Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday urged the Transportation Department to ensure Southwest’s chief executive pays a price for mass U.S. flight cancellations that have left passengers and employees stranded around the country, throwing lives into chaos and drawing further attention to the company’s business practices. “Southwest’s flight delays and cancellations are beyond unacceptable,” Sanders (I…
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Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday urged the Transportation Department to ensure Southwest’s chief executive pays a price for mass U.S. flight cancellations that have left passengers and employees stranded around the country, throwing lives into chaos and drawing further attention to the company’s business practices.
“Southwest’s flight delays and cancellations are beyond unacceptable,” Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on Twitter. “This is a company that got a $7 billion taxpayer bailout and will be handing out $428 million in dividends to their wealthy shareholders. The U.S. Department of Transportation must hold Southwest’s CEO accountable for his greed and incompetence.”
Bob Jordan, who has worked for Southwest for decades and became the company’s CEO earlier this year, acknowledged on Tuesday that the airline needs to “upgrade” its outdated scheduling system and other technology that flight attendants and pilots have been warning about for years.
“For more than a decade, leadership shortcomings in adapting, innovating, and safeguarding our operations have led to repeated system disruptions, countless disappointed passengers, and millions in lost profits,” the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) said in a statement Wednesday. “The holiday meltdown has been blamed on weather that had been forecast five days prior, but this problem began many years ago when the complexity of our network outgrew its ability to withstand meteorological and technological disruptions. SWAPA subject matter experts have repeatedly presented years of data, countless proposals that make Southwest pilots more efficient and resilient.”
Instead of investing more heavily in such critical upgrades, Southwest pumped billions of dollars into stock buybacks in the years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Jordan took over as chief executive in February, receiving a generous compensation package that could amount to $9 million for the year. Earlier this month, just weeks before the airline began canceling thousands of flights per day, Jordan announced that the company would reinstate its quarterly dividend, which was suspended at the beginning of the pandemic.
The current payout of 18 cents per share, set to reach shareholders next month, will cost the company $428 million a year.
In an internal message to employees on Tuesday, Jordan said of the ongoing meltdown, “This stops with me.”
“I’m accountable for this and I own our issues and I own our recovery,” Jordan added.
“Southwest’s flight delays and cancellations are beyond unacceptable.”
Like Southwest’s management, the Transportation Department—headed by Pete Buttigieg—knew there was potential for a holiday travel crisis. The department is currently investigating the ongoing flight cancellations.
“Before the debacle, attorneys general from both parties were sounding alarms about regulators’ lax oversight of the airline industry, imploring them and congressional lawmakers to crack down,” The Lever reported Wednesday. “Four months before Southwest’s mass cancellation of flights, 38 state attorneys general wrote to congressional leaders declaring that Buttigieg’s agency ‘failed to respond and to provide appropriate recourse’ to thousands of consumer complaints about airlines’ customer service.”
“Weeks before that, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) sent Buttigieg a letter warning of ‘the deeply troubling and escalating pattern of airlines delaying and canceling flights’ particularly during holidays,” the outlet added.
In November, Buttigieg leveled fines totaling $7.25 million against six airlines for “extreme delays in providing refunds” to customers whose flights had been canceled or significantly altered.
But critics said the punishment was far from adequate, and neither Southwest nor its main competitors were among the companies ordered to pay penalties. The Lever noted Wednesday that Southwest “has spent more than $2 million on lobbying since Biden took office and Buttigieg became secretary of Transportation,” and he has faced withering criticism for refusing to take on the increasingly consolidated airline industry.
\u201c1) My @econliberties colleagues released model legislation in September aimed at repealing a thing called federal preemption in the airline industry. You can read about it here: https://t.co/8e9dEmbD7K\u201d— Katie Van Dyck (@Katie Van Dyck) 1672263469According to Bloomberg, Buttigieg told Jordan on Tuesday that the Transportation Department “expects that Southwest will meet its obligations to passengers and workers and take steps to prevent a situation like this from happening again.”
The Christmas travel crisis isn’t the first time this year that U.S. airlines have faced backlash over mass cancellations. Around the July 4 holiday, major airlines including Southwest canceled or delayed thousands of flights amid a travel surge.
At the time, Sanders wrote a letter calling on Buttigieg to strengthen federal regulations to impose a fine of “$27,500 per passenger for all domestic flights that are delayed more than two hours and all international flights that are delayed more than three hours when passengers are forced to wait on the tarmac.”
The senator also urged the Transportation Department to fine airlines “$55,000 per passenger if they cancel flights that they know cannot be fully staffed.”
Buttigieg has yet to do either.
Sen.-elect John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who joined Sanders in calling for a crackdown on the airline industry earlier this year, wrote on Twitter Wednesday that “airlines have a responsibility to their customers.”
“When they fail,” he added, “we must hold them accountable.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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Legislation that Sen. Bernie Sanders unveiled 13 years ago to help boost workplace democracy and curb worsening inequality in the United States was included in the $1.7 trillion omnibus package approved by the Senate on Thursday.
Modeled on the success of employee ownership centers in Ohio and Vermont, Sanders’ (I-Vt.) Worker Ownership, Readiness, and Knowledge (WORK) Act authorizes a $50 million grant program to help create and expand employee ownership centers around the country.
As Sanders’ office explained:
These centers provide workers with the tools they need to own their own businesses through employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) or eligible worker-owned cooperatives. This act will authorize the [U.S.] Department of Labor to provide education and outreach, training, and technical support for local and state programs dedicated to the promotion of employee ownership and participation. Sanders helped establish the Vermont Employee Ownership Center in 2001 and first introduced the WORK Act in 2009. Sanders also secured $158,000 for the Vermont Employee Ownership Center as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 earlier this year.
“Workers deserve an ownership stake in the companies they work for, a say in the decisions that impact their lives, and a fair share of the profits that their work makes possible,” Sanders said Thursday in a statement.
“This modest but effective legislation will go a long way to ensuring workers have the tools they need to have a seat at the table they worked to build,” he continued. “By making sure workers have their seat and their voices are heard, we can start to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the wealthy few.”
“Workers deserve an ownership stake in the companies they work for, a say in the decisions that impact their lives, and a fair share of the profits that their work makes possible.”
Research has shown that worker ownership leads to higher wages, better benefits, a more secure retirement, and reduced gender and racial wealth disparities. In addition, employee-owned enterprises see lower turnover and increased output. Sanders’ office attributes these positive effects to improved “employee morale, dedication, creativity, and productivity, as workers share in profits and have more control over their own work lives.”
Other studies have shown that worker-owned companies in the U.S. are less likely to outsource jobs and more likely to experience stronger profits and shareholder returns. According to one recent analysis, scaling up employee ownership could quadruple the share of wealth held by the bottom 50% of U.S. households.
In 2019, roughly 25 million workers in the U.S. already owned some stock in the company where they were employed, according to Sanders’ office. More than 10,000 enterprises currently use some type of employee ownership model, improving material circumstances for millions of working people nationwide.
“On behalf of the more than 10 million American households that already benefit from an ESOP, we are deeply grateful to Sen. Sanders for his dedication to include the WORK Act in the omnibus,” Jim Bonham, president and CEO of the ESOP Association, said Thursday.
“Starting years ago with the Vermont Employee Ownership Center that he helped create, we have learned that increased education, awareness, and feasibility grants directly results in more employee-owned businesses and now those lessons can be applied across the nation,” said Bonham. “More employee-owned businesses mean more stable local jobs, higher incomes, increased retirement savings, better work environments, and more productivity for our economy.”
The omnibus package, which funds the federal government through 2023, also includes the first budget increase for the National Labor Relations Board in nearly a decade, as Sanders’ office noted.
The massive, 4,100-plus-page bill now heads to the House. It must be approved by lawmakers in the lower chamber and signed into law by President Joe Biden by Friday to avoid a painful government shutdown.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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U.S. Sen Ed Markey on Wednesday led a group of upper chamber lawmakers who urged the Biden administration “to fulfill its commitment in the Glasgow Statement by publicly releasing a plan for ending public financing of unabated international fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022.”
“To date, the United States has not made public its plan for meeting these pledges by the end of the year.”
Last year, dozens of countries and institutions including the United States pledged at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland to end public financing of the overseas unabated fossil fuel sector by the end of this year and fully prioritize a shift to clean energy investment.
“To date, the United States has not made public its plan for meeting these pledges by the end of the year,” wrote Markey (D-Mass.)–who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety–along with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
“In order to assess whether the United States will succeed in meeting them, we must understand the steps the country is planning to take to achieve them,” the senators explained. “That is why we are asking you to release your plan for how the United States will fulfill its Glasgow Statement commitments.”
“To strengthen our position as a global leader on climate change, enable effective oversight of U.S. public finance, and catalyze similar efforts from multilateral banks and other countries, the United States must demonstrate in transparent and concrete terms how it intends to fulfill this crucial climate pledge,” the lawmakers asserted.
\u201cWe’re calling on @POTUS to meet his administration\u2019s international climate commitments and publicly release a plan before the end of the year to lay out how the U.S. will end public financing of international fossil fuel projects.\u201d— Ed Markey (@Ed Markey) 1671660194The letter continues:
The public release of our plan to implement the Glasgow Statement commitments will help the United States encourage other governments and their institutions, as well as public finance institutions, to hold themselves accountable to their pledge. A clear indication of our move away from public finance for international fossil fuel projects can also spur more climate-friendly financing decisions in other international bodies such as multilateral development banks.
A transparent, open plan will also enable the United States to apply pressure to fossil fuel-financing countries such as China and Russia, which are glaringly absent from the list of Glasgow Statement signatories.
Markey’s request–which is not his first such ask of Biden–came weeks after a report published by Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth U.S. revealing that Group of 20 member governments and multilateral development banks spent nearly twice as much financing international fossil fuel projects as they did on clean energy alternatives during a recent two-year period.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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Recall your attention to the response from the US establishment after Russia was found to be using Iranian drones in the war in Ukraine. The extent of the outrage was so intense that the issue was brought to the UN Security Council, and the spokesman for the State Department briefed the press on the American position conveyed during the proceeding. He said, “we expressed our grave concerns about Russia’s acquisition of these UAVs from Iran,” and “we now have abundant evidence that these UAVs are being used to strike Ukrainian civilians and critical civilian infrastructure.” He added, “we will not hesitate to use our sanctions and other appropriate tools on all involved in these transfers.”
American intelligence officials later told the New York Times that Iran had sent members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the Crimean Peninsula; they had been sent, the allegation goes, to train the Russian military how to use the drones they had acquired. Mick Mulroy, a former Pentagon official and retired CIA officer, commented on this, saying, “sending drones and trainers to Ukraine has enmeshed Iran deeply into the war on the Russian side and involved Tehran directly in operations that have killed and injured civilians,” and “even if they’re just trainers and tactical advisers in Ukraine, I think that’s substantial.”
The Biden Administration and members of the intelligence community have endorsed an important principle: a state is responsible for the crimes it enables others to commit. Applying this standard to those designated as enemies is quite common, but powerful states always reserve a different set of standards for themselves. Any morally serious person will endorse the precept of universality, and insist upon applying the same criteria to ourselves that we do to others.
If one were to establish the goal of reducing the amount of violence in the world, the simplest way to begin would be to eliminate one’s own contribution to it; the withdrawal of American involvement in criminal acts would mitigate much of the savagery. The Biden administration is responsible for directly facilitating crimes in Yemen that greatly exceed anything Iran is accused of. The Administration has the opportunity to enact the principles they’ve enunciated, and it doesn’t require sanctions or other coercive measures, they merely need to stop participating in the Yemeni war.
The consequences of the war are not controversial. The United Nations estimated that 377,000 people had died at the end of 2021, and that doesn’t account for the destruction that occurred the following year. Yemen is the scene of perhaps the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with almost three-quarters of the population, 23.4 million people, requiring humanitarian assistance. The Yemeni population is subjected to a blockade that can reasonably be classified as torture, the World Organization Against Torture has reported. The legal director for the organization said, “the tens of thousands of civilians who die due to malnutrition, waterborne diseases, and the lack of access to healthcare are no collateral damage of the conflict.”
The American contribution to the war is not opaque. While the Obama administration was in office, some officials warned that the support they were providing could make them criminally liable for the war crimes being committed. During his campaign for the presidency, Joe Biden said he intended to treat Saudi Arabia like “the pariah that they are,” and he made clear his intention to stop selling weapons to them; his determination in this matter didn’t survive his election. Arms sales continued, diplomatic cover for the continuation of the blockade is still provided, and Saudi Arabia still relies on American contractors to service its Air Force. The dependency on American contractors to maintain and service Saudi warplanes cannot be overstated: if the US canceled these contacts the Saudi planes would be restricted to their hangers.
On December 6, The Intercept reported that Bernie Sanders was advancing a war powers resolution aimed at halting American support for the war Saudi Arabia was leading in Yemen. The Biden administration was asked to avoid incriminating themselves as transparent hypocrites, and allow for their policy to approach the standard they condemn Iran for failing to reach. This task was too strenuous for the administration. They lobbied intensely against the resolution and Sanders was forced to withdraw it.
It should never be shocking when a president behaves in a manner contrary to how he presented himself during his campaign; or when an administration condemns enemies for their crimes while they are committing worse acts. Hypocrisy of this sort is a prominent feature of the American political establishment. But this is a particularly egregious example of this. The Biden administration is reserving the right to aid Saudi Arabia as they annihilate Yemeni society and slaughter its inhabitants, and they expect to be greeted with something other than contempt when they accuse their enemies of criminal conduct. This isn’t a privilege that should be afforded to them.
The post Yemen: End American Complicity first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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A new UNICEF report finds that over 11,000 children have been killed or injured in the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen since 2015. A six-month ceasefire between warring parties expired in October. Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders withdrew a Senate resolution Tuesday that would have ended U.S. support for the war, following pressure from the White House. Sanders said he would bring the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Listen to a reading of this article:
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Bernie Sanders has withdrawn his bill to end US support for the Saudi war on Yemen following reports that the Biden administration was working to tank the resolution, with White House aids reportedly saying they’d recommend the president veto it.
Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Tuesday night withdrew his request to vote on the Yemen War Powers Resolution that would end US support for the Saudi-led war and blockade on Yemen, citing White House opposition to the bill.
Sanders said on the Senate floor that he was informed ahead of the scheduled vote of the administration’s opposition to the legislation, meaning President Biden would veto the resolution. The Intercept reported earlier in the day that The White House was pressuring senators to vote against the bill, and Democrats came out in opposition to Sanders’ resolution earlier on Tuesday, including Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA).
Sanders’ justification for not holding the vote was that the administration claimed it would work with Congress on ending the war in Yemen. He said the White House wanted to “work with us on crafting language that would be mutually acceptable” and insisted if that didn’t happen, he would resume his efforts to end the war through a resolution.
But even if the White House really wants to engage with Congress on the issue, or if Sanders chooses to reintroduce the resolution, the plan will take time, which Yemenis don’t have. There has been a cessation in violence in Yemen, with no Saudi airstrikes since March, but there has been a recent uptick in fighting on the ground.
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Sanders Withdraws Yemen War Powers Resolution Vote Over Biden Opposition
The White House was asking senators to vote against the resolution and threatened Biden would veto the bill
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #SaudiArabia #Biden #BernieSanders https://t.co/9dJ5DqSSE7 pic.twitter.com/YtcWcbcl0d— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) December 14, 2022
It’s probably also worth noting that this administration has been consistently lying about its intentions to end this war, with Biden campaigning on the promise to bring peace to Yemen and make a “pariah” of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, then turning around and keeping the war going while greeting the crown prince with a friendly fistbump ahead of a meeting where the two leaders coordinated their governments’ continued intimacy.
“Today, I withdrew from consideration by the U.S. Senate my War Powers Resolution after the Biden administration agreed to continue working with my office on ending the war in Yemen,” Sanders said on Twitter. “Let me be clear. If we do not reach agreement, I will, along with my colleagues, bring this resolution back for a vote in the near future and do everything possible to end this horrific conflict.”
“At which time the House, under GOP control, will block your efforts,” former congressman Justin Amash replied. “But you know that already. As does the Biden administration, which is why they don’t want you to pass this joint resolution now, when all the pressure is on the president, because his party currently controls.”
“What I’m acknowledging is that both Rs and Ds in government are addicted to war,” Amash added. “They’re playing a game. When Trump was president, everyone knew he wouldn’t sign a Yemen joint resolution, so it passed Congress. Biden has to pretend he’d sign it, so he needs Congress to block it.”
Indeed, it would appear that a determination was made that the war in Yemen was too important for its outcome to be left to the legislative branch. Experts have long acknowledged that the mass atrocities in that war-ravaged nation would be forced to end if the US and its allies stopped assisting the Saudi military in perpetrating them, and Biden could have done so on day one of his presidency, but, as Vox’s Alex Ward put it last year, “doing so would risk losing Riyadh as a key regional partner.” Saudi Arabia plays a key role in both US fossil fuel interests and in fighting Iran, and that’s clearly a geostrategic asset that Washington is unwilling to relinquish.
So now we’re looking at a best-case scenario where either (A) the worst mass atrocity on earth continues for a much longer time than it would have if Sanders’ bill had passed, or (B) we get a watered-down version of the resolution. And of course there’s the other scenario where neither of these things happen and the slaughter just continues into the foreseeable future completely unabated.
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The White House is whipping against Bernie Sanders Yemen war powers resolution, urging a no vote this evening, sources involved tell me https://t.co/SfftPmSK3c pic.twitter.com/AX73LUbHlf
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) December 13, 2022
In the lead-up to the vote The Intercept’s Daniel Boguslaw and Ryan Grimm reported on the shenanigans coming from the White House to undermine the resolution. An update to their article about the bill currently reads as follows:
The White House, according to sources involved in the fight over the resolution, is urging senators to vote against the resolution. The White House is arguing that a vote in favor is unnecessary because, despite the lapse of the ceasefire, significant hostilities have not yet resumed, and the vote will complicate diplomacy. They are also arguing that Biden has made significant progress in reducing violence and re-opening ports and airports, so his judgment should be respected and the resolution rejected. And finally, the White House has warned that some of the arguments being made could complicate the effort to back Ukraine in its war against Russia. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
So efforts to end the war in Yemen needed to be sabotaged because they might complicate the US proxy war against Russia? That’s some, uhh, interesting logic.
It’s hard to think of a word to describe all this besides “evil”. If intervening to ensure the continued mass starvation of children and mass military slaughter of civilians is not evil, then nothing is evil. It’s actually hard to think of anything more evil.
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Biden Lied About Yemen
"We are being lied to about yet another US war by yet another US president."https://t.co/uLD2hCMaP2
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 29, 2021
This could be called a tri-partisan crime, with both Democrats, Republicans, and independent Sanders each playing a role in making sure the war in Yemen keeps going. Libertarian Scott Horton, one of the most forceful critics of the US role in the war, had harsh words for supposedly anti-interventionist Republicans for not doing more on this front.
“I blame Rand Paul,” Horton tweeted. “He’s supposed to be young Ron in the Senate, and with more willingness to rumble. He could have been championing this resolution all along. We know he knows about the war. He’s why we had to rely on Bernie Sanders and his friends to even try. Mike Lee too. There was not a single GOP co-sponsor in the Senate. Not one.”
It’s safe to say that in a nation which serves as the hub of an empire that’s held together with endless violence and the threat thereof, anyone who ascends to a certain level of power in any party is going to have to be a servant of mass military slaughter to some extent. That’s why efforts to save Yemen keep getting stonewalled, that’s why Biden’s promise to end that war turned out to be a lie, that’s why the US war machine keeps expanding, that’s why aggressions keep ramping up against Russia and China, and it just might end up being why the human species went the way of the dinosaur.
Here’s hoping that all changes soon.
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On the heels of New York Times workers walking off the job, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday made the case for revamping the nation’s news media system by giving reporters around the United States the resources necessary to produce high-quality journalism for the benefit of society. In an email to supporters, the Vermont Independent described how profit-maximizing media outlets have undermined…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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A group of 20 Democrats and progressives in the Senate are urging President Joe Biden to crack down on federal contractors’ political donations to help reduce “quid pro quo corruption” among federal lawmakers and lobbyists and shine a much-needed light on dark money spending. In a letter spearheaded by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and signed by 20 senators…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is planning to bring a resolution aimed at ending U.S. support for the Saudi Arabia-led war in Yemen to a vote in the Senate as early as next week, saying it could have the votes to pass. Sanders told The Intercept this week that he will put a war powers resolution to a vote, which can be done without the backing of Senate leadership because of the nature of the…
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In a win for workers, the House passed a resolution on Wednesday to force the adoption of a railroad labor contract with, crucially, the inclusion of a hard-fought amendment for seven days of paid sick leave for rail workers.
The resolution advanced with a 290 to 137 vote, while the amendment providing sick leave passed largely on party lines, with only three Republicans joining all Democrats in voting to grant rail workers sick days.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) had originally planned to bring the resolution, sans sick leave, to a vote as is, but the Congressional Progressive Caucus said that it was able to negotiate a deal with House leadership on Tuesday night to have the sick leave proposal included. The seven days of sick leave in the proposal is less than the 15 days that workers had sought, but is still an improvement over current conditions.
Representatives Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), who submitted the amendment, celebrated its passage.
“Railroad corporations are raking in record profits — over $20 billion last year alone,” Omar said in a statement following the vote. “Meanwhile, their workers do not even have the basic protections of a single day of paid or unpaid sick time. In the face of these record profits, railroad workers have made a simple, dignified request for the basic protections of paid leave. And we in Congress need to listen to them.”
The legislation now goes to the Senate, where Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has pledged to block consideration of the resolution without first holding a roll call vote on the paid sick leave proposal, calling the current policy of rail workers being given zero paid sick days “unacceptable.”
“The bottom line is that the American people and workers throughout the country are profoundly disgusted by the kind of corporate greed that we are seeing,” Sanders said in an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday. “In the last three quarters of this year alone, the railroad industry made $21 billion in profits, provided $25 billion in stock buybacks and dividends…. Meanwhile, for workers on the railroads, they have zero, underlined, zero guaranteed sick leave.”
Sanders said there is a good chance that the sick leave proposal could pass with support from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. Pointing out that Republicans claim to support the working class — however false those claims may prove in practice — he said, “Put up or shut up. If you can’t vote for this to give workers today, who really have hard jobs, dangerous jobs — if you can’t guarantee them paid sick leave, don’t tell anybody that you stand with working families.”
Paid sick leave became a major sticking point for Democrats and progressives after President Joe Biden urged Congress on Monday to force the adoption of the agreement, negotiated with Biden administration representatives in September, circumventing unions to prevent workers from striking in December. Several major unions involved in the contract negotiations — representing over half of the rail workers affected — had voted down that agreement.
Currently, strict attendance policies cause major fatigue and health issues for many rail workers. The contract offer had included some provisions for workers, including pay raises and three days off each year for routine health appointments, if scheduled 30 days in advance. This was insufficient to assuage many workers’ concerns, and still didn’t address the issue of paid sick leave that workers have been fighting for.
Unions and union workers had expressed frustration over Biden’s announcement, saying that it went against his supposed pro-union stances.
The AFL-CIO called on Congress to pass the sick leave provision in a statement on Wednesday. “To be clear, rail companies could do the right thing today and grant workers paid sick leave,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said. “But they’ve refused, putting profits over people. That’s how we got here.”
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWED), one of the unions that voted against the agreement, called on workers and supporters to contact their congressional representatives to tell them to support the proposal after putting out a scathing statement about the original resolution on Tuesday, saying that, as negotiated, it would only make the situation worse for workers.
“[T]he big corporations, the monopolies that control America — the robber baron railroads — have again profiteered from the problem they created and shifted the consequences of it onto the Railroad Workers, the customers, and the general public,” the union said. “This cannot continue. There must be a change.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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As the House prepares to vote Wednesday morning to force the adoption of a rail contract and avert a rail strike, a growing number of progressives in Congress are calling for the inclusion of a key sick leave demand for which unions and workers have pleaded for months.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) appears to be leading the charge for the provision in Congress, telling reporters it is “outrageous” that the agreement, negotiated with the White House in September, lacks union members’ paid sick leave request. He is planning to demand a Senate vote on a provision to provide workers with sick leave.
“Will I demand a vote to ensure that workers in the railroad industry have what tens of millions of workers have, and workers here on Capitol Hill have: guaranteed paid sick leave? The answer is yes,” Sanders, who has been outspoken about the rail contract in recent months, told reporters on Tuesday.
At least one other senator, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), is on board with the sick leave provision, according to HuffPost. “I’m hopeful we can guarantee them a week of sick days and I’m working with Sen. Sanders and others to get that done,” she said.
The vote was scheduled after President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass a bill to avoid a strike, angering rail unions, workers and labor advocates. In calling to do so, Biden essentially told Congress to override the will of the thousands of union members who voted against ratifying the contract, who have said that the agreement is insufficient to address workers’ concerns over punishingly strict attendance policies and their current complete lack of sick days.
House progressives have also called for the inclusion of the sick leave provision.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) said that he can’t “in good conscience” vote for the bill in its current form. “We fumbled this in Build Back Better, we can’t do that again,” he tweeted.
“Rail workers can’t schedule getting the flu on a Tuesday 30 days in advance,” Bowman added, referring to a provision in the current contract that would require workers to schedule medical appointments 30 days in advance. “What we’re seeing is an inhumane deal being pushed onto workers even after a majority voted it down. If we are a pro-labor party, we must stand up for them. They need paid sick leave now.”
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) also vowed to vote against a bill that excluded the demand, saying, “Every worker deserves paid sick leave. I will not support a deal that does not provide our rail workers with the paid sick leave they need and deserve.”
“Railroad workers grind themselves to the bone for this country as their labor produces billions for Wall Street,” added Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York). “They demand the basic dignity of paid sick days. I stand with them. If Congress intervenes, it should be to have workers’ backs and secure their demands in legislation.”
It’s unlikely that House leadership will allow the paid leave provision to be included in the bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has vowed to bring the agreement to a vote as is, without sick leave. House progressives’ votes are also unlikely to be enough to tank the bill unless it faces widespread Republican opposition or if more Democrats speak up on behalf of the workers opposed to the current contract.
Republicans, unsurprisingly, appear to be opposed to the inclusion of the sick leave provision — as are a number of conservative and corporate groups and, of course, wealthy railroad owners, whose greed is the reason for the current showdown, labor advocates say.
Four of the 12 rail unions involved in the contract negotiations have voted down the agreement in recent weeks, representing over half of the 115,000 affected rail workers. The unions issued furious statements following Biden’s statement, lambasting the president for siding with rail industry owners over workers.
“[P]assing legislation to adopt tentative agreements that exclude paid sick leave for railroad workers will not address rail service issues,” the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, one of the unions that voted against the contract, wrote in a statement. “Rather, it will worsen supply chain issues and further sicken, infuriate, and disenfranchise railroad workers as they continue shouldering the burdens of the railroads’ mismanagement.”
Railroad Workers United, an inter-union coalition of rail workers, condemned Biden and Democrats who are supporting the current agreement while praising progressives who are standing up for the sick leave provision.
“The ‘most labor-friendly President in history has proven that he and the Democratic Party are not the friends of labor they have touted themselves to be. These wolves in sheep’s clothing have for decades been in bed with corporate America and have allowed them to continue chipping away at the American middle class and organized labor,” said Railroad Workers United co-chair Gabe Christenson.
“Except for a handful of progressives — notably Bernie Sanders — who have shown their willingness to fight for us, the entire political machine must be changed,” Christenson continued.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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In the weeks following right-wing billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter in late October, Republican members of Congress gained hundreds of thousands of followers on the platform, while Democrats experienced a purge of followers, a new report finds.
According to an analysis of ProPublica data by The Washington Post, the biggest shifts in follower counts for Republicans have almost all been gains, with the biggest winner being white nationalist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia), followed by far right Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), both gaining over 300,000 followers each. Senators Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rand Paul (Kentucky) both gained roughly 200,000 followers, while Rep. Matt Gaetz (Florida) added over 100,000 accounts to his follower count.
Meanwhile, the largest shifts in follower counts for Democrats have all been negative, save for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (New York), likely because he is poised to take over for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (California) as the next leader of the Democratic caucus.
The accounts with the biggest losses belong to Senators Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), both of whom lost over 100,000 followers. Rep. Adam Schiff (California) — a member of the January 6 committee and the target of recent attacks from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) as well as a slate of false social media posts — has also lost around 100,000 followers.
Look, it’s congressional Twitter account follower data from @propublica in this @washingtonpost joint:https://t.co/ZFeagko9mo pic.twitter.com/XaR8s5R6Rd
— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) November 28, 2022
Not only do these changes in follow counts generally follow party lines, they also appear to follow the ideological spectrum — some of the furthest right members of Congress gained the most followers, while the most left-leaning members, Sanders and Warren, lost the most.
The Post notes that these findings suggest that left and liberal users appear to be quickly fleeing the platform in the Musk era, while right-wing users are joining Twitter or becoming more active. This could also be the result of the fact that Musk appears to be disproportionately banning prominent left-wing accounts, including antifascist activist and researcher Chad Loder and leftist anarchist collective CrimethInc, while elevating and responding to far right accounts.
The past weeks and years have shown that Musk is a part of the right wing, even though he insists that he is politically neutral. He urged followers to vote for Republicans ahead of the midterm election, has repeatedly donated to Republicans and has tweeted about dangerous far right conspiracy theories on topics like the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband and debunked COVID denialism. Musk’s anti-worker, anti-union management style and hostility toward antiracist and other social justice movements also point to a right-wing ideology.
Musk has also hinted that he will reinstate former President Donald Trump, who was banned for inciting violence around the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Musk has already reinstated accounts belonging to other far right figures like Jordan Peterson (banned for anti-trans hate speech) and the personal account of Greene (banned for COVID disinformation and violent rhetoric).
Such actions have led commentators to speculate that Musk views his ownership of Twitter as a way to advance his right-wing beliefs.
“[I]t’s now impossible to ignore the emerging reality that Musk values owning Twitter as a powerful weapon for right-wing activism,” MSNBC columnist Zeeshan Aleem wrote in an op-ed last week.
“As the richest man on Earth and a proudly exploitative executive, he has a direct interest in amplifying the power of the right,” Aleem continued. “He shares the Republican Party’s hostility to unions, higher tax rates on corporations and the ultra-wealthy, and regulations on businesses. He also seems to find the left’s growing focus on anti-bigotry off-putting, and he doesn’t like challenges to his authority.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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The House will intervene in a dispute between unionized rail workers and rail companies by moving to impose a labor contract on workers that excludes their top attendance demands, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) announced after President Joe Biden issued a call for Congress to act on Monday night.
In his statement, Biden said that the adoption of the contract, negotiated earlier this year and rejected by unions representing over half of the more than 115,000 rail workers affected by negotiations, is necessary to avert a “potentially crippling national rail shutdown.”
“[A]t this critical moment for our economy, in the holiday season, we cannot let our strongly held conviction for better outcomes for workers deny workers the benefits of the bargain they reached, and hurl this nation into a devastating rail freight shutdown,” Biden said.
Unions have expressed ire over Biden’s statement. “We’re trying to address the issue here of sick time. It’s very important,” Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen president Michael Baldwin told CNN. “This action prevents us from reaching the end of our process, takes away the strength and ability that we have to force bargaining or force the railroads to … do the right thing.”
“A call to Congress to act immediately to pass legislation that adopts tentative agreements that exclude paid sick leave ignores the Railroad Workers’ concerns,” wrote union Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWED) in a statement. “It both denies Railroad Workers their right to strike while also denying them of the benefit they would likely otherwise obtain if they were not denied their right to strike.”
The deadline for an agreement is December 8, at which point union members will strike if an agreement isn’t reached. Though several unions have ratified a contract, members across unions have agreed to strike in solidarity with the four unions that have rejected the agreement.
This could have an enormous impact on the U.S. economy, affecting water supplies and potentially costing $2 billion a day in lost economic output, according to railroad trade group the Association of American Railroads. Workers and union supporters say that the blame for the strike would lie nearly entirely on rail owners’ greed and their abject refusal to provide workers with basic provisions enjoyed by many other workers, like paid sick leave and not being penalized for taking time off.
The rail workers say they face grueling working conditions and are expected to work for weeks without a day off, not even for situations like a doctor’s visit, recovering from a heart attack, or the death of a parent. Indeed, one impetus for the current dispute was a locomotive engineer’s death from a heart attack earlier this year after he was forced to delay a doctor’s appointment due to work demands.
Pelosi said shortly after Biden’s statement was released that the House will take up a vote to adopt the agreement “with no poison pills or changes to the negotiated terms,” meaning that workers would not get the sick leave demands they have asked for. As it is, the deal contains raises and would allow employees to take a day off for routine health appointments, if requested 30 days in advance. This agreement, workers say, is not nearly sufficient to address the punishing attendance policies that they face.
It is unclear if the Senate will be able to pass the agreement; in its current form, it will likely see opposition from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who has called for Congress to ensure that workers’ demands are met.
“If the rail industry can afford to spend $25.5 billion this year to buy back its own stock and hand out huge dividends to its wealthy shareholders, please do not tell me it cannot afford to guarantee paid sick days to its workers and provide them with a decent quality of life,” he wrote in a tweet on Saturday, adding later that “Congress must stand with rail workers.”
Workers and labor advocates are furious over Biden’s statement, which comes at odds with his pledge to be a pro-labor, pro-union president.
“This is a legacy defining moment for Joe Biden,” wrote inter-union caucus of railroad workers Railroad Workers United. “He is going down as one of the biggest disappointments in labor history.”
A labor friendly Whitehouse wouldn’t issue a statement with misinformation and outright lies. Union leaders agreed put it to members for a vote—despite politicians and pundits strong arming members, 4 unions representing a majority of organized rail labor rejected the deal. https://t.co/MOa6cIP2cL pic.twitter.com/xvOd5BsmAJ
— Ross Grooters (@RossGrooters) November 29, 2022
“Full sellout from the White House for the majority of rail workers who rejected the deal the President brokered, preemptively denying them the right to strike,” wrote Labor Notes journalist Jonah Furman. “This was the ‘which side are you on?’ moment, and the White House chose the railroad bosses.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) announced on Thursday that he is seeking to become the chair of a powerful Senate committee that has wide influence over what he is planning to prioritize in the role: Medicare for All, workers’ rights and affordable college.
The Vermont senator is likely to take the helm of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, where he has previously served as a member. From the top spot, he will be able to steer the committee’s priorities on health policy and other areas of special interest to progressives.
“As chairman of the committee, he will focus on universal healthcare, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, increasing access to higher education, and protecting workers’ rights on the job,” Sanders’s communications director Mike Casca said in a statement.
Sanders’s HELP chairmanship could lead to an advancement in priorities that he has previously advocated for but that have not necessarily taken hold among other members of Congress; he could, for instance, pursue legislation like his bipartisan proposal to safely import drugs from other countries in order to lower prices for patients.
Meanwhile, he would have a larger, more visible platform to champion Medicare for All, for which he has advocated relentlessly for years; earlier this year, he introduced legislation to establish Medicare for All in the U.S., which is the only wealthy country in the world without a universal health care system. Though the idea is far from having enough votes to pass, his advocacy could help sway senators to his side.
“I think there’s a caricature out there of Bernie Sanders that doesn’t take note of the fact that the guy is a politician who has been doing this for a really long time,” Social Security Works executive director Alex Lawson told The Washington Post. “He knows how to work with his colleagues.”
In lieu of Medicare for All, for instance, Sanders has spent the last couple of years relentlessly advocating for the lowering of prescription drug prices, introducing bills to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices and commissioning reports to highlight the issue.
He has also pushed for the expansion of Medicare to include dental, vision and hearing — a measure that has support among a wide set of Democrats in the Senate, but that has been rejected by pharma-funded conservative Democrats Senators Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) and Joe Manchin (West Virginia).
Sanders’s chairmanship could be a headache for the pharmaceutical industry, which is notorious for being the most powerful lobby in Washington. As one pharmaceutical lobbyist told The Washington Post, “He’ll go after [the drug companies] at every turn, and they only have a couple friends left in the caucus any more so it’s going to be tough.”
The HELP Committee also has wide jurisdiction over federal labor regulations on issues like wages and working conditions, meaning that Sanders’s chairmanship could advance his agenda to expand workers’ rights in a pivotal time for the labor movement. Sanders has tried to get the federal minimum wage raised to $15 an hour — an issue that falls under the purview of the HELP Committee — but was shot down by Sinema and Manchin in 2021.
Other issues like the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would massively increase workers’ union and collective bargaining rights, also fall under the HELP Committee’s jurisdiction, and could see movement under Sanders. The bill passed the House last year but never came to a vote in the Senate, where it only went as far as being referred to the HELP committee. Sanders could direct the committee to take a vote on the bill or hold hearings on the proposal and on workers’ rights at large.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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As the midterm elections wrap up with a better-than-expected showing for Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is saying that the Democratic Party must make curbing the influence of deep-pocketed political donors one of its top priorities in order to save democracy from the far right.
The right is posing a credible and concerning threat to democracy in the U.S. — and their attacks on democracy are aided by the fact that billionaires and corporations are exercising ever increasing influence over elections, as enabled by 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Sanders said in a new interview with Rolling Stone.
“We have got to do everything we can to defend American democracy,” Sanders said, explaining what he thinks the Democratic Party should prioritize for the next two years.
Something in this cycle that was “not talked about, I think, enough is the degree to which billionaire money impacted this election. It’s disgusting,” he said. “As I mentioned, I was in Pittsburgh with Summer Lee. She had to run against millions of dollars of AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] super PAC money coming in the last couple of weeks, and she ended up beating it back. This is a major, major problem.”
AIPAC, a pro-Israel group that has emerged as a strong force against progressive candidates in recent years, indeed spent over $1 million in the general election and $2 million in the primary trying to defeat progressive Summer Lee in her campaign for a Pennsylvania U.S. House seat. Lee ultimately triumphed, but AIPAC succeeded in defeating other progressive primary and general House candidates along the way, like Jamie McLeod-Skinner in Oregon, who lost to her Republican opponent by 2.5 points.
“So when you’re looking at democracy, it’s not just Trump. It is the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which has got to be dealt with,” Sanders continued.
Citizens United, which has been the subject of progressive ire for years, allows entities to pour an unlimited amount of money into elections.
This has handed an astounding amount of influence to billionaires and corporations, which progressives like Sanders say can essentially buy elections due in part to Citizens United. Indeed, OpenSecrets found in an analysis of House elections last week that, of the races called as of Thursday, 96 percent were won by the candidate who spent the most in the election.
Since Citizens United was handed down by the Supreme Court 12 years ago, the amount of money being poured into elections by deep-pocketed interests has been rapidly growing, with no signs of stopping.
According to a recent report by Americans for Tax Fairness, just 465 billionaires had poured an astonishing $881 million into the election by the end of September, putting them well on track to have spent a billion dollars on the election by the time Election Day came around.
Meanwhile, the flow of dark money — or political donations where the donors’ names and identities are hidden — has reached a record high for midterm elections, OpenSecrets has found. As of Election Day, outside groups, which are largely funded by dark money, had spent more than $2.1 billion in federal races this cycle, smashing the previous record of $1.6 billion, set in 2018.
Sanders has previously spoken up about this issue. In 2015, Sanders introduced a constitutional amendment that would undo the Citizens United decision, calling it “one of the most disastrous decisions in” the Supreme Court’s history at the time, and he has continually spoken up about the issue over the years.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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A group of Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is pressuring the Federal Reserve to explain why it’s continuing to raise interest rates at such a rapid pace when economists across the political spectrum say that rate hikes will only hurt the working class with little upside for the economy at large.
In a letter sent to Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Monday, 11 members of Congress lay out a wide swath of evidence from both Powell himself and from economists that American families will be in for “pain” in the coming months, as Powell has said, as the Fed plans to raise interest rates by 75 basis points, or 0.75 percent, for the third consecutive time this year.
The letter, signed by progressive lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Representatives Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), expresses “concern” about the Fed’s “alarming” plans and “disturbing warning” to American families about what to expect in coming months.
As the lawmakers point out, the Fed has predicted that as it continues raising rates through next year, unemployment will rise from its current rate of about 3.5 percent to 4.4 percent in 2023 and 2024. This means that about 2 million people will lose their jobs as economic growth slows and the labor market grows weaker, Powell has said.
“I wish there were a painless way to do that. There isn’t,” Powell said in a press conference in September, contrary to what progressive economists have said about the way that the Fed could wrangle inflation with minimal impact to the labor market.
Other experts’ estimates of the impact on the economy are more dire. Bank of America estimates that unemployment could jump as high as 5.6 percent, which could mean the loss of over 3 million jobs. Meanwhile, according to a survey released last month by The Wall Street Journal, economists predict that there is a 63 percent chance that the U.S. will enter a recession in the next 12 months, in large part due to the Fed’s relentless rate hikes.
Economists, who have been raising warnings about the damage that the rate hikes could cause for months, have been puzzled about Powell’s decisions, the letter points out. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has said that whether or not there will be a global recession comes down to “policy choices and political will,” economists are unclear on what the Fed’s goals are.
“The Fed clearly wants the labor market to weaken quite sharply. What’s not clear to us is why,” one economist wrote in a report earlier this year, as the letter writers pointed out. Economists have also questioned whether or not the rate hikes could have as much impact on inflation as they’re supposedly meant to have, saying that the impacts on the working class could outweigh any supposed benefits.
Memo to the Fed: Your rate hikes aren’t slowing inflation because inflation is coming from big corporations using the cover of inflation to increase their prices more than their costs.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 13, 2022
Even the Fed itself admits that the rate hikes may have little impact on inflation, considering the vast amount of other factors at play, like corporate price gouging and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the letter reads. The lawmakers list a variety of times that Powell has admitted that the Fed’s power over commodity prices is limited.
“As one economist noted, the Fed can’t ‘click its heels three times, raise rates and have inflation drop. There’s a myriad of factors going on now, and it’s a mistake to think the Fed controls any more than a handful of those,’” the letter says. “Nevertheless, you continue to double down on your commitment to ‘act aggressively’ with interest rate hikes and ‘keep at it until it’s done,’ even if ‘[n]o one knows whether this process will lead to a recession or if so, how significant that recession would be.’”
“These statements reflect an apparent disregard for the livelihoods of millions of working Americans,” the lawmakers wrote, “and we are deeply concerned that your interest rate hikes risk slowing the economy to a crawl while failing to slow rising prices that continue to harm families.”
While progressives warn that the Fed’s rate hikes would be at best a band aid on the problem, they say that raising interest rates to suppress demand is a neoliberal policy that passes economic pain onto the consumer at any cost — even a recession. Progressive advocates say, instead, that providing relief to the public while targeting corporations who are using inflation to raise prices would be a good start.
President Joe Biden appears to agree that corporate price gouging is an important underlying cause for inflation, at least in part. On Monday, he warned oil and gas companies that, if they don’t take action to lower gas prices at the pump, they could face a corporate windfall tax that would capture excess profits. Indeed, the oil and gas industry — and corporations as a whole — have been enjoying huge profits as inflation has soared, while Americans are increasingly having to take out predatory loans for basic expenses.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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President Joe Biden called for a windfall tax on energy companies in a speech on Monday, a move that would deliver a major win to the climate and progressive advocates who have been calling for a tax on excess profits made amid high inflationary rates.
In his response to major oil companies posting record-breaking profits, Biden cited wartime policies to stop corporations from war profiteering and said that oil companies must take steps to lower gas prices or face a tax on their profits.
“If they passed the rest [of the profits] onto the consumers, the price of gas would come down around an additional 50 cents,” Biden said. “But rather than increasing their investments in America, or giving American consumers a break, their excess profits are going back to their shareholders and are buying back their stocks and their executive pays are going to skyrocket. Give me a break.”
Oil companies must “invest in America by increasing their production and refining capacity” and lower prices, he said. “If they don’t, they’re going to pay a higher tax on their excess profits and face other restrictions.” He said he will work with Congress to explore the government’s options for this action.
The oil industry has a choice.
Either invest in America by lowering prices for consumers at the pump and increasing production and refining capacity.
Or pay a higher tax on your excessive profits and face other restrictions.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 31, 2022
Oil majors reported huge profits last week as they released their Q3 finances for this year. Exxon, Chevron and Shell made record or near-record profits totalling billions of dollars each; Exxon, in fact, made the largest quarterly profit ever reported by an international oil company, at a profit of $19.7 billion. Experts have said that the high profits that the fossil fuel industry has experienced — and the stock buyback programs and shareholder enrichment that they allow — are evidence that the companies are price gouging customers at the pump.
Meanwhile, gas prices have stagnated after steadily falling from peak levels for a few months, and remain high at about $3.76 per gallon on average across the country.
The news was celebrated by Democrats, progressives and climate advocates who have been calling for a corporate windfall tax for months. They say that a windfall tax could be a crucial way for Democrats to tackle the current economic pressures facing Americans and that the move could represent a rebuke to corporations as they grow bolder in squeezing the public for profit.
“President Biden is right. At a time when Exxon, Shell and Chevron increased their profits by 168 percent to $81 billion in the last 2 quarters by charging outrageously high prices at the pump, we need a windfall profits tax,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on Twitter. “The revenue should go directly back to the American people.”
In March, Sanders introduced a bill that would capture 95 percent of profits made by any large corporation in excess of pre-pandemic levels, in hopes of curbing greed-fueled inflation. And, earlier this year, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) introduced a narrower tax that would capture 50 percent of the price increase of oil barrels compared to pre-pandemic levels. The profits from the tax would be sent directly back to consumers.
Those bills were never brought to a vote, and conservative Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) has expressed his opposition to the idea, which, partnered with Republicans’ almost certain uniform opposition, would likely doom any chance of passing legislation that comes before Congress. But Biden’s support of the idea could bring renewed energy to the proposal, bringing it from the sidelines to the mainstream in Congress.
“This is exactly the type of leadership we’ve been waiting for from President Biden. Big Oil has made nearly $300 billion in excess profits this year by gouging us at the pump,” said Stop the Oil Profiteering spokesperson and climate activist Jamie Henn in a statement. “With 80 percent of voters supporting the policy, this could be a political game changer for Democrats. It’s a clear way for them to play offense against opponents who are in the pockets of Big Oil.”
Advocacy groups have rallied around the policy. Earlier this year, over 120 progressive and climate groups sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) urging them to support the idea, saying that the oil and gas industry has been exploiting crises like the Russian invasion of Ukraine to rake in profits and further cement its dominance over the global energy system.
The implementation of a windfall tax would not be without precedent. As Sanders pointed out when he introduced his bill, the U.S. has enacted similar windfall taxes during the first and second World Wars and during the Korean War in order to combat war profiteering.
Further, U.K. lawmakers levied a windfall tax on oil and gas producers earlier this year — the implementation of which could provide lessons for Biden. Climate advocates have criticized the U.K. law for being too lax and for allowing the government to continue subsidizing oil and gas companies while taxing them; Shell, for instance, has paid none of the 25 percent tax on profits so far despite making a record-breaking $30 billion in profits so far this year because the company made investments in production.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Democratic socialism offers a vision of a good life—that we can share wealth and power and knowledge, be less selfish and cruel, and let everyone, not just the lucky few, develop their talents.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
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In what advocates call a “grotesque display of corporate profiteering,” the health insurance giant formerly known as Anthem reported making $2.3 billion in net profit off its policyholders over the past three months as analysts predict a dramatic spike in the cost of health insurance premiums in 2023.
Elevance Health, the largest for-profit company within the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, surpassed Wall Street expectations on Wednesday and reported nearly $40 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2022. Returns to shareholders increased by 7 percent, generating $1.6 billion in profits for investors. Elevance provides health coverage for 118 million people across multiple states.
Elevance claims its profits are the result of offering more service to more customers. However, health care activists who help patients fight for coverage from their insurance providers say a chunk of this profit undoubtably comes from denying insurance claims from sick people who cannot afford proper care otherwise. Denying claims, they say, is a “regular business practice” for squeezing out extra profits. Insurers know the vast majority of patients do not exercise their right to appeal when claims are denied and are often unsure how to do so.
“Part of this money is made denying claims,” said Aija Nemer-Aanerud, Health Care For All campaign director at People’s Action, in an interview. “How many surgeries, medications and doctor visits would $2.3 billion amount to if we didn’t live under a for-profit system set up to advance the interests of greedy corporations instead of actually care for people?”
A spokesperson for Elevance did not respond to an email requesting internal data that would show whether the company is turning profits by denying health insurance claims, but organizers have gathered horror stories from patients across the country. The six largest private health care insurers enjoyed a combined $41 billion in profits in 2021, and in 2020, private insurers denied more than 42 million in-network claims from patients covered by Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace plans, according to People’s Action and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Thanks to federal transparency requirements tied to ACA subsidies, we know that means nearly one in five claims under ACA marketplace plans were denied by private insurers in 2020. This figure only includes federally subsidized ACA plans, not the private plans provided by employers that many people have. Eleana Molise, a neighborhood organizer with ONE Northside in Chicago, said one in seven of all medical claims are estimated to be denied nationally.
“This especially affects Black and Brown people who are sold the worst insurance, and people in rural America, where you get fewer or no health care providers, or they are ‘out-of-network,’ meaning you get stuck with the bill,” Molise said in a livestream Tuesday with health care advocates, impacted patients and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).
“A rational health care system is a system that guarantees health care for all as a human right, and it is s system that is cost effective, a system that is comprehensive … it is not a system designed to make private health insurance companies huge profits,” Sanders said, repeating his call for universal public health insurance known as Medicare for All.
Private health insurers will often refuse to pay for medical care under the rules baked into insurance plans — deductibles must be met, doctors must be within the insurer’s network, and any drugs prescribed must be on the insurer’s approved list of medications.
However, advocates report that people are often stuck with massive bills for medical care that is rightfully covered under their plans, forcing them to pay out-of-pocket or challenge the insurer under complicated and frustrating appeals processes handled by the company itself.
“The wolf is guarding the henhouse,” said Ken Whittaker, executive director of the social justice group Michigan United. “They know most people don’t know you can appeal your claim, and less than 1 percent appeal claims when they are denied … and that’s more money for CEOs and Wall Street investors.”
While it’s unclear just how much profit is raised by denying insurance claims, advocates say the industry’s behavior leaves little doubt that private insurers are gouging patients and public health care programs. For example, an Elevance CEO took home $17 million in salary and bonuses in 2020, the same year Elevance and other Blue Cross Blue Shield companies agreed to pay a $2.67 billion settlement in a major antitrust case filed on behalf of policyholders.
A recent New York Times investigation found that private insurance companies exploited Medicare Advantage, which provides private health coverage for people 65 and older but is paid for by the federal government, to rake in billions of dollars from taxpayers. The majority of large insurers sent the government inflated bills, and Elevance and other companies face federal lawsuits for elaborate schemes to inflate profits. As The Times notes:
Anthem, a large insurer now called Elevance Health, paid more to doctors who said their patients were sicker. And executives at UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest insurer, told their workers to mine old medical records for more illnesses — and when they couldn’t find enough, sent them back to try again.
Each of the strategies — which were described by the Justice Department in lawsuits against the companies — led to diagnoses of serious diseases that might have never existed. But the diagnoses had a lucrative side effect: They let the insurers collect more money from the federal government’s Medicare Advantage program.
Medical bills that the insurance company refuses to pay after an emergency room visit or a major illness are the most common form of claim denial, Nemer-Aanerud said, but millions of uninsured and underinsured people are unable to afford basic preventative care that would help them stay healthy long-term — and keep costs down for everyone else. Coverage of lifesaving treatments and prescriptions are also denied by insurers, often the result of secret kick-back agreements made with pharmaceutical companies that drive up drug prices and determine which medications are covered for patients.
Callie Gibson, whose husband Mark Hall was denied access to proper medication for a chronic digestive disease, said the issue is affecting her family right now, but health coverage denial can happen to any of us. Hall was on medication that worked for years, but after switching from Medicaid to a private employer’s plan through Cigna Health, he was forced to switch to a biosimilar despite an appeal from his doctor. Even after taking higher doses, the new drug does not adequately control digestive bleeding and other painful symptoms, preventing Hall from living his daily life.
“Because ultimately, the insurance companies don’t care about you as an individual,” Gibson said during the livestream with Sanders, reflecting on the couple’s experience with Cigna. “They care about their shareholders, the people who are making money off this company, and they are not going to take action as long as they are continue to make money, and until we hold them accountable for what they are doing.”
The Health Care For All campaign is helping people fight for their claims through the appeals process, and anyone who has been denied health coverage is encouraged to contact the campaign.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has called for marijuana to be legalized in the wake of President Joe Biden’s surprise announcement that his administration will be pardoning thousands of simple federal marijuana possession charges and considering moving to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level, known as descheduling the drug.
While Biden’s move is laudable, it’s not enough to deliver justice to people who have long suffered under marijuana convictions, Sanders said.
“I have long believed that marijuana should be legalized and those arrested for possession should be pardoned and have their records expunged,” he said shortly after Biden’s announcement. “The President’s executive action today is an important step forward, but much more needs to be done.”
Sanders’s tweet was part of a flood of calls from progressive and Democratic lawmakers and 2022 candidates for federal marijuana legalization, which they say is overdue to begin undoing the decades of harm that harsh marijuana prohibition has unleashed on Black and Brown communities in particular.
“Pardoning people convicted on simple marijuana possession charges & calling for marijuana to be reclassified is welcome news and long overdue,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) wrote. “Next, we must deschedule marijuana completely.”
“Legalize it,” she added.
While the Congressional Progressive Caucus didn’t explicitly call for legalization, it did highlight legislation passed by the House earlier this year to federally legalize marijuana, deschedule the drug under federal law, and establish a process to expunge marijuana-related convictions.
Drug law reform advocates have also called for marijuana to be legalized, for marijuana charges to be expunged and for the drug to be descheduled in wake of the announcement.
“There is no reason that people should be saddled with a criminal record — preventing them from obtaining employment, housing, and countless other opportunities — for something that is already legal in 19 states and D.C. and decriminalized in 31 states,” Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Kassandra Frederique said in a statement. “We, however, hope that the Biden Administration will go further and fully deschedule marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), rather than initiate a process that could lead to rescheduling.”
Calling vast marijuana criminalization a “failed approach,” Biden announced on Thursday that he will be pardoning people convicted on simple federal marijuana possession charges, which will affect about 6,500 people, none of whom are currently imprisoned.
A pardon, which prevents people from facing further punishments for their charges, doesn’t go as far as expungement, which would seal the charges from being publicly viewable. Advocates say expungement is necessary because people with drug charges are often denied basic needs like housing or face discrimination in job hiring.
Biden is also asking the Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland to begin the process of potentially descheduling marijuana. Currently, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug, the category that carries the worst penalties for selling and using the drug.
Democrats, abolitionists and drug legalization advocates have long advocated for descheduling marijuana as a step toward ending the failed war on drugs — and its corresponding war on the communities it has ravaged.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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After Saudi-led international oil cartel Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, announced on Wednesday that it will be conducting its largest slash to oil production since 2020, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) expressed outrage and called for the U.S. to end military aid to Saudi Arabia altogether.
Sanders said that OPEC’s motivation is clear: to raise gas prices at a time when the oil and gas industry is already making record profits due to high gas prices and industry market manipulation.
“OPEC’s decision to cutback on production is a blatant attempt to increase gas prices at the pump that cannot stand,” Sanders wrote. “We must end OPEC’s illegal price-fixing cartel, eliminate military assistance to Saudi Arabia, and move aggressively to renewable energy.”
Other Democratic lawmakers have also called for an end to military assistance to Saudi Arabia, with a group of Democrats introducing legislation to mandate the withdrawal of troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in response to the move. Progressives have previously advocated for ending military support to dangerous petrostate Saudi Arabia over the country’s devastating war on Yemen.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) echoed Sanders in agreeing that OPEC’s move is yet another reason for the U.S. to transition to renewable energy and lessen its dependence on fossil fuels. He announced that he is reintroducing legislation to initiate talks with OPEC and non-OPEC allies, known together as OPEC+, in order to “hold OPEC and its allies accountable for colluding to hike energy prices on working families.”
Climate advocates have expressed alarm that OPEC can exercise such unchecked power over the global economy, which is on the brink of a recession, while also maintaining fossil fuel’s controlling grip over the energy market.
“Right now we are witnessing how our near-total reliance on fossil fuels has allowed the world to be so easily manipulated by a handful of dangerous and greedy leaders,” Stop The Oil Profiteering spokesperson Cassidy DiPaola told Truthout. “OPEC has some of the worst human rights and environmental records in the world, and it comes as no surprise that they are using their power to fix prices and fleece consumers.”
Though reducing oil production is an ultimate goal of the climate movement, as long as OPEC’s move doesn’t come with a corresponding increase in renewable energies, it only serves to further entrench the fossil fuel industry by pumping its profits, advocates say. Over the past years, climate advocates have called for a managed decline of the oil industry — including reducing production while drastically boosting energy efficiency and renewable energies — rather than simply squeezing the supply of the energy market, as OPEC is doing.
“We cannot allow our energy to be controlled by a cartel of oil producing states,” DiPaola continued. “It is time for a swift and just transition to renewable energy that will provide the world with the energy freedom we need and deserve.”
Democrats reacted with frustration on Wednesday after OPEC announced it will soon be cutting production by 2 million barrels a day, which will likely cause oil prices to skyrocket. Oil barrel prices have been steadily declining over the past months, as the global economy teeters on a global recession, causing a corresponding decline in gas prices at the pump.
President Joe Biden’s approval rating — an important harbinger of how well Democrats will fare in this year’s midterm elections — has been trending strongly with gas prices over the course of his presidency, and this announcement may reverse the current trend of rising approval for the president.
The Biden administration has been considering a gas export ban as the midterms approach in hopes of helping to nudge gas prices even further down, a move that climate and environmental groups have called for in response to the OPEC announcement.
“It is no surprise that the international oil cartel is seeking to maintain high prices. Political leaders here at home must understand that the solution is not to increase drilling. Corporations are exporting record quantities of gasoline, and making record-setting profits as a result,” Food and Water Watch policy director Mitch Jones said in a statement on Wednesday. “It’s time to take real action to rein in this outrageous corporate profiteering. That should start with Congress passing a ban on gasoline exports.”
Oil trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute have voiced opposition to the move — likely because it could cut into their ability to price gouge, as lawmakers and climate advocates have accused oil companies of doing. Indeed, experts say that the practice of exporting oil has massively increased the U.S.’s reliance on foreign energy sources and gives fossil fuel companies the opportunity to use exports as a means to reduce domestic supply and increase prices for consumers.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) have condemned Starbucks for its ruthless campaign to stymie the growing union effort in its retail stores across the country and are asking the company to answer for its “unethical and unlawful” union-busting tactics.
In a letter sent to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Board of Directors Chair Mellody Hobson on Tuesday, the lawmakers expressed concern over the seemingly endless anti-union tactics that the company has been using as workers have waged a historic union campaign over the past year. They demanded that the company put an end to its union busting and allow workers to unionize freely.
Lawmakers highlighted several union-busting tactics that have been used by the company, which they say appear to be in direct violation of federal labor laws. On top of the company’s continual efforts to intimidate and coerce unionizing employees, the letter points out that Starbucks has withheld a wage increase and benefits for trans health care, abortion travel, student loan repayment and better sick leave accrual from union members, moves which “appear to be illegal under the plain text of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).”
Indeed, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) officials have said that Starbucks’s withholding of wage and benefits increases are illegal. The board is scheduled to attempt to prosecute the company for these actions at the end of this month — but, even if the board is able to force the company to face legal consequences for its actions, labor laws are notoriously weak and would not necessarily dissuade the company from union busting.
“We are deeply troubled by Starbucks’s anti-union campaign, including the ongoing and illegal weaponization of benefits against unionizing workers, and the company’s brazen efforts to flout the NLRA,” the lawmakers wrote. “We urge you to immediately end these tactics and recognize and bargain in good faith with unionized workers.”
The letter, also signed by Senators Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), concludes by demanding that the company provide information on how managers have been instructed to respond to the union and which benefits have been rolled out to non-union stores.
Lawmakers also demanded that Starbucks disclose how much the company has spent on its union-busting campaign. It is typical for companies to spend millions on expensive anti-union lawyers in efforts to dissuade workers from unionizing.
Starbucks’s anti-union campaign doesn’t appear to be slowing down. According to the union, Starbucks Workers United, the company closed yet another unionized location this week, this time in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This is the ninth unionized or unionizing store that’s been permanently closed in recent months, the union says, in what it calls “clear retaliation” for unionizing efforts.
The company has also fired over 110 union organizers in recent months, according to the union, and has been delaying bargaining with its over 220 unionized stores. After months of the union pressuring the company to set bargaining dates, the company announced last month that it would finally begin the bargaining process — despite some stores having won their union elections almost a year ago now.
Starbucks has faced pressure from progressive lawmakers to end their union-busting practices before. In March, Sanders sent a letter to Schultz urging him to “do the right thing” and allow workers at the company to unionize. The Vermont independent has continually supported unionizing Starbucks workers throughout their campaign, visiting Boston workers as they held the longest strike in Starbucks’s history and rallying with workers, encouraging them to continue holding the torch for the burgeoning labor movement.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Throughout the United States, racial separation remains a common feature of collective life. The consequences are significant for left political organizing aimed at building a multiracial working-class majority.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
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If there’s a chance to make a better world, our best shot comes from building a working-class majority.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
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As the wealth gap between middle-income Americans and the 1 percent balloons, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling for redistribution of wealth from the wealthiest Americans to the middle and working classes as one of the first steps needed to save the country from the far right and “restore democracy.”
In an interview with CBS on Tuesday, Sanders said that Democrats need to recognize that billionaires are only getting richer and richer, while workers are falling behind – and, as long as this trend continues, people will keep losing faith in the idea that the government exists to work for them.
“Right now, a lot of people are losing faith in government,” he said. “If you are a worker out there – and your job went to China, your job went to Mexico, you’re making less than you used to make, your kid can’t afford to go to college, you can’t afford health care – and somebody puts a 30 second ad up on CBS, ‘vote for me,’ [you’d] say ‘go to hell. You’re all the same, you’re not doing anything for me.’”
“You want to restore democracy? Have a government that works for ordinary people,” he said.
When asked about the threat to the U.S. from the far right and Donald Trump, Sanders said that a large problem is that voters and regular people don’t see candidates that vow to work for them.
“You’re not going to hear it much on corporate television. I happen to believe we need redistribution of wealth in this country. We need to protect the middle class and working class, and the billionaires cannot have it all,” he said.
While there has been a redistribution of wealth over the past half century, he said, it has “gone in the wrong direction.” “We’re talking about trillions of dollars going to the 1 percent while the working class and the middle class become poorer,” he emphasized.
Indeed, according to a report commissioned by Sanders and released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Tuesday, the share of all wealth held by the top 1 percent shot up from 27 to 34 percent between 1989 and 2019, while wealth held by the bottom half of Americans dropped from 4 percent to 2 percent over the same period.
Overall, in 2019, while the bottom 50 percent of Americans owned $2.3 trillion in wealth, the top 10 percent owned $82.4 trillion, the report found.
These 2 graphs really tell the story.
Average wealth –>
Top 10%, 1989: $2.5M
Top 10% 2019: $6.4MBottom 25%, 1989: $0
Bottom 25%, 2019: -$11K pic.twitter.com/7O3WNNd1Ge— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) September 28, 2022
Student debt has been a major factor in the suppression of the wealth of the bottom 25 percent. In 2019, according to the report, student debt was the largest source of debt among the bottom 25 percent, surpassing the amount of debt from mortgages and credit cards combined.
The wealth gap has likely grown throughout the pandemic. Though pandemic provisions like the child tax credit and the stimulus checks kept millions of Americans afloat through the first two years of the pandemic, those financial programs are now over – while the economy remains unstable and inflation remains high.
On the flip side, however, U.S. billionaires have added over $1.7 trillion to their collective wealth since the start of the pandemic, much of this growth accruing to the very richest people in the world. According to a January Oxfam report, the world’s 10 richest people have doubled their wealth during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding $5 trillion to their collective wealth – or more than two times the $2.3 trillion total wealth owned by the bottom 50 percent of Americans in 2019.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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The Senate voted to advance a must-pass government funding bill on Tuesday night after a so-called side deal to greatly expand fossil fuel infrastructure sponsored by conservative Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) was taken out, in a massive victory for thousands of climate and community activists who mobilized against the proposal.
Manchin announced before the vote on Tuesday that the proposal had been taken out after it became clear that it wouldn’t have the votes to pass. If it had been attached to the budget bill, the vote would likely have failed, potentially triggering a government shutdown at the end of this month.
The proposal would have severely limited the regulatory power of key environmental laws and given the green light to numerous oil and gas projects, garnering fierce opposition from activists and progressive lawmakers for its moves to enrich and entrench the fossil fuel industry. Indeed, the proposal appeared to have been at least partially written by the major fossil fuel trade group, American Petroleum Institute, an ally of Manchin, himself a coal baron.
Research has found that the bill would have been a major contributor to the climate crisis. An analysis by Oil Change International found the projects that would have been fast tracked by the fossil fuel expansion bill would have added 665 million metric tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere yearly, more than negating any of the supposed emissions reductions impacts that proponents of the bill had said it would create.
Indigenous and community activists who live along the proposed path of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which Manchin sought to fast track with the bill, said that the bill would have exposed Appalachian communities to countless spills and other safety hazards during the pipeline’s construction and while it was in operation.
Climate and community groups had waged protests and sent numerous letters to Democrats and the Democratic leadership, urging them to kill the deal.
Climate and community activists celebrated the death – however temporary – of Manchin’s proposal.
“Senator Manchin’s dirty deal went down in flames today because Indigenous and frontline communities raised their voices and fought back,” said Oil Change International in a statement, while warning that the deal could still rear its head in upcoming bills. “This legislation would have had deadly consequences for communities and the climate, and we applaud all Members of Congress who stood with frontline communities and boldly opposed it. That’s real climate leadership.”
Food and Water Watch noted that the campaign to kill the proposal was successful despite the odds.
“Tonight’s turnaround represents a remarkable, against-all-odds victory by a determined grassroots climate movement against the overwhelming financial and political might of the fossil fuel industry and its Senate enablers,” said Food and Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter in a statement. “While the campaign against polluting oil and gas is far from over, this repudiation of Senator Manchin’s so-called permitting reform bill marks a huge victory against dirty energy – and also against dirty backroom Washington dealmaking.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) also celebrated the victory for climate activists.
“I want to congratulate the more than 650 environmental groups and community organizations who made clear that, in the midst of the horrific climate crisis that we face, the last thing we need is a side deal which would build more pipelines and fossil fuel projects,” said Sanders in a statement. “This is a victory for the survival of the planet and a major loss for the fossil fuel industry.”
Sanders was a key opponent of the deal. Last week, he sent a letter urging his colleagues to oppose the deal and had signed onto another letter from eight senators last week sharing their concerns about potential deleterious impacts to environmental justice that the deal would have created.
Over 70 Democrats in the House had also voiced their opposition to the deal, provisions of which they said were tantamount to “attempts to short-circuit or undermine the law in the name of ‘reform.’”
However, it was the opposition of not only Democrats but also Republicans that appeared to have helped to kill the proposal in the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) had been whipping Republicans to vote against the proposal for reasons that appear to be chalked up to revenge for the party; the GOP had come up with its own fossil fuel permitting bill that shares similarities with Manchin’s deal. And their opposition to Manchin’s side deal appears to have been triggered by the West Virginia senator’s support of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which they viewed as a betrayal.
Nonetheless, the Republican version of the fossil fuel expansion bill will likely not garner the support of enough Democrats to pass.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
