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Category: bernie sanders

  • “Health Care Is a Human Right”: Sanders Schedules Hearing on Medicare for All

    The Senate Budget Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday to examine the economic and social benefits of implementing Medicare for All to combat the current health care crisis, Chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) announced on Monday.

    The COVID pandemic, which has claimed over 1 million lives in the U.S. so far, has highlighted the inequities in the U.S. health care system — which were already vast before the pandemic, Sanders wrote in a press release. The senator’s plea, which he has been making for years, is a familiar one: now, more than ever, the U.S. must catch up to every other wealthy country in the world and implement universal health care.

    “Estimates show that nearly 27 million Americans and their families lost their health care coverage when they lost their jobs due to COVID-19,” Sanders said in a tweet on Tuesday. “Let me be clear: health care is a human right, not a job benefit. Yes. It’s time for Medicare for All.”

    The hearing, entitled “Medicare for All: Protecting Health, Saving Lives, Saving Money,” will feature testimony from health and policy experts, as well as testimony from the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which has previously analyzed how a single-payer health care system would impact the U.S. budget.

    As Sanders pointed out, the U.S. spends twice as much per capita on health care as the average wealthy country, but has the lowest life expectancy and fewer physician visits than in most other wealthy countries, according to The Commonwealth Fund. Over a quarter of the entire U.S. adult population is not insured or is underinsured because of the country’s highly exclusive private health care system; as a result, tens of thousands of Americans die each year because they either put off or don’t seek medical care when they need it, the press release says.

    These inequities have been made starker by the pandemic. As tens of millions of families lost health insurance due to pandemic-related layoffs, unequal access to health insurance created large disparities in health outcomes between people who are insured and people who are uninsured.

    Implementing Medicare for All would be immensely beneficial for health outcomes and equity in the U.S., the press release goes on — and it would also come with economic benefits.

    “[E]stimates show that Medicare for All could save 68,000 lives per year, and numerous studies find that Medicare for All saves the American people and the U.S. health care system billions of dollars a year,” the press release says.

    “According to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare for All would save $650 billion each year, improve the economy, and eliminate all out-of-pocket health care costs,” the press release continues. “Even a study done by the right-wing Mercatus Center estimated that Medicare for All would save more than $2 trillion over a decade.”

    In March, Sanders vowed that he would soon reintroduce his Medicare for All bill, which he has reintroduced several times over the past decade or so.

    Lawmakers in the House have also been advocating for the proposal, and progressive representatives held the first pandemic-era hearing on the topic in March. Earlier this year, Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s (D-Washington) version of the bill gained a record 121 cosponsors in the House — far short of the roughly 218 votes needed to pass the House, but a sign that the idea is gaining momentum among the Democratic caucus.

    The measure is popular among the public. According to a poll from Morning Consult/Politico last year, 55 percent of Americans support Medicare for All, while only 32 percent oppose it; a poll in 2020 by The Hill/HarrisX found that 69 percent of voters support Medicare for All.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Says Democrats Must End Filibuster to Protect Abortion Access

    As Senate leaders prepare a vote on Democrats’ bill to protect abortion rights on the federal level, senators like Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) are calling on lawmakers to end the filibuster so that the bill can be passed.

    On Monday, Sanders pointed out that Republicans have manipulated the filibuster in the past in order to advance anti-Democratic causes.

    “If Republicans can end the filibuster to install right wing judges nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote in order to overturn Roe v. Wade, Democrats can and must end the filibuster to keep abortion legal,” Sanders said in a tweet.

    Shortly after Donald Trump took office in 2017, Republicans took advantage of their slim majority to change Senate rules in order to allow right-wing Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch to be confirmed with a simple majority vote of 51 votes. The move capped off 10 months of obstruction by the GOP, led by then-Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), to block President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nomination, Merrick Garland.

    At the time, Republicans claimed that they were acting to protect the public’s interests by not allowing a nominee to go through during an election year, even though Obama’s nomination took place nine months before the election. But that argument was shown to be completely disingenuous when they rammed through the nomination of far right Justice Amy Coney Barrett just weeks after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died; Barrett was sworn in only five days before the 2020 presidential election.

    Progressive lawmakers and advocates have been calling for an end to the filibuster for years, saying that it’s the largest obstacle to progress on vital climate and social issues. Indeed, the filibuster will spell the death of the abortion rights bill that House Democrats passed last September.

    Still, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) has scheduled a vote on the bill this week, saying that the vote will force Republicans — and certain Democrats — to have their votes to deny Americans abortion access on the public record.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) also recently called for an end to the filibuster in order to pass the abortion bill. In an interview with Teen Vogue last week, Warren said that she plans to fight to end the filibuster even if conservative Democrats like Senators Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) say they won’t allow it.

    “We may not end the filibuster in the next hour and a half, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight to do exactly that. To make change takes not only passion, but persistence. We gotta turn the heat up under it, and keep it up. Those who don’t want to make change count on the fact that people get tired,” Warren said. “Over Roe v. Wade, we don’t have the luxury of getting tired. So if we want to make real change, we’ve got to push [to end the filibuster].”

    Abortion rights advocates say that President Joe Biden should step in as a leader of the party to whip obstructionists like Manchin and Sinema in line.

    Both Manchin and Sinema have said that they oppose changing filibuster rules in order to protect abortion access, arguing that the filibuster protects reproductive rights, even though the opposite is true right now. Even if filibuster rules were changed, Manchin has described himself as “pro-life” — or more accurately, anti-abortion — meaning that it’s possible that he would vote against passing the bill anyway.

    If Manchin votes “no” on the bill this week, it could further fuel criticisms and frustrations against the conservative lawmaker, who has spent nearly the entirety of Biden’s time in office blocking the Democratic agenda.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Can Bernie Do It?

    He was then attacked for using the conventional models that all conventional economists use. Apparently, these models are fine when they support austerity, but are out-of-bounds for use when they support progressive policy.

    This post was originally published on Real Progressives.

  • “That’s a Fact”: Amazon Union’s Smalls Lambasts Anti-Union Senators in Hearing

    Amazon Labor Union (ALU) President Christian Smalls sharply rebuked U.S. senators for protecting Amazon from criticisms about its illegal labor practices at a Senate Budget Committee hearing led by Chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on Thursday.

    After Sanders delivered his opening speech, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) went on a tirade about how he thinks the independent Senator’s stances on the issues of Amazon illegally union busting and support of the labor movement in general are too politicized — even though Republicans dubiously claim to be the party of the working class. Graham said that it’s “very dangerous” that Sanders and the committee have determined Amazon to be, in Graham’s own words, “a piece of crap company.”

    The hearing was held for lawmakers to examine whether companies that violate federal labor laws, often openly, should be allowed to contract with the federal government.

    When Smalls began his testimony, he directly addressed Graham’s remarks.

    “First of all, I want to address Mr. Graham. It sounds like you were talking about more of the companies and the businesses in your speech, but you forgot that the people are the ones who make these companies operate,” Smalls said. “And when we’re not protected, and when the process for holding these companies accountable is not working for us — that’s the reason why we’re here today.”

    Smalls went on to say that it’s not “a Democrat or Republican thing. It’s a workers thing.” He reminded Graham that he is also supposed to represent the interest of workers who may be abused by companies in his state.

    Later in the hearing, Graham said that it’s unfair for the $1.2 trillion company to discuss their illegal conduct when there’s a legal system to file complaints about unfair labor practices — though labor experts generally acknowledge that the system’s lax punishments for breaking labor laws fail to deter union busting.

    Graham asked Smalls if he had filed legal complaints against the company. “You had a process where somebody could advocate for your interest,” Graham said.

    “There is a process that’s not working,” Smalls replied.

    “Well that’s your opinion,” Graham quipped.

    “That’s a fact,” Smalls said.

    Workers and union organizers faced abusive conditions from Amazon as ALU was organizing two New York City warehouses in Staten Island, Smalls continued, facing traumatizing intimidation and coercion tactics as part of the company’s multimillion dollar union-busting campaign. At one point, Smalls and other organizers were arrested while handing out food to workers after Amazon called the police on the group.

    Though Amazon faces charges of illegal union busting from the National Labor Relations Board, lax labor laws allow the company to get away with vast amounts of union busting moves, illegal or not, while facing little consequence. Sanders has asked President Joe Biden to cancel Amazon’s contracts with the federal government until the company stops union busting, but there’s no word from Biden yet on the request.

    “We want to feel that the government is allowing us to use our constitutional rights to organize,” Smalls said. “The notion that people united in this democracy will outmatch tyranny is the oldest American ideal.” And though workers won the union at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse, Amazon is still refusing to meet at the bargaining table with the workers, despite the legal obligation to do so.

    “To me, it just sounds like the corporations have the control, and they control whatever they want. They break the law, they get away with it — they know that already, that breaking the law during these election campaigns won’t be resolved during the election campaigns. So they purposely continue to break the law,” Smalls said, saying that the union had filed 40 unfair labor practices during the campaign. But despite the fact that many of these charges had merit, he said, the victims of these charges have still not gotten relief.

    Smalls called for Congress to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would make it easier for workers to form a union.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Blasts Senate for Favoring Corporate Welfare Over Child Care and Climate

    Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont blasted the warped priorities of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday as the Democratic-controlled chamber moved to advance legislation that he warned would provide a $53 billion “blank check” to the profitable microchip industry under the guise of promoting innovation, domestic manufacturing, and job creation.

    “We have strange priorities here in the Senate,” Sanders, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said in floor remarks. “We can’t extend the child tax credit to combat child poverty. We can’t deal with the crisis in child care. We can’t provide dental care to seniors on Medicare. We can’t deal with climate change.”

    “But somehow,” the senator added, “we can provide a massive amount of corporate welfare to a handful of corporations.”

    Sanders’ comments came as the Senate began holding votes on dozens of motions related to the COMPETES Act, which is currently in conference committee as the House and Senate reconcile their differences on the legislation before final passage. The motions are aimed at instructing the conferees’ work on the bill.

    In recent weeks, Sanders has vocally warned on the Senate floor and in the pages of major newspapers that the measure in its current form would do nothing to prevent taxpayer funding from going to large corporations that bust unions, outsource U.S. jobs, and buy back their own stock.

    The Vermont senator has specifically targeted a provision that would authorize an additional $10 billion in NASA funding for moon landers, money that could wind up benefiting billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space flight company Blue Origin.

    “Clearly, Mr. Bezos desperately needs this federal assistance,” the Vermont senator said sarcastically. “He is only worth $150 billion.”

    On Wednesday, Sanders introduced motions that would attach a number of safeguards to the legislation’s funding and cut the $10 billion NASA provision.

    “At a time when 70 million are uninsured, when 600,000 people are homeless in this country, while we are seeing a growing gap between the very rich and everybody else,” Sanders said, “it does not make a lot of sense to give $10 billion to the second-wealthiest person in this country.”

    By overwhelming margins — 6-87 and 17-78 — the Senate voted down both of Sanders’ proposals while approving several Republican-led motions unrelated to the bill’s core objectives, including one that would instruct conferees to prohibit President Joe Biden from lifting the terrorism designation on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

    The Senate’s votes came days after the leak of a draft opinion signaling that the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority is set to overturn Roe v. Wade, imperiling abortion rights and more across the country.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has vowed to hold another vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, House-passed legislation that would codify the right to abortion care into federal law. But the bill will fail again as long as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) continues to oppose it and the 60-vote filibuster remains intact — thanks in large part to Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

    “Congress must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW,” Sanders tweeted late Monday. “And if there aren’t 60 votes in the Senate to do it, and there are not, we must end the filibuster to pass it with 50 votes.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden May Invite Starbucks and Amazon Union Organizers to the White House

    The Biden administration may soon invite Starbucks and Amazon union organizers to the White House, potentially heeding Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vermont) call to do so last week.

    As White House insiders told The Washington Post, administration officials are currently in talks with union organizers to organize a potential visit. The meeting has not been finalized, and details are still being worked out, sources said.

    This would be a major show of support from the administration for ongoing labor movements that have been surging across the country. Though President Joe Biden has made some moves to support unions and the labor movement, his administration has been largely silent about the issue that has otherwise been making waves within the working class.

    White House officials are apparently eager to open a dialogue with labor organizers in order to showcase the resurgence of the labor movement, which they say is a direct result of the administration’s economic policies, according to the Post, though labor organizers have been working to mobilize workers en masse for years and long before this administration came to power.

    The meeting discussions appear to be a direct response to Sanders’s call last Sunday for Biden to invite unionizing workers to the White House. During a rally with Amazon workers and union organizers in New York City, Sanders praised Biden for speaking about labor issues but said he can and should go further to support the labor movement.

    “What he has got to do is start inviting these guys to the White House,” Sanders said. “He’s got to invite the Starbucks workers to the White House, the other unions that are organizing all over this country, and make it clear that he is on their side and that he is going to do what he can to support labor organizing throughout this country.”

    Sanders has been emphasizing that if Democrats want to come out with majorities in Congress after the midterm elections this fall, they need to strongly stand behind the labor movement. Biden should be a leader in that regard and could take steps like canceling Amazon’s contracts with the federal government because of the company’s disregard for federal labor laws in its union-busting campaigns, the Vermont senator said.

    Unionizing Starbucks workers have asked lawmakers to be more vocal about their union campaign in order to bring attention to the severe anti-union drive that the company has been waging. Starbucks has fired at least 18 pro-union employees, seemingly because of their involvement with union organizing, though the company alleges otherwise. It is illegal for companies to retaliate against workers for union activity, but current punishments for doing so are lax.

    The president of Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which successfully unionized a Staten Island Amazon warehouse last month and lost its election for a second warehouse that voted last week, said that lawmakers should pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act in order to protect unionizing workers and galvanize new movements. Aside from that, Biden can act on his own, he said.

    “They have to pass the PRO Act,” ALU President Christian Smalls told Vanity Fair. “If they’re not going to pass the PRO Act, Biden needs to sign an executive order. Simple as that.”

    With less than 200 days to go until the midterm elections, vocally supporting workers’ movements could turn out to be a favorable strategy for the White House. Polling from September last year by Gallup showed that support for labor unions is on the rise and is currently at its highest level since 1965 with a 68 percent approval. Recent polling conducted by Blue Rose Research for More Perfect Union has also found that 75 percent of Americans support Amazon’s union efforts.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Warns Democrats: Back Union Movement Now or Face Defeat This Fall

    In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) warned Democrats that they need to start publicly supporting surging labor movements or else face defeat in the midterm elections this fall.

    Since the unceremonious death of the Build Back Better Act last year, the Democratic party has been in dire need of messaging, and needs to embrace a strong pro-union platform if they want to boost their chances of retaining power in Congress, Sanders told the magazine before heading to rallies in support of unionizing Amazon workers in New York and Starbucks workers in Virginia.

    Democrats have to decide if they’re going to “become a party which stands for the working class of this country” or if they’ll “remain a corporately controlled party beholden to [their] wealthy campaign contributors and to the corporate media as well,” Sanders said.

    To choose the latter is to risk losing big in this year’s elections. “To turn your back on the working class, in general, is political suicide,” he said. Becoming “strongly involved in the labor movement” is, on the other hand, “the right thing to do,” he added. “It is also very, very good politics. And I think if the Democrats don’t do that immediately, they are going to look at a very, very bad 2022.”

    Sanders has been a staunch supporter of the labor movement, which is experiencing a renaissance led largely by young organizers and grassroots activists. For his part, he’s created a unit within his office of about 10 staffers focused on supporting unionizing workers not only within headline-grabbing campaigns, but also in places like John Deere, Kellogg’s and universities across the country.

    Sanders has also been pushing Democrats to take more action to support labor movements. Recently, he called for President Joe Biden to invite Starbucks and Amazon labor organizers to the White House, and to cancel Amazon’s federal contracts and refuse to work with the company until it stops union busting.

    Though Biden has pledged to be the most pro-union president in American history, he and the party, which holds a majority in both chambers of Congress, have so far fallen short of labor organizers’ expectations of the supposedly pro-union party. For instance, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a sweeping bill that would make it far easier for workers to form unions in the country, has sat dormant in Congress for over a year after the House passed the bill last March.

    The president of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which recently made waves for successfully unionizing the first Amazon warehouse in the country, told Vanity Fair that Congress can and should take action on the issue. “They have to pass the PRO Act,” said ALU President Christian Smalls. “If they’re not going to pass the PRO Act, Biden needs to sign an executive order. Simple as that.”

    Sanders had worked for provisions of the PRO Act to be included in the Build Back Better Act, which could have bypassed the filibuster, but the bill was gutted and killed by conservative Democrats in the Senate. In his interview, he also expressed frustration about how the Democratic Party handled those major obstructionists within their ranks — chiefly Senators Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona).

    The Vermont senator blamed Manchin and Sinema for dragging the party behind, but also said that Democrats need to shape up in their response to them.

    “How you handle Manchin, how you handle Sinema and the other conservative Democrats is one of the challenges that the Democrats have got to deal with,” he said. “But the current strategy is an absolute political failure.”

    Sanders also had harsh words for Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos. If the senator were given a chance to talk to Bezos directly, “There’s nothing that I would say to him except, ‘You know what? We’re gonna take you on,’” he said. “You could either start responding to the needs of your workers, or we’re gonna fight you ruthlessly.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Ridicules Romney for Saying that Student Loan Cancellation Is a “Bribe”

    Student debt cancellation advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) ridiculed Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Thursday after the Republican said that government benefits like loan forgiveness are tantamount to a “bribe.”

    After news circulated that President Joe Biden is exploring options to cancel student debt without Congress on Wednesday, Romney wrote, “Desperate polls call for desperate measures: Dems consider forgiving trillions in student loans. Other bribe suggestions: Forgive auto loans? Forgive credit card debt? Forgive mortgages? And put a wealth tax on the super-rich to pay for it all. What could possibly go wrong?”

    In response, Sanders, who favors canceling all student debt, pointed out that Romney’s view on student loans isn’t consistent with his views on government funding for corporations and the wealthy.

    “Mr. Romney supports ‘bribes’ in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy and billions in welfare for corporations, but is shocked by the idea that working Americans might get help paying off student debt,” Sanders tweeted. “I know he thinks corporations are people, but does he know people are people?”

    Political commentators also criticized Romney’s post, pointing out that Romney supported the huge bailouts that were provided to corporations and banks in 2008 with little accountability. Romney has personally benefited from such corporate bailouts, to the tune of millions of dollars; for instance, he profited from the bailout of Bain Capital as Bain skimmed money from workers’ pension funds.

    Romney’s argument that wealthy Americans shouldn’t have to face a tax to cover debtors’ student loans is also disingenuous. To justify their opposition to canceling student debt, conservatives often cite their supposed concerns over the federal deficit or government spending, but economists have found that the vast benefits from student debt cancellation would outweigh the limited impact that such an action would have on the deficit and inflation.

    The Utah Republican’s tweet also seemed to suggest that student debt cancellation is simply a last-ditch effort by Democrats to gain voters’ favor before the election, despite the fact that action on student debt is popular and would materially benefit millions of Americans’ lives — and as though Republicans aren’t actively trying to restrict voting and undermine elections across the country.

    While conservatives oppose student loan forgiveness outright, Biden has hesitated to act on the issue and appeared to dampen expectations on his plans to cancel debt on Thursday.

    In spite of reports that the president is considering canceling a substantial amount of debt, Biden said that canceling $50,000 of debt is not on the table. “I am considering dealing with some debt reduction. I am not considering $50,000 debt reduction,” he said, adding that he will be announcing a plan within the “next couple of weeks.”

    Some advocates are hopeful that Biden will cancel more than $50,000 per debtor, though that seems unlikely.

    It’s unclear what amount of student loans Biden is considering forgiving, and whether forgiveness will be universal across all debtors. His administration has flip flopped on the issue, and he pledged on the campaign trail that he would only cancel up to $10,000 for each borrower.

    Debt activists say that $10,000 is not enough to help borrowers who are the most in need and point out that that amount could easily come back in interest over time.

    Biden has heeded progressives’ advice on student debt before. When he extended the payment pause earlier this month, he also wiped out the default status of over 7 million borrowers, in order to give them a “fresh start” when payments restart. Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), both advocates of student debt cancellation, had urged his administration to move borrowers out of default in a letter last year.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bernie Sanders Demands Biden Cancel Amazon Contracts Over Union-Busting

    Sen. Bernie Sanders demanded Tuesday that President Joe Biden cancel Amazon’s federal contracts over the e-commerce giant’s aggressive and unlawful union-busting efforts in New York, Alabama, and elsewhere, a call that came as union voting kicked off at a second Amazon facility in Staten Island.

    In a letter to Biden, Sanders (I-Vt.) pointed to the president’s campaign promise to “institute a multi-year federal debarment for all employers who illegally oppose unions” and “ensure federal contracts only go to employers who sign neutrality agreements committing not to run anti-union campaigns.”

    “The essence of your plan for strengthening union organizing was to make sure that federal dollars do not flow into the hands of unscrupulous employers who engage in union-busting, participate in wage theft, or violate labor law,” the Vermont senator wrote. “In order to implement that plan, I urge you to sign an executive order preventing companies that violate federal labor laws from contracting with the federal government.”

    “As you may know, Amazon, one of the largest and most profitable corporations in America, is the poster child as to why this anti-union busting executive order is needed now more than ever,” Sanders added.

    In a floor speech Tuesday evening, the Vermont senator declared that “no government — not the federal government, not the state government, and not the city government — should be handing out corporate welfare to union busters and labor law violators.”

    “So today I say to President Biden: You promised to prevent union busters like Amazon from receiving lucrative contracts from the federal government,” said Sanders. “Please keep that promise.”

    Federal agencies have fined Amazon dozens of times over the past two decades for a range of offenses related to workers’ rights, including wage, hour, and workplace safety violations. A report released earlier this month estimated that the injury rate among Amazon’s warehouse workers rose 20% in 2021, a year in which the company spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants.

    In recent weeks, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has sued Amazon for unlawfully retaliating against union organizers and other “flagrant unfair labor practices.”

    In January, ahead of the historic union victory at JFK8 that Amazon is working to overturn, the NLRB alleged in a formal complaint that the company “repeatedly broke the law by threatening, surveilling, and interrogating their Staten Island warehouse workers who are engaged in a union organizing campaign.”

    Despite its repeated and ongoing transgressions, the powerful company continues to benefit from federal contracts. The National Security Agency, for instance, has quietly awarded Amazon Web Services a cloud contract worth up to $10 billion.

    Sanders, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, argued in his letter to Biden that Amazon “should not receive” the federal contract as long as it continues to engage in “illegal anti-union activity.” Next week, Sanders is expected to preside over a hearing examining how many federal contracts flow to companies, including Amazon, that are fighting unionization efforts.

    “Since 2004, Amazon has received thousands of federal contracts worth billions of dollars,” Sanders wrote Tuesday. “Mr. President: Taxpayer dollars should not go to companies like Amazon and multi-billionaires like Jeff Bezos who repeatedly break the law.”

    The Vermont senator’s demand comes as unions and lawmakers are pushing the New York attorney general to investigate whether Amazon has invalidated its eligibility for state-level taxpayer subsidies by violating labor laws. According to Good Jobs First, Amazon has received at least $4.18 billion in state and local taxpayer subsidies since 2000.

    “If we do not stop subsidizing Amazon’s warehouses, New York state becomes complicit in subsidizing union-busting practices with taxpayer money,” New York Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-40) told The Lever last week.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Hey, Bernie, Make It A Real Single Payer Bill…No Profits

    Senator Bernie Sanders has announced that he is going to introduce his Medicare for All bill in the Senate—and hold a hearing.  This is most welcome news. As Bernie campaigned for the presidency, he elevated national single payer health care, an improved Medicare for All, into the public spotlight and onto the nation’s agenda. His advocacy for Medicare for All informed millions and lifted spirits building hope that a universal single payer plan is possible in the US. He has not done that well at writing legislation.  His most recent bill, the Medicare for All Act of 2019 (S. 1129), falls short of essential single payer principles and lets stand billions in profits that will undermine care and steal public funds.

    The post Hey, Bernie, Make It A Real Single Payer Bill…No Profits appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden Can Reduce Prescription Drug Prices Without Congress, Warren Says

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) has urged the Biden administration to take action to lower prescription drug prices after a group of legal and public health experts found that the executive branch has the power to do so without approval from Congress.

    In a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra, Warren wrote that the agency should heed the advice of experts and “use its executive powers to lower drive prices, as explicitly contemplated by the Department of Health and Human Services’s Comprehensive Plan for Addressing High Drug Prices.”

    The letter follows a note that experts sent to Warren last week detailing how existing laws give HHS legal tools to intervene when “excessive” drug prices are negatively affecting public health.

    “These tools can help the Administration break patent barriers, foster competition where currently there is none, and drive down prices. Critically, using them requires no additional congressional action,” the experts wrote.

    The experts, led by professors and legal students from Harvard, Yale and Columbia, pointed to a law known as “government patent use power,” which gives the government the authority to use a patented technology without a license; the Defense Department uses the law to procure technologies like bullets and night vision goggles, for instance. In the past, the government has used this law to purchase patented medicines at a lower cost, but lawmakers haven’t used it for this purpose since the 1970s, the experts wrote.

    “Today, the federal government could and should use this power to curb excessively high drug prices paid by the government,” they said. The government doesn’t need to jump through specific hoops to use the law, they wrote, and “it can simply buy patented drugs from a low-cost manufacturer, or it can manufacture drugs itself.” This could drastically lower the cost of drugs used by Medicare and Medicaid.

    The letter also cites a 1980 bill known as the Bayh-Dole Act, which was adopted to provide the American public access to inventions that were created using government funds and thus tax revenue.

    “[W]hen the government directly funds research that results in a patent, the Bayh-Dole Act gives the government two additional tools: a royalty-free license in that patent and a right of the government to ‘march in’ on the patent to ensure that the resulting products are ‘available to the public on reasonable terms,’” said the letter writers.

    The combined use of Bayh-Dole and the patent use power law would be especially powerful, they said, and could help to significantly lower drug prices and expand access to crucial drugs.

    President Joe Biden has previously called for action to lower prescription drug prices via his social spending bill, known as the Build Back Better Act. But the pharmaceutical industry was vehemently opposed to the drug price provision in the bill, lobbying hard against the measure and persuading some conservative Democrats to oppose its inclusion as well.

    Ultimately, the Build Back Better Act was killed by Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) and the prescription drug pricing plans died with it. Earlier this year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) demanded that the Senate floor take up debate on his and Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-Minnesota) bill to allow Medicare to access lower drug prices, but the debate was blocked by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).

    If the Biden administration takes executive action to lower drug prices, circumventing Congress on the issue altogether, it would likely be an enormously popular move. Last year, polling found that the public overwhelmingly supported Sanders’s proposal to give Medicare the ability to negotiate prescription drug prices, with 88 percent of people surveyed saying that they supported the proposal.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Calls on Biden to Invite Starbucks, Amazon Union Workers to White House

    During a rally with unionizing Amazon workers, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) called on President Joe Biden to do more to support unions, saying that the president should invite the labor organizers to the White House.

    In New York City on Sunday, speaking in front of a crowd of Amazon Labor Union (ALU) members and supporters along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Sanders commended Biden for praising unions more in speeches and statements than previous presidents have, but said that the president should do more than just talk.

    “Does the [Biden] administration need to be doing more to support unions?” one member of the crowd asked.

    “Yes,” Sanders replied, to cheers from the crowd. “To his credit, Biden has talked more about unions than any other president in my lifetime. But talk is not enough.”

    “What he has got to do is start inviting these guys to the White House,” he continued, gesturing to the ALU organizers standing by the platform. “He’s got to invite the Starbucks workers to the White House, the other unions that are organizing all over this country, and make it clear that he is on their side and that he is going to do what he can to support labor organizing throughout this country.”

    In an interview with The New York Times ahead of the rally on Friday, Sanders said that he has made this suggestion directly to the White House, and that he has told the Biden administration to take the time to listen to the workers about their wants, needs, and how the White House can support them.

    Aside from flying to meet with both Amazon workers in New York and Starbucks workers in Virginia on Sunday, Sanders has also held virtual town halls with both groups of workers that were live streamed to the public, asking them to share their experiences with union busting at their respective organizations. He has also made moves to leverage his power as a senator to pressure executives to stop union busting.

    Biden has generally been supportive of labor unions during his time in office. Earlier this month, in a speech to labor leaders at a union conference, Biden signaled his support for Amazon workers who are in the midst of a unionizing campaign.

    He noted that his administration has created a task force that explores and executes ways to better support unions from the federal level, “to make sure the choice to join a union belongs to workers alone.” Then, he said, “and by the way, by the way: Amazon, here we come.” Later, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki walked back this statement, saying that the government wouldn’t be involved in supporting unionizing efforts by Amazon workers.

    On the campaign trail, Biden pledged to be the “most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history.” Though workers have been driving a major resurgence of the labor movement over the past year or so, there are still major roadblocks in union organizing that experts say could be eased by support from the White House.

    Even just calling attention to union busting by a company, as Starbucks workers have previously called for from lawmakers, could help garner support for workers’ efforts. However, Biden has yet to comment on the Starbucks union push, which has been an extraordinary force within the labor movement over the past months.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • How to Tell the History of the Democrats

    What connection does the party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson have to the party of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris?

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Bernie Sanders Urges Congress to Reject Bailout for Bezos Space Company

    Sen. Bernie Sanders took to the pages of The Guardian on Friday to inveigh against legislation currently before Congress that, if approved, could provide billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space flight company with a lucrative NASA contract to build a moon lander.

    “At a time when over half of the people in this country live paycheck to paycheck, when more than 70 million are uninsured or underinsured and when some 600,000 Americans are homeless, should we really be providing a multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout for Bezos to fuel his space hobby?” Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, wrote in his op-ed. “I don’t think so.”

    “The time is now,” he added, “to have a serious debate in Congress and throughout our country as to how to develop a rational space policy that does not simply socialize all of the risks and privatize all of the profits.”

    The bill at issue is the COMPETES Act, a measure ostensibly aimed at bolstering U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, providing more funding for technological research and development, and enhancing the nation’s space exploration efforts.

    The Vermont senator has warned for weeks — including in remarks on the Senate floor — that the bill is rife with “corporate welfare.” Sanders has trained much of his ire on a provision that would give NASA $10 billion to pick a company to build a second moon lander after the agency awarded SpaceX — a company owned by billionaire Elon Musk — a $2.9 billion contract to make a lunar rocket last year.

    Blue Origin, which competed for the original contract, unsuccessfully sued NASA over the SpaceX deal, claiming the contract was improperly awarded. Last July, Bezos and a handful of others rode a Blue Origin rocket to the edge of space, a 10-minute trip for which he was widely derided.

    With the COMPETES Act, Congress appears poised to give Bezos another shot at a NASA contract. The House and Senate have both passed versions of the legislation, but the two bills must be reconciled before they can reach President Joe Biden’s desk for final approval.

    Sanders is pushing lawmakers to strip out the $10 billion “bailout to Blue Origin” and attach conditions to the measure’s proposed taxpayer subsidies to the U.S. microchip industry. As Politico reported last month, Bezos’ company is “working behind the scenes to combat the Vermont Independent’s assault on its possible role in NASA’s public-private partnership to land on the moon by 2025.”

    In his op-ed for The Guardian on Friday, Sanders argued that “this issue goes well beyond just one contract for Bezos to go to the moon,” noting, “In 2018, private corporations made over $94 billion in profits from goods or services that are used in space — profits that could not have been achieved without generous subsidies and support from NASA and the taxpayers of America.”

    “NASA has identified over 12,000 asteroids within 45 million kilometers of Earth that contain iron ore, nickel, precious metals, and other minerals,” the senator wrote. “Just a single 3,000-foot asteroid may contain platinum worth over $5 trillion. Another asteroid’s rare earth metals could be worth more than $20 trillion alone. According to the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, ‘There are twenty-trillion-dollar checks up there, waiting to be cashed!’”

    “The questions we must ask are: who will be cashing those checks?” Sanders continued. “Who will, overall, be benefiting from space exploration? Will it be a handful of billionaires or will it be the people of our country and all of humanity?”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Is Traveling to Rally With Amazon and Starbucks Workers This Weekend

    This Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is traveling to both New York and Virginia in order to meet with unionizing Amazon workers and Starbucks workers on the same day.

    In New York City, Sanders will be meeting with Amazon Labor Union (ALU) organizers and workers, ALU President Christian Smalls announced on Twitter on Wednesday.

    “The workers [with Amazon Labor Union] are taking on one of the most powerful companies in the world and one of the wealthiest men in America,” Sanders said. “I’m proud to stand in solidarity with them and support their fight for dignity on the job. See you on Sunday!”

    The face-to-face meeting comes after an organizing call between Amazon workers and Sanders held earlier this month in celebration of ALU’s recent win at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York. Sanders praised the workers for their campaign, which he said showed that workers are in the midst of waging “a national, sweeping movement” for better working conditions and worker solidarity.

    Also on Sunday, Sanders will travel to Richmond, Virginia, to rally with Starbucks Workers United. The rally, called Unity Fest, was announced about a month ago and will also feature live music from local bands.

    Starbucks workers’ union recently swept Richmond, winning five union elections in one day, all by large margins. There are now roughly 25 unionized Starbucks stores in the country, with more union election results coming in weekly.

    These wins come as Starbucks has been attacking its employees across the country, despite findings from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that the company’s practice of retaliating against pro-union workers in places like Memphis and Phoenix is a violation of federal labor laws.

    “The movement of workers demanding dignity on the job wins again,” Sanders wrote on Tuesday. “Congratulations to Starbucks workers in Richmond on your vote to unionize! I will see you Sunday!”

    Sanders has supported unionizing workers in union campaigns at Starbucks, Amazon, and beyond, especially as the labor movement has seen a surge of activity over the past year. In February, Sanders highlighted Starbucks workers’ struggles in a town hall and last month wrote a letter to CEO Howard Schultz demanding that he obey federal labor laws and step out of the way of unionizing workers.

    “At a time of growing income and wealth inequality, workers are fighting back and unionizing — at Amazon, Starbucks, universities and hospitals. They are right,” wrote Sanders on Wednesday. “We need an economy that works for all, not just billionaires.”

    Indeed, workers are fueling a renewed push for unions across the country. According to NLRB data, union filings have increased by 57 percent over roughly the past six months. Unions are increasingly popular in the U.S. One recent poll found that 75 percent of Americans support Amazon workers’ fight for a union, while Gallup polling last year found that public support for unions is at the highest level it’s been since 1965.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Is Open to Running for President If Biden Doesn’t Seek Reelection

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) may run for president again in 2024 if President Joe Biden doesn’t seek reelection, a newly revealed campaign memo shows.

    In a memo circulated among political allies and shared with The Washington Post, Sanders adviser and 2020 campaign manager Faiz Shakir says that, “In the event of an open 2024 Democratic presidential primary, Sen. Sanders has not ruled out another run for president, so we advise that you answer any questions about 2024 with that in mind.”

    If Sanders ran again in 2024, it would be his third time running for president. In both of his previous runs, the democratic socialist was beat by a moderate candidate after establishment members of the party banded together to defeat him.

    Shakir concludes the memo by encouraging allies to weather and address attacks from opponents. “As campaigning heats up in states across the country, your political opponents and their corporate-aligned allies will try to make you feel defensive about Sen. Bernie Sanders’ support for your candidate,” the memo says. “Our advice is to embrace the attacks.”

    The memo also says that, if opponents or members of the media ask allies if they’ll support Sanders if he challenges Biden in 2024, allies should point out that Sanders has been one of Biden’s greatest allies in the Senate.

    “As Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, no one fought harder for the president’s policy agenda than Bernie,” reads the proposed response. “He traveled to Republican Congressional Districts last summer to promote Build Back Better. Unfortunately, that legislation was stopped by corporate Democrats.”

    As Mike Casca, a spokesperson for Sanders, told the Post, Sanders is a popular politician. “While it’s frustrating this private memo leaked to the media, the central fact remains true, which is that Senator Sanders is the most popular officeholder in the country,” Casca said.

    Indeed, as YouGov found in recent polling, Sanders is the most popular politician currently in office, with 48 percent of respondents saying that they have a positive view of him. He has a 6-point lead in popularity over Biden, who is the next most popular active politician, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Donald Trump at 38 percent.

    Sanders has had a major hand in shaping the current Democratic platform. Measures like Medicare for All, student debt reform and free public college were relatively obscure when he first ran on them in 2016 but now have become part of the mainstream political conversation and are even being adopted in some states.

    Biden is likely to run for reelection, however. The president and top advisers have assured allies that he plans on running again in 2024, but with the caveat that he can’t plan for years into the future for certain.

    It’s also unlikely that Biden won’t run for reelection just going by historical standards. Only a small handful of presidents have chosen not to run for reelection, and only 10 presidents have lost to another candidate after running for a second term.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Says It’s Time to “End the Failed War on Drugs” and Legalize Marijuana

    On Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) called for marijuana to be legalized and for past marijuana-related convictions to be erased, as legislation to do so has stalled in the Senate.

    “Legalize marijuana. Expunge past marijuana convictions. End the failed War on Drugs,” Sanders wrote on Twitter.

    Sanders’s statement came among an influx of other legislators calling for the passage of the Marijuana Opportunity and Reinvestment (MORE) Act, which the House voted to pass earlier this month. The bill, which would allow people convicted of certain marijuana crimes to have their records expunged and fully decriminalize marijuana across the country, has stalled in the Senate, where it has little chance of passing due to Republican opposition and the filibuster.

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) called for the abolishment of the filibuster in order to pass the legislation. “Today would be a great day for the Senate to end the filibuster and pass the MORE Act — which would legalize marijuana and expunge records,” Jayapal said on Wednesday.

    Senate Democrats say that they’re working on their own legislation to legalize marijuana that would tweak the way marijuana importers and sellers are taxed.

    Legalizing marijuana is a hugely popular issue among voters. In November, Gallup found that support for marijuana legalization, which has been increasing steadily over the past decades, is at an all-time high of 68 percent.

    Drug legalization advocates and people convicted of marijuana-related crimes say that the passage of the MORE Act could be a huge advancement of social justice in the country. Black people are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana; Black and Latino men also receive longer prison sentences than white men arrested on similar drug charges.

    Even with legalization, these racist disparities remain. In every state where marijuana is currently legal, Black people are still more likely to be arrested for marijuana-related charges.

    The MORE Act takes steps to try to alleviate racial justice issues created by marijuana criminalization and the war on drugs by taxing sales on legal marijuana and redistributing the funds to communities that were especially damaged by the war on drugs. It would also require the Bureau of Labor Statistics to regularly publish data on the demographics of marijuana business owners and employees in hopes of bringing transparency to the industry, which is currently mostly white-owned.

    Some social justice activists have also been seeking to create democratically-owned businesses as the marijuana industry develops from its nascent stages. In Rhode Island, for instance, workers are asking state legislators to reserve licenses for worker-owned cooperatives within the industry in order to ensure that there’s space for more equitable businesses with support and participation from the communities they serve.

    Legalizing marijuana could also be a huge boon for the government’s coffers. A recent report found that states that have decriminalized marijuana have collected more than $10 billion in tax revenues since 2014. Additionally, a study released last week found that legal marijuana reduces demand for prescription drugs obtained through Medicaid funded by state programs.

    “The reductions in drug utilization that we find could lead to significant cost savings for state Medicaid programs,” said Shyam Raman, a doctoral student at Cornell University and co-author of the study. “The results also indicate an opportunity to reduce the harm that can come with the dangerous side effects associated with some prescription drugs.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bernie Sanders Calls on Amazon to “Sit Down and Start Negotiating a Contract”

    On an organizing call Monday night with leaders of the Amazon Labor Union, Sen. Bernie Sanders said he believes the grassroots group’s historic election victory in Staten Island earlier this month has empowered workers across the nation to collectively face down their corporate employers and fight for better conditions.

    “All across this country, people are saying, ‘Whoa! If these guys at Amazon can take on that company, we can do it as well,’” said Sanders (I-Vt.), the chair of the Senate Budget Committee. “What we’re looking at, I think, is a national, sweeping movement.”

    In the days since the independent union’s victory — which Amazon is attempting to overturn with a slew of formal objections — workers at more than 100 of the retail giant’s facilities across the United States have contacted the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) about organizing their workplaces, a nightmare scenario for management.

    ALU’s landmark win also came amid a wave of union victories at Starbucks locations nationwide. After Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York voted to unionize in December, employees at more than a dozen of the company’s shops scored election victories in the weeks that followed — momentum that Starbucks executives are actively trying to blunt.

    “People are sick and tired of corporate greed,” Sanders said during Monday’s call, which featured ALU president Christian Smalls, chair Angelika Maldonado, and Workers Committee member Michelle Valentin Nieves.

    “I know that I have colleagues in the Congress who feel the same as I do,” the Vermont senator added. “Our demand now is that [Amazon’s billionaire executive chairman Jeff] Bezos and Amazon sit down and start negotiating a contract. Our demand is that they stop spending millions trying to prevent workers from exercising their constitutional right to form a union.”

    In an attempt to galvanize additional union drives, the call directed viewers to a website that aims to connect employees with organizers and provide them with key information and resources.

    But Smalls, who was fired by Amazon in 2020 after he organized a walkout at JFK8 over the company’s inadequate pandemic safety protocols, emphasized that face-to-face conversations are essential to help workers “really understand what unions provide.”

    “Find somebody that’s in a union and have a conversation with them,” Smalls suggested to workers. “And not just one conversation, it takes several conversations… At the end, you’ll probably make the decision to want to join one.”

    Maldonado, a current employee at Amazon’s JFK8 facility in Staten Island, similarly stressed the importance of in-person interaction and education in laying the groundwork for unionization.

    “No matter where you work,” said Maldonado, “you deserve to have certain rights that other workers in other companies do.”

    The organizing call came as ALU is gearing up for a second union election in Staten Island on April 25, when voting is set to begin at Amazon’s 1,500-worker LDJ5 warehouse.

    As The City reported Monday, ALU’s demands “remain the same at LDJ5: a $30-an-hour minimum wage, better working conditions, including two paid 30-minute breaks and an hour-long paid lunch break, better medical leave, additional paid time off, and eliminating productivity rates that require workers to pick a certain number of items an hour.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders: US Shouldn’t Give Bezos a “$10 Billion Bailout” for His “Space Hobby”

    Repurposing a phrase right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin recently used to obstruct social spending and climate legislation, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday called for a “strategic pause” in corporate welfare, referring specifically to a bill that would hand around $53 billion in subsidies to the U.S. semiconductor industry.

    The bill, known as the COMPETES Act, would also authorize an additional $10 billion in federal funding for moon landers, a provision that Sanders (I-Vt.) has slammed as “a bailout to Jeff Bezos so that his company Blue Origin can launch a rocket ship to the moon.”

    In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, the Vermont senator made the case for amendments that would attach conditions to the $53 billion in federal subsidies and strip out the $10 billion “bailout to Blue Origin.”

    Politico reported last week that “since NASA chose [billionaire Elon Musk’s company] SpaceX a year ago to build its lunar lander, Blue Origin has been lobbying Congress and NASA to open the program back up for competition.”

    If approved, the $10 billion in the COMPETES Act would be granted to NASA to pick a company to build a second lander.

    “Let me be very clear. Mr. Bezos has enough money to buy a very beautiful $500 million yacht — looks very nice to me,” Sanders said Wednesday, pointing to a picture of the vessel.

    Sanders went on to note that Bezos, the billionaire founder and executive chairman of Amazon, “has enough money to purchase a $23 million mansion with 25 bathrooms.”

    “Not quite sure you need 25 bathrooms, but that’s not my business,” the senator added. “So, no, count me in as somebody who does not think that the taxpayers of this country need to provide Mr. Bezos a $10 billion bailout to fuel his space hobby.”

    Sanders also urged lawmakers “not to provide $53 billion to the highly profitable micro-chip industry without protections for the American taxpayer.”

    “This is not a radical idea. These exact conditions were imposed on corporations that received taxpayer assistance in the bipartisan CARES Act, which passed the Senate 96 to 0,” said Sanders, referring to a coronavirus relief package enacted in 2020. “In other words, every member of the U.S. Senate has already voted for the conditions that are in this amendment.”

    The House and Senate have both passed versions of the COMPETES Act, but the two bills must be reconciled before they can reach President Joe Biden’s desk.

    “One of my colleagues in the Democratic caucus has… suggested that we need to take a ‘strategic pause’ when it comes to making urgent federal investments in childcare, healthcare, education, affordable housing, paid family and medical leave, and home healthcare — policies that would substantially improve the lives of the American people,” Sanders said in his floor remarks Wednesday.

    “Well, you know what I believe?” he continued. “I believe that, maybe, just maybe, the time has come to take a ‘strategic pause’ when it comes to providing tens of billions of dollars in corporate welfare to some of the most profitable corporations and wealthiest people on this planet.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders, Bush Unveil Bill to Use the Defense Production Act to Fund Clean Energy

    As President Joe Biden doubles down on fossil fuels amid high gas prices, Democratic and progressive lawmakers have introduced a bill to instead make investments in renewable energy to lower utility prices and boost energy independence in the U.S.

    The Energy Security and Independence Act, introduced Wednesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Representatives Cori Bush (D-Missouri) and Jason Crow (D-Colorado), would set the stage for Biden to invoke the Defense Production Act to spur renewable energy production in the U.S. It would authorize $100 billion in funding to do so, and would ensure that at least 40 percent of the funds are used in communities that are on the front lines of the climate crisis.

    The bill comes in wake of conservative calls to increase oil and gas production in response to gas prices shooting up due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Though climate deniers often claim that increasing domestic production of fossil fuels is a pathway to achieving energy independence, experts say that the U.S. will always depend on international energy producers as long as the country is largely reliant on fossil fuels.

    Last week, Biden announced that his administration will start unleashing oil from the U.S.’s strategic oil reserve in order to combat high gas prices, though some experts have said that not focusing on boosting renewable energies is a missed opportunity for him and the climate.

    “The days of energy security being synonymous with a reliance on human rights violators like Russia and Saudi Arabia, or a propagation of corporate profits for Exxon, Chevron, and BP, are over,” Bush said in a statement.

    “When we talk about energy security, it’s time we include the safety of Black and brown lives in that definition,” Bush continued, noting that notions of energy security should also take energy affordability, efficiency and the climate crisis into account.

    The bill would maintain momentum from renewable energy investments by creating a Domestic Renewable Energy Industrial Base Task Force in order to chart an all-of-government plan to move toward 100 percent renewable energy. It would provide funding for home weatherization and supply chain improvements.

    Lawmakers also hope to fund heat pump installation as climate advocates hail electric heat pumps as a far more efficient and climate-friendly home heating and cooling method. The bill would create “good, union jobs” to perform such installations, according to its fact sheet.

    “Today, with rising prices on essential items and Russia’s horrific war in Ukraine, it is clear now more than ever: Addressing climate change and energy dependence is not just an environmental issue, it is a matter of national security,” Sanders said. “Not only would this legislation help us combat climate change and strengthen energy security and independence in the U.S., but it will help working families save money on their utility bills, create good, union jobs, and take on the greed of oligarchs both here and abroad.”

    The bill has 27 House cosponsors, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and other progressive squad members. The bill’s six Senate cosponsors include Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts). It also has the endorsement of over 80 climate and progressive organizations.

    Biden has shown a willingness to kickstart climate-related products with the Defense Production Act, a wartime provision used to spur production of products deemed crucial for national security. Last week, he invoked the Defense Production Act to compel mining and processing for electric vehicle batteries and energy storage facilities.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bernie Sanders Hails Growing Union Movement as an Antidote to Oligarchy

    Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered a floor speech on Monday hailing the growing wave of union victories across the United States, including high-profile wins by Amazon and Starbucks workers, as an essential challenge to the country’s vastly unequal political and economic status quo.

    “While the billionaire class is becoming much, much richer, real weekly wages for American workers are $40 lower today than they were 49 years ago,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an address in the Senate chamber just days after Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York voted to form the company’s first-ever union in the U.S.

    “In fact,” Sanders continued, “during that period there has been a massive, massive transfer of wealth from the working class and middle class of our country to the top 1%.”

    The Vermont senator pointed to a recent analysis estimating that $50 trillion in wealth was redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1% between 1975 and 2018.

    That decades-long trend of ballooning wealth at the very top has accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen the roughly 700 billionaires in the U.S. add $1.7 trillion to their collective fortunes as Covid-19 inflicted devastation on the country, with poor communities and low-paid workers bearing the brunt.

    “Today,” said Sanders, “multi-billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson are off taking joy rides on rocket ships to outer space, buying $500 million super-yachts, and living in mansions with 25 bathrooms. And let’s be clear. It’s not just income and wealth inequality. It is economic and political power.”

    Corporate profits also soared to record highs last year even as the deadly coronavirus continued to wreak havoc and as inflation ate away at ordinary workers’ wages.

    In his speech on Monday, Sanders portrayed grassroots unionization efforts at Amazon and Starbucks as further evidence that “working people all over this country are sick and tired of being exploited by corporations making record-breaking profits.”

    “They are sick and tired of billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, becoming obscenely rich during the pandemic, while they put their lives on the line working for inadequate wages, inadequate benefits, inadequate working conditions, and inadequate schedules,” said Sanders, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee. “If you think that the union victories at Amazon and Starbucks are an aberration, you would be sorely mistaken.”

    While union membership declined last year, 2021 was marked by a wave of strikes and organizing efforts that many saw as the possible start of a resurgent labor movement after years of devastating corporate attacks on collective bargaining rights. According to one recent study, the corporate assault on unions over the past four decades has cost the median U.S. worker $3,250 per year.

    “The union struggles that have been taking place against corporate greed ultimately determine the quality of wages, benefits, and working conditions that all American workers enjoy,” Sanders said Monday.

    There’s no sign that corporate America intends to end its union-busting in the face of mounting labor organizing across the country. In 2021 alone, Amazon spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants, and the company is expected to challenge the election results in Staten Island.

    During a town hall on Monday, Schultz — an experienced union-buster who returned as Starbucks CEO this month amid organizing drives in dozens of states nationwide — declared that the hugely profitable coffee company is “being assaulted in many ways by the threat of unionization.”

    Sanders argued Monday that “in the year 2022, the United States and the rest of the world face two very different political paths.”

    “On one hand, there is a growing movement towards oligarchy in which a small number of incredibly wealthy and powerful billionaires own and control a significant part of the economy and exert enormous influence over the political life of our country,” said the Vermont senator. “On the other hand, in opposition to oligarchy and corporate greed, there is a movement of working people and young people who, in ever-increasing numbers, are fighting for justice in a way that we have not seen in years.”

    “And it is that growing trade union movement that makes me so very hopeful for the future of this country,” he added, “and it is a movement that I will do all that I can to support.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Announces Budget Committee Hearing on Corporate Greed and Profiteering

    Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) announced on Friday that the committee will soon hold a hearing on how corporate greed is contributing to rising prices and inflation.

    The hearing scheduled for Tuesday will highlight a “level of corporate greed [that] has only widened the gap between the top one percent and the working class,” according to the press release. It will feature testimony from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Lindsay Owens, director of Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic advocacy group.

    “The American people are sick and tired of corporate greed,” Sanders said. “They are sick and tired of being ripped-off by corporations making record-breaking profits. They are sick and tired of being forced to pay outrageously high prices for gas, rent and food while large corporations make out like bandits.”

    The hearing comes as high prices are squeezing working-class Americans, while corporate profits rise. As inflation rose by 7 percent in 2021, corporate profits increased by 25 percent to reach nearly $3 trillion – a record high. CEOs and shareholders are benefiting heavily from these profits; last year, S&P 500 firms spent more than $900 billion.

    Meanwhile, prices for basic needs have also skyrocketed. Gas prices are up 38 percent, used car prices have increased by 41 percent and Tyson has increased its prices on meat products, the press release points out. Analysis from Bloomberg last week found that the average family will have to shell out an extra $5,200 this year for the same level of consumption as previous years.

    As corporations were raising prices, executives bragged about it. As Owens wrote in March, CEOs in many industries have told investors on earnings calls that raising prices on products has been a successful tactic for raising revenues and stock prices.

    The Vermont lawmaker has been urging Congress to address corporate profiteering. During a speech on the Senate floor in February, Sanders said that billionaire wealth hoarding has led to an oligarchic society in the U.S.

    “The time is long, long, long overdue for Congress to start addressing the needs of the American people,” the independent senator said. “Maybe, just maybe, we should do what the American people want, and not what wealthy campaign contributors want.”

    In late March, Sanders introduced a bill that would capture nearly all excess profits through 2024. The Ending Corporate Greed Act would levy a tax on corporate windfall profits, capturing 95 percent of corporate profits exceeding average pre-pandemic levels through 2024.

    This would not be the first time that the country implemented similar taxes in order to prevent corporate price gouging. During the first and second World Wars and the Korean War, the U.S. taxed profits to ensure that companies weren’t taking advantage of wartime to pad their pockets.

    Other lawmakers have introduced similar bills; in February, lawmakers debated whether or not to give federal regulators more power to crack down on and potentially ban corporate price gouging. Republicans claimed that high prices are caused by labor shortages and inflation, though industries have been lobbying against corporate price gouging regulation in order to keep their profits high.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Corporate Profits Reached Record High of Nearly $3 Trillion in 2021

    As working-class Americans struggled with high inflation, corporate profits soared to a record high in 2021, reaching nearly $3 trillion.

    Data from the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that pre-tax profits over the whole year increased by a whopping 25 percent, reaching $2.8 trillion. The annualized rate of profit from the fourth quarter was even higher, at $2.94 trillion.

    The boost in profits exceeds the 7 percent inflation for consumer prices, bolstering arguments that companies are raising prices beyond inflation rates in order to pad their profits. Meanwhile, hourly wages for U.S. workers increased by about 4.7 percent last year, which is equivalent to a pay cut of about 2.4 percent.

    Experts say that the record profits are evidence that inflation isn’t a concern for corporations.

    “Clearly, mega-corporations could easily absorb the higher costs of goods and services right now,” wrote Robert Reich, former labor secretary and economics professor at University of California, Berkeley. “They’re not raising prices because they have to. They’re doing it because – with so few competitors – they can. The problem, at its core, is corporate greed.”

    Indeed, corporate executives have admitted on earnings calls with shareholders that they’re not afraid to exploit inflation and current crises like the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in order to increase their profits.

    “Our business operates the best when inflation is about 3 percent to 4 percent,” Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen told investors last June. “A little bit of inflation is always good in our business.”

    Other corporate executives have lied about their reasons for raising prices. As CBS reported, Tyson’s CEO told shareholders that the company it’s only raising prices on meat products in order to cover inflation costs for the company. However, it posted profits of $1 billion in the first quarter of 2022, a 48 percent raise over the same period last year.

    Lawmakers have proposed legislation to reign in runaway profits. Last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) introduced a bill that would have created a minimum tax rate of 15 percent in order to prevent companies from paying $0 in taxes or a negative tax rate, thanks to corporate subsidies.

    Other recent proposals have been aimed directly at current profits. Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) unveiled his corporate windfall profits tax, which would levy a 95 percent tax on corporate profits that exceed pre-pandemic levels for companies that make more than $500 million in profits yearly. The tax resembles policies that the U.S. put in place during World Wars I and II and the Korean War to discourage companies from profiteering from the conflicts.

    “We cannot allow big oil companies and other large, profitable corporations to continue to use the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the specter of inflation to make obscene profits by price gouging Americans at the gas pump, the grocery store, or any other sector of our economy,” Sanders said in a press release on the bill. “During these troubling times, the working class cannot bear the brunt of this economic crisis, while corporate CEOs, wealthy shareholders, and the billionaire class make out like bandits.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bernie Sanders Wants WWII-Style Tax on 95 Percent of Corporate Windfall Profits

    On Friday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced a bill that would capture nearly all of the excess profits being raked in by major U.S. corporations as they exploit ongoing crises to pad shareholders’ and executives’ pockets.

    The Ending Corporate Greed Act would levy a 95 percent tax on excess profits for corporations that make more than $500 million in yearly revenue until 2024, and would apply to about 30 top companies. The bill, cosponsored by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and introduced by Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) in the House, would raise an estimated $400 billion in one year.

    Unlike recent windfall tax proposals, Sanders’s bill would target not only the oil and gas industry but all other large corporations in the country, including Amazon, Starbucks, Blackstone and Pfizer.

    The legislation is inspired by windfall profits taxes that were enacted during the first and second World Wars and the Korean War; during WWII, the tax rate reached 95 percent in order to prevent war profiteering. As Sanders’s press release on the bill points out, the U.S. enacted a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies in the 1980s after the government temporarily implemented price controls on oil during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

    “The American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented corporate greed that exists all over this country. They are sick and tired of being ripped-off by corporations making record-breaking profits while working families are forced to pay outrageously high prices for gas, rent, food, and prescription drugs,” Sanders said in a statement.

    “The time has come for Congress to work for working families and demand that large, profitable corporations make a little bit less money and pay their fair share of taxes,” he continued.

    Profits that are higher than average profits from pre-pandemic years would be subject to the tax, and wouldn’t be subject to revenues to ensure that companies aren’t punished for raising prices for legitimate reasons.

    Last year, major corporations like Chevron, Apple and Moderna made tens of billions of dollars more than they did in pre-pandemic years; between 2015 and 2019, Amazon made an average of $6.9 billion in profits a year, but the company’s profits skyrocketed to $38.2 billion in 2021.

    The bill would discourage companies from raising prices in order to pad profits, a practice that has run rampant in recent years as companies take advantage of the COVID economy and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    Sanders’s bill is similar to previous Democratic proposals in that it targets corporate windfall profits as those profits are soaring, but it goes much further in its scope and size.

    Previous bills have only targeted oil and gas companies; one proposal by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) would tax Big Oil’s income in 2022 at only 50 percent above companies’ average pre-pandemic incomes. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-Rhode Island) windfall tax bill would subject crude oil barrels imported or produced to a 50 percent tax on the difference between current prices and average pre-pandemic prices.

    Progressive advocates and economists say that Sanders’s bill is necessary to protect customers from being fleeced by companies that are seeking to fill executives’ and shareholders’ wallets. The bill has been endorsed by organizations like the Economic Policy Institute and the Sunrise Movement.

    “The Covid pandemic, and now war in Europe, have caused immense suffering — but also prosperity for a few giant corporations,” said University of California, Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman. “In the past, the United States has successfully used excess profits taxes to remedy this unfairness. Senator Sanders’s bill reconnects with this distinguished tradition, for the benefit of us all.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Democrats Schedule First COVID-Era Hearing on Medicare for All

    Rep. Cori Bush speaks at a House Judiciary Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on October 21, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Democrats in the House Oversight Committee have scheduled the first hearing to consider Medicare for All since the onset of the pandemic, as progressive lawmakers wage a new push for the proposal.

    Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-New York) and Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) will lead the hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, March 22, to consider proposals for universal health care and to assess the ways that the U.S.’s primarily private health care system is affecting people without insurance.

    The hearing will also feature Representatives Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-New York), Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts), as well as testimony from big names in the Medicare for All sphere, like activist Ady Barkan and economics professor Jeffrey Sachs, among others.

    “We deserve a health care system that prioritizes people over profits, humanity over greed, and compassion over exploitation,” Bush wrote on Thursday. “That’s why we’re holding our first Medicare for All hearing since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This policy will save lives.”

    This is the latest move in progressive lawmakers’ recent push to revive the campaign for Medicare for All, which has been relatively dormant in Congress for several years; the last time Democrats held a hearing on the subject was 2019.

    In the hearing, lawmakers will cover Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s (D-Washington) Medicare for All Act, which would establish a single-payer health care system and which recently surpassed a record 120 cosponsors. Democrats will also discuss inequities faced by non-white people, people with disabilities and LGBTQ people, who are disproportionately underinsured or uninsured.

    “As chairwoman of the Oversight Committee,” Maloney told The Nation, “I am holding this hearing to examine how the gaps in our current system threaten the health of the most vulnerable among us and how Congress can ensure that every person in this country has access to high-quality health care — no matter who they are.”

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) recently announced that he is planning to reintroduce his Medicare for All legislation; the last time he did so was in 2019.

    “In the midst of the current set of horrors — war, oligarchy, pandemics, inflation, climate change, etc. — we must continue the fight to establish healthcare as a human right, not a privilege,” Sanders wrote. The Vermont lawmaker also recently called for all medical debt to be abolished.

    The hearing comes during a pandemic that has exposed major cracks in the U.S. health care system. In the early months of the pandemic, an estimated 7.7 million people lost health care coverage after losing their jobs, leaving them in the lurch as COVID-19 swept the U.S., the only wealthy country in the world that doesn’t have universal health care.

    As the pandemic continues, disparities in pandemic-related health outcomes have become even more clear. A survey last year found that about 1 in every 3 COVID deaths and 40 percent of cases are linked to a lack of health insurance. Another study found that for every 10 percent increase in a county’s rate of uninsured people, the county experienced 70 percent more COVID infections and 50 percent more deaths.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Tells Starbucks CEO to Stop Union Busting and “Obey the Law”

    Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz speaks during Starbucks annual shareholders meeting March 18, 2015, in Seattle, Washington.

    As former CEO Howard Schultz takes the helm once again at Starbucks, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has demanded that the company “do the right thing” and allow employees to exercise their legal right to organize.

    On Tuesday, Sanders wrote a letter to Schultz demanding that the company step out of the way of unionizing workers. He emphasized that Starbucks workers are afforded the right to unionize under the U.S. Constitution, pointing out that the company has already been found by federal officials to be violating the law in its union busting attempts.

    “As you prepare to head back into your former role as Starbucks CEO, I am writing to you with a simple request,” Sanders said. “Please respect the Constitution of the United States and do not illegally hamper the efforts of your employees to unionize.”

    The union recently announced that workers at over 150 locations have filed to unionize so far, a figure that grows nearly every day. Workers at the company’s hometown of Seattle voted to join a union on Tuesday afternoon with a unanimous vote of 9 to 0. They joined six stores that have already voted to form a union and there are quite a few more elections ongoing or coming up in the next weeks and months.

    The company has fought hard against the union campaign, allegedly illegally firing at least one pro-union worker, cutting employee hours to disrupt organizing efforts and shutting down stores that are in the process of unionizing.

    Workers say that the company has brought Schultz back as interim CEO in order to crack down even further on the unionizing effort. They have asked lawmakers to increase public pressure on the company to hurt its public image and discourage further anti-union moves.

    The union, Starbucks Workers United, has filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accusing the company of over 20 counts of illegal union busting. On Monday, the list of unfair labor practices charges grew as the union filed allegations that the company illegally threatened New York pro-union workers with loss of income and benefits or termination at locations in Long Island and Manhattan.

    Sanders expressed frustration over the company’s potentially illegal anti-union tactics. “Instead of obeying the law, I am deeply concerned that Starbucks has engaged in a massive union busting campaign led by outgoing CEO Kevin Johnson. Workers have been fired for ‘the crime’ of being pro-union,” Sanders wrote.

    The Vermont lawmaker pointed out that the company has plenty of resources at its disposal to meet workers’ demands for better pay and working conditions. Starbucks raked in $29.1 billion in profits last year, paid Johnson $20 million in compensation in 2021, and has pledged to spend $20 billion on stock buybacks and dividends over the next three years.

    “I am under the impression that Starbucks respects its ‘partners’ and supposedly adheres to progressive values. If that’s the case, it should behave lawfully and respect the decisions of its employees as to whether or not they want to join a union,” the lawmaker continued. “This is a pivotal moment for Starbucks. As you return to the company, it is time to do the right thing: End the union busting and obey the law.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bernie Sanders Calls for the Cancellation of All Medical Debt

    Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally at Vic Mathias Shores Park on February 23, 2020, in Austin, Texas.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) called for medical debt to be abolished on Monday in response to news that the country’s three largest credit agencies will be removing paid-off medical debt from credit reports.

    Experian, Equifax and TransUnion announced last week that credit reports will no longer include medical debt that went to collections after it’s been paid off. This accounts for almost 70 percent of medical debt on credit reports, and will eliminate billions of dollars in recorded debts. The agencies are also extending the grace period before medical debt appears on credit reports from six months to one year.

    Sanders praised the move, but said that it doesn’t go far enough. “‘Medical debt’ and ‘Medical bankruptcy’ are two phrases that should not exist in the United States of America,” Sanders wrote on Twitter. “Removing 70 percent of past-due medical debt from credit reports is a step in the right direction, and much more needs to be done. We must cancel all medical debt.”

    Earlier this week, Sanders said that he’s planning to reintroduce legislation to establish Medicare for All as millions of people are set to lose Medicaid coverage under a privatization scheme that the Biden administration is implementing. Medicare for All would eliminate most medical payments, greatly reducing if not eliminating widespread medical debt issues.

    Medical bankruptcy is a uniquely American problem. In other wealthy countries – all of them with universal health care – medical bankruptcy virtually doesn’t exist. And yet, tens of millions of people in the U.S. struggle with medical debt; about half of the country’s adults carry medical debt (though estimates on this vary, and some research has found only about 10 percent of adults owe medical debt).

    Adults are putting off needed medical care or skipping prescriptions because of the costs associated, including people with insurance coverage who cannot afford the co-pays and coinsurance. Though it comes at the expense of people’s health, such behavior is understandable given that millions of people in the U.S. are pushed into poverty by these out-of-pocket medical expenses.

    In his last presidential run, Sanders campaigned on eliminating medical debt and placing strict guidelines on how medical debt could be enforced.

    “500,000 Americans will go bankrupt this year from medical bills. They didn’t go to Las Vegas and blow their money at a casino. Their crime was that they got sick,” he said in 2019. “How barbaric is a system that says, ‘I’m going to destroy your family’s finances because you had cancer’?”

    At the time, it was estimated that Americans hold about $81 billion in medical debt, according to a 2016 study. A more recent study from last year finds that Americans actually owe about $140 billion in medical debt, which has become the largest source of debt in collections in the country in recent years. That study did not include data from the pandemic, which may have caused that figure to balloon even more.

    Sanders has also advocated for all student debt to be eliminated. Americans collectively owe nearly $1.9 trillion in student debt, according to the Student Debt Crisis Center, a record-high amount that economists say is seriously weighing down the economy.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Pans Jeff Bezos as Amazon Workers Walk Out Over Low Pay

    Amazonians United workers gather outside Amazon’s ZYO1 delivery station on March 16, 2022, as part of the organizations first multistate walkout in the U.S.

    After roughly 60 Amazon warehouse workers walked off the job demanding a raise and better working conditions on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) expressed support for the workers in their multi-state walkout.

    The main motivation behind the walkout, which took place at three separate facilities in New York and Maryland, was a demand for $3 an hour raises. Workers also called for 20-minute breaks, which the company offered earlier in the pandemic but reduced to only 15 minutes in recent months.

    Led by Amazonians United, workers have circulated a petition over the past months with a list of demands, calling for more staffing and better inclement weather policies after six workers in Illinois died when a storm swept through an Amazon facility.

    Workers said that the deaths could have been avoided if the company had allowed cell phones on the work floor and held storm drills with workers; the company has extended the phone policy and established a severe weather hotline, The American Prospect reports, but has ignored other demands from the workers.

    “If Jeff Bezos can afford a $500 million yacht, a $23 million mansion with 25 bathrooms and a rocket ship to blast a comedian to outer space, you know what? Amazon can afford to give its employees a $3 raise,” tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on Wednesday. “I stand in strong solidarity with the Amazon workers walkout.”

    Amazon has granted $3 raises to some facilities on a seasonal basis, but not every facility, which workers are frustrated with. Pay at the ZYO1 delivery station in Queens starts at $16.25 an hour. Starting pay at the DMD9 facility in Maryland is $15.90.

    “It’s about pay for everybody,” one ZYO1 worker told The American Prospect. “We’ve made it clear the past few months.”

    In response to workers’ campaign for better working conditions at ZYO1, managers punished the workers by taking snacks away from the break room, but then reintroduced them by handing workers snacks individually. One worker described the move as “brainwashing” and demeaning.

    Longer breaks are crucial for the workers who are on their feet all day at work. “We work really long days, and we work at night,” Maryland associate Linda Gomma told the Associated Press. “Our breaks are really the one time we get to sit down and stretch our legs. Those five minutes don’t really matter to Amazon at all. But they matter a lot for our muscles and our sanity.”

    While workers beg for better working conditions, the company has made huge profits off of their labor. Net sales increased by 22 percent in 2021 over 2020, jumping to $469.8 billion. Last year, when its new CEO Andy Jassy stepped in to run the company after Bezos took a step back, the company gave him over $200 million in stock on top of his previously awarded stock worth $45.3 million. The median pay at the $1.6 trillion company was $29,000 last year.

    The company also recently announced a huge stock split and a $10 billion stock buyback plan, showing that the company has money to spare.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Urges Tax on Windfall Oil Profits as Companies Exploit Ukraine Crisis

    Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders speaks during a committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office building on February 17, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    As oil companies seek to profit off of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling for officials to place a tax on oil profits and implement price controls in order to lessen the effects of the crisis on the public.

    “We can no longer allow big oil companies, huge corporations and the billionaire class to use the murderous Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing pandemic as an excuse to price gouge consumers,” Sanders wrote over the weekend. “It is time to enact a windfall profits tax and reasonable price controls.”

    Crude oil prices have been jumping since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last week, with corresponding soaring prices at the pump for consumers. According to surveys, the national average is now $3.61 per gallon, which is almost a dollar higher than the average this time last year.

    But even before the invasion, retail prices were steadily rising. As inflation has risen precipitously over the past few months, oil and gas companies have taken the opportunity to raise prices to compensate for rising production or other costs – and to make even greater profits.

    A windfall tax would levy a tax on profits made by fossil fuel companies in response to the invasion, and possibly also tax profits made as inflation has risen. This could potentially discourage fossil fuel companies from artificially inflating prices in response to the crisis.

    In 2020, Sanders introduced similar legislation, which sought to capture 60 percent of the skyrocketing wealth increases that billionaires have been raking in during the pandemic in order to fund universal health care. If such a tax had been implemented from then until now, it would have raised trillions of dollars with essentially no impact on billionaires’ lifestyles.

    A tax on Big Oil could be similarly fruitful for the government. Last year, a report found that top oil and gas companies made $174 billion in the first nine months of 2021, while raising dividends and paying CEOs tens of millions of dollars. Companies posted similarly high profits in the fourth quarter of 2021, with Exxon Mobil reporting profits of $8.9 billion, its highest earnings in seven years.

    Lawmakers like Sanders have noted that prices are rising in part because companies are trying to rake in profits at consumers’ expense; in November, President Joe Biden asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether oil and gas companies are engaging in antitrust behaviors in order to pad profits under the guise of inflation. Before winter set in last year, reporters found gas companies were sending large amounts of gas abroad in order to limit supply and raise prices for heating bills.

    For an oil company, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the potential impacts to fossil fuel supplies could be an opportunity to price gouge. In an attempt to preempt this last week, Biden warned companies against raising prices, saying they should “not exploit this moment to hike their prices to raise profits.” But so far, he hasn’t taken further action to discourage companies from doing so.

    Meanwhile, pro-fossil fuel groups wasted no time saying that oil production should increase now, even though the country is already producing close to its limit. Less than 24 hours after the invasion – and, in the American Petroleum Institute’s case, just as the invasion was being announced – extremist right-wing politicians, conservative pundits and influential oil groups jumped on the crisis. Oil cronies insisted that more drilling is the only way to achieve energy independence, even though climate advocates have pointed out that 100 percent energy independence could have been achieved years ago if the country relied on renewable sources instead.

    Increasing drilling is also a terrible, near-genocidal idea in terms of the climate. In a report released on Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the effects of continuing on the current path of the climate crisis will lead to food and water shortages, mass migration and death, especially in poor nations. Even more traditionally conservative energy organizations have directed governments and oil companies to stop pursuing new fossil fuel projects immediately in order to avert disaster.

    Sanders’s suggestion to cut into oil and gas profits could not only help reduce costs for consumers, but also help to mitigate the climate crisis. The profitability and influence of fossil fuel companies, which receive trillions of dollars in subsidies from world governments, are part of what’s keeping them going – for now.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Hails Starbucks Organizers for Their “Courage” Against Union Busting

    Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally at the Arthur Ashe Junior Athletic Center on February 27, 2020, in Richmond, Virginia.

    In a town hall with organizing Starbucks workers on Wednesday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) highlighted the corporation’s greed and praised the workers for their “courage” in standing up to the company’s union busting.

    “We live in a country today where a lot of people are hurting, they feel powerless. And what you are doing is addressing that by bringing people together to stand up for justice,” Sanders said. “And you, I want to say, are an inspiration to many of us.”

    Starbucks workers have been facing a fierce union-busting campaign by the company, which has been forcing employees to attend anti-union meetings, using legal delay tactics and firing organizing employees. Despite these tactics, over 100 stores in 26 states have filed for union representation over the past few months, and new filings are flooding in every week.

    Although the company refers to employees as ‘partners’, workers say that they have been treated as anything but. Low wages and unsafe working conditions due to COVID are common complaints, and workers say that the company refuses to address their concerns. In response to the organizing campaign, the company has hired over 30 union-busting lawyers from the notorious anti-union firm Littler Mendelson.

    Sanders pointed out that while the company refuses to listen to its employees’ concerns, it is raking in record profits and rewarding executives and shareholders handsomely. “You’re dealing with a very wealthy corporation spending millions trying to crush the union organizing effort that is taking place all over this country,” the senator said.

    During the pandemic, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz has become $1.2 billion richer, Sanders said. Last year, CEO Kevin Johnson got a 39 percent pay raise, bringing his total compensation to over $20 million. Meanwhile, the company’s revenues grew by 31 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021, and increased by 22 percent over the past two years.

    Organizers at the town hall shared their experiences working at Starbucks, highlighting the company’s union busting.

    “Instead of investing in their workers that make this company so successful, they’re investing millions in an anti-worker, anti-union campaign,” said Kylah Clay, a barista and organizer in Boston. “But this should come as no surprise given the company’s longstanding opposition to workers’ empowerment. Since the 1980s, Starbucks has deployed million dollar anti-union legal teams to pressure their so-called partners out of exercising their rights to unionize.”

    The company often touts benefits like retirement funds and discounted vacations as reasons that workers don’t need to form a union, but the benefits can be so expensive that workers can’t even use them.

    “Even for those of us who have the privilege to take advantage of some of the benefits, all of these dazzling benefits that Starbucks does offer can’t be taken advantage of due to the lack of wages,” said Len Harris, a Denver worker and organizer. Harris once tried to contribute to a 401(k) offered by the company, but couldn’t afford to pay rent with the contribution.

    Harris added that the company offers few forms of advancement for tenured employees. Employees with years of experience earn only 63 cents more than people who were just hired, Harris said.

    Part of the reason why the labor movement is currently surging is because young people are facing much more hardship in the job market than previous generations, Sanders pointed out.

    “Your generation has had it tough, to be honest with you. Everything being equal, you are earning less than your parents earned, despite the fact that, in general, you have more education. Many of you are struggling with student debt,” he said. “What you guys are doing is breaking new ground … having the courage to take on a very, very powerful corporation.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.