Addiction and debt slavery: the real growth industries of the USA

Addiction and debt slavery are prime examples.




So many people are making fortunes off of the opioid CRISIS, that it is a real growth industry.


Opioid overdoses accounted for more than 42,000 deaths in 2016, more than any previous year on record. An estimated 40% of opioid overdose deaths involved a prescription opioid.

https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/index.html





And the same holds for the student loan debt CRISIS, which is only getting worse.


The next generation of graduates will include more borrowers who will probably never be able to pay off their debt. Student loan debt in 2019 is the highest ever.

The latest student loan debt statistics for 2019 show how serious the student loan debt crisis has become for borrowers across all demographics and age groups. There are more than 44 million borrowers who collectively owe $1.5 trillion in student loan debt in the U.S. alone.


Student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt category - behind only mortgage debt - and higher than both credit cards and auto loans. Borrowers in the Class of 2017, on average, owe $28,650, according to the Institute for College Access and Success.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/02/25/student-loan-debt-statistics-2019/#327aba50133f







Joe Biden Backed Bills To Make It Harder For Americans To Reduce Their Student Debt.

https://www.ibtimes.com/joe-biden-backed-bills-make-it-harder-americans-reduce-their-student-debt-2094664






The industry's political generosity increased in the years leading up to Congress' passage in 2003 of a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Since then, industry spending levels have fluctuated, though they have usually hovered around the $30 million range, including during the 2014 cycle when that number was nearly $32 million. 2012 was the cycle when the industry contributed the most -- over $50.7 million. The pharmaceutical industry has traditionally supported Republican candidates, with the 2008 and 2010 cycles serving as the only exceptions. During the 2014 cycle, Republicans received 58 percent of industry contributions whereas Democrats received only 42 percent.

The top contributors during the 2014 cycle were Pfizer Inc. (over $1.5 million), Amgen Inc. (above $1.3 million) and McKesson Corp. (more than $1.1 million).

The industry's policy goals include resisting government-run health care, ensuring a quicker approval process for drugs and products entering the market and strengthening intellectual property protections.

In terms of lobbying, key players in 2014 included the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (over $16.6 million), Amgen Inc(nearly $8.6 million), Pfizer Inc (nearly $8.5 million), the Biotechnology Industry Organization (almost $8.3 million) and Eli Lilly & Co (around $8.2 million). Lobbying efforts focus on the patent system, research funding and Medicare. While lobbying totals were fairly high at over $229.1 million in 2014, the industry hit a record in spending nearly 272.8 million on lobbying activities 2009 -- around the time when the Affordable Care Act was being debated in Congress.

One piece of legislation the industry has lobbied heavily on recently is the 21st Century Cures Act. The bill, which passed the House, would encourage the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to rely less on randomized controlled trials when deciding whether or not to put a new drug on the market. Critics argue that this would all but guarantee that more drugs will hit pharmacy shelves at a faster pace, though potentially at the expense of patient safety.




https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/background.php?cycle=2018&ind=H04

UPS workers confront wall of union-company collusion in local supplement fights

By Kayla Costa and Mark Witkowski

27 March 2019

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/03/27/team-m27.html

After the Teamsters union unilaterally imposed a sellout contract on nearly 250,000 workers at United Parcel Service (UPS) last October, resistant workers are now confronting efforts by union bureaucrats to push through local and regional supplemental agreements.

In addition to the national master agreements for UPS and UPS Freight, workers vote on three regional agreements for the Central, Western and Eastern regions, and twenty-five supplements and riders covering union locals, urban metro areas and state regions. These additional agreements sort out particular details relating to health care and pension benefits, wages, quotas for job creations, vacation days and overtime for workers within these regions.

These agreements must be approved across the US before the national agreement can technically go into effect, though UPS, with the assistance of the Teamsters, has already ramped up exploitation of the workforce and announced a profit-boosting “transformation plan.” Serving as a direct arm of corporate management, the Teamsters union is eager to rush through these local and supplemental votes to give UPS the green light to establish a new tier of “hybrid” drivers, maintain poverty wages for the part-time workforce, and ramp up workloads and harassment.

During the nationwide voting process, workers voted against the following six tentative agreements: Central Pennsylvania, Western Pennsylvania, Local 243 Metro Detroit in Michigan, Upstate and Western New York, Local 804 New York City, and Trailer Conditioners Inc. (TCI). Their rejection sent union representatives back to the negotiating table, only to return with a second offer that workers knew was equally bad if not worse than the first offer.

Since the initial rejection, only the TCI supplement was approved, by a 58 to 42 percent “yes” vote. Workers voted against the follow-up offers in Upstate and Western New York, Western Pennsylvania, and Metro Detroit, and negotiations are ongoing behind workers’ backs in Central Pennsylvania and Local 804 in New York. However, workers confront the anti-democratic efforts of the union every step of the way.

For example, after workers voted by 65 percent against the Upstate and Western New York supplement, the Teamsters used the obscure “two-thirds clause” in the union constitution to declare it ratified. The clause requires a two-thirds vote to defeat a contract, instead of a simple majority, if less than 50 percent of eligible members participate in the ratification vote. Written into the constitution thirty years ago, this clause was used for the first time when 54 percent of parcel division workers voted against the national agreement last fall.

More recently, in early March, UPS workers voted against the supplemental agreements for Western Pennsylvania and Metro Detroit by 96 percent and 88 percent, respectively. Unable to use the bogus two-thirds loophole, Teamsters executives debated the best strategy to drive through the sellout as quickly as possible.

The faction of the union represented by Denis Taylor, the Package Division Director of the union, and President James Hoffa prepared to impose the agreements unilaterally, using “emergency” clauses in the constitution. Fearing that this would provoke a rebellion, the majority of the leaders on the General Executive Board pushed against this plan and instead suggested the pursuit of the normal strategy of wearing down opposition through repeated votes on sellout after sellout.

Avral Thompson, the Vice President of the Central Region, warned that, “The imposition would violate the trust and solidarity of our members and local unions,” adding that local leaders in the relevant states have threatened legal action if the agreements were forced through.

In 2013, the Hoffa administration amended the constitution in order to unilaterally impose the supplements and riders after workers voted three times to reject union-backed deals.

The Teamsters United and Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) have played a treacherous role by insisting that rank-and-file workers cannot take any action unless it is authorized by the Teamsters bureaucracy, which has repeatedly trampled on the rights of workers on behalf of management.

With sentiment growing for wildcat strikes and increasing support for the call by the WSWS UPS Workers Newletter for UPS workers to form rank-and-file committees to take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the Teamsters, the two so-called reform factions did everything to uphold the authority of corrupt bureaucracy.

At the same time, they claimed the union would be democratized by electing TU and TDU-backed candidates in local elections and replacing Hoffa in the race for Teamsters president in 2021. But the presidency of TDU-backed candidate Ron Carey in 1992, who was elected in a US Labor Department-supervised election, did nothing to change the character of the Teamsters. Carey betrayed the 1997 UPS strike, signing a deal that sanctioned the hiring of part-time employees as full-timers with a reduced pay scale.

Carey was later brought down in a corruption scandal implicating the AFL-CIO and the Democratic National Committee.

As the union continues its campaign to ram through the sellout for hundreds of thousands of exploited UPS drivers, warehouse workers and other employees, the TDU and TU are reprising the same dead-end proposal as they did after the rejection of the national contract, telling workers to send the negotiators back to the table for a “good” contract. This is a fraud. The Teamsters is a business, not a genuine workers’ organization, and it is led by affluent executives who have a direct financial stake in increasing the exploitation of UPS workers and increasing the profits of the corporation.

UPS workers must draw the lessons from this past year and begin to form rank-and-file committees, independent of the unions, to fight the corporate-union conspiracy and advance the interests of drivers, warehouse and other workers. These committees should link up with the fight of workers at Amazon, FedEx and other logistics companies in the US and internationally, to begin a coordinated effort to mobilize the enormous strength of workers in this strategically critical sector of the world economy. An industrial counter-offensive must be combined with a political struggle against both big business parties and the capitalist system they defend. The aim of such a struggle must be the socialist transformation of the economy, including transforming the logistics industry into a public enterprise, collectively owned and democratically controlled by the working class.

Widespread losses of pollinating insects revealed across Britain

Wild bees and hoverflies lost from a quarter of the places they were found in 1980, study shows

Damian Carrington

Environment editor

 @dpcarrington

Tue 26 Mar 2019 12.00 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/26/widespread-losses-of-pollinating-insects-revealed-across-britain

A widespread loss of pollinating insects in recent decades has been revealed by the first national survey in Britain, which scientists say “highlights a fundamental deterioration” in nature.

The analysis of 353 wild bee and hoverfly species found the insects have been lost from a quarter of the places they were found in 1980. A third of the species now occupy smaller ranges, with just one in 10 expanding their extent, and the average number of species found in a square kilometre fell by 11.

A small group of 22 bee species known to be important in pollinating crops such as oilseed rape saw a rise in range, potentially due to farmers increasingly planting wild flowers around fields. However, the scientists found “severe” declines in other bee species from 2007, coinciding with the introduction of a widely used neonicotinoid insecticide, which has since been banned.

Researchers have become increasingly concerned about dramatic drops in populations of insects, which underpin much of nature. Some warned in February that these falls threaten a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, while studies from Germany and Puerto Rico have shown plunging numbers in the last 25 to 35 years.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, is based on more than 700,000 sightings made by volunteers across Britain from 1980 to 2013. These are used to map the range of each species of bee and hoverfly over time. The data did not allow the assessment of numbers of insects, but some researchers think populations have fallen faster than range.

Pollinating insects are vital to human food security, as three-quarters of crops depend on them. They are also crucial to other wildlife, both as food and as pollinators of wild plants. “The declines in Britain can be viewed as a warning about the health of our countryside,” said Gary Powney at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, who led the research.

He called for more volunteers to take part in the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme: “Their contribution is vital for us to understand what is happening in our landscape.” Another recent study found that allotments, weedy corners and fancy gardens can all be urban havens for bees.

The biggest factor in the decline in pollinators is likely to be the destruction of wild habitats and use of pesticides as farming has intensified. But the analysis also revealed a particularly big drop of 55% in the range of upland bee and hoverfly species, and significant falls in northern Britain, which may result from climate change making conditions too warm.

Among the bees whose range has shrunk are the formerly widespread red-shanked carder bee, whose extent fell by 42%, and the large shaggy bee, whose range fell 53%. But the lobe-spurred furrow bee, which was once rare, has expanded its range fivefold and is now considered an important crop pollinator in England.

Powney said the increased range of the bees most commonly pollinating crops is good news and might be a result of more oilseed rape being grown, as well as wildflower margins being planted. But he also warned: “They are a relatively small group of species. Therefore, with species having declined overall, it would be risky to rely on this group to support the long-term food security for our country. If anything happens to them in the future there will be fewer other species to ‘step up’.”

Prof Dave Goulson, at the University of Sussex and not part of the latest research, said: “Previous studies have described declines in UK butterflies, moths, carabid beetles, bees and hoverflies – this new study confirms that declines in insects are ongoing.”

If the losses of upland and northern species are due to climate change, “then we can expect far more rapid declines of these species in the future, as climate change has barely got started”, he said. Goulson also said the start of more rapid declines in southern bees after 2007 coincided with the first use of now-banned neonicotinoid pesticides.

Roy van Grunsven, at the Dutch Butterfly Conservation project, said the decline in numbers of insects was very likely to be a lot higher than the shrinking of their range: “Going from flowery meadows full of bees to intensive agriculture with a few individuals in a road verge does not result in a change in distribution, but of course is a huge change in [numbers].”

Matt Shardlow, of the conservation charity Buglife, said unless the pesticide approval process was improved to help bee safety and green subsidies were targeted to create corridors that connect wild spaces, we can expect the declines to continue or worsen.

The EU’s censorious copyright directive will create two internets

26 March 2019

By Matthew Lesh

https://capx.co/the-eus-censorious-copyright-directive-will-create-two-internets/

Today's approval of the European Copyright Directive is the end of the internet as we know it

  The EU's copyright directive represents everything that’s wrong with its policymaking process

  YouTube have warned that they would have to block videos viewed 90 billion times a month in Europe because of uncertain copyright

The European Parliament’s approval of the Copyright Directive today is the end of the internet as we know it. This new regulation creates substantial new controls on what we can share online which threaten freedom of expression, undermine creativity, and cement the dominance of technology giants.

The Copyright Directive will create two internets. The first, a heavily censored version for European users, including filters to prevent you from uploading content. The second, a free internet where creativity is encouraged, for everyone else.

The directive represents everything that’s wrong with the EU’s policymaking process. It was written at a substantial distance from Europeans, heavily influenced by lobbyists and national compromises. There is a serious lack of accountability.

The opposition to the directive was substantial, but it didn’t seem to matter. Over 200 intellectual property academics have warned that the directive serves “narrow sectional interests”. Even substantial parts of the European music industry have raised concerns about the scheme. The Change.org petition opposing the directive has reached over 5.1 million signatories, the most in the website’s history. Last weekend – while some Brits were marching to stay in the EU – thousands of Europeans took to the street in Save the Internet marches.

There are two particularly concerning sections of the law.

Article 11 prevents news aggregators, such as search engines and social media companies, from linking and providing snippets of news articles without paying a “link tax”. This is clearly absurd. There is no reason why websites should have to pay for what is, in fact, doing news organisations a favour by linking people to their content. It is the responsibility of news organisations to monetise their content through advertisements or paywalls, not attempt to siphon revenues from more successful technology companies.

In practice, this will concentrate power in the hands of large news sites, who are most likely to reach deals to licence the right to link to each other and other sites. A German study found almost two-thirds of revenue will go to a single publisher, and just 1 per cent to smaller publishers. It’s therefore no surprise that the multinational publishing industry lobbyists pushed the directive.

The internet was supposed to democratise access to information. This article will decrease access to online news. It will be much simpler for most websites to block links than go through the effort and expense of reaching licence deals. In 2014, Google shut down Google News in Spain to avoid legal liability in response to a similar domestic law. It was not worth operating a free service that brings in little revenue at the cost of paying for links.

Article 13 makes platforms (like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and web forums) proactively liable for breaking copyright. It reverses the onus, assuming user-generated content breaks copyright unless proven otherwise. This undermines the essential internet principle that platforms should not be legally responsible for the content produced by their users. Platforms are like libraries. When a book breaks copyright or is defamatory it is removed. But you do not sue a library for what authors write, you go straight to the source. While they must remove content on request if it breaks the law, internet platforms should not be liable for everything people say.

Copyright is often unclear and contested. Because they will be legally liable, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms will need to use automated systems to prevent users posting swaths of content from images, videos, and music through to humorous GIFs and memes. In practice, this means new, complex upload filters. This is a serious threat to freedom of expression and online creativity, which often involves mixing together various creative sources. It’ll also often result in false positives, and, to avoid paying fines, substantial limiting of content where copyright is uncertain.

YouTube have pointed to the example of Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, which has been viewed almost 6 billion times:

 “This video contains multiple copyrights, ranging from sound recording to publishing rights. Although YouTube has agreements with multiple entities to license and pay for the video, some of the rights holders remain unknown. That uncertainty means we might have to block videos like this to avoid liability under article 13. Multiply that risk with the scale of YouTube, where more than 400 hours of video are uploaded every minute, and the potential liabilities could be so large that no company could take on such a financial risk.”

YouTube have warned that they would block access to videos viewed 90 billion times a month in Europe because of uncertain copyright.

While this will all be an expensive pain, Article 13 is a gift to the largest platforms in some ways. Only the largest companies will be able to afford to comply with the legislation by creating automated copyright assessment and licencing with owners. Newer and smaller platforms will not be able to compete. This locks in place the largest companies.

The fight for internet freedom does not end here.

First, the directive must now be transposed into domestic laws. If Britain leaves the EU without a deal, there is no reason the controversial law should be adopted uncritically or without a proper domestic debate. If taking back control means anything, it must mean the ability to diverge from this sort of ridiculous EU overstep. (Though, notably, this will mean fighting back against British creative industry which supported the directive.)

Second, there are fights still to be won. It emerged last weekend that the Conservative Government is planning a new “Ofweb” regulator – an iPlod. The new regulator would have the power to enforce a strict online harm code of conduct, and levy huge fines on social media companies, web forums such as Mumsnet, and even media websites like The Times and Telegraph which have comments sections. This is press regulation by the back door. It would create extraordinary system of censorship by giving the state the power to decide what we can view online.

We may have lost this battle, but the war for a free internet must continue.

Trump Administration And Democrats Return Health Law To Political Center Stage

By Julie Rovner

MARCH 26, 2019

https://khn.org/news/trump-administration-changes-course-asks-court-to-strike-down-aca/

[UPDATED at 4:30 p.m. ET]

“The Mueller Report” is so last week’s news. Health care has returned in force as the dominant political issue in Washington, reflecting what voters have been telling pollsters for the past year.

The Trump administration moved Monday night to get more in line with President Donald Trump’s voter base by endorsing a Texas federal judge’s December opinion that the entire Affordable Care Act should be struck down as unconstitutional.

After he arrived at the Capitol for lunch with Republican senators Tuesday, Trump endorsed the change, suggesting it will usher in Republican priorities instead. “The Republican Party will soon be known as the ‘party of health care!’” he told reporters.

Less than two hours later, House Democrats unveiled their proposals to not only protect the health law, but also expand it — including extending help paying premiums and other costs to families higher up the income scale than those now eligible and reinstating cuts made by the administration for outreach to help people sign up for coverage.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that, since taking control of the House in January, Democrats have been fighting to preserve the health law and “voted on Day One” to file a motion in the Texas court case to support the ACA.

The arguments are a return to one of the key battles during the 2018 midterm elections. Democrats hammered their Republican opponents on the GOP’s two-year efforts to repeal the ACA — and especially its popular protections for people with preexisting medical problems and Medicaid expansion — and credited those attacks for big gains the party scored in the House and legislatures around the country.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said those Democrats were elected to “protect and expand” the health law. He warned Republicans not to undermine it, saying, “Americans don’t want to see the ACA protections undone.”

The new filing in the Texas case marks an about-face for the Justice Department. The Republican attorneys general and governors who brought the case argued that when Congress zeroed out the tax penalty for people who lacked health coverage as part of the 2017 tax bill, the entire Affordable Care Act was rendered unconstitutional. In December, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor agreed with them, although he put his ruling on hold while the case is on appeal.

At that time, the Justice Department did not endorse the GOP plaintiffs’ argument. It suggested instead that the elimination of the tax penalty should invalidate only those parts of the health law most closely associated with it — notably, the provisions requiring insurance companies to sell to people with preexisting conditions and not charge them more.

The health law is being defended by a group of Democratic attorneys general, led by California’s Xavier Becerra. They filed their brief Monday night, just before the Justice Department issued its position change.

“The Affordable Care Act is landmark legislation that has transformed the nation’s healthcare system,” said the brief. Striking it down “would strip existing healthcare coverage from millions of Americans” and “it would make a mockery of the dramatic votes in which the same Congress rejected earlier efforts to repeal or substantially revise the ACA.”

The Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment on the change of position, which was filed as part of the appeal process. Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the department “has determined that the district court’s comprehensive opinion came to the correct conclusion and will support it on appeal.”

Trump has repeatedly called for the law to be repealed and replaced, but when Republicans controlled Congress they could not muster the necessary votes. Just last week, the president lashed out Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who died in August, for failing to support that effort.

If the law is invalidated, it would not only directly affect the 11 million people who purchase insurance through the ACA marketplaces, but also millions of low-income people who gained coverage under the expansion of the federal-state Medicaid health program. The Urban Institute estimates full repeal would result in nearly 20 million more uninsured Americans.

The ACA also includes substantial changes to the Medicare program, extends protections to people with employer-provided insurance and includes such seemingly unrelated provisions as requiring calorie counts on restaurant menus and making it easier to make generic copies of expensive biologic drugs.

Health analysts warn that the law is so embedded into the fabric of the nation’s health system that eliminating it could have consequences well beyond the things it created.

“The act is now part of the plumbing of the health-care system,” wrote University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley in a post for the Incidental Economist website. “Which means the Trump administration has now committed itself to a legal position that would inflict untold damage on the American public.”

Democrats, who already had their health event scheduled for Tuesday, were quick to pounce on what they see as a GOP weakness.

“In two short sentences, the Trump administration crystallized its position that the health care coverage enjoyed by nearly 20 million people, as well as the protections by tens of millions more with preexisting conditions, should be annihilated,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the floor Tuesday morning.

Democratic presidential candidates also voiced their opposition.

“I’ll say it for the zillionth time: We will not let the Trump administration rip health care away from millions of Americans. Not now. Not ever,” tweeted Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said in an interview on MSNBC that health care is “one of the biggest most critical issues facing American families. The existence of preexisting conditions and that being a barrier to people having access to health care. We decided as a nation” that it was wrong, she said, to deny someone with a preexisting condition access to health care, and that the Republicans’ latest move amounts to “playing politics with people’s public health.”

[NO SHIT!!?? Kamala Harris is NOT a progressive. Harris herself has endorsed some more incremental health care expansion plans that wouldn’t do away entirely with private coverage. Harris is pretending to be a progressive, just like Obama did. Our so-called ‘representatives are KILLING US! “For-profit health care” is a contradiction in terms. Americans are sheep being governed by wolves and foxes.  –vanishingmediator]

Senate Dems Vote ‘Present’ on Green New Deal to Foil McConnell’s Ploy

Olivia Rosane

Mar. 27, 2019 06:57AM ESTP

https://www.ecowatch.com/green-new-deal-senate-vote-2632922259.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3

The Green New Deal ― an ambitious 10-year plan to transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels while promoting green jobs and greater equality ― failed to advance in the Senate Tuesday after most Democrats voted "present" in an attempt to forestall a Republican ploy to exploit disagreements within the party.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had been clear about his intention to put the resolution to an up or down vote in an attempt to force Democrats to support or oppose the controversial measure ahead of the 2020 election, CNN reported. Climate activists and the proposal's House co-sponsor and leading champion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had given Senate Democrats the greenlight to vote "present" in an attempt to slight McConnell, Vox reported. Ocasio-Cortez said McConnell's manipulations suggested Republicans were not taking climate change seriously.

"The Senate vote is a perfect example of that kind of superficial approach to government," Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday, according to Vox. "What McConnell's doing is that he's trying to rush this bill to the floor without a hearing, without any markups, without working through committee — because he doesn't want to save our planet. Because he thinks we can drink oil in 30 years when all our water is poisoned."

The measure was defeated 57-0, The Guardian reported, meaning it failed to get the 60 votes necessary to advance to a final vote, the Huffington Post pointed out. Three Democrats and one Independent, Maine Senator Angus King, joined with all 53 Republicans in voting "no."

The Democrats who broke ranks to vote against the measure all come from conservative-leaning states. They were Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Doug Jones of Alabama.

Manchin said that he wanted to focus on "real solutions that recognized the role fossil fuels will continue to play," according to a statement reported by CNN.

"We cannot successfully address our climate challenge by eliminating sources of energy that countries are committed to using," he said.

Manchin is notoriously pro-coal and has received almost $1 million in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry over the course of his career. In total, the senators who voted "no" Tuesday have received more than $55,000,000 in contributions from fossil fuel companies, Oil Change United States reported.

While the Green New Deal isn't advancing right now, its first Senate sponsor Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey said it had done a good job of sparking a national debate about climate change.

"This resolution has struck a powerful chord with the American people," Markey said at a Monday press conference reported by the Huffington Post. "The Green New Deal was always designed to be an opening of a national discussion. And it has worked. In just six short weeks, everyone is debating a Green New Deal. There's been more debate about climate change in the last six weeks than in the last six years."

Every senator running for president in the 2020 Democratic primary has co-sponsored the measure, among them California's Kamala Harris, Massachusetts' Elizabeth Warren, Vermont's Independent Bernie Sanders, New Jersey's Cory Booker, New York's Kirsten Gillibrand and Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar.

While the Sunrise Movement, the grassroots group that has worked to popularize the deal, endorsed the strategy of voting "present," they will now continue to pressure Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to co-sponsor the measure.

"We particularly want Sen. Schumer to continue to make climate change central to his agenda and come through and back the Green New Deal," Sunrise Movement spokesperson Stephen O'Hanlon said, as Vox reported.

Meanwhile, during a House financial services committee hearing, Ocasio-Cortez continued her outspoken advocacy for environmental action, reacting strongly against the idea that it was an elitist concern. A video of her speech had been shared thousands of times by Tuesday night, The Guardian reported.

"This is about our lives, and this should not be partisan," she said in the clip. "Science should not be partisan."

Why Norway plus gives Britain the time it needs to get out of its Brexit mess – op-ed in The Telegraph

Yanis Varoufakis

https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2019/03/27/why-norway-plus-gives-britain-the-time-it-needs-to-get-out-of-its-brexit-mess-op-ed-in-the-telegraph/

Brexit is, undeniably, important. The Prime Minister’s faulty negotiations have now turned what the majority of the British people considered an opportunity into a national crisis. However, now is perhaps the moment to reflect that, in an era of trade wars, geopolitical realignment and existential threats to our nations’ democracies, Brexit is not as important as we have allowed ourselves to imagine.

Its mishandling has certainly whipped up damaging uncertainty – not helped by the events of the last week. Nevertheless, the decision of Japanese car makers to end production in the UK reflects a broader change in the global division of labour.

Similarly, the role of the City of London in Britain’s future deserves careful reconsideration independently of Brexit.

Turning to constitutional matters, the Irish backstop controversy is a reminder of the incomplete peace achieved in Northern Ireland because London and Dublin abandoned their strict sovereignty claims without completing their worthy efforts with a post-Westphalian joint sovereignty arrangement.

In short, never before have the people of the UK needed more a serious debate on their business model and constitutional arrangements. But never before has, courtesy of Brexit, such a debate been less possible.

Brexit has turned the majority of Britons into hostages of three extreme interest groups labouring under strong motives: hard Remainers hellbent on rescinding the June 2016 verdict; hard Brexiteers for whom a costly clean exit from the EU is a prerequisite for “making Britain great again”, and an EU establishment whose only priority is to demonstrate to Europeans that anyone challenging Brussels’ authority will be ritually humiliated.

Caught up in that three-way feud, Britain’s majority are being denied the opportunity to have a truly vital debate about the country’s future.

Democracies are good at engendering convergence in the face of polarisation. But that requires time. Three conditions are needed to give such a debate a chance in the foreseeable future.

First, the Prime Minister must present the EU with an offer that Brussels cannot refuse before April 12.

Second, this offer cannot be her previous deal, given Parliament’s intense and justifiable opposition to a treaty that only a nation defeated at war would accept.

Third, both the Hard Remainers and Hard Brexiteers must be denied what they seek, at least in the short term.

Either a no-deal Brexit before June or Britain’s participation in the European Parliament elections during a lengthy extension of Article 50 would poison the well of British democracy, by maximising the losing minority’s discontent while disempowering the middle ground who favour a soft Brexit.

Key to finding a way out of the current Brexit impasse is to focus on creating the space for a Great Debate on Britain’s business model and constitution, both of which are in a state of disrepair.

An ideal Brexit is out of reach but a decent medium-term settlement allowing Britons jointly to envision their future is not. And that settlement is none other than a Norway Plus, or a Common Market 2.0, solution for the medium term.

In practical terms, Norway Plus would involve Mrs May ditching her deal and mustering a majority in Parliament in favour of an amended Withdrawal Agreement specifying a short transition period after which Britain will remain indefinitely, but not necessarily forever, in the single market and customs union.

The DUP, Labour and Brussels would have no alternative but to agree to this amended agreement before the April 12 deadline.

Once the gun has been removed from the country’s head, another technical extension of Article 50 would be granted to complete the necessary legislative steps.

At the same time, the House of Commons, Britain’s civil society, chambers of commerce, trades unions, citizens assemblies etc can deliberate on how to bring up to date the UK’s business model and constitutional arrangements, including its long-term relationship with the EU.

The argument that Norway Plus is favoured only by a minority is correct but irrelevant. As no majority exists for any type of Brexit outcome, the aim must be to enable democratic dialogue by minimising the discontent of the most discontented and by satisfying the more numerous middle ground who hold the least intense preferences.

While the UK would have to implement EU rules for an indefinite period, Norway Plus respects the 2016 decision to leave the EU without committing the British government to the humiliation of any backstop.

Having left everyone slightly dissatisfied, but no one terribly incensed, Norway Plus would make possible the much needed Great British Debate that the country needs.

And if this debate leads the people of Britain to conclude that they wish to move toward a “cleaner” outcome, then a second referendum can be held, in the fullness of time, to decide either to re-join in the EU or to leave its single market and the customs union.

After all, no one stops Norway today from leaving the single market if its people so choose.