Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced a bill on Tuesday to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in 14 years and end the longest period that the wage hadn’t been increased since the minimum wage was established decades ago. The bill would raise the current federal minimum wage by nearly $10 an hour, increasing it from the current level of $7.25 to $17 an hour over the next five…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Two hundred members of Congress have expressed their backing of the impending UPS worker strike and have pledged not to support any potential effort by lawmakers to prevent the workers from striking. Lawmakers in the House and the Senate sent letters to Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and UPS CEO Carol Tomé this week stating their support for the workers, who are slated to go on strike as soon as…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
With labor activity making headlines across the U.S. and wealth inequality at all-time highs, new polling finds overwhelming support among the public for a slate of pro-worker bills advanced by Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vermont) Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee last month. According to polling by Data for Progress released Tuesday, all three bills passed by the committee last…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A coalition of 40 advocacy groups is urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) to adopt a strong set of provisions to lower insulin prices and “put an end to insulin profiteering” in an upcoming health package. The groups, led by watchdog Public Citizen and diabetes advocacy group T1International, sent a letter to Schumer on Monday saying that, while some progress has been made over…
Among the most dangerous people in the US are those who actually once fervently believed the foundational myths of the country’s social and political order.
It’s the true believers — we who are schooled on republican virtues, democratic procedures, universal equality, and fair play that are said to be deeply embedded in the US experience — who become radical crusaders when their beliefs are shattered by the truth.
The true believers are cast as traitors to humanity, nation, race, or creed when they turn on those who foster a false loyalty or cheap patriotism based on lies or deception.
The late Daniel Ellsberg was one of these soldiers of truth. Once a handmaiden for US foreign policy, experience brought home the murderous, cynical, and false execution of that policy. At great risk — even physical risk — Ellsberg bravely cast aside his privileged, highly respected position and exposed the ugly, hypocritical US intervention in Southeast Asia, an engagement that led to and fueled the savage destruction wrought by the Indochinese war. Ellsberg devoted the rest of his life to opposing the abuse of his once deeply felt ideals.
Thinking of Ellsberg before his death while reading Norman Finkelstein’s new book, I’ll Burn that Bridge When I Get to It!, I could not help but see Finkelstein cast in a similar light. Certainly, they are different people, with different burdens, and different circumstances. But they are alike in important ways: both have shown uncommon courage and uncompromising idealism. Both have known the lash of ostracism.
Where Ellsberg’s idealism was violated by the US empire’s betrayal of his ideals, Finkelstein’s idealism forces him to stand almost alone against cherished beliefs that none dare challenge. Ellsberg confronted US power, Finkelstein attacks the sanctity of conventional, officially-protected thought.
Finkelstein’s new book is not easy to discuss. It is many things — not in a bad way, but in a personal, boldly eccentric way. He is a remarkably good writer: a careful grammarian, a skilled wordsmith, with a keen, logical mind. No doubt the logical construction of his arguments inflames his foes even further.
The book is divided into two sections: 1.) an extensive argument against the latest fashions of the academic left, capped with an effective critique of their embodiment, Barack Obama, and 2.) an ambitious attempt to defend a John Stuart Mill-inspired account of academic freedom and academic responsibility.
In Part I (Identity Politics and Cancel Culture), Finkelstein effectively foregoes theoretical foreplay and leaps right into discussions of some of today’s more prominent, celebrated figures, locating them and their ideas within the framework of a purported remolding of anti-racism. With the writings and initiatives of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robin DiAngelo, and Ibram X. Kendi, Finkelstein finds a bogus path to curing racism as a societal cancer, a path strikingly deviated from the tradition of his (and my) past heroes and heroines in the struggle against racism and racial inequality.
Finkelstein carefully, and in great detail, challenges the scholarship of the writers and the political weight of their ideas. His own scholarship is impeccable, though he favors the time-honored effectiveness of hitting the nail on its head until the head breaks off! He is relentless.
To many of the young, college-educated activists who have come to understand the scourge of racism though Crenshaw, Coates, DiAngelo, Kendi, and their colleagues, the Finkelstein critique will itself appear as racially insensitive, an attack on identity that is truly worthy of cancellation.
Finkelstein counters this “Little Red Book” mob reaction by extensively and passionately quoting from his own anti-racist icons: Frederick Douglass, WEB DuBois, Paul Robeson, and Martin Luther King. His brilliant contraposing of DuBois against Kendi is a veritable seminar in deep and productive anti-racist thinking. The contrast alone diminishes Kendi’s thought. Shrewdly, Finkelstein lets the history of sacrifice, defiance, activism, and razor-sharp analysis by these giants of human advancement address the shallow bromides of smug, secure, petty-bourgeois academics.
From the perch of an insular, arid academic office, the question of racism is a question of manners and self-styled group recognition; from the path that Douglass, DuBois, Robeson, and King trod, the question of racism was a question of emancipation, ending exploitation, and achieving economic security.
If I had my preferences, the author would have broadened his attack beyond these mostly African-American intellectuals to include the vast body of US academics engaged in navel-gazing and supplicating before the ruling class. When leading philosophers are reduced to pondering the depth of “sentiments” and public intellectuals are selling the empty, emotive catch-all-that-we-hate concept of “authoritarianism,” the commodification of anti-racism earns no special place. Intellectual life as contained in academia in general is numbing.
Finkelstein expresses a well-earned contempt for Barack Obama, his hypocrisy, and his self-regard. In many ways, Obama gave agency to appearance over substance in a way similar to the scribblings of Crenshaw, Coates, DiAngelo, et al. Obama sold the appearance of change and delivered none.
By contrast, Finkelstein casts Bernie Sanders as an authentic agent of change shackled by the Democratic Party leadership. But surely Sanders knew about those shackles and did little to break them. In the end, he, too, sold the appearance of change and delivered none, though perhaps not as cynically as did Obama.
Finkelstein’s politics are influenced by his earlier immersion in Gang of Four Maoism. Forgoing his parents’ Popular Front leftism for REAL revolution, the author’s fingers were burnt. Like so many recovering Little Red Bookers, he now struggles to imagine any politics not going through the Democratic Party, despite his contempt for that party. Apparently, Marxist “orthodoxy” was never considered an option.
Which brings us quite naturally to the other part of Finkelstein’s book, Part II (Academic Freedom). Like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and a handful of other US commentators, Finkelstein is part of a dying breed — the true, classic liberal who believes passionately and deeply in freedom of speech, a free press, free academic inquiry, and many other freedoms associated with enlightenment values.
By the third decade of the twentieth century, history has shown these rights to be rights of convenience. The bourgeois state recognizes these rights when it is useful for propaganda purposes or when the state detects no threat, should they be exercised. Otherwise, when the state is made insecure by freedom of speech, assembly, movement, etc., these rights are squelched.
In political theory, rights of convenience are actually privileges, where privileges are the warrants granted capriciously by those in power. With the end of the Cold War and its propaganda function, the pretense of universal rights, of absolute freedoms, is just that — a pretense. The current tribalism around both red and blue allegiances demonstrates how shallow goes the popular commitment to the Bill of Rights.
Yet Finkelstein, like other true-believers — nineteenth-century liberals, their admirers, and a smattering of libertarians — still clings to these beliefs and attempts to support them in a world grown cynical.
He wrestles with the idea that a university or its educational counterparts should have freedom of inquiry and its necessary condition, freedom of speech. He relies almost exclusively on John Stuart Mill’s rule-utilitarian justification, citing the potential and actual good that comes from accepting these principles (rules).
At the same time, Finkelstein concedes the obvious counterexamples (e.g., advocating paedophilia) that nullify the universality of Stuart Mill’s rule-utilitarianism. He and we are left with a principle neither absolute nor real-world operant.
For Finkelstein and other enlightenment liberals, academia should be a marketplace of ideas, when, in fact, it is a class war. More broadly, the battle for ideas is waged between classes.
Nonetheless, we should embrace the idealism of Finkelstein and the other doctrinaire liberals, but without illusions. Absent a measure of free speech, the little chance we have of getting radical ideas past the gatekeepers drops sharply.
My reservations aside, Finkelstein and his book are treasures. At a time of mind-numbing conformity and groveling before power, a figure who defies conventions and takes us where the thought police do not want us to go should be cherished.
I’m reminded of my teenage epiphany when I found and read Norman Mailer’s Advertisements for Myself. Today, I would disagree with nearly everything in the book, but at a time of stifling Cold War conformity, it broke those chains for me.
Finkelstein, too, is a chain-breaker.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced legislation Wednesday that would require the Pentagon to return a portion of its enormous and ever-growing budget to the Treasury Department if it fails another audit in the coming fiscal year. The Audit the Pentagon Act, an updated version of legislation first introduced in 2021, comes amid mounting concerns over rampant price…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has fired a shot across the bow to the White House in his latest move in his quest to lower prescription drug prices in the U.S. Sanders has vowed to oppose all health-related nominees, including President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), until the Biden administration presents a “comprehensive” plan to address the prescription…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
They say when America sneezes, Australia gets a cold. Well, America’s poised to suffer another migraine, and his name is Donald Trump. Chris Graham outlines the path back to the White House for the world’s most dangerous leader, and explains just how short and wide it really is.
There’s no way Donald Trump could ever return to the White House, right? In just the course of the last few months alone he’s been criminally indicted on charges of falsifying electoral documents over his payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels; he’s been found to have sexually abused writer E. Jean Carrol, in the 1990s; and this week he’ll be indicted again, this time on federal crimes related to the theft of top secret and classified documents.
And none of that even factors in the reality that he’s also facing investigation in Georgia over his conduct around the 2020 election, nor the Congressional and other investigations into the January 6 assault on the US Capitol building, an attempt led by Trump to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
So even if Trump somehow manages to escape jail over the next 18 months, there’s no way Americans would vote him back in, right? Well… think again. Not only has Trump time and again proved his critics wrong, but his path back to the US presidency is a lot easier than you might think. And by ‘a lot’, I mean an American shit-tonne.
Based on voting in the 2020 election, there are six US ‘swing states’ which were won by Biden, but if won back by Trump in 2024 would more than deliver him enough electoral college votes to win back the presidency: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The margins in four of those states are the definition of razor thin – they’re less than one per cent, and in the case of Georgia it’s a margin of just 0.12 per cent, or to be even more precise, 5,230 votes. In Arizona, the margin is 0.16 per cent (5,819 votes); and Wisconsin is 0.32 per cent (10,342 votes). That’s a total of just 21,462 votes, from more than 11 million voters.
Flipping just those three states in 2024 would deliver the 37 electoral college votes he needs to force a tie with Biden. An electoral college tie is then broken by the House of Representatives, which is currently controlled by the Republicans.
In other words, it’s not a big ask.
A week is a long time in politics, and we’re still 18 months out from the 2024 election, so a lot can happen between now and then. But what do the polls in those six states say today? And before we dive down into them, a quick tip: If you're inclined, the best place to follow US polls is at FiveThirtyEight.com. They compile polls from across the nation, so they're reporting is an aggregate, hence they're consistently right where others are wrong. One of their other great features is they give each poll a rating from ‘A to E’, which means you can not only get an average of a lot of polls, but you can also factor in the quality of the numbers while you do it.
Speaking of which… a poll last week in Georgia (with an ‘A’ rating by FiveThirtyEight) put Trump at 42 per cent, and Biden at 41. A poll in Nevada on May 23 put Trump at 48 per cent and Biden at 47, while an earlier May 18 poll had Trump at 48 and Biden at just 41.
Winning Georgia and Nevada isn’t enough for Trump to reclaim the presidency. He’d either have to also win Pennsylvania, or two of the other three remaining states (Arizona, Wisconsin or Michigan). The latest polling gives Biden a slight lead in those four states.
But here’s the twist. In Arizona in March, a Rasmussen poll – generally regarded as reliable by FiveThirtyEight - had Trump 11 points ahead of Biden, 50 to 39 per cent. That’s a very big lead, well beyond the margin of error of most polls (usually around three points). In Wisconsin in November last year, Trump was ahead 10 points, and ahead six points in Pennsylvania. In October he had a three point lead in Michigan.
The point being, the polls by no means write Trump off – in fact they’re best described as ‘consistently mixed’ for Trump, which means he’s very much in with a chance, and doing a lot better than he was in 2016 when he won the US presidency, amid polls that consistently said he would lose by a landslide.
More strikingly, if you look at the national polling results, it routinely shows Trump and Biden jockeying for position, with both winning and losing. And if you look only at the highest rated polls by FiveThirtyEight - the New York Times/Sienna College poll, and the Selzer & Co poll produced by Grinnell College, both of which are rated A+ - the most recent poll from Selzer & Co was a 40-40 even split, and the most recent NY Times poll (held in October last year) was won by Trump by one point (45-44).
Long story short, Trump is very much in a neck and neck race with Biden, and while voting trends at the 2022 mid-term elections seemed to reject a lot of Trump-endorsed candidates, the US presidential race is a very different beast.
In terms of Trump’s lead over other Republican candidates vying for the presidency, he not only remains the presumptive favourite for the Republican nomination, but the longer the campaign for president goes on, the more his lead grows.
When second placed favourite and Florida governor/culture wars warrior Ron DeSantis finally officially entered the race on May 26, his polling numbers went nowhere. At the same time, Trump’s increased slightly.
It’s early in the race, but Trump has consistently held a lead over DeSantis of around 40 points. By contrast, in 2015, Trump gradually built a lead in the polls over time, but occasionally lost one to various candidates such as Ted Cruz.
Of course there’s other factors in the re-election of Donald Trump to the White House, particularly Joe Biden, and specifically his unpopularity with the American people. Biden’s approval rating, according to polling compiled by FiveThirtyEight, hit negative territory in August 2021, the first year of his presidency, and it hasn’t recovered since.
Today, it’s at 41 per cent approval (up from his lowest score of 37), while 55.2 percent of voters disapprove. They’re not unusual numbers for a sitting president – Trump’s lowest approval rating in office was 34 per cent, Obama’s was 38 – but it’s not helpful if you’re trying to win a second term.
At the same time, Trump’s ‘favourability rating’ – whether or not voters have a favourable or unfavourable view of him, is sitting at 39.5 per cent, with 54.5 of voters having an unfavourable view of him. That means more people ‘like’ Biden, but less people ‘dislike’ Trump.
There’s also the issue of the Democrats’ extraordinary capacity for self-harm, and its innate ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of what looks like almost certain victory. Because don’t forget, Trump enjoyed four years in the White House in large part thanks to the corruption of the Democratic National Convention, the process created to select the Democrats’ nomination for a presidential run.
The DNC is supposed to be an unbiased governing body, but the leak of tens of thousands of emails and attachments in 2016 (remember Wikileaks?!) revealed the party leadership actively worked to undermine the candidacy of Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination. This was despite consistent polling showing he was the preferred candidate over Hillary Clinton.
History obviously recalls the outcome – Trump defied the polls and won the race, despite the fact Clinton also outspent him in campaigning by a factor of two (Clinton’s bill at the end was almost $800 million, compared to Trump’s $440 million).
Running the unpopular Clinton instead of Sanders meant that less Democrat voters turned out than the two previous elections won by Obama. But in 2020, the Democrats failed to learn the lesson of 2016, selecting Joe Biden as their candidate for the presidential election, despite more polls showing Sanders as the leading candidate.
Biden defeated Trump convincingly on electoral college votes, but as the table above reflects, the actual difference between winning and losing the White House was just over 20,000 votes in three states.
Now in 2024, the Democrats are effectively stuck with Biden, despite a majority of Americans believing Biden is too old to serve a second term as president (67 per cent, if you believe a recent Yougov poll), and that Vice President Kamala Harris is too inexperienced.
At the risk of labouring the point, an NBC News poll in April found 70 per cent of Americans thought Biden should not re-run; and a Washington Post/ABC poll in May found that only 33 per cent of Americans thought Biden had the physical health to serve a second term, and 32 per cent thought he had the mental sharpness. And yes, these polls were all taken well before Biden’s latest public fall, earlier this month.
Long story short, Donald Trump is anything but finished. While Biden continues to stumble and mumble his way through campaign events, losing support along the way, Trump has already proven that criminal conduct doesn’t turn away masses of voters, let alone affect his base.
So watch this space.
The post You Think Trump Can’t Win in 2024? Less Than 22,000 Votes Stand Between Him And The White House appeared first on New Matilda.
This post was originally published on New Matilda.
Five members of the Senate Democratic caucus voted against the debt ceiling package negotiated between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) and the White House on Thursday, condemning cruel provisions in the bill aimed at harming the nation’s most economically vulnerable populations. The bill passed Thursday evening 63 to 36, with Senators John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), Ed Markey (D...
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) released a report on Tuesday finding that the U.S. is quickly hurtling toward a child care cliff that will plunge the country even deeper into its child care crisis come September unless Congress acts. The report, released by Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee chair Sanders and member Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), finds that both families and...
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Amid the longest period in Congressional history without any raising of the federal minimum wage, new polling finds that the vast majority of voters not only support raising the minimum wage, but also nearly tripling it. According to polling by Data for Progress released last week, 74 percent of voters support raising the federal minimum wage to $20 an hour — almost three times the current level...
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday led a group of senators in urging the Pentagon to investigate price gouging by military contractors after a CBS News probe that aired on “60 Minutes” earlier this week confirmed that private corporations are drastically overcharging the Defense Department for weaponry and other equipment, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in excess taxpayer spending and...
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, under threat of subpoena, has finally appeared before the United States Senate to answer for the company’s union-busting practices.
Most unionized Starbucks workers had never, before Wednesday’s Senate hearing, heard Schultz try to defend how Starbucks has gone about relating to employees at the company’s near 300 unionized stores. And they didn’t like what they would hear.
The Schultz testimony, noted Gianna Reeve, a 22-year-old shift supervisor at a unionized Starbucks location in Buffalo, New York, gave Starbucks baristas “nothing new.” Buffalo saw the first successful Starbucks union vote in late 2021.
“His testimony and continued denial of Starbucks’ illegal activities is deplorable,” says Reeve. “It’s even more frustrating to hear Schultz feign unawareness about the labor law that deems those activities illegal.”
Throughout the Senate hearing, Schultz repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. The National Labor Relations Board — the independent federal agency that protects the right to organize — doesn’t share his perspective. The NLRB has found that the national coffee chain has violated federal labor law some 1,300 times under Schultz’s watch.
Those violations, the NLRB has held, include illegally monitoring and firing organizers, withholding benefits from unionized stores, and closing a store that attempted to organize.
“The Starbucks coffee company unequivocally — and let me set the tone for this very early on — has not broken the law,” Schultz at one point in the hearing insisted, a stance that brought immediate laughter from the gallery.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, reminded Schultz numerous times that workers have a constitutional right to organize. The decision on whether or not to form a union, the senator emphasized, belongs only to workers, not billionaire CEOs.
“Over the past 18 months Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign in the modern history of our country,” Sanders noted. “The fundamental issue we are facing today is whether we have a system of justice that applies to all — or whether billionaires and large corporations can break the law with impunity.”
Starbucks workers at the hearing found the spectacle of members of Congress grilling Schultz to be highly satisfying, especially since management and the union have spent only a few minutes together in the over 400 days since the first Starbucks store voted to unionize.
Gianna Reeve, the Buffalo Starbucks employee, noted she had once attempted to hold Schultz accountable by asking him to sign the Fair Election Principles, a set of standards assembled by Starbucks Workers United that expects management to commit itself to not retaliating against workers organizing to fight for a fair contract. Schultz’s response?
“He ran out of the room,” says Reeve.
“The work of baristas across the country brought us to this hearing moment,” she adds, “and it’s gratifying to witness.”
Following the hearing, Reeve once again attempted to confront Schultz and get him to sign the Fair Election Principles, a request he ignored as aides escorted him away.
\u201cUnion baristas @UnionTyler and @ReeveGianna once again ask Howard Schultz to sign the Fair Election Principles, to which he walks away. Again.\u201d— Starbucks Workers United (@Starbucks Workers United) 1680107251
Starbucks workers — the company calls them “partners” — shared with the Senate committee how far Starbucks management will often go to interfere in union organizing.
Maggie Smith, a single mom and Starbucks “partner” from Knoxville, Tennessee, testified that she felt motivated to form a union during the height of the Covid pandemic in the fall of 2021. The Knoxville store would soon afterwards become the first unionized Starbucks store in the South. But that victory didn’t come without a fight.
Employees at the Knoxville store found themselves threatened by their store manager and accused of being disloyal for wanting a union. The company even fired one six-year veteran of the company after she became actively involved in the union organizing. The NLRB has since found merit in the multiple unfair labor practice charges the union has filed and will pursue civil prosecutions. The agency is also seeking to reinstate, with back pay, the fired Knoxville “partner.”
Smith told the Senate panel she first realized how little real meaning the Starbucks “partner” label held when she saw first-hand how much the company opposed the “true partnership” with Starbucks that unionizing workers were trying to organize.
“You can’t be,” Smith explained, “pro-partner and anti-union.”
The Senate testimony from the Knoxville Starbucks workers offers just one example of how Starbucks is attempting to bust burgeoning union drives at Starbucks stores across the country. But Schultz throughout the hearing vehemently denied that Starbucks has broken any law.
“I take offense with you categorizing me or Starbucks as a union buster when that is not true,” Schultz told Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), who had cited the huge sums of money Starbucks had spent retaining the services of the well-known Littler Mendelson anti-union law firm.
That Schultz response also drew laughter from union supporters in the crowd.
The Schultz era at Starbucks may now have ended, but the Starbucks worker fight for fair contracts remains far from over. The new Starbucks CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, has announced he plans to work a half-day shift once a month at a Starbucks outlet to stay close to customers and the store culture. He’s remained mum on his plans to negotiate with the union.
Starbucks workers have organized over 7,500 workers since December 2021, Buffalo’s Gina Reeve told the Senate panel. Those workers will be closely watching what course the new Starbucks CEO decides to take.
“The power dynamics of Starbucks need to be rebalanced,” she observed, “and I hope to see CEO Laxman Narasimhan take the opportunity to really make a ‘different kind of company.’”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders stumped for progressive Chicago mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson late Thursday, imploring the city's voters to turn out in record numbers to overcome what he described as the powerful establishment forces backing conservative Democrat Paul Vallas.
"Our job on Tuesday is to make sure we have the largest voter turnout this city has ever seen," Sanders (I-Vt.) told the crowd gathered at the University of Illinois Chicago days ahead of the April 4 runoff. "This is going to be a close election, and the deciding factor will be voter turnout."
A Northwestern University poll released earlier this week showed the race is in a dead heat, with Johnson and Vallas each receiving 44% support and 12% of voters still undecided.
"Brandon's opponent and the other side—they have a lot of money," the Vermont senator said Thursday. "That's what always happens when you take on the establishment. They have the money. They've got a lot of power. But you know what we have? We have the people."
The rally came after new financial disclosures showed that a super PAC with close connections to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently spent nearly $60,000 on digital media supporting Vallas, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools who has worked to privatize education in his home city as well as New Orleans and Philadelphia.
"The fundamental issue, the deep down issue, is: Which side are you on?" Sanders said Thursday night. "Are you on the side of working people, or are you on the side of the speculators and billionaires? And I know which side Brandon is on."
While Sanders didn't explicitly mention the DeVos-tied super PAC's support for Vallas' campaign during Thursday's rally, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten did, saying it "tells you everything you need to know about" Vallas.
In a statement earlier Thursday, Weingarten said that "Paul Vallas’ goal of defunding public schools and dividing parents against teachers makes him precisely the kind of candidate who would appeal to a fellow wrecker like Betsy DeVos—a person who's devoted her life to ending public education as we know it."
"From Chicago to Philadelphia to New Orleans," Weingarten added, "Vallas waged a craven campaign to voucherize and pauperize, just like DeVos tried—and failed—to do when she served as Donald Trump's education secretary."
Watch Thursday's rally:
Johnson, a longtime educator and organizer, also called attention to the Illinois Federation for Children PAC's spending on the race during a candidate forum late Thursday.
"Betsy DeVos has inserted herself and her resources into my opponent's coffers," Johnson said.
Vallas countered that he has "never had any conversations or contacts with Betsy DeVos."
"Our campaign has not received any money from her," Vallas said, citing the often vanishingly thin barrier separating so-called "independent expenditures" by super PACs and direct donations to political campaigns.
In addition to the DeVos-connected spending, Vallas has also received financial support from "conservative contributors and prominent Republicans," the Chicago Tribune reported earlier this month.
"Vallas' largest contributor was golf course developer Michael Keiser, who has given him $700,000," the Tribune noted. "Keiser previously contributed $11,200 to former President Donald Trump, a Republican. Vallas has taken money from John Canning, a Chicago private equity executive who has given to many politicians locally but also national Republicans, and Noel Moore, who has given to Trump and Texas Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz."
Johnson's biggest contributors, by contrast, have been unions representing teachers and service workers.
"When you take dollars from Trump supporters and try to cast yourself as a part of the progressive movement, man—sit down,” Johnson said at Thursday night's rally.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Sen. Bernie Sanders are circulating a letter this week urging the Biden administration to "undertake a shift in U.S. policy in recognition of the worsening violence, further annexation of land, and denial of Palestinian rights" by Israel.
The letter, which was first obtained and published by Alex Kane at Jewish Currents, was written by Bowman (D-N.Y.) and is being circulated by Sanders (I-Vt.) in order to gain support from other senators. So far, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), André Carson (D-Ind.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) have signed it.
In the letter, the lawmakers expressed their "deep concern" over the "rapidly escalating violence" perpetrated by Israeli occupation forces and settler-colonists against Palestinians. It notes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government includes people like Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Jewish supremacist security minister who "openly encourages and praises violence against Palestinians," and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who "responded to the recent Israeli settler attacks on the Palestinian town of Huwara" by calling for the whole town to be "wiped out."
\u201cSCOOP: Bowman, Sanders and 8 others are urging the Biden administration to investigate whether Israel is using US weapons to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians. It's progressives' most forceful response yet to Israel\u2019s new far-right government\u00a0https://t.co/iPJVBdemIe\u201d— Alex Kane (@Alex Kane) 1680104787
The letter—which, unlike various human rights groups, does not use the term apartheid—details "shocking violence" that is the "bloody reality" for Palestinians living under illegal occupation in the West Bank.
"On February 22, a daytime raid by the Israeli army into the crowded Palestinian city of Nablus killed 11 Palestinians, among them a 72 year-old-man and a 16-year-old child," the lawmakers wrote. "On February 26, a Palestinian gunman shot dead two Israeli settlers outside of Nablus. Subsequently, hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian town of Huwara."
"The settlers, accompanied by the Israeli army, set fire to homes, schools, vehicles, and businesses, killing one Palestinian and injuring over 300 Palestinians," the letter continues. "The local Israeli military commander called the attack a 'pogrom.'"
The letter notes:
This comes amid an already violent year. Israeli forces and settlers have killed over 85 Palestinians in 2023, including 16 children. At least 14 Israelis have been killed, including two children. The previous year was the deadliest for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2004 and included the Israeli military's killings of two American citizens, Shireen Abu Akleh and Omar Assad...
This Israeli government's anti-democratic mission to dismantle the rule of law is a threat to Israelis and Palestinians alike. In addition to explicitly hateful, anti-Palestinian policies, this government is attempting to destroy the independent Israeli judiciary.
The Israeli government's judiciary reforms—which earlier this week were put on hold amid massive protests—"open the path towards further annexation of Palestinian lands," in "violation of international law," the U.S. legislators noted.
The lawmakers urge the Biden administration to:
The lawmakers' push was praised by organizations including the Institute for Policy Studies, Win Without War, and Jewish Voice for Peace, whose political director, Beth Miller, called the letter "an important call to action."
\u201cUSCPR is proud to sign onto this letter led by \n@SenSanders & @RepBowman. \n\nThis letter pushes action & accountability for the U.S.'s ongoing funding of the Israeli regime's human rights abuses against Palestinian people. \n\n#StopArmingIsrael\nhttps://t.co/N4YDS2CSDD\u201d— #DefendMasaferYatta USCPR (@#DefendMasaferYatta USCPR) 1680112274
"Over 80 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers just since the beginning of 2023, and the Biden administration's statements of 'concern' mean nothing without action and accountability," Miller said in a statement. "Leaders in Congress who join this letter are following the demands of a rapidly growing number of Americans—including American Jews—who want to see the Israeli government held accountable for its decades of oppression of Palestinians."
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Ex-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz testified during a much-anticipated hearing led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on Wednesday, parroting what appeared to be blatant lies about the company’s fierce anti-union campaign and hundreds of labor law violations over the past year and a half. For the roughly two hours that Schultz was in the hot seat before Sander’s Health, Education...
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Monday led two dozen House Democrats in urging Congress to allocate at least $1.2 billion in humanitarian aid for Yemen—whose people have suffered eight years of U.S.-backed Saudi war—in next year's budget.
"As we approach the 8th anniversary of the Yemen war, the country remains stuck in a devastating cycle of conflict and humanitarian crisis that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives," Tlaib (D-Mich.) and 23 other lawmakers wrote in a letter to House Subcommittee on State and Foreign Relations Chair Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Ranking Member Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).
"Yemen has the grim title of the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with over 4 million Yemenis displaced and an estimated 80% of the country's 30 million people reliant upon some form of assistance for their survival," the letter, which was first sent last week, asserts.
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The letter's authors lament that "international appeals for assistance for Yemen have consistently [fallen] short of their goals by large margins" and that "the continuous reduction in funding has greatly exacerbated the humanitarian suffering."
The United Nations "has had to close over 75% of its lifesaving programs, and the World Food Program has been forced to cut or reduce food distribution to 8 million people, increasing the number of areas at risk of famine," the letter notes.
"Without a significant increase in American assistance (which we believe would incentivize foreign nations to increase their support in turn), we fear that 2023 will be a heartbreakingly deadly year for everyday Yemenis," the signers assert.
The lawmakers urge Congress to include at least $1.2 billion "for humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts in Yemen" in the budget for fiscal year 2024. They also ask the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development "to develop programming that directly invests in sustainably developing long-term economic opportunities for Yemenis."
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Tlaib is one of four dozen bipartisan House lawmakers who last June introduced a War Powers Resolution to end "unauthorized" United States military involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen's civil war.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), along with Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), introduced a similar measure in the Senate. Last December, Sanders withdrew the resolution just before it was slated for a floor vote, while vowing to work with the Biden administration on ending U.S. involvement in the war.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
A Senate committee headed by Bernie Sanders of Vermont released a report late Sunday aimed at debunking Starbucks’ narrative that it supports workers’ rights and has not committed large-scale violations of U.S. labor law — claims that former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz will likely repeat when he testifies before the panel later this week. Since late 2021, when Buffalo workers voted to form the…
A Senate committee headed by Bernie Sanders of Vermont released a report late Sunday aimed at debunking Starbucks' narrative that it supports workers' rights and has not committed large-scale violations of U.S. labor law—claims that former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz will likely repeat when he testifies before the panel later this week.
Since late 2021, when Buffalo workers voted to form the company's first union in the U.S. and set off a movement that quickly swept the country, "Starbucks has adopted an aggressively anti-union stance that is reflected in Schultz's public statements, the company's communications to workers, and its scorched-earth approach to blocking unionization activity," the new report states.
"Though the coffee giant claims they are a 'progressive' company, there is mounting evidence that the $113 billion-dollar company's anti-union efforts include a pattern of flagrant violations of federal labor law," the report continues. "The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed over 80 complaints against Starbucks for violating federal labor law and there have been over 500 unfair labor practice charges lodged against this company. These violations include the illegal firing of more than a dozen Starbucks workers for 'the crime' of exercising their right to form a union and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions."
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee's majority staff report was published ahead of Schultz's planned testimony on Wednesday, an appearance that the billionaire—who has led Starbucks' aggressive union-busting campaign—resisted for weeks before finally relenting earlier this month under threat of subpoena.
The report also comes days after Starbucks workers across the country went on strike and outlined their demands—including a starting hourly wage of $20, guaranteed hours for full-time workers, and 100% employer-covered healthcare—ahead of the company's Thursday shareholder meeting, the first under new CEO Laxman Narasimhan.
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While Starbucks says it "respects employees' right to organize," the HELP Committee report notes, the company in practice has "taken a firmly anti-union position" and has shown it is "willing to do whatever it takes to stop workers from organizing" by firing dozens of union leaders, surveilling and punishing pro-union employees, and promising better benefits for non-union locations.
"NLRB judges have found that Starbucks broke the law 130 times across six states since workers began organizing in fall 2021," the HELP report states. "The NLRB is also currently taking Starbucks to trial in 70 additional cases."
The report goes on to challenge Starbucks' claim that it is bargaining in good faith with workers who have voted to join Workers United. None of the nearly 300 locations that have made the choice to unionize since December 2021 have secured a first contract.
"It has been over 450 days since the first Starbucks stores voted to form a union. Starbucks has not taken any meaningful steps to make progress toward actually negotiating a contract in that time period," the report observes. "On November 30, 2022, the NLRB found that Starbucks has unlawfully refused to recognize and bargain with the union at its Reserve Roastery Store in Seattle following an election in May 2022. Starbucks has appealed the NLRB's decision to the Ninth Circuit."
The committee's analysis—which also takes on the company's claim that it is a "model employer" and that the unionization push does not reflect the desires of the majority of its workforce—concludes that "Starbucks has engaged in the most significant union-busting campaign in modern history."
"Just because Starbucks is a $113 billion company and Howard Schultz is a billionaire with a net worth of $3.7 billion does not mean that they are above the law," the report says. "They must be held accountable for creating a culture that allows widespread violations of federal labor law in an effort to stop workers from exercising their constitutional right to organize."
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Gregory Becker is the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, the second largest bank to fail in U.S. history. He was also, up until the day the bank failed on March 10, a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, one of 12 Federal Reserve Banks in the country charged with keeping institutions like Silicon Valley Bank healthy and solvent. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is...
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has condemned the Biden administration’s decision this week to reject a request to lower the price of an extremely expensive prostate cancer drug that can help extend the lives of patients for months or years. Failing what advocates considered a litmus test of the administration’s willingness to act on prescription drug prices on Tuesday, the National Institutes of…
Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) are calling on the Biden administration to bring an end to several estate and dynasty trust tax rules that are allowing the richest Americans to hide hundreds of millions of dollars from government tax agents. Dynasty trusts and the estate tax are major sources of tax evasion that stack the U.S. tax system even more in...
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Howard Schultz announced on Tuesday that he is stepping down from his post as Starbucks CEO two weeks earlier than his scheduled departure date, resigning just before a hearing led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) about the company’s union busting next week. Schultz began his third stint as CEO of the company last year when, as workers said, the company brought him back to lead the fight against...
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren this weekend called on federal officials to investigate the causes of recent bank failures and urged President Joe Biden to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whom she has criticized for intensifying financial deregulation and imposing job- and wage-destroying interest rate hikes.
Asked on Sunday by Chuck Todd of NBC's "Meet the Press" about the possibility of Powell imposing yet another interest rate hike despite ongoing market turmoil, Warren (D-Mass.) said, "I've been in the camp for a long time that these extraordinary rate increases that he has taken on, these extreme rate increases, are something that he should not be doing."
Powell "has a dual mandate," said Warren. "Yes, he is responsible for dealing with inflation, but he is also responsible for employment. And what Chair Powell is trying to do, and he has said fairly explicitly, is that they are trying to, in effect, slow down the economy so that, this is by the Fed's own estimate, two million people will lose their jobs. And I believe that is not what the chair of the Federal Reserve should be doing."
Since the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine disrupted international supply chains—rendered fragile by decades of neoliberal globalization—powerful corporations in highly consolidated industries have taken advantage of these and other crises such as the bird flu outbreak to justify profit-boosting price hikes that far outpace the increased costs of doing business.
"Raising interest rates doesn't do anything to solve" a cost-of-living crisis driven primarily by "price gouging, supply chain kinks, [and] the war in Ukraine," Warren said Sunday. "All it does is put millions of people out of work."
"Jay Powell... has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy, one is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both."
Powell, an ex-investment banker, was first appointed by then-President Donald Trump in 2018 and reappointed by Biden in 2021. Warren noted that she opposed Powell's nomination in both cases "because of his views on regulation and what he was already doing to weaken regulation."
"But I think he's failing in both jobs, both as the oversight and manager of these big banks, which is his job, and also what he's doing with inflation," said Warren.
Asked by Todd if Biden should fire Powell, Warren said: "My views on Jay Powell are well-known at this point. He has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy, one is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both."
"Would you advise President Biden to replace him?" Todd inquired.
"I don't think he should be Chairman of the Federal Reserve," the Massachusetts Democrat responded. "I have said it as publicly as I know how to say it. I've said it to everyone."
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Meanwhile, in a Saturday letter, Warren asked Richard Delmar, Tyler Smith, and Mark Bialek—respectively the deputy inspector general of the Treasury Department, acting inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and inspector general of the Fed's board of governors—to "immediately open a thorough, independent investigation of the causes of the bank management and regulatory and supervisory problems that resulted in this month's failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank (Signature) and deliver preliminary results within 30 days."
Until the Treasury Department, the Fed, and the FDIC "intervened to guarantee billions of dollars of deposits," the second- and third-biggest bank failures in U.S. history "threatened economic contagion and severe damage to the banking and financial systems," Warren noted. "The bank's executives, who took unnecessary risks or failed to hedge against entirely foreseeable threats, must be held accountable for these failures."
"But this mismanagement was allowed to occur because of a series of failures by lawmakers and regulators," Warren continued.
In 2018, several Democrats joined Republicans in approving Sen. Mike Crapo's (R-Idaho) Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which weakened the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Crapo's deregulatory measure, signed into law by Trump, loosened federal oversight of banks with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets—a category that includes SVB and Signature.
"As officials sought to develop a plan responding to SVB's failure, Chair Powell muzzled regulators from any public mention of the regulatory failures that occurred under his watch."
Moreover, the Fed under Powell's leadership "initiated key regulatory rollbacks," Warren wrote Saturday, echoing criticisms that she and financial industry watchdogs voiced earlier in the week. "And the banks' supervisors—particularly the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which oversaw SVB—missed or ignored key signals about their impending failure."
It is "critical that your investigation be completely independent and free of influence from the bank executives or regulators that were responsible for action that led to these bank failures," Warren stressed. "I am particularly concerned that you avoid any interference from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who bears direct responsibility for—and has a long record of failure involving—regulatory and supervisory matters involving these two banks."
"I have already asked Chair Powell to recuse himself from the Fed's internal investigation of this matter, but he has not yet responded to this request," wrote Warren. The progressive lawmaker said "this silence is troubling" in light of recent reporting that "as officials sought to develop a plan responding to SVB's failure, Chair Powell muzzled regulators from any public mention of the regulatory failures that occurred under his watch."
"Bank regulators and Congress must move quickly to close the gaps that allowed these bank failures to happen, and your investigation will provide us important insight as we take steps to do so," added Warren, who has introduced legislation to repeal a vital provision of the Trump-era bank deregulation law enacted five years ago with bipartisan support.
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In appearances on three Sunday morning talk shows, Warren doubled down on her demands for an independent investigation into recent bank failures, stronger financial regulations, and punishing those responsible.
After lawmakers from both parties helped Trump fulfill his campaign promise to weaken federal oversight of the banking system, Powell "took a flamethrower to the regulations, saying, 'I'm doing this because Congress let me do it,'" Warren told ABC's "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. "And what happened was exactly what we should have predicted, and that is the banks, these big, multi-billion-dollar banks, loaded up on risk; they boosted their short-term profits; they gave themselves huge bonuses and big salaries; and they exploded their banks."
"When you explode a bank, you ought to be banned from banking forever."
"When you explode a bank, you ought to be banned from banking forever," said Warren, who acknowledged that criminal charges could be coming. "The Department of Justice has opened an investigation. I think that's appropriate for them to do. We'll see where the facts take them. But we've got to take a close look at this."
Not only did former SVB chief executive officer Greg Becker, who lobbied aggressively for the 2018 bank deregulation law, sell millions of dollars of shares as recently as late last month, but until federal regulators took control of the failed bank on March 10, he was on the board of directors at the San Francisco Fed—the institution responsible for overseeing SVB.
On Saturday, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont announced that he plans to introduce legislation "to end this conflict of interest by banning big bank CEOs from serving on Fed boards."
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"We've got to say overall that we can't keep repeating this approach of weakening the regulation over the banks, then stepping in when these giant banks get into trouble," Warren said Sunday, arguing for stronger federal oversight to prevent the need for bailouts.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.