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Category: American Rescue Plan

  • Biden Unveils American Families Plan, Which Would Establish Paid Leave Program

    President Joe Biden speaks on the North Lawn of the White House on April 27, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    The Biden administration released details of its plan to help millions of families across the country through a $1.8 trillion spending bill that would expand child care, make some college education tuition-free, and establish a first-of-its-kind federal paid leave program, among other items.

    The proposal, dubbed the American Families Plan by the White House, is expected to be talked about and promoted to a great extent by President Joe Biden on Wednesday evening, when he gives his first speech in office before a joint session of Congress. Much of the plan will make permanent certain aspects of the legislation that was passed into law earlier this year under the pandemic economic relief act also known as the American Rescue Plan, while other parts of Biden’s proposal will be entirely new.

    The plan, for example, would extend family tax credits that were put into place by the economic relief package that passed in March, which expanded the Child Tax Credit for families from $2,000 per child to $3,600 for families with children under the age of 6 and $3,000 for families with kids from 6 to 17.

    Under the American Rescue Plan passed earlier this year, the Child Tax Credit takes the form of monthly payments of $250 to $300 per child for qualifying families. The American Families Plan that’s now being promoted by the administration would make the expanded tax credit permanent, and would continue the practice of sending monthly payments to families, rather than giving families a credit at tax time.

    The expanded credit, the administration wrote in a document outlining the broad plan, “lifted millions of children out of poverty, made it easier for families to afford child care, and ensured that low-income workers without children would not continue to be taxed into poverty.”

    The administration’s proposal would also seek to make child care free for many households, and offer it at a reduced price for many more.

    “Families will pay only a portion of their income based on a sliding scale,” the White House said. “For the most hard-pressed working families, child care costs for their young children would be fully covered and families earning 1.5 times their state median income will pay no more than 7 percent of their income.”

    Biden’s plan would also seek to invest more in paying child care workers themselves a livable wage. According to the White House, child care workers “are among the most underpaid workers in the country and nearly half receive public income support programs.” The typical child care worker earned around $12.24 per hour last year, the White House explained, but under the proposals in the American Families Plan, investments in child care would increase the wages of those caregivers to a minimum of $15 per hour.

    The proposal also includes a $109 billion plan to make two years of community college free for any person wishing to attend one. If implemented, it would affect about 5.5 million students who would no longer have to pay tuition or fees to get a two-year degree. The plan would be paid for jointly, with the federal government providing 75 percent of the costs and state governments agreeing to pay the remaining 25 percent.

    Biden’s plan would also fund two years of tuition for students enrolled in four-year universities that serve marginalized communities, such as historically Black colleges and universities, and would aim to increase the Pell Grant award by up to $1,400 to families with lower incomes. Pell Grants would also be made available to Dreamers, individuals who were brought to the U.S. by their parents as children and have lived here ever since.

    If implemented, the American Families Plan would also establish paid leave for American workers who are sick, who are starting families, and for other reasons. The economic relief package passed earlier this year gave tax credits to companies that voluntarily instituted paid leave for their employees, but the new federal proposal by Biden would make paid leave available to every worker in the country.

    The administration notes that the pandemic was incredibly costly, forcing many workers, particularly women, to stay home. “The United States is one of the only countries in the world that doesn’t guarantee paid leave,” the White House document states. “Nearly one in four mothers return to work within two weeks of giving birth and one in five retirees left or were forced to leave the workforce earlier than planned to care for an ill family member.”

    The plan offered by the president would, within 10 years, establish a program that guarantees 12 weeks of paid leave for workers. It would provide workers with a minimum of two-thirds of their average weekly income (for low-income workers, it would be 80 percent of their weekly wages) up to $4,000 per month. It would also ensure that workers would be eligible for paid leave “to take time to bond with a new child, care for a seriously ill loved one, deal with a loved one’s military deployment, find safety from sexual assault, stalking, or domestic violence, heal from their own serious illness, or take time to deal with the death of a loved one.”

    There are a number of other provisions that also appear in the proposal, including making Pandemic-EBT summer programs — established to ensure children who benefited from free school lunch programs wouldn’t go hungry during the summer months — a permanent fixture, as well as making more generous subsidies in the Affordable Care Act last beyond the pandemic.

    The administration also laid out how it plans to pay for the $1.8 trillion bill, mainly through tax increases on wealthy Americans.

    The proposal would increase taxes on top income earners, from 37 percent to 39.6 percent, while also increasing the taxes on capital gains, which currently sit at 20 percent, to 39.6 percent as well. Taking both actions to fund the bill falls in line with Biden’s campaign promise to ensure that taxes on typical workers’ pay and income from capital gains are equal, while also ensuring that no American family earning under $400,000 per year would see their taxes increased.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Child credit will cut child poverty by 50%

    The American Rescue Plan has been hailed as a historic effort that will cut poverty by a third and child poverty by half. Congress can keep it going.

    By: Deepak Bhargava and Dorian Warren

    It took 20 years for the United States to finally wield the sharpest tool in its arsenal to cut child and family poverty.

    This summer, families with children 17 and younger will receive checks of up to $3,600 per child, on top of their one-time $1,400 stimulus checks, thanks to the expansion of the child tax credit in the American Rescue Plan.

    The plan has been hailed as a historic effort that will cut poverty by a third and child poverty by nearly half. The expansion of the child tax credit, which made it fully refundable, is the reason why. 

    With the average cost of housing, feeding and clothing a child at more than $1,000 a month, the expansion of the child tax credit could pay as much as two-thirds of the yearly costs of raising a child. 

    The work now is to ensure that Congress makes this poverty-busting tool permanent beyond a one-time infusion.

    Our hope is that elected leaders won’t take another 20 years to make it so, because we’ve seen how the slow arc of progress in little understood policies has huge ramifications for American families. 

    Two decades ago, our organization, Community Change, along with the Children’s Defense Fund and other groups, led a campaign to increase the refund amount from the child tax credit for individuals who qualify, regardless of whether they worked. We lobbied the Democratic-controlled Senate. 

    From Maine to Montana, grassroots groups led by low-income mothers and part of the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support supported by Community Change called their members of Congress daily and visited their offices, and even their homes.

    Our pressure and the voices of the women who were most impacted succeeded in expanding the child tax credit; the final legislation delivered $8 billion to low-income families per year.

    But it was a partial victory. We did not succeed in eliminating the work and income requirements for individuals to qualify, and we did not win in making the credit fully refundable, which would give filers refunds even if the amount is more than what they owe in taxes.

    Left opposed expansion 20 years ago

    The reason for the partial victory in 2001 was a surprising one — opposition from liberals. 

    Then-President George W. Bush, a Republican, wanted to expand the size of the credit, but under his proposal low-income people who paid no federal income taxes would not benefit. 

    It was a time in the aftermath of President Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform, which gutted many of the resources that low-income families relied on to survive. We expected the Republican opposition to our full demands, but liberals offered some of the harshest criticism, parroting many of the same racist and sexist tropes as their colleagues across the aisle who called our demands fringe. 

    It took 20 years of organizing, but the fringe is now mainstream.

    The child tax credit delivers significant financial support to families who have struggled during the pandemic and are simply trying to make it in this economy.

    Because, unlike years past when only individuals who worked and earned a minimum amount were eligible, this year’s rescue plan delinks the work requirements. Even those not working can earn the refund for children they are raising who are younger than 17.

    Monthly checks give stability

    Families also normally receive the refund the following year, but under the rescue plan families will start receiving it this year, as early as this summer. 

    The Treasury and Internal Revenue Service recently decided to pay families monthly, instead of one lump sum, which will provide parents with more stability knowing when cash is coming for diapers, rent and other basics. 

    Our job now as organizers is twofold. First, we have to make sure that the 10 million low-income people who are eligible but don’t file taxes claim their benefits.

    Second, we fight again to make the expansion of the child tax credit and its sister, the earned income tax credit (which was expanded to up to $1,500 for adults not raising children at home), permanent fixtures to help people living on the brink.

    _____________________________________________________

    About the Author: Deepak Bhargava, former president of Community Change, is a policy expert on poverty and co-editor of a new book, “Immigration Matters.” Dorian Warren, co-president of Community Change, is one of the country’s leading advocates of guaranteed income policies.

    The post Child credit will cut child poverty by 50% appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Families Should Expect Child Tax Credit Payments Starting in July, IRS Says

    Child and parent check mailbox

    The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced this week that it would likely be able to start sending out checks to families that are eligible for a child tax credit that was included in an economic stimulus bill that passed earlier this year.

    As part of the American Rescue Plan signed into law just last month, families with children under the age of 17 are set to receive monthly payments to help ease financial burdens created during the coronavirus pandemic. Those with children under the age of six would receive $3,600 per child over the course of a year, or $300 per month, while families with kids aged six to 17 years would receive $3,000 per child annually, or $250 per month.

    The IRS is being tasked with sending the checks out. Previously, there was some concern over the agency’s ability to do so by the summer, as the legislation for the bill was just signed into law in March. IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig had, just a few weeks ago, testified that he wasn’t sure about being able to get the checks out in July.

    On Tuesday, however, Rettig sounded much more confident.

    “We will launch by July 1 with the absolute best product we are able to put together,” he said.

    Rettig cautioned that delays could become necessary if hiccups within the process come about, adding that he wouldn’t “risk our system” within the IRS to put payments out on time. Still, the comments the commissioner made this week suggest the tax credit payments are more likely to be ready at that time than not.

    President Joe Biden has regularly touted the payments as being beneficial for families across the U.S. who are still struggling with the economic fallout from the pandemic. He has also expressed an interest in making payments such as these permanent for families in the future.

    “We reduced child poverty, and we reduced poverty in Black communities significantly, just by that act alone,” Biden said this week about the act while meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. “One of my objectives there is — overall objective is to make those changes permanent.”

    Some, however, believe payments to families with children alone isn’t enough, and also want the amounts to be larger. In late March, just after the American Rescue Plan was enacted, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) introduced legislation that proposed giving $2,000 per month to every person in the U.S., regardless of whether they were parents or not, for the remainder of the pandemic, as well as $1,000 in payments for 12 months after it ended.

    “People don’t only need relief, they need stability, certainty, and predictability,” Jayapal said about the proposed legislation, adding that “a one-time survival check isn’t enough to get people through this crisis.”

    Other Democrats in Congress are calling on Biden to include a fourth standalone stimulus payment within the infrastructure bill that his administration is crafting, with many also urging the president to make recurring payments a part of it as well.

    “To truly build back better, families need stability and certainty through ongoing relief,” a letter to Biden from more than 50 Democrats in the House of Representatives said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Little-Known Senate Rule That Could Change Everything

    Chuck Schumer's face, really close up

    If the reports hold true and the rug doesn’t get jerked out from under us, it appears Chuck Schumer and his slim Senate Democratic majority have located a tool that will pull most of Mitch McConnell’s filibuster fangs right out of his frowny mouth… and maybe, just maybe, bring some of the changes we most desperately need.

    “Elizabeth MacDonough, who serves as the parliamentarian, is reportedly willing to accept an interpretation of an obscure budget rule to let Democrats use previously passed legislation, enacted through the reconciliation process, to bypass the standard 60-vote filibuster threshold that Republicans were threatening to use to block future legislation,” wrote Chris Walker for Truthout. “That rule, Section 304 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, allows lawmakers to make amendments to reconciliation bills that have already passed and become law.”

    Genius, no? A trick of the language, some deft lawyer’s sleight-of-hand, and voilà! All sorts of great stuff can be passed with a simple majority under the auspices of reconciliation. President Biden and Schumer got the first one across the goal line — the American Rescue Plan — and going forward, so long as they affect the budget somehow and stay within parliamentary lines, vast new pieces of legislation can be passed simply by labeling them as “amendments” to the bill that’s already done.

    The key number in that report is “1974,” the year this rule was made law. That makes it 47 years old, a comfortably middle-aged rule, much like myself. How, after decades of ruthless Republican interference in basic good government by way of the filibuster, did I/we/Chuck/Obama/Joe/Every Democrat since Watergate miss Rule 304? It is the sword in the stone, legislatively speaking, and if the Democrats don’t mess it up, it could become the biggest political game-changer of our lifetime.

    “It’s as if the Senate has discovered water,” former Senate parliamentarian Alan Frumin told CNN. “We have known about it for years. It’s anybody’s guess why it hasn’t been utilized for years.”

    Thanks, buddy. You could have dropped a note.

    The very idea gets me to giggling like a titmouse in a tree. Take Biden’s pending massive multitrillion-dollar proposal for infrastructure reform and repair, called Build Back Better (BBB). Before the advent of Rule 304, and after the passage of the American Rescue Plan, getting infrastructure through this Senate was going to be like rolling blood up a sandy hill in the rain pretty much forever. Beyond the fact that 10 Republicans would leap from the Capitol dome before voting to give Biden a legislative win, “centrist” Democrats like Joe Manchin would be ever circling, like sharks looking to take bites out of the prize.

    With 304? All they have to worry about is Manchin and his cohort, and they are manageable.

    I have a vision of Schumer oozing ersatz courtesy as he says, “Pardon me a moment, Mitch, I just want to make some… revisions to that… bill we passed already… yeah, revisions… hang on… nip here, tuck there… 51 votes… and yeah, HOWYA LIKE ME NOW, MITCH? INFRASTRUCTURE, CLIMATE LEGISLATION, GUN REFORM, ANOTHER STIMULUS, RIGHT IN YOUR BITTER FACE!” At which point Chuck will start doing the Floss with giddy gusto, and I will fall down dead and smiling at the glory of it all.

    Preposterous? Probably the Floss bit, yeah, but the rest is well within reach. The possibilities here, while not endless, are pretty damned dramatic. It’s not just Build Back Better we’re talking about here. The parliamentarian has strongly suggested Democrats could move as many as six pieces of legislation under Rule 304 before the end of this Congress. What six policy initiatives are most dear to you? Call your Democratic senator if you have one and let them know. If you don’t have one, call them anyway.

    Rule 304 is not a silver bullet, however. Whatever goes into the proposed legislation must adhere to the rules of reconciliation as interpreted by the parliamentarian. MacDonough already struck the $15 minimum wage hike from the seedcorn American Rescue Plan, so that vital initiative will have to fight it out over the longer, and far more perilous, way home.

    Biden and the Democrats have to decide to use the thing first, and if you listen to them talk, that decision has not yet been made. “Democrats insist that they have made no decisions about how to use the tool,” reports The New York Times. “‘It is always good to have a series of insurance policies,’ Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, said about the possibility that Democrats could repeatedly duplicate last month’s party-line passage of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief legislation should they not be able to work out deals with Republicans.”

    We shun predictions here at Truthout, so I am not saying the use of 304 is a done deal. I’m not not saying it, either. I am saying that they’d be a pack of kick-me-sign folks if they don’t deploy this thing with fireworks and a parade. Build Back Better by itself has the potential of being transformative on a generational level, and the White House knows this full well. That alone is worth the reach.

    “President Joe Biden’s sprawling infrastructure plan doesn’t just attempt to turn decades-old progressive policy pursuits into law,” reports Politico. “Aides and operatives inside and out of the White House are coming to view it as an ambitious political play to cement, and even expand, the coalition of voters that delivered Democrats to power in November.”

    If and when this does go down, there is one large concern to encompass. If progressive legislation starts flying out of the Senate like it’s a fire sale at a Frisbee factory, and if Rule 304 blocks all Republican obstruction, the GOP could still reach for the last bloody club in its bag.

    The Capitol has already been sacked once by the same people McConnell will exhort into a frothing rage once he is fully thwarted… and never forget Donald Trump squatting down in Florida waiting for a new chance at relevance. What better way to recapture the spotlight than to call for an insurrection against the egghead libs trying to steal our cows and cars and Jesus? He did it once, and this would be fertile tinder for him to try again.

    All that is filed under “maybe,” and no reason at all to stop. The pieces are still moving, but if they fall into place just so, this could be a summer and fall beyond many of our wildest dreams.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Four Unions at Rutgers University Reach Historic Deal to End Layoffs

    After a year of layoffs, cuts and austerity, the faculty and staff of four unions at Rutgers University have voted in support of an unusual and pioneering agreement to protect jobs and guarantee raises after the school declared a fiscal emergency as a result of the pandemic. A key part of the deal is an agreement by the professors to do “work share” and take a slight cut in hours for a few months in order to save the jobs of other lower-paid workers. “The historic nature of this agreement is that it encompasses all four unions,” says Christine O’Connell, president of the union representing Rutgers administrators. “This agreement protects jobs.” We also speak with Todd Wolfson, president of the Rutgers Union of graduate workers, faculty and postdocs, who says the unions’ core demand was stopping further layoffs. “That core demand was met, and there’s no layoffs through the calendar year and into next year.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report and The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

    After a year of layoffs, cuts and austerity, the faculty and staff of four unions at Rutgers University — where our co-host Juan González is a professor of journalism and media studies — have voted in support of an unusual, pioneering agreement to protect jobs and guarantee raises, after the school declared fiscal emergency as a result of the pandemic. A key part of the deal is an agreement by the professors to do “work share” and take a slight cut in hours for a few months in order to save the jobs of other lower-paid workers.

    This is journalist and Rutgers University professor Naomi Klein, speaking ahead of the vote at a town hall meeting sponsored by the Coalition of Rutgers Unions last week.

    NAOMI KLEIN: This tentative agreement is the product of a year-long fight for a people-centered alternative in the pandemic crisis. When management turned to layoffs and austerity last spring, the 19 unions of the Coalition of Rutgers Unions came together to develop an alternative approach that saves jobs, protects the vulnerable and centers the university’s core mission of teaching, research and service.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, as of last night, all four unions at Rutgers have now ratified the memorandum of agreement with the university by overwhelming rates, and it will be implemented affecting 10,000 workers across the university.

    For more, we’re joined by two people who spearheaded the agreement: Todd Wolfson, president of the Rutgers faculty, grad workers and postdoc union, and Christine O’Connell, president of the Union of Rutgers Administrators-American Federation of Teachers, which represents 2,700 administrative staff at the university.

    We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Todd Wolfson, let’s begin with you. Talk about what exactly was agreed to and the historic nature of this agreement.

    TODD WOLFSON: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

    So, what was agreed to was — our core demand was no layoffs of staff and stopping the layoffs that had begun. And so, that core demand was met, and there’s no layoffs through the end of the calendar year into next year. We also called on a fair and just reappointment process. About 20 to 25% of our adjunct faculty were laid off in the midst of this crisis, and we want them back to pre-pandemic numbers. And we have a process that will get them back to those numbers. We also made a demand that our doctoral students, who do much of the teaching and much of the critical research of the university — that our doctoral students, who are facing invisible layoffs, are given a one-year extension, funded. Now, we didn’t get that for all of our doctoral students, but the ones who are coming off funding will get that extension if their work has been impacted by the pandemic. And then we also won our raises back.

    And in exchange for those things, we have agreed to a work share program. And the work share program is — it doesn’t mean we’re sharing work among workers, but rather that the federal and state government and the employer, Rutgers, share the cost of employees. So it takes some of the burden of the cost of employees off of Rutgers, and it’s part of the American Relief — the American Recovery Act. And some of that cost is then shared with the federal and state government, so that Rutgers sees some savings. So, we’re, in effect, furloughed at either 10 or 20% of our time through the end of June.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Todd, I wanted to ask you about the — when the university first voided all the contracts unilaterally by declaring a fiscal emergency in the midst of the pandemic, could you talk about the union’s effort to try to get the university to be more transparent about what the actual dollar figures were on the fiscal emergency that they were claiming?

    TODD WOLFSON: Yeah. I mean —

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The union had to go to court, didn’t it?

    TODD WOLFSON: The union had to go to court on multiple occasions, but, in particular, what you’re referring to is we were trying to get information about a massive growth in the athletic subsidy in the university, a jump in numbers of $100 million over one fiscal year. And so, we were calling on them to give us the information. They stonewalled us, and so we took them to court. We won in court and got the majority of that information.

    And I want to — I mean, the context here is that Rutgers is spending, you know, over the course of 10 years, $200 million to $300 million on their athletics program in subsidies to that athletics program, which is about the amount of — or probably more than what they’re facing in terms of economic problems due to the pandemic. And yet, in response to the pandemic, they’ve laid off a thousand workers, stolen raises, etc. And so, we wanted real transparency about that. So, that was a consistent battle to force Rutgers to be clear and transparent about where the money is coming from and where it’s going.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And to what degree, Todd, do you think the new leadership at the university — Jonathan Holloway, the first African American president in Rutgers history, came in in the middle of this pandemic, on July 1. Did he have any kind of major impact on the ability of the union to reach a settlement?

    TODD WOLFSON: We hope so. It’s not entirely clear, but we’re cautiously optimistic about President Holloway’s role in this. So, there has been a pivot under the new administration. We have been calling on what we call a people-centered alternative to the pandemic for a year now. And Jonathan Holloway came into office about nine months ago, so in the midst of this fight. The past president, Robert Barchi, ignored our calls. We said that we would furlough and work share in order to stop layoffs. We offered them $100 million in savings to stop layoffs across the university. And they still did those layoffs and ignored us. It’s taken us another nine months, under President Holloway, to get to this point, but we have gotten here. So, I mean, we could talk more about what actually — why this is so important, but we think that President Holloway has played an important role.

    AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Christine O’Connell into the conversation, president of the Union of Rutgers Administrators-American Federation of Teachers. Your union voted last night. Explain exactly what you voted for. And also, can you talk about what happens with the staff, like the cleaning crews, the janitors? How have the support staff been impacted by this agreement?

    CHRISTINE O’CONNELL: Thank you, Amy and Juan, for having me. Good morning.

    The historic nature of this agreement is that it encompasses all four unions — right? — and impacts all of us differently, but jointly. I represent maintenance staff, in addition to administrative staff in every academic department. We’ve seen layoffs in academic departments. We’ve seen layoffs in libraries during the pandemic and at the largest research university in New Jersey.

    And our maintenance staff, we’ve been advocating for health and safety protocols, transparency, and providing PPE and securing definitive protocols that they should follow, as well, to protect themselves, as well as protect others on campus.

    So, this agreement protects jobs, right? We are using this as leverage, hopefully, to protect folks from losing their income, their health benefits and, for many in the staff unions, tuition remission for their dependent children, because that is a vital benefit for those who don’t earn a lot of money.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Christine, the ability of the four unions to negotiate together, how unusual is that? And how much of an impact did that have on the administration, that the various unions, even though they had different income levels and different types of jobs, managed to stay together at the bargaining table?

    CHRISTINE O’CONNELL: I think that “solidarity” is a word that is used frequently, but we showed what it actually means in practice. Having multiple unions advocate for each other and understand each other’s needs is key. And management, I think, has a much better understanding that in order for Rutgers to work, Rutgers’ workers work. And I think that has been made clear.

    And I do give credit to Jonathan Holloway, because he referenced the “beloved community.” We are the beloved community, all of us — staff, faculty, students. In every aspect of this university, we make up that beloved community.

    AMY GOODMAN: And before we go, I wanted to ask either of you, Todd, Christine, even Juan, a Rutgers professor, about this latest news. Rutgers was the first of five U.S. colleges and universities that has announced plans to require students be fully vaccinated before they can come back to campus in the fall, with limited exceptions for underlying medical conditions and religious beliefs. How will this be enforced? And what are the thoughts of teachers and other staff on this?

    TODD WOLFSON: I can jump in and then let Christine and Juan jump in. I mean, for us, we want — we think it’s great that the students are going to be vaccinated. We also think the workers should be vaccinated. The university did not reach out to us to talk about this. We think it’s important that — I certainly think that all my members should be vaccinated. We want a safe campus. We all want a safe campus.

    Now, how they’re going to mandate this and how it’s going to work, honestly, there isn’t enough transparency between us and the university, so it’s hard to know. But from our vantage, faculty certainly skew older, and so we want a safe place, if we’re going to be in the classroom, for our teachers. And so, not only should the students be vaccinated, but we want our faculty to be vaccinated, as well.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank —

    CHRISTINE O’CONNELL: And —

    AMY GOODMAN: Yes. Go ahead, Christine. We have a few seconds.

    CHRISTINE O’CONNELL: Just to jump in, we also — we strongly encourage our members to be vaccinated. We are not in support of a mandate for faculty and staff, but we are strongly in support of — we all want a health and safety — a healthy and safe campus to return to, especially as we try to return to post-pandemic life.

    AMY GOODMAN: Christine O’Connell, president of the Union of Rutgers Administrators-American Federation of Teachers, and Todd Wolfson, Rutgers union of grad workers, faculty and postdocs, thanks so much for being with us.

    A Happy Birthday to Matt Ealy!

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 21 GOP-Led States Threaten to Sue to Use COVID Relief on Tax Cuts

    President Joe Biden walks out with Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to deliver remarks on the American Rescue Plan in the Rose Garden at the White House on March 12, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    In the decade following the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Texas and 18 other Republican-led states took the extraordinary step of refusing free money — namely, rejecting an infusion of federal funds that would have allowed them to expand Medicaid coverage for many of their uninsured residents.

    Now, the GOP is attempting to orchestrate a redux of this cruel politics. This time around, in pandemic-era 2021, a coalition of 21 states is ginning up a lawsuit to prevent implementation of a key part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP), namely a $350 billion investment in local and state governments.

    Back when it was Medicaid expansion that was on the line, there was no good reason for Republican states to block the infusion of federal cash other than sheer orneriness, and a deep-seated aversion to using government resources to improve the prospects of those at the bottom of the social and economic ladders. It wasn’t as if the Medicaid expansion envisioned by the ACA was dumping the problem on states; quite the contrary — it was providing vast federal subsidies to the states to make the lives of their poorer residents a little bit easier. In fact, Medicaid expansion was as close a free lunch for the states as exists in U.S. politics. And yet, GOP states resisted signing on — and in February 2018, many ultimately joined with Texas in suing to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act, a lawsuit the Trump administration signed onto.

    As a result of this ideological intransigence, millions of Americans who would otherwise have been under health care umbrellas were left without stable and regular medical coverage — with devastating results in poor regions, as the COVID-19 crisis has shown. Each year, even absent a deadly pandemic, tens of thousands of Americans die not because their diseases can’t be treated, but because they lack the insurance that would allow them to access that treatment. In 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that more than 17 percent of Texans — 5 million people — lacked health insurance. By the middle of last year, as the pandemic ravaged the state, that number had grown by an additional 659,000.

    The ARP’s $350 billion to the cities and state wouldn’t lead to simply a few marginal investments and minor grants that remain largely “out of sight, out of mind” for the public. Instead, sums of money this large represent an infusion of so much cash that it has the potential to transform infrastructure very much in the public eye: school systems, public transport and housing infrastructure, public health systems, environmental support networks, and many other critical services and systems for decades to come. The Brookings Institute recently published a report on how cities and states could spend the money; among other conclusions, it recommended massively shoring up the country’s public health infrastructure, bulking up affordable housing, and creating regional recovery coordinating councils to bring in both the public and private sectors in reimagining local economies.

    The immediate impetus for sending such large sums of money to local and state governments was to protect services and public workers during a period when, because of the pandemic, upwards of 1.4 million of these workers had been laid off. But, beyond simply protecting existing jobs, the sums of money involved are large enough to allow for important investments that, for decades, cash-strapped governments have been unable to make. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently awarded the United States a C- grade for the quality of its aging infrastructure — and that was actually an improvement over the D grades the society has handed out in previous years. That a country as affluent and resource-rich as the U.S. can fail so dismally when it comes to maintaining or developing state-of-the-art infrastructure has nothing to do with an innate lack of resources and everything to do with political failings and an inability to raise enough tax revenues to make such projects possible.

    Biden’s ARP is ambitious in many ways, and arguably nowhere more so than in its belief that injecting enough money into cities and states will be able to kick-start these long-delayed societal improvements.

    There is, however, a catch. The ARP’s authors were aware of the political temptations states and cities would face to use the funds to pad their general funds and then seek political capital with voters by handing out tax cuts. And so, to minimize this risk, the monies distributed to local and state governments under the ARP come with a caveat: While they can be used to build private-public partnerships, they cannot be used simply to cut taxes.

    That’s where the Republican attorneys general have stepped in. Such a restriction is, they are arguing, an infringement on basic constitutional rights that states have to set their own tax rates. Last week, Ohio became the first of the 21 states to sue the Biden administration over this provision. In the coming weeks, other states will likely follow suit.

    There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy to these lawsuits. For, even though every GOP member of the Senate voted against the ARP, there’s no indication that, if the tax-provision was removed, Republican-led states and cities would reject the money. Rather, after lambasting Democrats for what they call a “bailout” of “mismanaged” blue cities and states, they now want to be able to use at least part of those funds to continue their decades-long rollback of taxes, especially those levied against high-earning individuals and companies. They want to retain the right to do so even if those tax-breaks — giveaways aimed at consolidating local support for the GOP — come at the expense of social programs urgently needed by those at the bottom of the economy. And, to that end, they are willing to ask the courts to spike the entire $350 billion unless they get their way on taxes.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Court Challenge

    As the Biden administration sets out to regulate business to level the playing field in the United States between workers and employers, address inequality, and combat climate change, Republicans are turning to the courts to stop him. Continue reading

    The post Court Challenge appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • Human Rights Are Back on the Agenda

    Human rights and democracy are high on the Biden administration’s foreign policy agenda. Continue reading

    The post Human Rights Are Back on the Agenda appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • Progressives Demand Repeal of Paygo Law as Automatic Medicare Cuts Loom

    Pramila Jayapal speaks at a podium as Elizabeth Warren stands in the background

    The leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is calling for permanent repeal of a notorious 2010 law that is threatening to inflict deep, automatic cuts to Medicare and other safety net programs following passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan earlier this month.

    On Friday, the House of Representatives — with the support of just 29 Republicans — approved legislation that would exempt the coronavirus relief package from a law known as statutory Paygo, which requires deficit spending to be offset by cuts to government programs. The Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act was enacted in 2010 with the support of the then-Democratic Congress and former President Barack Obama.

    While Paygo rules were waived in coronavirus relief bills approved during the Trump presidency, congressional Democrats’ use of the arcane budget reconciliation process to pass the American Rescue Plan over unified Republican obstruction prevented inclusion of a waiver this time around, setting the stage for tens of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare, farm subsidies, and other programs if the Senate fails to act.

    “We’re pleased that the House voted today to waive statutory Paygo for the American Rescue Plan Act to prevent damaging, self-defeating, and wholly unnecessary cuts to Medicare and other programs,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement. “We urge the Senate to follow the House’s lead and act swiftly to waive statutory Paygo.”

    But Jayapal stressed that the House bill — which also pushes off a separate 2% cut to Medicare set for April 1 — is just a temporary solution to a problem that will continue cropping up without complete repeal of the 2010 law.

    “It’s long past time for Congress to end statutory Paygo permanently,” said Jayapal. “The austerity politics of the last several decades have been an unmitigated failure — hollowing out programs that families rely on and leaving millions unable to afford the basics.”

    “Congress should never have to choose between protecting programs like Medicare and lifting families out of poverty or providing urgently needed assistance to working people facing unprecedented economic hardship,” the Washington Democrat continued. “At the Progressive Caucus, we will keep fighting to end statutory Paygo for good so that Congress can focus on what really matters: empowering and investing in working people across this nation.”

    To pass the House legislation, the Senate Democratic caucus will need to win the support of at least 10 Republicans as long as the 60-vote legislative filibuster remains intact. But judging by overwhelming opposition to the Paygo waiver bill among House Republicans — 127 members of the GOP caucus voted no — Senate Democrats could have difficulty obtaining the necessary votes.

    A spokesperson for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, told NBC News last month that the Vermont senator will work to prevent the estimated $36 billion in Medicare cuts from taking effect. A fix must be passed by the end of the year.

    “Trump and his Republican colleagues used deficit spending to pass $2 trillion in tax breaks overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthiest and large corporations and expanding a military budget with a Pentagon that has never been independently audited,” then-Sanders spokesperson Keane Bhatt said in February. “When it comes to feeding children who are hungry or treating people who are sick in the middle of a pandemic, funding cuts due to supposed concerns over the deficit would be unacceptable and immoral.”

    Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), chair of the House Budget Committee, noted Friday that Paygo exemptions have in the recent past “been enacted with little dispute,” pointing specifically to the 2017 bipartisan passage of a waiver for Trump and the GOP’s tax cuts, which could have triggered $25 billion in automatic Medicare cuts.

    “Enough House and Senate Democrats joined Republicans to prevent harmful across-the-board cuts to critical programs even though we opposed the short-term [government funding resolution in which the Paygo waiver was buried] and the massive tax giveaways to the wealthy,” Yarmuth said on the House floor.

    “Even in the wake of contentious legislation,” the Kentucky Democrat continued, “Congress has come together to prevent sequestration and protect Medicare, farm supports, social services, resources for students and individuals with disabilities, and other programs Americans rely on. This time should be no different.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • How Union Activists Pushed Congress to Save Hundreds of Thousands of Pensions

    Jan Kacher of Deerfield, Michigan, adjusts a sign as he rallies on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol building with fellow Teamsters Union retirees who traveled from across the country to voice their opposition to deep cuts to their pension benefits on April 14, 2016, in Washington, D.C.

    This article was originally published by Labor Notes.

    “When Don first got his letter saying his pension was going to be cut 52 percent, it was one of those moments like when President Kennedy was killed and 9/11,” said Dana Vargo, spouse of a retired Teamster. “You remember exactly where you were.”

    “My letter said, starting in a couple months, your pension will go from $3,000 a month down to $1,500,” said Greg Smith, who had put in 31 years as a freight Teamster. “When people got those, all of a sudden the phone started ringing.”

    It was 2015 when all 410,000 current and retired Teamsters in the Central States Pension Fund received that letter, informing them they would be spending their golden years broke. Congress had just made it legal for a multi-employer pension fund in “critical status” to yank back retirees’ hard-earned income. The Teamsters international had been complicit.

    What chance did a bunch of ordinary retired truck drivers and their spouses have to stop the cuts? And yet, they did exactly that.

    First they got the cuts at Central States, which covers 25 states, slowed down, then stopped them dead. But the underlying problem was still looming — the fund was going to run out of money.

    Central States wasn’t the only multiemployer fund in hot water, either. Some funds actually did slash retirees’ pay, including Ironworkers Local 17 in Cleveland and the Western Pennsylvania and Upstate New York Teamster plans. Among the others in danger were retired miners, machinists, and musicians.

    Finally this March, the pension activists won a total victory: $86 billion from Congress, as part of the big economic stimulus bill, to restore all the ailing multiemployer funds to health, and to pay back everyone whose pensions had already been slashed.

    They did it with sheer persistence — and because no one else was going to.

    “It was the grassroots effort and the continuous pounding on them,” Vargo said. “Pre-Covid when we could go to Washington we were always showing up uninvited, finding them in the halls and saying ‘When are you going to help us?’

    “I’m sure that even though 50 percent of the legislators didn’t vote for the bill, they are so glad that we are going to go away.”

    No Takebacks

    By the time retirees started opening those awful letters in 2015, a handful of Teamsters had been sounding the alarm for years. That’s why Smith’s phone was ringing — he was part of a grassroots network that Teamsters for a Democratic Union had helped start in Ohio.

    Smith got to enjoy only a year and a half of serene retirement before TDU organizer Ken Paff called to warn him about the “Solutions Not Bailouts” plan being promoted by a joint union-employer group, the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans — with the Teamsters signed on in support. The gist was, we have to destroy the pension to save it.

    The shortfall was real. For most troubled funds, the biggest underlying problem is simple: not enough current workers compared to the number of retirees. Chalk that up to employer schemes like deregulation and union-busting, along with unions’ failure to organize.

    The problem got worse in 2007 when the Teamster leadership let UPS pay a lump sum to withdraw from the Central States fund. Then it and other pension funds took a bath in the 2008 financial crisis, intensifying the crunch.

    But none of that should have been the retirees’ problem. They were owed those pensions, in compensation for work done long ago. “Companies would come to us when we negotiated and say, ‘We only have so much money, do you want health or wage or pension?’” Smith said. “We would say, ‘Instead of putting a dollar in our wages, take half of it and put it into the pension.’ You do that over and over. Then at the end of your career you retire, and they come and say ‘Sorry.’”

    What happens if a pension fund can’t pay its obligations? It’s insured by a federally chartered entity, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which would pay out only a fraction of the benefits owed. Even so, Central States is so big that if it defaulted, the PBGC would go belly-up too. That’s why Congressional intervention was needed.

    The idea of Solutions Not Bailouts was to legalize taking the money out of retirees’ hides, instead of coughing up from the public treasury.

    It Started in Ohio

    With TDU’s help, about a dozen people started the Northeast Ohio Committee to Protect Pensions — the first of many such committees. Smith, a longtime TDU activist, brought organizing knowhow.

    They drafted Mike Walden, a retired truck driver from Akron, as their chair. Walden wasn’t a TDU member, but he was glad to have their help. “Of course we had some pushback, because a lot of Teamsters didn’t like TDU,” he said. “But I just told people we need to all work together to keep that pension.”

    Soon Committees to Protect Pensions formed in Columbus, Youngstown, Canton (led by Vargo and her husband), and Cincinnati. Ultimately there were 65 across the country, and a national organization with Walden as president and Vargo as secretary.

    As the organizing gained steam, Teamster President James P. Hoffa belatedly quit the board of the group that was promoting Solutions Not Bailouts. The union officially opposed the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act — the 2014 law that enabled pension cuts — and gave the grassroots movement some support.

    Standing Room Only

    After the letters went out announcing the cuts, monthly meetings of the Kansas City Committee to Protect Pensions ballooned from 125 people to 450.

    Tim Pagel in Houston saw the same effect. For years he’d been hearing from TDU about looming threats to the pension, but Local 988 officers shrugged off his proposals to organize. Impressed with how pension committees elsewhere were using Facebook, he started his own local group, which quickly grew.

    By 2016, local officers agreed to bring an expert from the Pension Rights Center to speak at the hall. The PRC became an invaluable resource and link to gain more allies, such as the AARP. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many people in our local hall,” Pagel said. “They couldn’t get into the parking lot. They had the double doors open because people were lined up outside the building trying to hear.”

    The Treasury Department appointed “Special Master” Kenneth Feinberg to recommend whether to approve Central States’ proposed cuts. He held public meetings to hear from retirees. In city after city, hundreds turned out to give him an earful. In Minnesota, retirees mounted picket lines at Congressmembers’ offices, rallied in the state capitol rotunda, and turned out 750 people to Feinberg’s meeting. A number of Teamster locals, including Louisville Local 89, joined the fight.

    Thousands of retirees traveled to D.C. to rally at the Capitol. A month later, feeling the pressure, Feinberg nixed the Central States cuts.

    “Shared Sacrifice” Pushed

    That still left the bigger problem — the pension funds needed money. The activists visited D.C. over and over to lobby for government help. Senator Bernie Sanders twice introduced the Keep Our Pension Promises Act, which would have gotten money to shore up the PBGC by closing tax loopholes for the rich.

    Then Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio introduced the Butch Lewis Act, named for a beloved TDU leader and pension activist who had “passed away from the stress,” Walden said; his widow Rita Lewis became a prominent voice in the struggle.

    Foes in the Senate kept pushing “shared sacrifice” — that retirees should feel some pain. But her husband had already made his sacrifice, Vargo said: “He worked all those years, missed all those family events, to get a pension for our family.”

    Besides, Pagel points out, the pension bailout is peanuts compared with Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, which swelled the federal debt by $1.9 trillion.

    The Right to Retire

    In the end the stars aligned. Democrats took the Senate. The Butch Lewis Act was attached to the stimulus bill and didn’t need a filibuster-proof 60 votes. Republicans were busy aiming their fire at Sanders’ $15 minimum wage.

    By defending their own pensions, the activists landed a blow for everyone’s right to retire. After multi-employer pensions it could have been cuts to single-employer pensions, and then Social Security.

    “The first three-fourths of this fight was educating the members about the pension, and that was over many years,” Pagel said. “We built up such a groundswell of anger at what was happening that Hoffa and all his minions, they couldn’t ignore it anymore.”

    “We knew there was nobody going to help us but us,” Vargo said. “It’s really a lesson that I’m happy to pass on to my kids and grandkids. You group together with other people of similar thought and you keep fighting. There’s just no other way.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Chomsky: Biden’s Early Agenda Gives Hope, But Activist Pressure Must Not Cease

    President Joe Biden walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on March 19, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Joe Biden’s first months in office have comprised a flurry of actions on the domestic front, including a historic stimulus bill. In this exclusive interview, the celebrated public intellectual Noam Chomsky shares his views on some key policies embraced by the Biden administration. Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. His latest books are Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (co-authored with Robert Pollin and C. J. Polychroniou; Verso, 2020), Chomsky for Activists (Routledge, 2020) and Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance (Haymarket Books, 2020).

    J. Polychroniou: President Joe Biden has been in office for approximately two months now, in the course of which he has signed scores of executive orders meant to reverse the policies of Donald Trump. But he has also managed to pass a huge and ambitious stimulus bill unlike anything seen during peacetime. What’s your assessment of Biden’s actions so far to deal with the most pressing issues facing U.S. society: namely, the coronavirus pandemic and the pain caused to millions of Americans on account of the pandemic?

    Noam Chomsky: Better than I’d anticipated. Considerably so.

    The stimulus bill has its flaws, but considering the circumstances, it’s an impressive achievement. The circumstances are a highly disciplined opposition party dedicated to the principle announced years ago by its maximal leader, Mitch McConnell: If we are not in power, we must render the country ungovernable and block government legislative efforts, however beneficial they might be. Then the consequences can be blamed on the party in power, and we can take over. It worked well for Republicans in 2009 — with plenty of help from Obama. By 2010, the Democrats lost Congress, and the way was cleared to the 2016 debacle.

    There’s every reason to suppose that the strategy will be renewed — this time under more complex circumstances. The voting base in the hands of Trump, who shares the objective but differs from McConnell on who will pick up the pieces: McConnell and the donor class, or Trump and the voting base he mobilized, almost half of whom worship him as the messenger God sent to save the country from … we can fill in our favorite fantasies, but should not overlook the fact that what may sound [ridiculous] has roots in the lives of the victims of the neoliberal globalization of the past 40 years — extended by Trump, apart from some rhetorical flourishes.

    In those circumstances, passing a stimulus bill was a major accomplishment. Republicans who favor it, and know that their constituents do, nevertheless voted against it, in lockstep obedience to what the Central Committee determines. Some Democrats insisted on watering it down. But what finally passed has valuable elements, which could be a basis for moving on.

    There are huge gaps. The bill surely should have contained an increase in the miserable minimum wage, an utter scandal. But that would have been very difficult in the face of total Republican opposition, along with a few Democrats. And there are other crucial features that are missing. Nevertheless, if the short-term measures on child poverty, income support, medical insurance and other basic needs can be extended, it would be a substantial step toward fulfilling the promise envisioned by such careful observers as Roosevelt Institute President Felicia Wong, who reflected that, “As I see it, both the scale and the direction of the American Rescue Plan break the neoliberal, deficits-and-inflation-come-first mold that has hollowed out our economy for a generation.” We haven’t seen anything that could elicit such hopes for a long time.

    There is also hope in appointments on economic issues. Who would have imagined that a regular contributor to radical economics journals would be appointed to the Council of Economic Advisers (Heather Boushey), joined by the senior economic adviser of the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute, (Jared Bernstein)?

    Biden’s strong support for Amazon workers, and unions generally, is a welcome shift. Nothing like it has been heard from the chambers of power in many years. In a sharp reversal of Trump legislation, the tax changes raise incomes mostly for the poor, not the rich. Economic Policy Institute President Thea Lee summarizes the package by saying that it “will provide crucial support to millions of working families; dramatically reduce the race, gender, and income inequalities that were exacerbated by the crisis; and create the conditions for a truly robust recovery once the virus is under control and people are able to resume normal economic activity.” Optimistic, but within reach.

    House Democrats have passed other important legislation. H.R. 1 protects voting rights, a critical matter now, with Republicans working overtime to try to block the votes of [people of color] and the poor, recognizing that this is the only way a minority party dedicated to wealth and corporate power can remain viable.

    On the labor front, the House passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, “a critical step toward restoring workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively,” the Economic Policy Institute reports, a fundamental right that “has been eroded for decades as employers exploited weaknesses in the current law.” It’ll probably be killed by the Senate. Even apart from party loyalty, there is little sympathy for working people in Republican ranks.

    But even so, it’s a basis for organizing and education. It can be a step toward revitalizing the labor movement, a prime target of the neoliberal project since Reagan and Thatcher, who understood well that working people must be deprived of means to defend themselves from the assault.

    Decline of union membership is by now recognized, even in the mainstream, to be a major factor in rising inequality — a phrase that translates to “robbery of the general public by a tiny fraction of super-rich.” The Economic Policy Institute has reviewed the facts regularly, most recently in a chart that graphically demonstrates the remarkable correlation between rising/falling union membership and falling/rising inequality.

    More generally, there is a good opportunity to overcome the baleful legacy of Trump’s bitterly anti-labor Labor Department, headed by corporate lawyer Eugene Scalia, who used his term in office to eviscerate worker rights, notoriously during the pandemic. Scalia was perfectly chosen for the transformation of the Republicans to a “working-class party,” as hailed by Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley in a triumph of propaganda, or maybe sheer chutzpah.

    Michael Regan’s appointment as Environmental Protection Agency administrator should replace corporate greed by science and human welfare in this essential agency, a move toward human decency that in this case is a prerequisite for survival.

    It’s easy to find serious omissions and deficiencies in Biden’s programs on the domestic front, but there are signs of hope for emerging from the Trump nightmare and moving on to what really should, what really must be done. The hopes are, however, conditional. The temporary measures of the stimulus on child poverty and many other issues must be made permanent, and improved. Crucially, activist pressure must not cease. The masters of the universe pursue their class war relentlessly, and can only be countered by an aroused public opposition that is no less dedicated to the common good.

    What do you think of Biden’s refusal to cancel $50,000 in student loans?

    A bad decision. What the realistic options were, I don’t frankly know. Higher education at a high level should be recognized to be a basic right, freely available, as it is elsewhere: in our Mexican neighbor, in rich developed countries like Germany, France, the Nordic countries, and a great many others, with at most nominal fees. As it substantially was in the U.S. when it was a much poorer country than it is today. The postwar GI Bill of Rights provided free education for great numbers of white males who would never have gone to college otherwise. There is no reason why young people of any race should be denied the privilege today.

    In light of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Biden has vowed to fight domestic terrorism by passing a new law “that respects free speech and civil liberties.” Does the U.S. need a new domestic terrorism agenda?

    A prior question is whether we should retain the current domestic terrorism agenda. There are strong reasons to question that. And any expansion should be a matter of serious concern. That aside, white supremacist violence is no laughing matter. Through the Trump years, the FBI and other monitors report steadily increasing white supremacist terror, by now covering almost all recorded terror. Armed militias are rampant — Trump’s “tough guys” as he’s admiringly called them. The problems can’t be overlooked, but have to be handled with great caution and a close eye on the temptations for abuse.

    Biden has proposed a plan to strengthen the middle class by encouraging unionization and collective bargaining, and his recent affirmation of the rights of workers to unionize, which was widely interpreted as support for Amazon workers’ rights to organize in Alabama, has spread considerable enthusiasm among progressives. Indeed, Biden’s support for unions is in pace with the highly favorable ratings that unions have been receiving in the last couple of years. What’s behind the support for unions in the present era?

    One reason is objective reality. The sharp rise in inequality is a growing curse, with extremely harmful effects across the society. As mentioned earlier, it closely tracks decline of unions, for reasons that are well understood. Historically, labor unions have been in the forefront of struggles for justice and rights. They also pioneered the environmental movement, as we’ve discussed before. Workers’ organizations are changing in character with the growth of service and knowledge-based economies. They have shared interests, and foster the values of solidarity and mutual aid on which the hope for a decent future rest. Many unions retain the world “international” in their names. It should not just be a symbol or a dream. The dire challenges we face have no borders. Global heating, pandemics, disarmament will be dealt with internationally, if at all. The same is true of labor rights and human rights more generally. At every level, associations of working people should once again be prominent, if not leading the way, toward a better world.

    This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Republicans Greet Covid Stimulus With Another Round of Inflation Fearmongering

    Their cry-wolf act is well practiced but lacks credibility. Continue reading

    The post Republicans Greet Covid Stimulus With Another Round of Inflation Fearmongering appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • Biden’s Neoliberal Rescue Of For-Profit Health System Proves We Need Medicare For All

    President Biden, the Democratic Party and America’s neoliberal vision of world order is rooted in an economic philosophy of privatization and financialization. To assure privatization goals of the 1% oligarchs, distinguished economist Michael Hudson writes that this is achieved by “conquering the brains of a country by shaping how people think. If you can twist their view into unreality economics, to make them think you are there to help them and not to take money out of them, then you’ve got them hooked.” To maintain corporate control of U.S. health care insurance, our system is privatized and unregulated. Private, big insurance companies are in the business of making money, not providing health care, and when they undertake the latter, it is likely not to be in the best interests of patients or to be efficient.

    The post Biden’s Neoliberal Rescue Of For-Profit Health System Proves We Need Medicare For All appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Black Farmers Hail $5 Billion in COVID Relief to Redress Generations of Racism

    A major provision in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill aims to address decades of discrimination against Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American farmers who have historically been excluded from government agricultural programs. The American Rescue Plan sets aside $10.4 billion for agriculture support, with about half of that amount set aside for farmers of color, and allocates extra federal funds to farmers who were “subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture has faced accusations of racism for decades, but little has been done to address the problem of discrimination in farm loans. John Boyd, a fourth-generation Black farmer and president of the National Black Farmers Association, says the new funds begin to address issues he has been fighting for 30 years. “This is a huge victory for Black farmers and farmers of color,” says Boyd.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

    We begin today’s show looking at a major provision in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that aims to address decades of discrimination against Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American farmers, who have historically been excluded from government agricultural programs. The American Rescue Plan sets aside $10.4 billion for agriculture support and allocates about half the funds to farmers of color who were, quote, “subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group,” unquote.

    The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights confirmed, as long ago as 1965, the U.S. Department of Agriculture discriminated against Black farmers, but little was done to address the problem, and the number of Black-run farms dropped 96% in the last century. By 1999, 98% of all agricultural land was owned by white people. In 2010, Congress approved a $1.2 billion settlement for thousands of Black farmers denied USDA loans because of their race. But a 2019 study by the Government Accountability Office, based on the USDA’s own data, shows farmers and ranchers of color continue to receive disproportionately smaller farm loans.

    The provision in the new COVID relief package is drawn from legislation introduced by newly elected Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is Georgia’s first Black senator and also the first Georgia Democrat to serve on the Agriculture Committee in three decades. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack welcomed the measure.

    AGRICULTURE SECRETARY TOM VILSACK: The history of USDA, unfortunately, involved a level of discrimination against a number of minority producers — Black farmers, Native American farmers, Hispanic farmers. And there is an effort, I think, with this package to try to deal not with the specific acts of discrimination, but the cumulative effect over a period of time. When people are discriminated against, they basically get behind, and it’s really hard for them ever to catch up. And the result, of course, is that we’ve seen a significant decline in the number of minority producers around the country. So, this is providing some debt relief for those minority producers, those socially disadvantaged producers, to impact and affect the cumulative effect of — to offset the cumulative effect of discrimination over a period of time.

    AMY GOODMAN: But the effort to address the USDA’s history of racism has come under fire from some Republicans, including Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who lashed out against the measure during a Fox News interview.

    SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: Let me give you an example of something that really bothers me. In this bill, if you’re a farmer, your loan will be forgiven, up to 120% of your loan — not 100%, but 120% of your loan — if you’re socially disadvantaged, if you’re African American, some other minority. But if you’re a white person, if you’re a white woman, no forgiveness as for reparations. What has that got to do with COVID? So, if you’re in the farming business right now, this bill forgives 120% of your loan based on your race. These people in the Congress today, the House and the Senate, on the Democratic side are out-of-control liberals.

    AMY GOODMAN: Senator Graham’s comments prompted a stern response from House Majority Whip James Clyburn, who’s also from South Carolina. He was speaking on CNN.

    REP. JAMES CLYBURN: Mr. Graham is from South Carolina. He knows South Carolina’s history. He knows what the state of South Carolina and this country has done to Black farmers in South Carolina. They didn’t do it to white farmers. We are trying to rescue the lives and livelihoods of people. He ought to be ashamed of himself.

    AMY GOODMAN: For more on the fight to end discrimination at the USDA and restore land to Black farmers, we go to Boydton, Virginia, to speak with John Boyd, fourth-generation Black farmer, founder and president of the nonprofit National Black Farmers Association.

    John, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Can you start off by talking about this $5 billion and what it means? Give us the history.

    JOHN BOYD: The $5 billion is historic in nature, Amy — and thank you for having me again — in what it’s going to do to help Black farmers and farmers of color in this country. You know, as you know, we’ve been suffering. And the $5 billion calls for debt relief. So, that would give many Black farmers a jumpstart, if they can get rid of the debt at the United States Department of Agriculture. And there is $1 billion that’s set aside for technical assistance and outreach and to really dig down into the core of the discrimination at the United States Department of Agriculture.

    Both of these measures, I’ve been fighting for for over 30 years, so I don’t anybody who’s watching this show to think that this is some new measure or new idea or concept that happened overnight. I’ve been trying to fix this, this measure, for over 30 years at the United States Department of Agriculture. And, Amy, I probably spoke to you about it 10 years ago. So, we’ve been trying a long time. And this is a huge victory for Black farmers and farmers of color, Native Americans and Hispanics, and other socially disadvantaged farmers.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how, over the last century, Black farmers lost 90% of their land?

    JOHN BOYD: Yes. And at the turn of the century, we were tilling about 20 million acres of land, primarily in the Southeastern Corridor of the United States, and we were close to 1 million Black farm families strong. And for those who don’t understand the history, every Black person in this country, we’re one or two generations away from somebody’s farm. And we survived slavery. We survived sharecropping. We survived Jim Crow. And here we are in the year 2021, and I’m talking to you about discrimination at United States Department of Agriculture. We lost this land by discrimination, from receiving discrimination at USDA.

    And I was one of those recipients, where the government clearly discriminated against me. I have a 14-page letter from them admitting to the guilt in those egregious acts that I faced by this this county official. The person responsible for making farm loans spat on me and used racial epithets, referred to me and other senior statesmen in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, as “boy.” He came to my farm, wanting me to sign a check over to him personally, with a loaded handgun. And I can tell you, Amy, he didn’t treat white farmers that way in Mecklenburg County. He would only see Black farmers on Wednesday. All of us would be lined up in the hallway with the same date and time on it. And he was referring to these elderly Black farmers — many were deacons and preachers and leaders in the community — as “boy” and talking downward towards them. So, this is deep-rooted discrimination that’s been going on in very pervasive ways for a very, very long time.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to Senator Lindsey Graham?

    JOHN BOYD: Yes.

    AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the history of Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina, when it comes to this issue.

    JOHN BOYD: Yes. Well, first of all, I’ve lobbied Senator Graham when he was in the House and in the Senate, and I’ve had meetings with him, in buttonhole meetings, trying to get him to support the Claims Remedy Act of 2010. He has over 6,000 Black farmers in his state. He knows the discrimination that I’m describing. And I’ve spoken to him personally about this discrimination. Amy, he never once used his megaphone to talk about or investigate the acts of discrimination that Black farmers like myself faced.

    So, I’m calling for, today, on your show — I want him to apologize to the Black community, to Black farmers, and apologize to this country for his wrong stance on this. Forty-nine members voted on 10 different amendments to strip or lessen the language that was in the COVID spending bill for Black farmers. Forty-nine senators, Republican senators, voted to take that out. And Senator Lindsey Graham was one of them. He has never tried to help. He is divisive. He is wrong for this country. And that message, that concept, the message of hate, hatred and division, that he continues to preach on Fox News, isn’t the American way. That’s not the way to bring America back.

    Here we are, for 30 years, trying to get this done. He should have took some time to say, “What can we do to help this measure, to make farming better for Blacks and other farmers in this country?” And he never once spoke about all of the money going to white farmers. Just, for example, under the Trump administration, $29 million — $29 billion, with a B, went to white farmers. What is his definition of that? All of the subsidies and programs and loans and all these incentives at USDA, for all of these decades, have went to white farmers. What is his definition of that?

    So, that’s what we’ve been talking about, clearly, for a long time: a system that has discriminated and mistreated and took and stole land from Black farmers for decades. And it went unchecked in this country. If he wanted to check something, he should have been checking about discrimination at USDA. He should have been checking about sharecropping in his historic state, South Carolina. These are things that Senator Lindsey Graham should have been doing.

    AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of it being Reverend Warnock, now Senator Warnock, from Georgia, the new Democratic senator, being the one who pushed this forward and sitting on the Agriculture Committee?

    JOHN BOYD: Yes. This is a historic nature, and my hat goes off to Reverend Warnock, Senator Cory Booker. For the first time in history, Amy — this is a new day in America — we have two Blacks on the Senate Ag Committee. We have the chairman in the House, Chairman Scott, also from Georgia, a chairman of the [House] Agriculture Committee.

    We have now a president, President Biden, and a vice president, who wants to help rectify some of the problems that we’ve faced. And I spoke to the president about this last February. And he committed to me that he would help me fix the issues at the United States Department of Agriculture. So I would like to recognize President Biden for signing that bill and making sure that we stayed in there. So, my hat is off right now to this administration for doing the right thing and having the guts to stand up to people like Lindsey Graham and the other 49 senators, who simply don’t want to help people, Black farmers and poor people in this country.

    AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Tom Vilsack, the new, once again, head, but also past head, of the USDA. The NAACP has noted Vilsack had lied to conceal decades of discrimination against Black farmers. The NAACP president, Derrick Johnson, responded to Biden’s nomination of Vilsack to head the USDA, calling it “extremely problematic for the African American community.” He cited the 2010 controversy when Vilsack served as agriculture secretary during the Obama administration and fired Shirley Sherrod from her USDA position overseeing rural development, amidst a misunderstanding over racial comments. Vilsack would later apologize. Johnson told The Washington Post, quote, “We think that an individual who unjustifiably fired Shirley Sherrod — who is a civil rights icon, a legend, who worked with John Lewis — should not be considered. … We should not go backward, we should go forward.” Well, in fact, Vilsack is once again the head of the USDA. John Boyd, have you spoken to him? And what are you demanding?

    JOHN BOYD: Well, two things. Yes, I have spoken to him. And one of the things that President Biden also committed to me during our one-on-one visit in South Carolina, that there would be change in leadership at USDA. So, when they announced that Secretary Vilsack was coming back to USDA, he was not my pick. And he wasn’t the pick for Black farmers. He was the pick that President Biden wanted to come back. I wanted new blood and new leadership, someone who will take a much more aggressive campaign against this discrimination at the United States Department of Agriculture.

    And, Amy, when I lobbied all of those years for the Claims Remedy Act of 2010, that put in place $1.25 billion for Black farmers, Secretary Vilsack was, in my opinion, too slow to act. I didn’t get the help on Capitol Hill, neither in the House or the Senate. And Valerie Jarrett, from the White House, the last five or six months, got on board and began to campaign to help me pass that measure in the House and Senate. So, I didn’t think he was the right person.

    But I spoke to him here a couple days ago, and he congratulated me on the measure in the bill. But I also urged him to put in swift action to make sure that these payments and the debt relief and all of these measures, the outreach and technical assistance, reach Black farmers and farmers of color expeditiously, not to sit on it and try to figure out a plan of action. If we can get $1,400 in the mailbox and direct deposit into Americans, then we can disperse and relieve debts for Black and farmers of color expeditiously. And I urged him to do that.

    AMY GOODMAN: And finally, you mentioned the Trump administration and Black farmers, farmers of color. How does it fit in to past presidents? How would you assess the Trump administration?

    JOHN BOYD: Worst administration in history for Black farmers, since my 38 years of doing this kind of work, Amy. My visit — and I’ve had the opportunity to sit down with every agriculture secretary, both Republican and Democrat, in the cage at USDA. And Secretary — former Secretary Sonny Perdue, in my visit with him, was the worst conversation I ever had. He said, “Mr. Boyd, it’s your farmers, i.e. Black farmers, are going to have to get large or get out of business.”

    And when I urged him to have more Blacks on the county committees and all of the USDA commissions, he said he didn’t need people that were lazy and didn’t want to work. How egregious and — for former Secretary Sonny Perdue to say that. I told him that I didn’t know any Black farmers, that are still farming, that have been treated worse than dirt by USDA, that are lazy and don’t want to work. Now, Amy, I work seven days a week, including holidays and Christmas, and I’ve been working all of my life. And that’s the way many Black farmers have. The issue here is, is we haven’t had access to credit the way that the white farmers have.

    And for that type of position from the Trump administration, set us back a little further. And not only just in Black farming, but in race relations in this country, the Trump administration set Black people and divided this country. And former Secretary Sonny Perdue was at the core of that, taking land away from Black farmers. He didn’t even have an assistant secretary for civil rights, a position that I lobbied for and campaigned for, for many years, to get into the farm bill. They didn’t even fill that position. So what does that tell you about the Trump administration’s commitment on civil rights and resolving complaints from Black and other socially disadvantaged farmers? Sonny Perdue gets an F from me. And I hope he heads to retirement in politics, because he really done a bad number on Blacks and other farmers of color in this country.

    AMY GOODMAN: John Boyd, I want to thank you so much for being with us, fourth-generation Black farmer, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association.

    When we come back, we go to Steve Donziger, the environmental lawyer who sued Chevron for ecological devastation in the Ecuadorian Amazon. After Chevron was ordered to pay billions of dollars, Chevron went after him personally. Donziger has spent nearly 600 days under house arrest. We’ll speak to him at his house. Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Heather Cox Richardson: 100 Million Shots

    Biden’s address was in part a victory lap after he signed the American Rescue Plan, a sweeping measure that launches the country in the direction it has avoided since 1981, using the national government not to cut taxes, which favors those with wealth, but rather to support working families and children. Continue reading

    The post Heather Cox Richardson: 100 Million Shots appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • The Stimulus Payments’ Big Delivery Snafus Need to Be Addressed — Now

    The poorest households, which need the money the most, had significant problems getting their $1,200 and $600 payments.

    Now that President Joe Biden has signed the third economic-stimulus bill — the American Rescue Plan Act — into law, those administering the distribution of the one-time direct payment of $1,400 at the Treasury Department and IRS and their vendors need to ensure the last relief payment does get delivered — even for the “hard-to-reach.”

    This was a significant problem with the $1,200 and $600 payments, mostly to recipients in the lower quartile of the 99 percent (33 million households) who need money the most. They are the demographic instantly buying goods and services, paying rent and mortgages, or paying down debts. The “multiplier effect” means their purchases fed expenditures of their landlords, utility companies, gas and diesel service-station corporations, banks, supermarkets and suppliers — thus, boosting the economy.

    Unfortunately, vendors hired by the Treasury and IRS to dispense the first two payments to those without bank or credit union accounts failed to deliver. Eight million eligible recipients reportedly didn’t get their $1,200 payment last May, indicating many of the same people probably didn’t get their $600 in late January.

    Treasury funds certainly were available for those first two payments ($290 billion for the $1,200, $166 billion for the $600). The $456 billion payout was “real money,” as Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois) was wont to say about federal allocations.

    Small wonder then that the first distribution of $1,200 starting in March 2020 was followed by the Treasury’s stunning admission that “hundreds of thousands” of the checks or pre-paid VISA debit cards were unused. This raises the question of whether the Treasury and IRS and their vendors for this crash project tried hard enough to reach the lower third of the U.S.’s 99 percent. At least one Treasury spokesperson told CNBC that they and the IRS planned to build on “lessons learned over the past year.” One successful contact method for thousands of the “hard-to-reach” they seemed to have bypassed was well-advertised street signups. The Sanders committee should ensure they do them for the $1,400 payment.

    The program’s second priority was to speed money to the eligible recipient base. That meant individuals with a gross annual income under $75,000 or couples under $150,000. Couples also were set to receive $500 per child under 17.

    Millions of eligible recipients were in several federal databases that Treasury/IRS staffs could have used: tax filings and refund payments, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, the Railroad Retirement Board, and departments such as Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Labor, Agriculture and the Census Bureau. But too many recipients seem to have fallen between the cracks of what should have been a rigorous search despite the short deadline.

    According to MarketWatch, many of those 8 million people probably fell into six categories:

    • The IRS claimed it didn’t have bank account information on these eligible even though monthly federal checks were directly deposited;
    • they may have earned more than payment ceilings (individuals: $75,000; married couples: $150,000);
    • they were claimed as dependents by others;
    • creditors directly garnished the bank deposit;
    • a complex immigration situation was involved;
    • IRS “glitches” of sometimes failing to use people’s “final destination bank.”

    The IRS Sets Up Service Websites to Help Recipients

    Decades of experience with the public taught the Treasury and IRS that mistakes and misunderstandings would arise, especially for this vast project. So the IRS set up a “FAQ” website and two other service sites: “Get My Payment” for questions on delivery status and payment mode; and the free “Non-Filers” for those with low or no income. However, the first two payment deliveries needed far more than websites because deliveries were fraught with far more than “glitches.”

    Treasury and IRS officials had to have begun planning for these distributions as the CARES Act with the stimulus provision was moving through Congress. They knew that this immense project entailed far more than delivering millions of tax-refund checks. But they apparently were not about to spend time, energy, payroll expense, printing supplies, and their own U.S. debit cards on those lacking bank or credit union accounts or who don’t contribute a penny to tax revenues.

    Their assignment to distribute those $1,200 payments within a week meant they could go only to the nearly 90 million with direct-deposit or regular checking accounts at banks or credit unions. Not the 150 million who lacked those financial credentials or were among the seemingly “hard-to-finds” with unknown addresses, or non-tax filers (10 percent of the population), or the homeless (1.5 million). They would be relegated to deliveries by vendors of financial institutions, which all but guaranteed trouble.

    If found, recipients with known addresses would get snail-mailed pre-paid “Economic Impact Payment” commercial debit cards instead of Treasury checks. The Denver Post reported the Treasury chose debit cards because the department “lacked the capacity to print millions of EIP checks required quickly. Plastic cards offered a quicker option[.]”

    Postage costs would be higher. And deliveries might take a little longer — like late summer/early fall — because of chaos at the U.S. Postal Service caused by its postmaster general.

    So much for putting money into the hands of the near-destitute quickly.

    Treasury and IRS Explain Need for Vendors for Payment Deliveries

    To warm up public acceptance of this decision, an IRS spokesperson in late April 2020 told Reuters that, “Hobbled by budget cuts and obsolete technology, the IRS would otherwise struggle with the enormous workload involved in printing and distributing millions of checks and could take months to complete the job.”

    Action began on April 13 when Treasury officials got the go-ahead to sign contracts with three vendors: VISA; Fiserv, a Fortune 500 company providing electronic transaction services for financial institutions and which would process and produce VISA cards; and MetaBank, a Fintel Technologies subsidiary. MetaBank was to be the overall and sole financial agent working with the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service through which taxpayer billions would pour into those pre-paid VISA debit cards.

    MetaBank (doing business as “Meta Financial Group”) would direct traffic, starting with getting a VISA use license, as noted on the Meta card. Fiserv’s subsidiary, Money Network Financial, would design and mail the cards attached to a two-page information sheet for recipients about card use — and MetaBank fees. It also would handle complaints (“go to “EPICard.com or call 1-800.240.8100”).

    Major problems began with two vendors almost as soon as the ink was dry on the contracts.

    The first was the presumption that every American had access to computers, the internet and cellphones. Decision-makers at the Treasury and IRS and the vendors obviously could not conceive targets might not be able to afford them. But in this low- or no-income population, 26 percent don’t own a computer, not counting those who’ve never used them. Of those who do have computers, 77 million still lack adequate broadband services for the internet. So how could they possibly find information from Treasury/IRS websites or these vendors?

    Homeless people might not have access to computers or electrical outlets to recharge their cellphones for those long waits on robotic responders. How would they contact assistance sources for the whereabouts of their stimulus payments to even activate the VISA debit card?

    Moreover, most cards have cumbersome and often unfair restrictions — and can be lost, stolen or scammed. Aside from use at banks and credit unions, they are limited to buying goods and services at VISA retail outlets, online or by phone. Money Network withdrawals were free only at its “in-network” ATMs such as All Point®, though my card also listed PLUS, INTERLINK, STAR and MetaBank.

    Some ATMs had daily withdrawal limits of $200 to $400. “Out-of-network” ATMs were charging $2 per transaction. Every EIP debit card balance-check inquiry by an in-network card-issuing bank’s ATM inquiry costs 25¢. A non-network ATM can cost from $2.50-$2.75.

    Money Network did provide a “Locater” site for finding an in-network machine within three miles of a recipient’s home. Retailers providing space for ATMs do so to sell goods and service. Among mine were Walgreens, Safeway, Ed’s Deli and Pietro’s Pizza. But, once again, what do thousands of recipients do if they don’t have access to a computer to find an in-network ATM?

    Of course, the $1,200 and $600 payments could be transferred to bank or credit union accounts, a path probably used by millions of card recipients like me. However, my credit union’s nearest branch was 30 miles away.

    Envelope Design Becomes Worst Blunder for Payment Deliveries

    The third problem was the mailer’s design and Money Network’s two-page informational sheet containing the attached VISA card. Now, the Treasury stores billions of those familiar envelopes containing federal checks. Seemingly they could quickly resupply if needed. The return address always arrests instant attention: “Department of the Treasury/Internal Revenue Service” over the ominous line “Official Business/Penalty for Private Use, $300.” Few would ever consider it junk mail.

    Additionally, the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) is the “official, digital and secure source for producing, protecting, preserving and distributing the official publications and information products of the Federal Government.” On a rush need for this kind of project, it’s difficult to believe the GPO would redesign print envelopes and literature resembling junk mail or permit Money Network to find an envelope company to do the same.

    The plain white envelope containing the card did have a large Treasury seal on the left side and a red-ink command that the mailer was “not a bill or an advertisement.”

    Inside were Money Network’s two pieces of information. A slip informed me my stimulus payment was in the VISA pre-paid debit card affixed to the two-sided information sheet with vital referral URLs. The card provided a phone number for authorization. But neither piece mentioned the number “$600,” which would have saved many from misunderstandings.

    The text about withdrawal methods, MetaBank rules and fees — and scam warnings — were set in a 9-point sans-serif font using justified lines with a 7-inch eye-swing. All were typography’s classic no-no’s for readability, and indicated recipients were not considered worth the expense of an additional page with larger type in serif fonts.

    So it was easy to see why millions accidentally tossed the mailer without opening it. Or bothered to read the information sheet. Or cut up the card. The rude awakening meant perhaps thousands calling MetaBank’s customer service for a replacement which, as in the case of loss or theft, required a garbage search to report the card’s number.

    Complaints from eligible recipients failing even to get the mailer seemed to have been so numerous that on February 1, 2021, the IRS dispatched a follow-up letter (Notice No. 1444-B) to us recommending that if it hadn’t arrived within seven days of receiving that letter, to go to “IRS.gov/eip” and click on “Get My Payment.” Or call 800-191-9835.

    Added to such aggravation was the assumption once again that all complainers had computers or electrical outlets for recharging cellphones for those lengthy waits between robotic responses directing keypad runarounds.

    Robotic answering services ever since have become the target of recipients’ rage and complaints about payment deliveries. Thousands have demanded help from such sources as the Consumer Protection Service Bureau, the Better Business Bureau, their congressional delegations, and their banks or credit unions. Terrible public images have fallen on VISA, ATM networks, the vendors, and, of course, both the Treasury and the IRS.

    It’s true that the current bill (H.R. 1319) was first introduced February 24 and has been fast-tracked through Congress for the President’s signature. But ever since the complaints began coming in almost a year ago about the first stimulus payment of $1,200, knowing others surely would follow, they’ve had time to address them.

    So let’s hope the Treasury, the IRS and their vendors get distribution right on the upcoming $1,400 stimulus payments. The third time might well be the charm.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Chris Hedges: Bandaging The Corpse

    The established ruling elites know there is a crisis. They agreed, at least temporarily, to throw money at it with the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 bill known as American Rescue Plan (ARP). But the ARP will not alter the structural inequities, either by raising the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour or imposing taxes and regulations on corporations or the billionaire class that saw its wealth increase by a staggering $1.1 trillion since the start of the pandemic. The health system will remain privatized, meaning the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations will reap a windfall of tens of billions of dollars with the ARP, and this when they are already making record profits. The endless wars in the Middle East, and the bloated military budget that funds them, will remain sacrosanct.

    The post Chris Hedges: Bandaging The Corpse appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Wealth Gained by Billionaires Amid COVID Could Pay for Two-Thirds of Relief Bill

    Hundreds march to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' mansion to lobby for higher wages, the right to unionize and a series of reforms in the way the giant company handles the COVID-19 crisis in Beverly Hills, California, on October 4, 2020.

    America’s billionaires have made so much money they could fund two-thirds of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) with just their pandemic wealth gains.

    Using the jump in their wealth since last March, three men alone — Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg — could foot the nearly $250 billion cost for supplemental unemployment benefits contained in the ARP that will pay millions of jobless Americans $300 a week for the next six months.

    The collective net worth of the nation’s 657 billionaires stood at $4.2 trillion as of Wednesday morning, March 10, 2021 — up $1.3 trillion, or 44 percent, since the pandemic recession began about a year ago — based on Forbes data compiled in this report by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). The combined fortune of the nation’s billionaires was just under $3 trillion on March 18, 2020, the rough start of the pandemic crisis.

    This billionaire wealth growth represents two-thirds of the $1.9 trillion cost of Biden’s pandemic rescue plan, which has been attacked by the GOP as too expensive. No Republican voted for the measure as it made its way through Congress.

    There have been 43 newly minted billionaires since the beginning of the pandemic, when there were 614. As billionaire wealth soared over 78 million lost work between March 21, 2020, and Feb. 6, 2021, and 18 million were collecting unemployment on Feb. 13, 2021.

    There are other startling matchups of the pandemic wealth growth of individual U.S. billionaires and components of Biden’s bill meant to help millions of Americans cast into crisis by the virus.

    • Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and Space-X, saw his wealth skyrocket $142 billion since March, or 567 percent — enough to solo fund the bill’s support for farmers, small businesses, and other industries ($108 billion) and for bars and restaurants ($25 billion). He would still be $9 billion richer than he was when the Covid-19 shutdowns began last year.
    • Bezos, founder of Amazon, had wealth growth of $67 billion, or 59 percent, the last 12 months — which could fund the assistance the ARP provides to renters and homeowners ($42 billion) and to veterans ($17 billion). He would still pocket an $8 billion pandemic profit.

    The ARP contains many forms of pandemic relief, including $1,400 payments for 60 percent of Americans. The $1.3 trillion wealth gain by U.S. billionaires since March 2020 could pay for a stimulus check of more than $3,900 for every one of the roughly 331 million people in the United States. A family of four would receive over $15,600. Republicans in Congress resisted sending families stimulus checks most of last year, claiming we could not afford them.

    Who does the American Rescue Plan help?
    Credit: Center for American Progress Action Fund

    Under current tax law, none of the billionaires’ $4.2 trillion in wealth will be taxed during their lifetimes, unless the underlying assets are sold at a gain. Thanks to a weakened estate tax and aggressive estate-tax dodging by the rich, much of the money will also escape taxation when passed onto the next generation.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and colleagues in the House have introduced the “Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act” to reap some revenue from huge fortunes that otherwise sit untaxed year after year. The tax rate would just be two cents on the dollar (2 percent) for people with wealth between $50 million and $1 billion and just three cents on the dollar (a total of 3 percent) for wealth above $1 billion.

    According to an ATF and IPS analysis of Forbes data, America’s billionaires alone would owe $114 billion for last year if Warren’s wealth tax had been in place and $1.4 trillion over 10 years. The law would raise a total of about $3 trillion over 10 years.

    Taxing some of the towering wealth of billionaires would be the diametric opposite of the last overhaul of the U.S. tax code, 2017’s Trump-GOP tax cuts. Those tax cuts, which coincidentally cost the same estimated $1.9 trillion over 10 years as the ARP, mostly benefitted the wealthy and corporations — very much including billionaires and the businesses they control.

    Credit: Americans for Tax Fairness
    Credit: Americans for Tax Fairness

    According to the Tax Policy Center, 65 percent of the TCJA’s benefits will go to the highest-income 20% of American households. By contrast, about 90 percent of the ARP’s benefits will go to the bottom 80 percent of households, with nearly a quarter (23 percent) going to the lowest-income fifth.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Community Health Centers Are Fueling Vaccine Equity. The Relief Bill Funds Them.

    Travel nurse Tiquella Russell of Texas prepares to administer a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital on February 25, 2021, in Los Angeles, California.

    President Biden approved $7.6 billion in emergency funding for community health centers when he signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan for combating the effects of the COVID pandemic on Thursday. Community health centers are public clinics that primarily provide health care in medically underserved areas and are proving crucial for overcoming massive racial disparities in vaccination rates.

    The Biden administration launched a program last month that provides vaccines directly to community health centers, where the majority of people vaccinated so far are people of color, according to analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. A longtime priority for progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, federally funded community health centers provide comprehensive health care to more than 29 million people, including 14 million people living below the federal poverty line, regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay.

    Vaccine shots, of course, are free at community health centers and other sites working with the government. As of March 7, federal data show that 54 percent of people who received one or more vaccine doses at a community health center are people of color, according to Kaiser’s analysis. While there are gaps in the data, roughly 26 percent of people who received vaccines are Latinx and roughly 12 percent are Black. Another roughly 17 percent identify as Asian, mixed-race or Indigenous.

    Higher vaccination rates among people of color at community health centers suggest that these clinics are doing a better job at vaccinating communities of color hard-hit by the pandemic than the national effort overall. Nationally, only 9 percent of people who have received at least one shot are Latinx and 7 percent are Black, but Latinx and Black people make up about 19 percent and 13 percent of the total United States population, respectively.

    The American Rescue Plan provides more than $60 billion in additional funding to staff and expand public health systems that work with community health centers on the front lines of the effort to contain the virus, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC).

    Despite disproportionately high rates of COVID infection and deaths in communities of color and especially among Black people, systemic racism has caused racial disparities in vaccine distribution and access. In February, the vaccination rate among white people in 35 states was more than double the vaccination rate among Latinx people and nearly double the rate among Black people, according to Kaiser.

    Experts point to multiple reasons for these disparities, including longstanding barriers to medical care faced by people of color and a lack of trust in a medical system with a legacy of racist abuse and experimentation. Research shows Black people are far less likely to trust doctors than white people are, due to legitimate fears that they will be denied care and face other forms of racism that undermine medical treatment. Racist immigration enforcement has also created barriers to vaccines, especially in the South.

    Community health centers are designed to address disparities in health care by tailoring their services to the needs of specific communities, whether that means providing access to care in multiple languages, expanding addiction treatment services or focusing on HIV prevention and treatment, to name a few examples. Hundreds of clinics serve rural areas where there are few other providers. Doctors and staff often reflect the people they serve, such as immigrants, people of color and LGBTQ people.

    The percentage of people of color receiving vaccines has increased at community health centers nationally since the Biden administration began working directly with the system to provide vaccines, with the share of patients of color receiving their first shot growing from 47 percent in January to 56 percent in February. This reflects the population served by community health centers, where 63 percent of patients were people of color in 2016.

    Currently, about 250 health centers with more than 4,000 sites are working to make sure that all three COVID vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson) are available to low-income people, houseless people, migrant workers, residents of public housing, patients who speak little English and people living in rural areas, according to NACHC.

    At this time last year, federal funding for community health centers was on the rocks in Congress, even as the clinics worked directly with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to contain the virus in marginalized communities. Staring down a potential fiscal cliff, community health centers nationwide were forced to consider hiring freezes and delay expansions and improvements in clinics and infrastructure.

    “Nearly one year ago we were fighting this pandemic with one hand tied behind our backs and a multitude of challenges that included diminished revenues, shortages of protective gear, supplies and tests,” said NACHC president Tom Van Coverden in a statement this week.

    However, community health centers proved to be crucial for providing care and extending public health messaging about COVID into vulnerable communities, including rural areas with few medical providers and among immigrant communities. In 2020, Congress pumped money into community health centers as the pandemic spiraled out of control under President Trump. The Trump administration attempted to take credit for the funding, even though community health centers often served recipients of Medicaid, the federal insurance program for low-income people that the Trump administration and Republicans worked to severely weaken and defund.

    About 91 percent of people served by the 12,000 community health clinics and satellite sites nationwide are low-income. Community health centers serve about 1.4 million houseless people and one third of people living in poverty.

    Each of the 1,400 health center organizations are run by boards where at least 51 percent of members are patients, according to NACHC.

    “Health center advocates across the country have worked tirelessly to let their leaders in Congress know that to successfully fight the pandemic, we need to have adequate resources,” Coverden said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Landmark. The American Rescue Plan

    The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan marks a sea change in government. With its expansion of the child tax credit, the bill is projected to reach about 27 million children and to cut child poverty in half. Continue reading

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    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • The American Rescue Plan May Be the Most Crucial Legislation in Decades

    It is hard to overestimate the importance of this measure both for the present moment and as a sign of the direction in which the Democrats in charge of the United States hope to take the nation. Continue reading

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    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • Doing Too Little In This Crisis Will Come Back To Haunt The US Economy

    The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP) is essential to a robust and equitable recovery. The risk of doing too little is far greater than the risk of doing too much, and the American Rescue Plan meets the scale of the crisis.

    The overall size and components of the ARP have been carefully studied and considered. Given the balance of risks facing the economy and the danger of delay, passing the plan at its current scale and composition is the most prudent thing policymakers can do to ensure a rapid and fair recovery. Clearly, this is necessary.

    As the Senate debates what belongs in the final relief bill this week, policymakers must not shortchange aid to state and local governments, which is essential to a robust recovery.

    The post Doing Too Little In This Crisis Will Come Back To Haunt The US Economy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Obstruction

    Republicans in Congress have held up the American Rescue Plan and voter reform. Continue reading

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    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • The Public Loves the American Rescue Plan

    The coronavirus relief bill illustrates just how dangerously close we are to minority rule. Continue reading

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    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • As Colleges Reopen, Higher Education Workers Are Organizing for Their Own Safety

    A sign alerting people that masks are required on campus seen at Bloomsburg University, in Bloomsberg, Pennsylvania, on February 6, 2021.

    President Biden included $35 billion in funding for higher education in his American Rescue Plan. If this aid makes it into the final Covid relief law, college and university employees across the country will no doubt applaud.

    The pandemic has hit this sector hard. Around 260,100 university employees (14.6 percent of the total workforce) have lost their jobs since February 2020. Staff also make up most of the Covid-19 deaths on college campuses.

    But while federal funding is welcome, it is no guarantee of equitable treatment for higher education workers. Economic disparities and unsafe working conditions are motivating staff on a growing number of college campuses to build power through union organizing.

    One of the most ambitious university organizing efforts is taking place in Arizona. Late last year, staff at two schools — the University of Arizona and Arizona State University — formed United Campus Workers Arizona Local 7065, a “wall-to-wall” union representing all of the schools’ employees. The union now aims to organize all higher education workers throughout the Grand Canyon state.

    At one point, Arizona had one of the highest Covid-19 transmission rates in the world, and yet many university workers were still being sent back to schools without proper precautions while others were facing furloughs and layoffs.

    “The administration’s seeming prioritization of financial issues over its employees’ health was alarming,” Laurie Stoff, a professor and one of the organizers of the unionization effort at Arizona State University, told Inequality.org. The university’s president, Michael Crow, dismissed scientific standards for reopening schools as “inappropriate” at the college level.

    But the frustrations that boiled over during the pandemic had been simmering for a long time, Stoff explains. All but the most secure tenured ASU professors have “at will” employment status, meaning they can be terminated without any justification.

    “This has made it much easier for the university to keep workers quiet, as they are afraid to speak out against their mistreatment,” Stoff said.

    Long before the pandemic, many lower-level ASU employees weren’t making a living wage and were struggling with rising healthcare costs, which, when combined with a lack of cost-of-living wage increases, amounted to pay cuts.

    Stoff said lower-level employees’ economic insecurity is particularly grating because of the stark contrast with those at the top end of the university’s pay scale. President Crow made $1.15 million in 2019, the 10th-highest salary among U.S. public university presidents. The school’s football coach made three times as much, with $3.5 million in pay that year. They also just boosted the pay for the Vice President for Athletics by $150,000 and gave him a $500,000 bonus, while telling faculty and staff that they won’t receive any salary increases due to the pandemic.

    These disparities are not unique to the Arizona. Across the country, full-time professors with tenure make up a rapidly shrinking share of university employees as schools seek to slash labor costs. Given the added strain of the current crisis, it’s perhaps unsurprising that multiple staff and student unions have signed union contracts during the pandemic, most recently at Augsburg University in Minneapolis.

    Stoff hopes that the union can pressure university leaders to pay greater attention to the needs of all of its employees. Thus far, she says, ASU has paid lip service to institutional changes that would benefit the lowest-paid workers on campus, who are disproportionately workers of color. “Many of the demands of groups representing the interests of students and workers of color have fallen on deaf ears and are largely ignored.”

    The union also aims to secure a living wage and greater job security for all employees, increased health care benefits for graduate students and adjuncts, and stronger protections against Covid-19. These gains for employees, Stoff insists, would be good for everyone.

    “The union is not the enemy of the school,” she said. “We want to create the best possible working environment at the university, which is also our students’ learning environment.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Going Big on the Coronavirus Relief Bill

    If Biden gets this bill passed and Americans feel that it relieves the economic crunch, it will go a long way toward erasing people’s distrust of government action to regulate the economy. Continue reading

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    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.