

    According to her sister, Gwenda Motley, hooks died of renal failure. The author and intellectual was surrounded by friends and family when she passed. She was 69.

    hook’s seminal works, such as Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, have blazed a trail for third-wave feminism and intersectionality. Ain’t I A Woman, which was published 40 years ago this year and inspired by Sojourner Truth’s speech of the same name, discussed the conditions faced by Black women in mainstream feminist movements that ignored them in favor of white supremacy and middle-class politics.

    hooks redefined feminism to be more expansive and more radical. “Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression,” she wrote in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. In Feminist Theory, she criticized liberal groups for promoting definitions of feminism that sought only to make women equal to men – despite the fact that some men, too, experience forms of oppression.

    hooks was born in the deeply segregated South in 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. She chronicled how capitalism and slavery have laid the groundwork for the mistreatment of Black women in society. She wrote, too, of how Black people can assert self-determination in the face of a society seeking to dominate and suppress individualism.

    She wrote extensively about love as a collective and individual practice — one that is antithetical to domination, and can propel society and progressive movements toward liberation.

    In her 2000 book All About Love: New Visions, hooks wrote,

    It is essential to our struggle for self-determination that we speak of love. For love is the necessary foundation enabling us to survive the wars, the hardships, the sickness, and the dying with our spirits intact. It is love that allows us to survive whole.

    Love must be radically conceived as a means to empower oppressed communities, hooks emphasized. As adrienne maree brown wrote for Truthout, drawing upon hooks’s work, it is impossible to receive that love from a nation that seeks to marginalize its non-white, non-wealthy communities; instead, the left must dispel concepts of love that are transactional or drawn upon oppressive power dynamics.

    Many modern feminists and progressive thinkers have championed hooks for laying the groundwork for their own radical work; abolitionist and We Do This ‘Til We Free Us author Mariame Kaba, for instance, has credited hooks for helping to open her mind to the intersections of gender and race. Other writers have similarly said that hooks’s work was crucial to their intellectual development.

    “For me, reading ‘Ain’t I A Woman’ was as if someone had opened the door, the windows, and raised the roof in my mind,” wrote journalist and author Min Jin Lee, who took a class taught by hooks at Yale University in 1987 and was inspired to seek out her work even though hooks herself didn’t assign it:

    [F]or me, a Korean girl who had been born in a divided nation once led by kings, colonizers, then a succession of presidents who were more or less dictators, and for millenniums, that had enforced rigid class systems with slaves and serfs until the early 20th century, and where women of all classes were deeply oppressed and brutalized, I needed to see that the movement had a space for me.

    hooks also regularly engaged in cultural criticism, and in more recent decades critiqued pop culture figures and modern movements for their unidimensional conception of race, gender, and other forms of oppression. She believed that engaging pop culture was important for advancing critical thinking.

    As progressive communities honor and grieve hooks, her own words on grief, from All About Love, can be instructive:

    To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending. The way we grieve is informed by whether we know love. Since loving lets us let go of so much fear, it also guides our grief. When we lose someone we love, we can grieve without shame. Given that commitment is an important aspect of love, we who love know we must sustain ties in life and death. Our mourning, our letting ourselves grieve over the loss of loved ones is an expression of our commitment, a form of communication and communion.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • US Passes Another Unfathomable COVID Milestone, Reaching 800,000 Deaths

    Lawmakers participate in a moment of silence for the 800,000 American lives lost to COVID-19 on December 14, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    On Tuesday, the U.S. reached a grim pandemic milestone: 800,000 people have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic hit the country last year.

    In the initial months of the pandemic, when the U.S. surpassed an already towering 100,000 deaths, The New York Times dedicated the front page of their May 24, 2020, paper to publishing every deceased person’s name with a brief description of their personalities – with the headline “An Incalculable Loss.” At the time, readers described the dedication as heart-wrenching.

    The U.S. would double that figure, however, hitting 200,000 deaths in September 2020. States began easing pandemic restrictions in spite of public health officials’ warnings, just as masking became widespread to contain the virus. By then, President Donald Trump had baselessly said many times that the pandemic wasn’t bad in the U.S. compared to other countries (it was) and that it was turning around soon. (It didn’t.)

    Public health figures worried that people would begin becoming numb to the loss.

    With 800,000 deaths – four times the September 2020 mark – more people have died from COVID-19 than the total number of people who died in the American Civil War; it is, on average over two years, orders of magnitude higher than the deaths due to common causes like car crashes or the flu.

    It is another dark milestone that marks the U.S.’s dismal response to the pandemic. In September 2021, with approximately 660,000 deaths, about 1 in 500 Americans had died from the virus. Now, that number is closer to 1 in 400.

    This new landmark, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, comes as the U.S. is once again experiencing a surge of cases. High vaccination rates and reimplemented mask mandates had driven down case rates this summer. But as more of the population became vaccinated, with about 17 percent of Americans still having not received a single dose of a COVID vaccine, cases began rising again in the fall – this time driven by the Delta variant and now, the nascent Omicron variant.

    Despite the U.S.’s vaccine drive over the past year, most of those deaths have occurred this year. The gap between vaccination rates between counties that went for Trump in 2020 and counties that went for Joe Biden, meanwhile, is growing ever wider. Researchers have estimated that over 160,000 of the deaths that have occured since June were preventable if vaccine holdouts had gotten their jabs.

    Biden encouraged Americans to get their shots on Tuesday, marking the “tragic milestone.”

    “I urge all Americans: Do your patriotic duty to keep our country safe, to protect yourself and those around you, and to honor the memory of all those we have lost,” the president said.

    As the more-transmissible Omicron spreads in the U.S., health experts are concerned that behavior during winter holidays will cause yet another spike in cases. Last year’s winter holidays were followed by a spike in the daily average of new cases to over 250,000. The nation is seeing another rise in cases now weeks after Thanksgiving.

    Of the people who have been infected with Omicron, many of the cases have been mild so far – but many of the cases have also been of unvaccinated people. Research has suggested that receiving a booster shot could help vaccinated people from contracting the variant.

    With no end in sight to the pandemic, some health experts are predicting that the U.S. will inevitably reach 1 million COVID deaths. One study estimated that the U.S. is closer to that milestone than official counts would suggest, with 100,000 COVID deaths uncounted due to reporting challenges.

    One million deaths isn’t a milestone that has to be reached; indeed, countries with higher vaccination rates aren’t seeing nearly as many cases, showing that more deaths are preventable.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Congress Raises Debt Ceiling After Months of Republican Obstruction

    The U.S. Capitol is pictured at sunset on December 13, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Congress voted to raise the debt limit on Tuesday after months of brinkmanship and Republican obstruction that threatened economic disaster.

    The resolution raises the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion, staving off the next battle on the fiscal move until 2023. Both chambers of Congress passed the measure largely on party lines, with only one Republican, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) voting in favor. President Joe Biden is expected to sign it into law as soon as possible.

    Over the past months Republicans in the Senate have been threatening to send the U.S. into default for the first time in history over their refusal to raise the debt ceiling. Even as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) was working to cut a deal with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) this month, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) insisted that Democrats capitulate to Republican demands on the debt ceiling and tack the issue to their reconciliation bill.

    GOP obstruction, which was led by McConnell, pushed the country incredibly close to a default, which Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen predicted would occur on December 15. If the U.S. defaulted, Republicans were likely to blame Democrats for the ensuing economic disaster, obfuscating GOP responsibility.

    Even a short default would have caused long-term economic instability, economists warned; a long-term default, meanwhile, would have mechanically triggered a recession, sending the fragile COVID economy spiraling and destroying up to $15 trillion of household wealth. President Joe Biden had slammed Republicans for their political games, calling it “hypocritical, dangerous and disgraceful.”

    McConnell and 13 other Republicans in the Senate ended up capitulating on their dangerous game last week, voting with Democrats last week to allow the debt ceiling to be passed with a simple majority in the chamber.

    Schumer applauded the resolution’s passage on Tuesday. “As I have said repeatedly, this is about paying debt accumulated by both parties, so I am pleased Republicans and Democrats came together to facilitate a process that has made addressing the debt ceiling possible,” he said.

    Indeed, a significant portion of U.S. debt was racked up by Donald Trump. With Republican lawmakers’ help on issues like tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, the national debt rose by nearly $8 trillion during Trump’s term. This is the third highest increase to the deficit by any presidential administration, only lower than George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, both of whom oversaw large wars.

    Still, with Republicans refusing to vote to bypass a filibuster on the debt ceiling bill directly, the GOP has set itself up to spew spurious talking points about the debt ceiling in order to attack Democrats. Republicans have been lying about whose debts need to be paid, ignoring their outsized role in the current debt situation. Meanwhile, with only Democrats voting on Tuesday to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans have already begun to attack the party for supposed irresponsibility.

    “Later today, every Senate Democrat is going to vote on party lines to raise our nation’s debt limit by trillions of dollars,” McConnell said ahead of the vote. Likely referring to the reconciliation package known as the Build Back Better Act, he continued, “if they jam through another reckless taxing and spending spree, this massive debt increase will just be the beginning.”

    However, as the typically conservative Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has found, the Build Back Better Act passed by the House would actually decrease the deficit. Republicans also had very little to say about the debt ceiling when the CBO estimated that the 2017 tax cut would cost the government $2.3 trillion over ten years.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • After Big Win in Buffalo, Starbucks Workers in Massachusetts File to Unionize

    A temporarily closed Starbucks on State Street in Boston and the reflection of Custom House Tower in its window on August 9, 2021.

    Following last week’s historic win in Buffalo, in which Starbucks workers formed the first-ever union within the company, Starbucks workers at two locations in the Boston area have filed petitions to unionize. If they’re successful, they’ll join Buffalo workers in being the first of the company’s roughly 9,000 corporate-owned locations to form a union.

    Workers filed on Monday to request union votes for locations in Boston and Brookline, a town in the Boston metropolitan area. They would be joining Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union — the same union that workers in Buffalo have now joined.

    The filing comes just days after Starbucks employees — or partners, as the company refers to them — at Buffalo, New York’s Elmwood location voted overwhelmingly in favor of the union, 19 to 8. They had faced monumental odds, with the company waging a fierce anti-union campaign.

    Another location in Buffalo, Genesee Street, is waiting for its union election results to be certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). However, the union was ahead 15 to 9 as of the initial count. The agency is currently reviewing seven challenged ballots.

    The Massachusetts workers are joining four other Starbucks locations that are currently waging a union campaign: Three additional locations in Buffalo and one location in Arizona have filed for unionization with Workers United. The Massachusetts filing is a sign that, as labor leaders have predicted, Buffalo workers’ successful unionization effort is inspiring workers at Starbucks and even independent coffee shops to begin similar efforts.

    In a letter to Kevin Johnson, CEO of Starbucks, the Boston-area workers expressed a feeling of solidarity with Buffalo Starbucks organizers.

    “Like the partners in Buffalo, Arizona, and beyond, we believe that there can be no true partnership without power-sharing and accountability,” the workers wrote. “We are organizing a union in Boston because we believe that this is the best way to contribute meaningfully to our partnership with the company.”

    In the letter, the workers appeal to the company’s mission, saying that Starbucks should live up to its own stated values and allow workers to assert power and unity in the workplace. “Starbucks’ mission is improving communities one coffee at a time,” they write. “Respecting partners’ right to organize will help us help the company accomplish this mission, by improving our lives and raising standards across the industry.”

    The letter writers call on Johnson to sign a list of “fair election principles” laid out by the union, largely including requests for Starbucks to step aside and stop interfering with organizers as they work on the union campaign.

    The company is unlikely to agree to the principles, as it has taken bold and potentially illegal steps to fight union campaigns. It took familiar union-busting steps that companies like Amazon have deployed, like holding mandatory anti-union meetings and outright telling employees to vote no.

    The company also sent multiple executives and former CEO Howard Schultz to Buffalo to surveil workers and potentially discourage them from voting for unionization. The company closed stores so that workers could attend a bizarre talk by Schultz in which, according to a video of the speech reviewed by Vice, he implied that the $139 billion corporation was similar to victims of the Holocaust. Executives, meanwhile, went to unionizing stores to intimidate workers while obfuscating their roles with the company.

    With the first round of union elections done, the company has now moved its anti-union tactics to the next set of locations attempting to organize. The union says that the company has been purposely scheduling pro-union workers erratically at Depew, one of the Buffalo locations that is attempting to unionize. This has a destabilizing effect on workers who are forced to work unpredictable hours.

    It has also been creating unsafe working conditions with overstaffing, which doesn’t allow workers to socially distance, and sending representatives from the company to surveil the store at all operational hours.

    “Starbucks is purposefully scheduling pro-union partners at inconsistent hours. They are often scheduled both open and close shifts in the same week,” Starbucks Workers United wrote. “This type of scheduling disrupts our ability to have a regular sleep schedule and hurts our mental health.”

    Even after the Elmwood location’s votes to unionize were officially counted by the NLRB, the company continued its anti-union messaging. “I am saddened that in the end the majority of you decided it was best for Workers United to represent you,” a Starbucks district manager wrote to Elmwood union members, claiming that the union was “divisive.”

    The unionization, however, seems to have united the local community in excitement; customers have been energized and supportive of the unionized workers, sending digital tips and congratulatory notes to the store, workers said.

    “Customers are excited. Many of them are new to Starbucks and tell me they are only here because we are now union. One of these leaves a $20 tip,” wrote Jaz Brisack, a worker at Elmwood.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Progressive Lawmakers Signal Support for Four-Day Workweek Proposal

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal

    As the movement for a shorter workweek gains steam across the country, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) has endorsed a House bill that would establish a 32-hour workweek as the nationwide standard for full-time work.

    The proposal was filed earlier this year by caucus member Rep. Mark Takano (D-California) and would shorten the standard workweek by lowering the threshold for overtime compensation from 40 hours to 32 hours. With standard eight-hour workdays, this would translate to a four-day workweek.

    Though the proposal stands little chance of passing Congress, the caucus’s support is a signal that progressives lawmakers are listening to the demands of the labor movement, which has fought to shorten the workweek for centuries and often succeeded. The CPC has nearly 100 members, including 96 House members and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

    Takano said he was pleased that the caucus endorsed his bill, adding that the measure would lead to an “improved quality of life for workers.”

    “After a nearly two-year-long pandemic that forced millions of people to explore remote work options, it’s safe to say that we can’t – and shouldn’t – simply go back to normal, because normal wasn’t working,” Takano said. “People were spending more time at work, less time with loved ones, their health and well-being was worsening, and all the while, their pay has remained stagnant.”

    CPC chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) praised the bill, similarly highlighting stagnant wages. “It is past time that we put people and communities over corporations and their profits — finally prioritizing the health, wellbeing, and basic human dignity of the working class rather than their employers’ bottom line,” she said.

    The 40-hour workweek was won by the labor movement in the early 20th century as a response to grueling working conditions during the Industrial Revolution. By 1890, workers were routinely working through exploitative conditions and 100-hour weeks where they were given either one day off or none at all. Workers in trade unions blazed a path for the 40-hour workweek, which was implemented by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and which remains the standard to this day.

    Nearly 90 years later, labor advocates say that the five-day, 40-hour workweek has become outdated. Not only can modern labor practices and automation accelerate work, pilot programs in other countries have found that shorter workweeks actually increase productivity.

    While the 4-day workweek proposal wouldn’t apply to gig workers and workers who are exempt from overtime, the proposal could dramatically change work culture in the U.S. and spark movements among exempt workers to demand similar change within their own workplaces. A shorter workweek could also free up hours for organizing coworkers for collective bargaining and improving other working conditions.

    Research has shown that on average, American workers spend more time at work than workers in comparable countries. Analyzing data from 2019, the People’s Policy Project found that not only are American workers squeezed harder than those in other countries, but also that overworking is inefficient, as Americans work more hours than workers in countries with a comparable Gross Domestic Product. This is partially due to a work culture and political system that values capitalistic output and supposed productivity over everything else — almost entirely at the expense of the working class.

    Research has demonstrated the enormous physical and mental toll of overworking; in May, a study found that nearly 750,000 people around the world die each year due to heart disease and strokes brought on by long working hours, making overworking and burnout a matter of life and death. Of course, conservative lawmakers have shown no interest in resolving these issues, instead glorifying measures like work requirements for people to access resources they need to survive.

    While a four-day workweek wouldn’t solve widespread issues of exploitation, labor advocates say it’s a necessary step toward a healthier work culture in the U.S. Work often extends far beyond the time that someone is actually on the clock, advocates have pointed out — workplaces stressors often creep into people’s personal lives, making days off little more than time to recuperate before clocking in again.

    “The benefits of a four-day workweek to us as individuals and our work culture are clear: better physical and mental health, fewer burnt-out employees, more equitable workplace outcomes, and so on,” Austin Cole, board member at 4 Day Week US, wrote for Truthout. “But to me, a reduction of working hours for the same pay isn’t about those benefits — it’s fundamentally about justice.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • White House Says Restarting Student Loans Is “High Priority,” Sparking Outrage

    White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki

    White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki recently announced that the Biden administration is not planning on extending the student loan payment pause, sparking outrage among debt advocates and people who have struggled with student loan repayments for years.

    A video of Psaki promising that the administration will soon reveal its plan regarding student debt payments circulated on Twitter over the weekend, garnering 1.7 million views as of Monday.

    “We’re still assessing the impact of the Omicron variant,” Psaki said. “A smooth transition back into repayment is a high priority for the administration.” The administration is planning to allow the student debt payment pause to expire at the end of January. The pause, which was implemented to aid borrowers as the economy was rocked by the pandemic, has been in place since March of 2020.

    The Biden administration’s announcement comes just as the movement for lawmakers to take action on the student debt crisis is surging. Many advocates and borrowers have expressed frustration over the administration’s failure to act.

    “I’m angry at Biden backtracking on a key pillar he ran on: cancellation. I’m fearing what the end of [the] moratorium will do for so many people,” wrote Debt Collective member Wen Zhuang. Other Twitter users noted that allowing repayments to start during a critical election year is a poor strategy for the nation’s top Democrats.

    The Congressional Progressive Caucus called on the White House to take action, saying “45 million Americans are stuck in the student debt trap. It’s preventing them from buying homes, starting families, and investing in their communities. [President Joe Biden] has the authority to take action today. He should use it, and provide millions with desperately needed relief.”

    On the campaign trail, Biden promised that he would cancel up to $10,000 of student debt per borrower. But the Biden administration hasn’t just refused to cancel student debt– it’s also lied about the president’s ability to do so. During press conferences, Psaki has consistently shifted responsibility away from Biden by saying that Congress should pass a bill to cancel debt instead, despite knowing full well that it would be nearly impossible for progressives and Democrats to pass such legislation.

    Debt cancellation advocates have repeatedly pointed out that Biden could cancel federal student debt with a stroke of his pen, a much more reliable strategy than trying to pass the measure through Congress. Legal experts have also said that Biden has the authority to cancel student debt, which is perhaps the reason his administration has hidden an Education Department memo on the legality of the action for months.

    Individuals are often forced to pay significant portions of their income in order to make payments, making student debt an enormous burden to many of the roughly 44.7 million Americans who are currently trying to pay off loans. Often, these payments don’t seem to have any set ending; many borrowers have reported that they’ve paid off more than they originally owed but that they still owe several times their original loan amount anyway.

    These loans also hold borrowers back from being able to participate in many parts of the economy. Loans often affect borrowers’ credit scores, endangering their ability to buy a home or secure housing. Cancelling debt, meanwhile, could help raise incomes and stimulate the economy by freeing up thousands of dollars for borrowers.

    According to recent data, the vast majority of student debt holders are not ready to restart payments. In a Student Debt Crisis Center survey of over 33,000 borrowers, 89 percent of borrowers who are employed full-time said that they aren’t financially ready to restart student loan payments in February.

    Restarting payments will sap borrowers out of billions of dollars. A recent report done for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) found that restarting payments will cost borrowers $7 billion a month and about $85 billion a year. On the other hand, the analysis found that canceling student loans could add over $173 billion to the Gross Domestic Product each year.

    Although Biden has refused to answer lawmakers’ and activists’ calls to cancel student debt, there are steps his administration can take to ease the burden on borrowers. Last month, Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) called on the Department of Education to move over 8 million borrowers out of default status for their loans before payments restart. “Allowing payments and collections to resume without taking these actions to protect borrowers in default would undermine our economic recovery,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Investigation Finds At Least 48 Members of Congress Have Violated STOCK Act

    The United States Capitol, as seen through bars

    At least 48 members of Congress and 182 top Capitol Hill staffers have violated a law meant to increase transparency and prevent conflicts of interests around stock trading in Washington, a recently released Insider investigation found.

    According to the Insider report, members of both major parties have violated the STOCK Act, with violations between Democrats and Republicans about even. Most of the violations from Capitol Hill staffers and Congress members are due to late reporting, with some disclosures coming as late as four years. Many of these disclosures demonstrate conflicts of interest between lawmakers’ investments and the industries they govern.

    Though late reporting violations come with a fee, these fees amount to what is essentially a slap on the wrist for members of Congress, the majority of whom are millionaires. Fees are typically just several hundred dollars, while many of the stock trades by members of Congress are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — if not millions or tens of millions.

    Though some of the violations were for trades of small value or only a few days late, other late disclosures were egregious, Insider found. This year, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) made dozens of stock trades that he disclosed months late, worth around $17.5 million total.

    Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-New Jersey) didn’t disclose dozens of trades that he made this year and last year until he was prodded by reporters; Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) was late to disclose nearly 130 stock trades from the first half of this year. Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tennessee), meanwhile, failed to properly report over 700 stock trades that she and her husband made this year — worth as much as $10.9 million.

    Several of the nearly 200 Capitol Hill staffers who violated the STOCK Act gave questionable excuses for not obeying the law. Despite being required to attend ethics training that covered trading rules, some staffers said that they weren’t aware of the law or that they weren’t sure how to disclose the trades. Many of the dozens of people that Insider reached out to for comment were unwilling to say why they violated the law.

    An anonymous source who formerly worked for the Senate ethics panel said that lax enforcement is one of the reasons why late disclosures are so common. Monetary penalties are relatively low, starting at $200 for filings that are over 30 days late — and if it’s a staffer’s first offense or if they’re forthright about their reason for disclosing trades late, they are often able to get the fee waived entirely. Although waivers are supposed to be rare, Insider found five staffers willing to provide copies of their waivers.

    The investigation also found that many lawmakers have personal financial interests in industries that they’re tasked with regulating; for instance, 22 Democrats who typically vote on environmental and climate issues have reported owning stocks in major oil and gas companies like Exxon and Shell.

    At least 15 members who serve on the Armed Services committees have had money vested in top defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon. Companies in the oil and gas and defense industries infamously receive hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies through direct bailouts and tax loopholes each year.

    Lawmakers have also made questionable trades regarding the pandemic. Many government officials, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, have come under fire over the past two years for making suspiciously opportunistic trades just before the pandemic triggered a market-wide crash or a boom in certain stocks.

    The Insider report found that at least 75 lawmakers held shares in the three major vaccine makers — Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Moderna — as coronavirus vaccines were being developed last year. Officials were privy to information regarding the pandemic that was not available to the public.

    These STOCK Act violations lend credence to progressive lawmakers’ campaign to bar top government officials from being able to trade stock altogether. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) has introduced legislation that would ban stock trading for Members of Congress, Cabinet members, top staffers, federal judges and White House officials.

    “We have entrusted these people with great power. They owe us great transparency,” Public Citizen’s Walter Shaub told Insider. “They are not even giving us minimal transparency.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • House Passes Bill to Prevent Future Blatant Corruption in Reaction to Trump

    President Donald Trump exits the Oval Office and walks toward Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on September 30, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

    On Thursday, the House passed a bill that will place restrictions on presidential power, aimed at rooting out blatant and continuous corruption like that of former President Donald Trump.

    The Protecting Our Democracy Act passed 220 to 208 largely on party lines, with one Republican voting for the bill. Many portions of the bill seem to be inspired by Trump, who often exploited loopholes and apparent impunity for him and his family in order to profit from the presidency while obscuring the lengths of his corruption from the public.

    In what seems to be a direct rebuke to Trump, the bill requires presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns. Trump infamously avoided releasing his returns, despite the fact that this was potentially illegal, likely because he often abuses loopholes to pay zero to no income tax. The bill also takes steps to bar presidents from enriching their personal bank accounts while in office.

    Trump continuously utilized his presidential power to force political allies and foreign dignitaries to stay at his hotels, which he refused to divest from despite blatant conflicts of interest. The former president profited greatly from his time in office, making an estimated $2.4 billion.

    The bill would enhance the Hatch Act, which prohibits government officials from campaigning while serving in office — guidelines that the Trump administration blatantly shirked and will likely face few consequences for. Trump currently faces many civil and criminal cases; the bill would also suspend the statute of limitations for sitting presidents’ federal crimes.

    In response to reports that Trump’s team solicited and benefited from foreign interference in the presidential election, the Protecting Our Democracy Act would require political committees to disclose contact with foreign agents to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

    The package has now been sent to the Senate, where it stands little chance of passing due to Republican opposition and the GOP’s continued fealty to Trump. However, supporters of the bill say that it could eventually be broken up, so at least some proposals in the bill could pass into law.

    Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California), who introduced the bill, wrote in The Washington Post that similar anti-corruption bills have precedent in Congress. He pointed to laws that Congress passed after President Richard Nixon resigned, which bolstered transparency and ethics laws and empowered inspectors general to seek out and act on corruption.

    “These post-Watergate reforms and others did a great deal to preserve the balance of power for much of the past half-century, even if successive presidents wore them down,” Schiff wrote. “Then came the election of Donald Trump. During the course of his four years in office, many of the Nixon-era norms were broken down, exposing new vulnerabilities to our democracy.”

    Schiff highlights the time Attorney General William Barr reduced Trump ally Roger Stone’s sentence and had the administration drop charges against Trump adviser Michael Flynn, blurring the line between the politics of the president and the Department of Justice. Schiff’s bill would require the disclosure of interactions between the White House and Justice Department. It would also create safeguards for whistleblowers and inspectors general after Trump fired a number of government watchdogs for personal and political reasons.

    “The list of Trump administration presidential abuses is nearly endless,” Schiff wrote. “This is why Congress needs a new set of democracy-affirming reforms. Indeed, because the Trumpian abuses of power are far more sweeping than anything undertaken by Nixon — and ultimately led to a violent attack on our Capitol — the need for stronger guardrails is greater than ever.”

    The bill includes several amendments introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York). The amendments extend nepotism guidelines to the president’s executive office and codify a Joe Biden executive order that took aim at the “revolving door” between federal government posts and private sector positions that seek to influence government policy.

    Progressive lawmakers and advocates lauded the bill’s passage. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) highlighted that the bill “will restore our system of checks and balances, protect our elections, & bolster congressional oversight.”

    Government watchdog Public Citizen also praised the bill, saying that its anti-corruption measures should transcend political infighting. “This legislation should never be viewed as a Democratic or Republican bill,” said Craig Holman, Public Citizen government affairs lobbyist. “[I]t is democracy legislation.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez Celebrate Starbucks Workers’ Historic Union Victory

    Starbucks employees celebrate after unionization votes are counted, on December 9, 2021 in Buffalo, New York.

    Progressive lawmakers are celebrating after Starbucks workers in Buffalo triumphed over nearly insurmountable odds to form the company’s first-ever union on Thursday, a sign that the reawakening U.S. labor movement is growing stronger.

    Workers at the Elmwood location in Buffalo voted overwhelmingly to form a union, 19 to 8. One store, Camp Road, voted against unionizing; the count from Genesee Street, the third location whose votes were slated to be counted on Thursday, has not yet been finalized by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). As of the unofficial count, however, the union is ahead 15 to 9, not counting seven challenged ballots. The union is confident that the vote will end up going their way.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) congratulated Elmwood workers for “the HISTORIC achievement of organizing the first-ever union at a company-owned Starbucks in the U.S.” He continued to criticize Starbucks, saying, “The company should stop pouring money into the fight against the union and negotiate a fair contract now.”

    The company poured a multitude of resources into its fight against the union, sending high-level executives to Buffalo to surveil and intimidate workers, holding mandatory meetings to promote anti-union propaganda, and telling workers to vote no. As More Perfect Union uncovered, the company was so desperate to union bust that it fired an employee with cancer because she was uncovering the company’s shady union-busting tactics.

    Sanders said that the workers’ efforts were inspiring, especially in the face of such strong opposition. “Workers with [Starbucks Workers United] made history today. They are a tremendous inspiration and it is so encouraging to see people all over the country standing up for themselves and each other,” he wrote. “In solidarity, together, working people can achieve the dignity they deserve.”

    In a tweet celebrating the workers’ effort, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) also highlighted the company’s union-busting campaign. “Hell yeah! Nothing like the smell of union coffee in the morning,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Congrats to [Starbucks Workers United] in Buffalo for making the first unionized Starbucks in the US! When we visited last month, workers shared the immense pressure they were under. Proud of them for pulling through.”

    Even after Elmwood was unionized, Starbucks corporate sent a letter expressing its disappointment over the vote. “I am saddened that in the end the majority of you decided it was best for Workers United to represent you to myself, your District Manager and your Store Managers,” wrote Starbucks district manager Michaela Murphy in a letter to Elmwood. “Everything we love most about Starbucks is the direct relationship we have to each of you and our ability to work together to create a better tomorrow.” Murphy then claimed that the union campaign was “divisive” for the staff.

    In response, Starbucks Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, pointed out the company’s hypocrisy. “We ask them to live up to the company’s Mission & Values and collaborate with us, instead of continuing to change our work environment by trying to pit partners against partners in our store and third-partying our union,” the union wrote.

    Still, the win is a tremendous one for the labor movement, which has been in the midst of a resurgence in recent months and years. Last month, John Deere workers voted for a new contract after a 10,000 person, month-long strike. Nearly 100,000 workers were on strike at the same time in October, with union members across many industries fighting for better working conditions as the pandemic rages on.

    Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) encouraged labor activists to continue fighting in a post on Twitter, saying, “Let’s unionize the whole country, and the world! Then let’s make these companies worker owned!”

    The Congressional Progressive Caucus also feted the win, offering congratulations to the workers and promoting the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize amid a time of decreasing union membership. “Every worker in the country should have the right to organize and join a union,” the caucus wrote. “It’s just one more reason we need to abolish the filibuster and pass the PRO Act in the Senate.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Report: Borrowers Will Lose $85 Billion Yearly If Student Loan Payments Resume

    Flanked by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Ilhan Omar, Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks during a press conference about student debt outside the U.S. Capitol on February 4, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    If student loan payments are allowed to resume without mass debt cancellation, borrowers will lose out on billions of dollars monthly, according to a new report done on behalf of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts).

    The Roosevelt Institute analysis finds that while the payment pause has helped borrowers save money and even accrue interest, it will cost them over $7 billion a month if payments resume in February. This translates to $85 billion annually.

    Restarting payments will especially impact Black and Latinx people, who hold disproportionate amounts of student loans and who struggle to repay those loans at higher rates. Another recent Roosevelt Institute analysis found that canceling up to $50,000 of student debt per borrower would increase Black Americans’ wealth by 40 percent.

    Canceling student debt could have wide-ranging positive effects for the economy, adding over $173 billion to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product in the first year alone.

    Warren, Schumer and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) cited the report to renew their call for President Joe Biden to extend the payment pause and cancel up to $50,000 of student debt. On Wednesday, the lawmakers sent a letter to the White House saying that they want to present “alarming new information” on the loan repayment resumption.

    “In order to prevent the student debt crisis from dragging down on our economic recovery, undermining the effectiveness of the American Rescue Plan, and causing unnecessary pain and stress for American families, we strongly urge you to extend the pause on student loan payments and interest and act to cancel student debt,” the lawmakers wrote.

    The Roosevelt Institute also urged Biden to take action on student loans in their report, saying that “the Biden administration should take the lessons learned from the student loan payment pause and implement a full cancellation of student debt via executive order.”

    Because the economy is still unstable for many lower- and middle-income Americans, resuming student loan payments could result in major financial disruption for borrowers. A recent survey of over 33,700 people by the Student Debt Crisis Center found that 89 percent of borrowers were not financially secure enough to resume student loan payments, which averaged nearly $400 a month before the pandemic.

    These payments present a significant financial burden to borrowers. Over a quarter of respondents said that a third of their income or more will go toward payments, while a tenth of respondents said that payments will cost at least half of their income.

    Lawmakers have said that the pandemic is still affecting the economy — and they’ve also argued that the emergence of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is reason enough to extend the pandemic repayment pause. Researchers are still studying the new variant, but officials say it may require an additional booster dose of COVID vaccines.

    This latest letter is the continuation of more than a dozen efforts by Warren and other lawmakers this year to urge Biden to take action on student loans. On the campaign trail, Biden promised to cancel up to $10,000 of student debt per borrower.

    Biden hasn’t just failed to cancel student debt; his administration has also lied about the existence of an Education Department memo on the subject. Earlier this year, Biden’s Chief of Staff Ron Klain said that the Education Department would be examining the issue and releasing their opinion on whether or not Biden has the authority to cancel student debt.

    That memo was never released, and for months, the administration has said that they don’t have any information on its contents. The memo’s existence was only made public through a Freedom of Information Act filed by debt activists — and it was dated April 8, meaning that the administration has had the memo for months and kept it secret from the public.

    So far, the Biden administration’s only step toward student loan relief has been to extend the student loan repayment pause until the end of January next year. With less than two months until payments are scheduled to begin again, and with the administration’s relative weakness on other pandemic protections like the eviction moratorium, it’s unclear whether Biden is planning to take action.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Buffalo Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form First-Ever Starbucks Union

    Starbucks workers wait for the vote count by the National Labor Relations Board on December 9, 2021.

    In a historic victory for the labor movement, workers at one of Starbucks’s 9,000 corporate-owned locations have voted to form the first-ever Starbucks union in the country, after facing tough opposition and union-busting efforts from the company.

    Workers at the Elmwood location in Buffalo voted 19 to 8 in favor of unionizing under Starbucks Workers United, which is under the Service Employees International Union. Camp Road, the second store whose votes were being counted on Thursday, voted against the union 12 to 8.

    Genesee Street, a store by the Buffalo airport, had several ballots that were disputed by the union and the company; as of Thursday, these ballots were not yet counted. Three other stores in the Buffalo area are in the midst of the unionization process but have not yet held an election.

    The union drive has garnered national attention, with the support of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York). Sanders congratulated Starbucks workers for their win on Thursday and called unionizing workers an “inspiration” at a town hall to support the drive earlier this week.

    For years, Starbucks workers have spoken out about poor labor conditions, including issues with chronic understaffing, which were only intensified by the pandemic. Workers hope to negotiate for higher pay, better benefits, sick leave and more.

    Employees previously told Truthout’s Candice Bernd that the pandemic has exacerbated already-hectic working conditions, with the company giving out fewer and fewer incentives even while it posts high profits as pandemic restrictions ease. Workers — or “partners,” as Starbucks refers to them — have also said that the company is sending waves of new employees to unionizing locations.

    In the last month alone, employees have said that the company added around 30 new workers to unionizing locations in order to dilute the vote. According to Vice, Genesee Street is one of those locations.

    The company has taken other steps in fighting hard against the union drive, resorting to tactics like filing a last-minute delay request in the union election, holding mandatory anti-union meetings and outright telling employees to vote “no.” The company has also sent former CEO Howard Schultz to speak to employees in relation to the drive and has deployed executives in undercover roles to talk to and surveil employees in unionizing stores.

    In October, the company closed two unionizing locations for reasons it claimed were unrelated to the union drive. But workers disagreed, saying that it was an attempt to throw off organizing efforts.

    Part of what allowed organizers to prevail was holding the company accountable to its own stated values, some workers said. Despite repeatedly taking steps that likely impede upon its workers’ right to form a union, Starbucks often claims to be a progressive company.

    “Partners are standing up to say, ‘No, the company needs to be better. That’s why we came to this company in the first place, because it said it would be better,’” Camp Road shift supervisor Gianna Reeve told Truthout’s Bernd. “Essentially, put your money where your mouth is.”

    The union formation is a watershed moment in the U.S. labor movement, which has been in the midst of a resurgence. It comes as other union drives have recently fallen victim to union-busting efforts by corporate behemoths, like the unionization effort of Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Calls for Boycott Grow After Kellogg Says It’s Permanently Replacing Strikers

    Kellogg's Cereal plant workers demonstrate in front of the plant on October 7, 2021, in Battle Creek, Michigan.

    Kellogg has announced that it is planning to permanently replace 1,400 workers who have been striking since October, after failing to offer a satisfactory deal to the union.

    Earlier this week, workers rejected a five-year deal that offered 3 percent raises and cost of living adjustments further along in the contract. The deal failed to remedy problems created by the two-tiered wage system that allows the company to offer less pay and worse benefits to newer hires, a tier that currently applies to about 30 percent of the cereal plants’ employees.

    “The members have spoken. The strike continues,” said Anthony Shelton, President of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. “The International Union will continue to provide full support to our striking Kellogg’s members.”

    Workers have been demanding higher raises, saying that they often work more than 80 hours a week. According to union representatives, the company’s latest offer wouldn’t let new workers reach a higher, legacy pay level for as long as nine years. The offer also would have limited the proportion of plant workers who would be eligible for pay raises to only 3 percent.

    Kellogg has refused to comply with workers’ demands for over a year now — and workers at four plants in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Tennessee have been striking since October 5. Labor advocates have been calling for a boycott of the company’s products while workers are striking, calls that have been amplified in light of Kellogg’s recent announcement. People on the “antiwork” subreddit have also been attempting to sabotage their hiring system so that potential replacement workers’ applications can’t get through.

    Sending in permanent replacement workers to disrupt a strike is potentially illegal; companies aren’t allowed to replace workers who are protesting unfair labor practices and can only replace so-called economic strikers if there is a “legitimate and substantial business justification” for doing so, as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo recently pointed out.

    However, there is no requirement for employers to prove that their justification for replacing the workers is legitimate, meaning that companies can do so essentially without recourse. Even when companies are found to be violating labor laws, punishments are often little more than a slap on the wrist.

    Permanently replacing workers who are striking is also generally regarded as an act of repression against workers who are exercising their right to protest for better working conditions. Some labor relations experts have cast doubt on whether or not the company will even be able to find enough workers willing to cross the picket line.

    “By voting ‘no,’ the workers are making a strong statement that they are not satisfied by the agreement, but they are also signaling they believe they have the leverage that’s needed to win more,” Rutgers labor professor Todd Vachon told CBS.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) criticized the company for the move on Wednesday. “When Kellogg’s employees worked 7 days a week during the pandemic to feed America they were called ‘heroes,’” Sanders wrote. “Today, despite big profits, the company is trying to break their strike by bringing in permanent replacements and sending 275 jobs to Mexico. Let’s stand with the workers.”

    Sanders is among a number of Democratic and progressive lawmakers who are trying to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, legislation that would strengthen labor laws, make it easier to form a union, and explicitly outlaw permanently replacing striking workers. Advocates say that by making replacing workers illegal, the PRO Act would help to restore workers’ right to strike.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Warren Slams Hertz for Raising Prices 147 Percent While Pursuing $2B in Buybacks

    Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) speaks during a Senate Finance Committee meeting Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on October 19, 2021.

    On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) sent a letter to Hertz, criticizing the car rental company for proposing a $2 billion stock buyback plan that would line the pockets of executives and the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, directly after the company exited bankruptcy.

    The letter comes at a time of skyrocketing rental car prices, which Hertz has been taking advantage of. An analysis cited by Warren’s office found that while rental car and truck prices increased by 39 percent between 2020 and 2021, Hertz’s prices have risen even higher. In August, the company was charging a median price of about $114 a day — 147 percent higher than their rate before the pandemic.

    Last May, the company filed for bankruptcy after the car rental industry was hit hard by the pandemic. Hertz laid off or furloughed 20,000 employees — just after paying out $16 million in bonuses to executives — as it dealt with debt that it had already accumulated before the pandemic. The company exited bankruptcy in June, just over a year after it filed, and paid out $3 million in bonuses to executives shortly after.

    In November, nearly five months later, the company announced plans for a new program to buy back up to $2 billion worth of stocks, which is nearly 20 percent of the company’s market cap. Hertz’s shares rose by 6.8 percent immediately following the announcement.

    Warren has slammed this decision, saying that the buyback program will pad executives’ and Apollo’s pockets “at the expense of customers and the long-term health of the company,” giving a 70 percent annualized return to the private equity firm that had just invested in the company in order to help pull it out of bankruptcy.

    “This decision, and other actions taken before and after their bankruptcy process, reveals that the company is happy to reward executives, company insiders, and big shareholders while stiffing consumers with record-high rental car costs and ignoring the recent history that nearly wiped out the company,” Warren wrote in the letter.

    “Hertz executives were inexplicably rewarded on both sides of this bankruptcy,” Warren continued. “But consumers are footing the bill… Consumers are struggling to make ends meet as costs rise throughout the economy and Hertz owes the public an explanation for this corporate greed.”

    Warren concluded her letter by demanding answers about how the buyback plan will affect the company’s health and how much executives and board members will benefit. She also asked if the company is considering potential risks posed to the industry due to the Omicron variant of COVID-19, and whether the buyback program is a risk the company can afford to take.

    Likely partially as a result of their sky-high prices, Hertz has been posting record profits, making $2.2 billion in total revenue in the third quarter of 2021 alone. Meanwhile, customers have reported struggling to get rental cars at a reasonable price — or even to get one at all, regardless of whether they’ve made a reservation. Car production has been causing shortages in rental car availability, and rental companies are evidently taking advantage of that in spades.

    The rental vehicle industry isn’t alone in taking advantage of the fragile COVID economy to increase prices. Other corporations have been taking advantage of the economy to pad their profits, disguising rising prices as inflation. But in reality, while production costs for many companies have gone up, data shows that corporations have been absorbing these costs, reaching into consumers’ pockets to pay for the higher costs and then some.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Senate Rejects Sanders’s Resolution to Block $650M Weapons Sale to Saudi Arabia

    Sen. Bernie Sanders looks at reporters while stepping into a car

    The Senate voted against a bipartisan resolution to block a $650 million weapons sale to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, rejecting a bid by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and progressive and Republican lawmakers to stop the sale.

    The resolution was voted down 67 to 30. Most Republicans voted against the resolution, except for Senators Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Mike Lee (Utah), who had teamed up with Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and others in the Democratic caucus to introduce the measure. Seven Democrats joined Republicans in voting no.

    Advocates of the resolution say the weapons sale will help Saudi Arabia advance its brutal blockade of Yemen, which is at the center of one of the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crises as a result of the war between Houthi rebels and the U.S.-backed Saudi coalition. Although aid groups are attempting to assist the roughly 20.7 million Yemenis — nearly 80 percent of the country’s population — who urgently need humanitarian assistance, the Saudi aerial blockade of the Sanaa airport has been preventing aid from reaching citizens. Meanwhile, Yemen’s economy is on the verge of collapse.

    Human rights groups and Yemeni-led advocacy organizations have condemned the weapons sale, and recently sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to pass the resolution. Hassan El-Tayyab, the director of Middle East policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, told Truthout that approving the arms sale “sends a message of impunity” to Saudi Arabia and removes key leverage that the U.S. could use to end the war.

    If Saudi Arabia were to end its blockade on the Sanaa airport, El-Tayyab said, Houthi forces would likely have little motivation to continue cross-border attacks. “For the U.S. to continue the support of Saudi Arabia for their defensive concerns, while not fully embracing the diplomacy needed to lift the blockade and end the aerial bombardment, we are essentially not addressing the root cause of the problem,” El-Tayyab said, adding that so-called “defensive” equipment in the sale could also be used to enforce the blockade.

    In a joint statement released by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Ilhan Omar and caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Washington) said the blockade has almost completely blocked medical supplies from entering the war-torn country. The blockade has also “amounted to a death sentence” for Yemenis seeking care abroad, they said.

    “The world’s largest humanitarian crisis is escalating. Last month, Saudi Arabia tightened its blockade on Yemen, permitting just 3 percent of the fuel the country needs into Yemen’s major port,” the lawmakers wrote. “Saudi warplanes enforce a blockade on Yemen’s airspace, threatening to shoot down commercial and humanitarian flights.”

    Ahead of the vote, the White House released a Statement of Administration Policy — a more forceful version of a regular statement — saying that the administration “strongly opposes” the resolution. This goes against promises Biden made during his presidential campaign, when he vowed to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” in response to the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident killed by a team of Saudi agents in 2018.

    “I would end the subsidies that we have, end the sale of material to the Saudis, who are going in and they’re murdering children and they’re murdering innocent people, and so they have to be held accountable,” Biden said at the time.

    In the statement, the White House claimed that the arms sale will only go toward defensive actions for Saudi Arabia, therefore, it won’t contradict Biden’s previous pledge to help end the war. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), a longtime critic of Saudi Arabia’s role in the war, also voted against blocking the sale, citing the same reasons as the White House.

    The arms sale divided the Democratic caucus, with only a handful of lawmakers siding with Biden and voting against the resolution.

    “The United States must do everything in our power to bring this brutal and horrific war to an end,” Sanders said on the Senate floor before the vote on Tuesday. “Exporting more missiles to Saudi Arabia does nothing but further this conflict and pour more gasoline on an already raging fire.”

    “Why in the world would the United States reward such a regime which has caused such pain in Yemen with more weapons?” Sanders asked. “My friends, the answer is we should not.”

    Paul also condemned the sale before the vote. “We could stop this war if we really had the will to do it,” Paul said. “All of America should be appalled at the humanitarian disaster caused by the Saudi blockade of Yemen.” When the resolution was introduced, Paul said the sale, if allowed to advance, would send a message to Saudi Arabia that their “reprehensible behavior” should be rewarded.

    The U.S. has provided the Saudi-led coalition with billions of dollars in weapons, training and military support, playing an instrumental role in the destruction of Yemen for nearly seven years. Donald Trump in particular was determined to support Saudi Arabia, going so far as to veto several bipartisan measures to stop weapons sales to the country during his tenure. In 2018, Sanders and allied Republicans led the Senate in passing a historic war powers resolution to end the U.S. role in the war, which was not authorized by Congress. The resolution died in the GOP-controlled House.

    The $650 million sale will go on despite the wishes of the American public, which largely disapproves of the sale. A Data for Progress poll found that 64 percent of likely voters oppose the sale, with opposition nearly even across political affiliations.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ayanna Pressley Introduces Resolution to Remove Lauren Boebert From Committees

    Rep. Ayanna Pressley

    After inaction from Democratic leaders in the House, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) introduced a resolution on Wednesday to strip Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) of her committee assignments for repeatedly waging Islamophobic attacks against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota).

    As first reported by The Washington Post, Pressley is hoping that the resolution’s introduction will force leadership to take action on Boebert’s Islamophobia. Democratic leaders have been relatively quiet on the issue, condemning Boebert’s comments but so far not taking public action to pursue a formal punishment for the far right lawmaker. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) has indicated that Republicans won’t be penalizing Boebert.

    The resolution doesn’t carry a “privileged” status, meaning that there is nothing forcing House leaders to consider the resolution immediately; it’s up to Democratic leaders to decide when, if ever, to take up the resolution. Omar has said that she’s confident that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) will take action this week.

    “For a Member of Congress to repeatedly use hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric and Islamophobic tropes towards a Muslim colleague is dangerous,” Pressley said. “It has no place in our society and it diminishes the honor of the institution we serve in.”

    “Without meaningful accountability for that Member’s actions, we risk normalizing this behavior and endangering the lives of our Muslim colleagues, Muslim staffers and every Muslim who calls America home,” Pressley went on. “The House must unequivocally condemn this incendiary rhetoric and immediately pass this resolution. How we respond in moments like these will have lasting impacts, and history will remember us for it.”

    The measure is cosponsored by 18 Democrats, including progressive “squad” members Representatives Jamaal Bowman (New York), Cori Bush (Missouri), Pramila Jayapal (Washington), Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York), and others like Representatives Judy Chu (California) and Jimmy Gomez (California).

    “We must be assured that no member is above accountability, and Republican leadership has failed to deliver any such accountability for Boebert,” said Bush. “It is time for Democratic leadership to act and pass our resolution to not only protect Rep. Omar, but the livelihoods and lives of Muslim communities around our country.”

    It’s unclear if the resolution would pass if brought to a vote. As of last week, at least 40 Democrats have signed statements calling for Boebert to be stripped from committees.

    After extremist right wing Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) posted a video depicting an anime version of him killing Ocasio-Cortez, the House took swift action to punish him, voting to censure him and remove him from committee assignments a little more than a week after the video was posted. In that instance, Gosar refused to apologize and faced additional calls to be expelled.

    Although Boebert did issue a weak apology to Omar, she has shown little remorse for her comments. Since the apology, the far right lawmaker has doubled down on her hateful rhetoric, even as more videos have emerged showing her making similar Islamophobic comments about Omar.

    The original video of Boebert’s hateful comments was released late last month, about 11 days ago as of Wednesday. While recounting a story about being in an elevator with Omar — which Omar later said never happened — Boebert implied that Omar was a terrorist. A video from a separate event shows Boebert calling Omar a terrorist directly, and accusing her of being a terrorist sympathizer.

    “This is why so many Muslims across the country have reached out to our office and to other members of Congress. Because they know that, when anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia is unaddressed, it’s the Muslim community that ends up paying for it,” Omar said on MSNBC on Tuesday.

    “I just want to make people understand how dangerous the usage of her words can be, because I am afraid that somebody like the people who have been leaving voicemails [for] my office will feel compelled to come and take out the terrorist,” she continued, referring to death threats she received after Boebert’s comments went public. “And that is not only endangering my life, but that’s endangering other Muslims.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Republicans Are So Determined to Obstruct Debt Limit, They’re Bucking McConnell

    From left, Sen. Tim Scott, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Steve Daines, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Sen. John Thune hold a news conference on Capitol Hill on July 21, 2021.

    Two months after Republicans allowed a vote on raising the debt ceiling to cover spending through mid-December, the party is once again using obstructionist tactics to gain paltry political points, jeopardizing the health of the entire U.S. economy in the process.

    This time, Republicans are going to even further extremes to threaten a debt default and subsequent recession, bucking a plan formed through negotiations with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) to pass the debt ceiling raise. The plan proposes passing the debt ceiling raise through Congress’s defense appropriations bill or creating a new process that would allow the debt ceiling to be raised with a simple majority of 51 votes.

    Instead, some Republicans are insisting — as they did earlier this year — that Democrats pass the raise through the reconciliation bill, a process that would likely take weeks.

    On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) told NBC that there wouldn’t be 10 Republicans who would agree to McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-New York) proposed rule change for a simple majority vote on the debt limit. “I think Democrats should raise the debt limit through reconciliation,” he said.

    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D-California) has rejected the idea to pass the debt limit through the defense bill. “Funding our troops through the NDAA should in no way, shape, or form be tied to the debt limit in process or substance,” he tweeted on Monday.

    GOP senators were similarly recalcitrant. “So if I vote for the NDAA, people are gonna say I voted to raise the debt limit? I’m not for that,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said.

    Republicans have rationalized their opposition to raising the debt ceiling by saying that they refuse to fund spending from Democrats. But in reality, the current debts that need to be paid were racked up by Donald Trump and Republicans, who amassed nearly $8 trillion in debt during Trump’s four years in office. This is more than any other president added to the deficit, with the exception of George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who were funding expensive war efforts.

    Without the defense bill or simple majority vote avenues, Democrats have very few options left to raise the debt ceiling. In effectively rejecting all options other than the one that they favor — one that would likely allow Republicans to smear Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterms — they are backing Democrats into a corner to force their hand on the raise, or else be blamed for the economic crisis that will follow.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has estimated that the country will be forced to default on its debts next week on December 15. If the country defaults on its loans for the first time in U.S. history, Yellen and economists have warned that a recession would result almost automatically.

    The subsequent economic downturn, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics, could cost nearly 6 million jobs and would plummet household wealth by $15 trillion. It would also lead to long-term effects on borrowing rates and would have a disastrous effect on the U.S.’s credit rating. Moody’s economists have called this scenario “cataclysmic.”

    This isn’t the first time that Republicans have threatened economic disaster over the debt ceiling. In 2011 and 2013, the party waged similar efforts. Both times resulted in economic turmoil; in 2011, Republicans’ efforts created a set of “hyperaustere” spending limits, The New Republic pointed out.

    Democrats do have another option for raising the debt ceiling, however. Eliminating the filibuster would allow the party to pass the debt ceiling and anything else they want through a simple majority vote. However, as months of negotiations over even the smallest proposals in the reconciliation bill have shown, conservative Democrats who favor keeping the filibuster are unwilling to budge on the issue, even in the face of disaster.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • $18 Minimum Wage May Soon Be on the Ballot in California

    Joe Sanberg speaks at a press conference at LA County + USC Medical Center on April 14, 2020, in Los Angeles, California.

    Progressive activist Joe Sanberg has filed a ballot initiative in California to raise the minimum wage in the state to $18 an hour, potentially signalling that organizers in the nearly decade-long Fight for $15 movement are changing the goalposts.

    The Living Wage Act of 2022 was filed with the California attorney general’s office last week, as first reported by the Los Angeles Times. Sanberg, an early investor in Blue Apron and founder of CalEITC4Me, which helps eligible Californians enroll for the Earned Income Tax Credit, has vowed to fund a campaign to gather enough signatures to get the initiative on the ballot in November of next year.

    The bill filing comes just as the state is set to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour for large businesses, starting in January. The wage increase will extend to all businesses in 2023 — right when the Living Wage Act, if passed, would kick in and begin gradually raising the minimum wage to $18 an hour across the board. After that, the wage would continue to rise as the cost of living in the state increases.

    Sanberg has long advocated for a higher minimum wage. At least once a week, he tweets about a figure from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which shows that the federal minimum wage would be $24 if it had kept up with productivity since it was established in 1968 — though some economists on the left point out that the minimum wage would actually be nearly $32 an hour if inflation is factored in.

    “If you work full time, you should be able to live with full financial security, and that’s not the case in California,” Sanberg told the Los Angeles Times. “We were a leader in pushing for a $15 minimum wage, but now we have to move the ball forward and farther. It’s overdue for $18.”

    Indeed, California has been at the forefront of the fight to raise the minimum wage to $15, a longtime goal for labor advocates and the New York fast food workers who began the Fight for $15 in 2012.

    But, according to the MIT living wage calculator, a living wage in California for a single adult with no children is $18.66 an hour — meaning that even $15 an hour isn’t a living wage in the state. A living wage for an adult with one child, meanwhile, is $40.34 — or about $84,000 a year, a far cry from the roughly $31,000 a year made by full time workers with a $15 wage.

    The $18 an hour wage would come closer to a living wage for the state, though it’s likely that inflation will push up the cost of living by the time the wage is implemented. Still, it’s closer to a living wage than $15 an hour.

    California’s minimum wage has been increasing since 2016 and is currently $14 an hour for big companies and $13 an hour for small companies.

    “The job will be done when everyone who works full time can afford life’s basic needs,” Sanberg told the Los Angeles Times, pointing out that the minimum wage should be closer to $24 hourly.

    On Twitter, Sanberg noted that the minimum wage disproportionately affects people of color. “Too many in CA — including essential workers -– are paid so little, they can’t afford life’s basic needs. Because of systemic inequity baked into the state, workers of color are much more likely to be paid poverty wages,” he said. “It’s time for a change. We’re raising the wage to $18.”

    Nina Turner, a progressive who recently ran against Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) for Brown’s seat in the house, tweeted in support of Sanberg’s initiative on Monday. “It’s unacceptable that millions of minimum wage workers in our country can’t afford life’s basic needs,” she wrote. “True wage justice means *every* worker can live a life of dignity. In places like California, $15 isn’t enough. Will do all I can to make this a reality.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Justice Department Sues Texas Over Racist Congressional Maps

    Attorney General Merrick B. Garland speaks at a press conference at the Department of Justice on December 06, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

    On Monday, the Department of Justice announced that it is suing Texas over Republicans’ newly-drawn congressional maps, which marginalize Latinx people and other nonwhite communities while giving disproportionate influence to white voters.

    In its lawsuit, the Justice Department says that the Texas legislature “refused to recognize the State’s growing [non-white] electorate” in their new congressional maps, which they drew in an “extraordinarily rapid and opaque legislative process.” The maps, which were signed into law in October, were rammed through the legislature by the state’s Republican majority.

    “This is not the first time Texas has acted to minimize the voting rights of its minority citizens. Decade after decade, Texas has enacted redistricting plans that violate the Voting Rights Act,” the Justice Department wrote. “In enacting its 2021 Congressional and House plans, the State has again diluted the voting strength of minority Texans and continued its refusal to comply with the Voting Rights Act.”

    This is the second time that the Department of Justice has sued Texas over voter suppression in a little over a month. In November, the agency charged that the state Republicans’ marquee voter suppression bill, S.B. 1, limited the voting rights of people with disabilities and elderly people. The bill outlawed drive-through and 24-hour voting, measures that had greatly expanded voting access for marginalized groups.

    The Department of Justice joins voting rights groups that have also sued the state over its new district map. These groups similarly argue that the map violates the Voting Rights Act by diminishing people of color’s voting power in the state.

    The new map creates two additional heavily Republican-leaning congressional districts, meaning that — if the map is upheld by courts — there will be 24 heavily-Republican districts, one competitive district and only 13 Democratic districts in the state.

    Though non-Latinx white people make up only about 41 percent of the state’s population, they are a majority in 60 percent of congressional districts in the new map. Meanwhile, Latinx people are a majority in only 18 percent of districts, despite making up 40 percent of the population. Under the new map, Black, Asian, and other populations don’t represent a majority in any district.

    These maps have also marginalized the state’s new residents, 95 percent of whom are people of color. Although the state will be gaining two seats in the House due to recent population growth, Republicans are giving white voters a majority over both new districts in Houston and Austin — a move that the Department of Justice has rebuked in its lawsuit.

    Republicans “surgically excised minority communities from the core of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (DFW) by attaching them to heavily Anglo rural counties, some more than a hundred miles away, placing them in a congressional district where they would lack equal electoral opportunity,” the agency wrote.

    The party has marginalized these voters despite the fact that many of the people that politicians would consider Latinx voted for Donald Trump in 2020. (Notably, many of the so-called Latinx people in Texas label themselves as Tejanos.) But despite wins in South Texas, Trump still lost the Latinx vote in the state overall, according to exit polls.

    Regardless of political affiliations, however, it seems Republicans are set on taking extreme measures to suppress nonwhite voters, even when those measures are based on bunk conspiracy theories. For instance, S.B. 1 creates a monthly review for voter rolls to ensure that undocumented immigrants aren’t registered to vote. This rule was made after Trump lied by saying that undocumented people were voting en masse.

    The last time Texas did a sweep of its voter rolls was in 2019, when Secretary of State David Whitley ordered a review of nearly 100,000 voters to check for noncitizens. After voting rights groups sued the state, alleging that the review violated voting rights protections, the state gave up its search.

    Whitley instructed officials not to take action on the list of people that his office had categorized as “possible non-U.S. citizens.” It’s unclear what methodology Whitley’s office used to create that list, but voting rights advocates noted that the very concept behind the project was discriminatory.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Oil and Gas Industry Profits Climbed as Americans Faced High Gas Prices in 2021

    View of an oil refinery at night

    The fossil fuel industry experienced a boom in profits during the first nine months of 2021, raking in tens of billions of dollars as Americans faced a jump in gas prices.

    A new report by Accountable.US shows that 24 top oil and gas companies made $174 billion in profits between January and September, lining shareholders’ and CEOs’ pockets. Sixteen of those companies raised their dividend at least once in 2021, the report found, and most of their CEOs had compensation packages of over $10 million.

    Companies like Exxon and Chevron have posted high profits in the third quarter of 2021; in just four months, the 24 companies made $74 billion in profits. Exxon alone reported making $6.9 billion in the third quarter, a 60 percent increase in revenue from the same time last year and its highest profits for four years.

    Meanwhile, gas prices have hit a seven-year high during the third quarter especially, increasing by 50 percent in just a year — amounting to an average of $3.40 per gallon in the U.S. — even as wholesale prices have gone down. This has helped pad profits for the oil and gas companies as increased demand drives higher gas prices after pandemic restrictions have been lifted.

    Critics of the oil and gas industry say that the high gas prices are by design, as oil and gas companies haven’t been replenishing fuel supplies to meet high demand. Conservative politicians have deceptively tried to blame high gas prices on President Joe Biden’s climate policies, despite the fact that the president’s climate approach has been tepid at best. But sustainable energy groups like the International Energy Agency have said that high prices are thanks to “the deliberate policies of energy producers.”

    From a climate perspective, more oil and gas production is not to be cheered — but the oil and gas industry has little incentive to shrink the fuel supply due to the climate crisis, and wouldn’t raise prices for that reason. Instead, the industry is likely manipulating costs because gas prices typically have little effect on demand and are not likely to drive down usage. This also means that middle- and- lower-income people with few alternatives for transportation will be hurt the most by these prices, as they continue to experience high levels of hardship nearly two years into the pandemic.

    “As Americans make sacrifices to cover high gas prices, oil and gas corporations are raking in billions that they then use to shower mega-rich CEOs and shareholders with more money,” Accountable.US wrote in its report. “Rather than increase production or reinvest to meet the energy demand increase caused by the world reemerging from COVID-19 lockdowns, oil and gas companies are taking advantage of bloated prices, fleecing American families along the way.”

    The Biden administration has taken note of oil and gas companies’ increased profits. “[T]he oil and gas companies are not flipping the switch as quickly as the demand requires,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

    Last month, Biden asked the Federal Trade Commission to examine potential “anti-consumer behavior” by the industry, pointing out the discrepancy between high prices and low wholesale costs. “This unexplained large gap between the price of unfinished gasoline and the average price at the pump is well above the pre-pandemic average,” he wrote.

    The industry’s actions regarding natural gas prices also lend credence to the idea that the companies are acting deliberately to pad their pockets. Recent reporting found that energy companies were exporting record amounts of natural gas while limiting supply domestically ahead of the winter, as utilities are stocking up. Gas bills are projected to rise to 30 percent higher than last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) pushed energy companies to explain their exporting practices last month, criticizing their “corporate greed.”

    “The cause of rapidly rising energy prices for consumers and manufacturers is clear: some of the nation’s largest and most profitable oil and gas companies are putting their massive profits, share prices and dividends for investors, and millions of dollars in CEO pay and bonuses ahead of the needs of American consumers and the nation’s recovery from the pandemic,” Warren wrote in a letter to the nation’s largest natural gas producers.

    The oil and gas industry isn’t the only industry taking advantage of the American public to pad their pockets during this time of economic turmoil. Corporations have seen huge increases in profits this year, which consumer advocates say is because companies are exploiting media cycles about inflation to raise prices precipitously.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Administration Is Approving Oil and Gas Drilling at Faster Rate Than Trump

    Joe Biden coughs into his hand at a podium

    Despite pledging to stop permitting oil and gas drilling on federal lands, President Joe Biden’s administration is approving permits at a faster rate than President Donald Trump did during most of his presidency, a new report reveals.

    According to data from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) analyzed by Public Citizen, the agency has approved about 333 drilling permits per month in 2021 since Biden took office. This is a higher rate than was approved under Trump in 2017, 2018 and 2019, though it is 25 percent lower than 2020’s average.

    The analysis, first reported by The Washington Post, shows that Biden has repeatedly broken his promise on the campaign trail to stop permitting on federal lands altogether.

    Permitting rates hit a high this spring and summer, when the administration was on track to beat Trump’s 2020 record of approving 452 projects per month. In July, The Associated Press reported that the Biden administration was on pace to approve drilling at the fastest rate since President George W. Bush was in office.

    Climate advocates have expressed their frustration with the Biden administration in response to the report. “The president has basically only tried to tackle one side of the climate problem,” Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org and director of Fossil Free Media, told The Washington Post. “He’s talked a lot about building clean energy, but he hasn’t done anything to stop fossil fuels. And you need to tackle both sides if we’re going to address this crisis.”

    Biden has made some flashy moves on oil drilling, like revoking the permit for Keystone XL, the pipeline project perhaps most infamous among environmentalists. But that same month, Biden approved Enbridge Energy’s Line 3, a slightly less well-known pipeline project that Indigenous and climate advocates have been fighting for seven years to stop — often putting their bodies on the line in the process.

    In November, the Interior Department recommended raising the fees that oil and gas companies have to pay when drilling on federal lands. This change was panned as trivial by climate and environmental activists, who noted that the fees would likely do little to prevent companies from seeking new drilling projects — especially considering the trillions of dollars in subsidies that the fossil fuel industry receives from governments each year.

    Halting permits for drilling projects is critical to stopping the advent of the climate crisis. Earlier this year, the often conservative International Energy Agency said in a report that if international powers are to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or less, governments must stop permitting new fossil fuel extraction projects this year. Climate advocates have also said that new drilling projects should stop immediately, adding that fossil fuels that have already been extracted shouldn’t be burned either.

    The amount of drilling permits granted by BLM under Biden shows that the president isn’t serious about tackling the climate crisis, advocates have said. “At precisely the moment when we must be forcefully rejecting new drilling, fracking and pipeline infrastructure, Biden isn’t just tolerating fossil fuels – he’s uplifting them,” Wenonah Hauter wrote for The Guardian.

    The administration’s fossil fuel regulators have shown little interest in taking the recommendations of climate advocates seriously. Earlier this year, a landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warned of extremely dire consequences for the climate if action isn’t taken soon. But the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM) wrote that the report “does not present sufficient cause” for the agency to reconsider its drilling permit practices.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • At Least 40 Democrats Are Now Calling for Boebert to Be Removed From Committees

    Rep. Lauren Boebert, center, conducts a news conference with members of the House Freedom Caucus outside the Capitol to oppose the Equality Act on February 25, 2021.

    As Democratic leaders consider their options to punish Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) for her Islamophobic comments toward Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), the list of Democrats calling for Boebert to be removed from her committee assignments is growing.

    On Thursday, 38 progressive lawmakers in the House released a statement in support of the punishment for Boebert. Led by Representatives Jamaal Bowman (D-New York), Cori Bush (D-Missouri), André Carson (D-Indiana) and Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), the lawmakers decried Republican leaders’ tacit endorsement of hate speech against Omar and Muslims across the country.

    Over past weeks, videos have emerged showing Boebert spewing animus toward Omar, implying that the progressive lawmaker is a terrorist and saying that she is part of the so-called “jihad squad,” a bigoted nickname for progressive lawmakers dubbed by Republicans.

    The lawmakers condemned House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) for his silence on the issue, pointing out that Boebert has refused to apologize for her Islamophobic attacks.

    “In the face of death threats and vitriol being spewed at Rep. Omar, Representative Kevin McCarthy (CA-23)’s decision to allow and embolden continued hostility from his members speaks clearly to the Republican party’s willingness to allow hate and division to grow at the expense of our people, our values, and our institutions,” the lawmakers wrote.

    The progressives went on to say that they “refuse to stand by as Islamophobia, anti-Blackness, anti-immigrant sentiment, and xenophobia are trafficked into the halls of Congress by members of the Republican party.” Pursuing disciplinary action against Boebert, they said, is a crucial step towards accountability — not only to Omar and fellow members of Congress, but also to the Muslim community at large.

    “Muslims across the country are looking to Congress at this moment, watching to see if those they sent to represent their interests in Washington are going to stand up in the face of blatant, vicious Islamophobia. We owe it to them… to stand up and show them that their votes to send us here mean something — that our values mean something, and are worth defending,” the statement concluded.

    The 38 lawmakers, including Representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), are joining a growing coalition of Democrats calling for Boebert to be disciplined.

    On Wednesday, leaders of five caucuses also led a call for Boebert’s removal from committees. Jayapal, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), Congressional Asian Pacific American Chair Judy Chu (D-California), Congressional Equality Caucus Chair David Cicilline (D-Rhode Island) and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Raul Ruiz (D-California) joined that call.

    “It should not be a partisan issue to condemn the explicit harassment and dangerous abuse of a colleague based on their religion, but this is the level to which the GOP leader and too many members of the Republican party have sunk,” the caucus chairs wrote.

    Earlier this week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) told reporters that leaders are “considering what action ought to be taken.” But Democratic leaders have since been quiet about the issue, even as Hoyer acknowledged that the “jihad squad” phrase and other similar language by far-right representatives could “inflame the passions” of potentially violent actors.

    Indeed, Omar has said that she received an uptick in death threats due to Boebert’s Islamophobic rhetoric. On Tuesday, the Democrat shared a voicemail she received that appeared to be a direct result of Boebert’s comments being posted and shared online. The caller hurled racist slurs and profanities at Omar, and threatened her life in no uncertain terms.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.