Wednesday, October 16, 2019
CEPR - Meet Our 20th Anniversary Host Committee
CEPR's 20th Anniversary Host Committee invites you to join us as we celebrate our anniversary with food, drink, and friends.
The Host Committee
Jared Bernstein, Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Laura Carlsen, Director, Americas Program, Center for International Policy
Ha-Joon Chang, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, Senior Research Fellow, CEPR
Danny Glover, CEPR Board Member, Actor, and Activist
Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editorial Director & Publisher, The Nation
Stephanie Kelton, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, Stony Brook University
Lance Lindblom, [Retired] President & CEO, Trustee, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, CEPR Board Member
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The Supreme Court Could Spell the End of American Democracy
OCT 15, 2019
It has almost gone unnoticed,
but amid the daily Sturm und Drang of the Trump impeachment inquiry, the
Supreme Court has begun another term. In any other year, the reconvening of the
court would be headline news. However, like everything else in the Trump era,
the court has taken a back seat to the chaos surrounding our 45th commander
in chief.
Nonetheless, the nine justices
who constitute our most powerful judicial body are set to decide a bevy of
politically charged cases that could impact the 2020 elections and profoundly
affect the lives of each and every American. It’s always tricky to predict
outcomes in the Supreme Court, but with its five-member conservative majority
now firmly entrenched, the panel is poised to swing further to the right as it
grapples with issues on LGBT rights, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA) program, abortion, the Second Amendment and “religious liberty.”
It is also likely that the
justices will be called on to address at least some aspects of the burgeoning
constitutional crisis triggered by the impeachment inquiry and Donald Trump’s
continued defiance of Congress.
Here are the potential
blockbusters in waiting:
LGBT Rights: Bostock
v. Clayton County, Georgia; Altitude
Express Inc. v. Zarda; R.G.
& G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Title VII of the
landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from
discriminating against employees on the basis of race, national origin,
religion or sex. Three cases argued last week ask whether the act also bans
discrimination because of sexual orientation.
The cases were filed by two
gay men and a transgender woman, who claim they were improperly discharged.
They are represented by a number of prominent lawyers, including Stanford
University law professor Pamela Karlan, and David Cole, the American Civil
Liberties Union’s national legal director.
In sum and substance, the
plaintiffs contend that sexual orientation, correctly understood, is a subset
of sex, and is therefore entitled civil rights protection. Their argument
squarely pits the court’s conservative justices, who typically adhere to narrow
“textualist” readings of statutes, against the tribunal’s liberals, who often
favor more expansive interpretations.
During the oral
arguments, Justice Samuel Alito articulated the conservative position with
his customary belligerence. Noting that the term “sexual orientation” isn’t
mentioned in Title VII, Alito charged that the plaintiffs are asking the court
to assume a power best left to Congress. “[W]hether Title VII should prohibit
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a big policy issue,” he
remarked, “different from the one that Congress thought it was addressing in
1964. … And if this Court … interprets the 1964 statute to prohibit discrimination
based on sexual orientation, we will be acting exactly like a legislature.”
Alito’s concerns were echoed
by Chief Justice John Roberts, who suggested that the plaintiffs want the court
to “update” the law. Roberts also worried that such an update would unduly
impact “religious organizations” whose doctrines preach against homosexuality.
U.S. Solicitor General Noel
Francisco also participated in the arguments, appearing on behalf of the Trump
administration and in support of the employers. In August, Francisco filed a
brief with the court, confirming that the Justice Department has reversed its
Obama-era policy of giving Title VII protections to gay and transgender
workers.
As expected, Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg pushed back against the conservatives, observing that the court
has held that sexual
harassment is outlawed under Title VII, even though that term isn’t
listed in the act. “No one ever thought sexual harassment was encompassed by
discrimination on the basis of sex back in ’64,” she
said. “And now we say, of course, harassing someone, subjecting her to
terms and conditions of employment she would not encounter if she were a male,
that is sex discrimination, but it wasn’t recognized [until later].”
If there is a possible swing
vote in the litigation, it might be cast by Justice Neil Gorsuch. In an
animated give-and-take with Cole, Gorsuch conceded that whether Title VII
should be read to cover sexual orientation was “really close.” He warned,
however, of the “massive social upheaval” a victory for the plaintiffs would
cause, adding that changes of that magnitude should be “an essentially
legislative decision.”
DACA: Department
of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California; Trump v.
NAACP; McAleenan
v. Vidal
Next month, the court will
hear arguments in three consolidated cases that will determine whether the
Trump administration’s executive order terminating the DACA program is lawful.
As a bit of background, the
program was implemented because Congress was unwilling to ratify the
Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would
have provided a pathway to citizenship for a large class of young people (1.3 million,
according to some credible estimates) who had been brought into the U.S. as
children without the intent to violate American law.
In response to this
congressional gridlock, President Obama ordered then-Secretary of Homeland
Security Janet Napolitano to introduce the program by way of a formal
memorandum, which was published on June 12, 2012. Obama followed up on
Napolitano’s memo three days later with an official
Rose Garden announcement.
In essence, DACA was designed
as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion aimed at reordering the nation’s
deportation priorities. Under the program, the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS)—the cabinet-level department that sets deportation policies and oversees
the operations of both Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE)—offers renewable two-year periods of relief from deportation
and work authorization to those who meet the program’s eligibility criteria.
In September 2017, the Trump
administration announced its intention to end DACA after a six-month
grace period. The repeal, however, was subsequently blocked by three federal
circuit courts, largely on procedural grounds.
The Trump administration wants
a decision on the merits. It contends that the president has the power to
repeal DACA because the program lacks congressional authorization.
Nothing is more central to
Trump’s nativist agenda than his crackdown on immigration. Ultimately, the
Supreme Court could well defer to the president, just as it did in upholding
his Muslim
travel ban in 2018. If it does, it could turn the dreams of DACA
beneficiaries into mass deportation nightmares.
It’s been a long time since
the Supreme Court considered a major Second Amendment case. Eleven years ago,
the court delivered a landmark triumph to the gun-rights lobby in District of
Columbia v. Heller—a 5-4 majority decision written by the late Justice
Antonin Scalia that held, for the first time, that the Second Amendment
protects an individual right to own and bear firearms.
Heller broke with the great
weight of prior scholarship and legal precedent, including the Supreme Court’s
1939 decision in United States v.
Miller, which reasoned that the Second Amendment protects gun ownership
only in connection with service in long-since antiquated state militias. And
while Heller was technically limited to gun ownership in the nation’s capital
and other federal venues, the court extended its individual-rights analysis to
the states two years later in McDonald v. Chicago, via a
5-4 opinion authored by Alito.
In December, the court will
hear the case of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City
of New York, which has the potential to rival or surpass Heller for its impact
on gun rights and gun regulation.
At issue is a New York City
ordinance adopted in 2001 that bars residents from taking their guns outside
city limits. The ordinance was challenged in a federal
lawsuit filed by the National Rifle Association’s New York affiliate
and three city residents, who argued that the regulation was unconstitutional
in light of Heller.
The plaintiffs lost at both
the district court level and before a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit
Court of Appeals, which issued a unanimous
decision in February 2018, concluding that the ordinance withstood
Second Amendment scrutiny under the decision. The Supreme Court agreed in
January to review the case.
What made Heller and McDonald
attractive to the gun-rights lobby as test cases is that each concerned
near-total bans on gun possession by private citizens. Outright prohibitions
are rarely easy to justify, and the five-member conservative Supreme Court
majority in each instance reinterpreted the Second Amendment to invalidate the
prohibitions involved.
Like Heller and McDonald, the
New York City case presents an outright ban—not on ownership, but on the right
to bear arms beyond the home. Realizing it could easily lose in the Supreme
Court, New York City announced in June that it has amended
the ordinance and will henceforth permit licensed gun owners to take
their firearms to second homes, businesses or shooting ranges outside city
limits. In July, the city filed a formal
motion with the Supreme Court, requesting that the case be dismissed
as moot because the ordinance is no longer in effect. The court denied the
city’s motion earlier this month, setting the stage for a Second Amendment
showdown.
Abortion: June
Medical Services LLC v. Gee
In 2014, Louisiana enacted a
law that requires doctors who perform abortions in the state to have active
admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of any clinic where they
provide abortion services. Currently, there are only three
abortion clinics in Louisiana. If allowed to take
effect, abortion-rights proponents charge, the law would put at least one
and possibly two of the clinics out of business.
On its face, the Louisiana
statute appears unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision
in Whole
Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, in which the court struck down a nearly
identical Texas law. By a 5-3 margin reached after the death of Scalia, the
court held that the Texas statute placed an undue burden on women seeking
abortions in violation of both Roe v. Wade and the
court’s 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood
v. Casey, which affirmed Roe’s validity.
Nonetheless, in 2018, the
conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Louisiana law. In
February, the Supreme Court stayed (i.e.,
temporarily blocked) the circuit court’s ruling from taking effect, allowing
the state’s abortion providers to seek Supreme Court review. Earlier this
month, the court agreed to hear the appeal.
Although the case has not yet
been set for oral arguments, abortion-rights groups understandably fear
the worst. The Supreme Court today is very different from the panel that
decided Whole Woman’s Health. Gorsuch has succeeded Scalia, and Justice Brett
Kavanaugh has replaced Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion
in Whole Woman’s Health and retired in 2018. Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are
known for their anti-abortion views.
When the dust settles on the
June Medical case, Whole Woman’s Health could easily be overturned. Worse
still, even if Roe technically survives, it could be gutted as a meaningful
legal precedent.
Religious Liberty: Espinoza
v. Montana Department of Revenue
In 2015, the Montana
Legislature enacted a tax-credit scholarship program for families who send
their children to private schools, including religious institutions. In 2018,
the Montana Supreme Court struck the law down, declaring that it violates the
First Amendment because the program aids religious organizations. In June, the
U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up the case.
The high court under Roberts
has been especially supportive of “religious liberty,” or as the court’s
critics allege, religious
intolerance. In 2013, the court held in Burwell v.
Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. that closely held private corporations with
“sincere religious beliefs” can lawfully deprive female employees of
health-insurance coverage for contraception. In 2017, in Trinity Lutheran
Church of Columbia Inc. v. Comer, the court struck down Missouri’s policy of
denying cash grants to schools owned and operated by churches and other
religious institutions.
If the trend continues this
term, the court will strike yet another blow to the separation of church and
state, and hand another victory to Trump’s fanatical evangelical followers.
Oral argument has not yet been scheduled.
The Constitutional Crisis: Cases
to be Determined.
In April, Trump took to Twitter,
threatening to petition the Supreme Court to intervene in the event House
Democrats moved to impeach him. The threat was entirely idle, and the House has
initiated impeachment proceedings all the same.
The Constitution vests the
House of Representatives with the “sole
power of impeachment.” As a result, the House’s decision to impeach isn’t
subject to judicial review. We know this beyond any reasonable doubt not only
because of the text of the Constitution, but because of the Supreme Court’s
1993 ruling in Walter Nixon v.
United States, involving a federal judge who insisted that he had received
an unfair impeachment trial in the Senate. The court unanimously rejected the
judge’s argument, holding that impeachment presented a nonjusticiable political
question. Judge Nixon was convicted and removed from office.
But while the court will not
intervene to stop Trump’s impeachment, we also know—courtesy of United States v. Nixon (1974),
involving President Richard Nixon—that it will review such impeachment-related
matters as the president’s refusal to comply with properly issued subpoenas. In
a unanimous decision written by then-Chief Justice Warren Burger, the court
ordered Nixon to turn over secret audio tapes made in the Oval Office to
Watergate special counsel Leon Jaworski, rejecting Nixon’s claims of executive
privilege.
It is doubtful that the
Supreme Court wants to get dragged into Trump’s impeachment drama. But like it
or not, it may be compelled to examine Trump’s blanket refusal to comply with
congressional subpoenas. When and if it does, it will have to determine whether
Trump is above the law, or if he, like Nixon, must be held accountable for his
actions. The future of American democracy literally could hang in the balance.
A recession is coming. When it does, we need to demand a Green New Deal
Having squandered the last
crisis, we cannot make the same mistakes again. A Green New Deal is the only
reasonable response
Mon 14 Oct 2019 06.00 EDT
American carnage and Brexit
collapse, detention camps and environmental breakdown – the daily barrage of
bad news makes it easy to forget that these are disparate symptoms of the same
disease unleashed by the 2008 financial crisis.
Back then, activists in Europe and the US
pushed for a holistic cure: a Green New Deal to deliver necessary investments
in people and planet. But establishment economists waved them off, preferring a
shot-in-the-arm of easy money. Now, all the grave symptoms of recession have
returned – and the old drugs don’t work any more, antibiotics to which the
disease has already adapted.
But now is not the time for
I-told-you-so. Never before has so much idle cash accumulated as in the past
decade – and never before has circulating capital failed so miserably to invest
in human health and habitat. We are long overdue for a Green New Deal.
Back in 2008, commentators
were quick to announce the death of financialized capitalism. Alan Greenspan,
former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was trotted out in front of Congress to
apologise for his faith in self-regulating financial markets. Activists
occupied town squares from Oakland to Madrid. And even the CEO of Goldman Sachs
admitted he had a “reason
to regret”. It seemed like radical change was around the corner.
It wasn’t. Far from
collapsing, banks like Goldman Sachs turned around to record profits, hand out
record bonuses, and rehash the risky practices that produced the Great
Recession.
Mortgage debt – the proximate
cause of the Wall Street collapse – is now at levels higher than in the
pre-crisis period. The stock of BBB-rated bonds in Europe and the United States
has quadrupled since 2008. Public debt has ballooned. And collateralised loan
obligations, or CLOs, have surged to $3tn, “reminiscent of the steep rise in
collateralized debt obligations that amplified the sub-prime crisis”, according
to the Bank of International Settlements.
How did this happen? How did
the financiers succeed in snatching such riches out of the jaws of their
bankruptcy? How did the most severe economic downturn in a century result in a
broad preservation of a broken status quo?
By a combination of carrots,
sticks and tricks.
The first two ingredients are
well known. The banks, of course, got their carrots. Governments in the US and
the EU bailed out their bankrupt private lenders, shifting the mass of their
debt on to the public balance sheets.
The public would then get the
stick. Instead of punishing the irresponsible architects of the crash, our
governments punished the pensioners, the poor and anyone who rose up to
challenge the regressive cuts they imposed.
Less well known are the tricks
deployed by governments and their central banks to stabilize the financial
system and stave off the growing demand for fiscal stimulus.
Among many – swaps, exchanges,
special vehicles purposes – quantitative easing was the most impressive, and
the most poisonous.
To understand how it worked,
recall that banks hate one thing more than bank robbers: assets on their books
that they cannot lend with interest. After the 2008 collapse, with investment
dead in the water, the central banks had pushed interest rates to near, or
sometimes below, zero – hoping to kickstart investment. But this drove bankers
up the wall, since they could not charge interest to lend their assets.
To help them along, the
central banks bought trillions of these assets from the banks, using freshly
minted cash. One knew that things got silly when the Bank of
England bought IOUs issued by McDonald’s.
On the surface, the tricks
worked. The influx of central bank money ended the recession, shrank
unemployment, even revived the United States’ gargantuan trade deficit to its
pre-2008 levels. Business-as-usual regained its dominance, and banks were
declared safe again.
Under the surface, however,
the crisis was deepening. The easy-lending environment created by quantitive
easing and rate cuts – far from raising wages and sparking new startups –
encouraged corporations to buy back their own shares, deliver more money to
their wealthy shareholders, and load up on debts in the process. In 2018,
buybacks soared to a record-high $806bn, a 55% increase from the year before.
According to a recent study by the Bank of England, the overall effect of
quantitive easing was to increase the wealth of the bottom 10% in the UK by
roughly £3,000, and that of the top 10% by £350,000.
Meanwhile, investment in the
real economy has plummeted. In the US, public investment dropped to 1.4% of
GDP, its lowest level in 75 years. In the eurozone, net public investment has
remained near zero for nearly a decade, with infrastructure investment in
southern European countries over 30% lower than it was pre-crisis. And with the
state on the sideline, the planet warmed, the environment collapsed, and
species after species moved toward extinction.
Now, we are heading back into
recession – but the old tricks don’t work any more. Rates have been cut,
liquidity has been pumped, and the economy remains at a stall. Central banks
are simply “pushing on a string”, as the former Fed governor Marriner Eccles
once said.
If 2008 saw the original
development of the Green New Deal proposal, then, 2019 is the time to deploy
it: a moment when the architects of the old strategy, pockets empty, no longer
seem able to defend it. “There was unanimity,” said Mario Draghi, retiring
president of the ECB, “that fiscal policy should become the main instrument.”
But fool me twice, shame on
me. Having squandered the last crisis, we cannot fall again for Draghi’s
promise of a mild Keynesian stimulus in the face of human extinction. Instead,
we must mobilize behind the Green New Deal as the only reasonable response to
the coming recession.
It is tempting to think of the
present moment as a crossroads: we either get our Green New Deal, or we descend
into eco-fascism. But the fallout from the last recession suggests that – if we
do not articulate a shared demand – we might just as easily get a slightly
reconfigured version of the status quo: a little more green around the edges,
sure, but with roughly the same distribution of power and resources. Such a
plan is already under way in Europe, where the European commission now calls
for a “green deal” with none of the transformative content of the Green New
Deal agenda.
With the climate strikers
marching on their front feet – and the old guard caught retreating on its heels
– we have a clear opportunity to achieve a true systems change. But it will
require us to make clear to our governments: it is a Green New Deal or bust.
Means Testing: Sanders vs. Warren on the Single Most Important Policy Idea for Progressive Success
Basing eligibility on wealth
or income level is phony progressivism and a crucial tactic promoted by the
right to eliminate social welfare programs that could benefit the entire
population and the common good.
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Bernie Sanders’s policy
proposals ranging from Medicare For All and abolishing student and medical debt
to free college tuition and even the right to vote are presented as universal
rights and programs. They are provided to everyone with no exceptions. The
record shows that this is the basis of viable social programs in a democracy.
It is the reason the two most popular and successful federal government
programs in the United States—Social Security and Medicare—have been impossible
for the right to defeat, even though they have been trying to do so since the
moment those programs were created in the 1930s and 1960s respectively.
It is standard procedure for
most Democratic candidates to support Bernie style social programs in theory—or
at least some of them—but then to insert the caveat that “of course, rich
people or even people above the poverty line should not get them for free
because they can afford to pay for them out of their own pockets.” It sounds
very fair and progressive, a blow against crony capitalism and directing
government money to the undeserving rich. It is a staple line regarding the
student debt plan of Elizabeth Warren, for example, and is roundly approved by
the punditocracy. It is the mark of a “serious” candidate. It is called “means
testing.”
But means testing is a phony
progressivism and a crucial tactic promoted by the right to eliminate social
welfare programs that could benefit the population. We can understand why
corporate Democrats like Biden or Buttigieg or Harris advocate means testing;
the corporate wing of the Democratic Party warmed to means testing in the 1980s
and it began to be embraced as a legitimate device in both the Clinton and
Obama administrations. It is now a common approach for that crowd.
So when someone as ostensibly
progressive as Warren does the same it demonstrates just how pervasive
right-wing ideology has been internalized in our politics.
Why do I call this a
right-wing idea? Because as soon as means-testing is accepted on principle and
introduced for a program, it begs the logical question of why not extend it to
other similar social programs? So if means testing free public college tuition
is such a great idea, then why not have well-to-do parents pay tuition for
their children in public high schools and middle schools and elementary
schools? Why not bill only the rich when they drive on any public roads
or use public libraries or parks or restrooms? Why not charge them for using
the police or fire departments? Where exactly do you draw the line? That is a
slippery slope toward privatization and elimination of government functions.
Why is that the case? Because
when programs are universal it is much harder for the enemies of those programs
to attack them as welfare giveaways to the poor, and an unfair burden on those
who are more successful. Note that it is almost always the wealthy and
privileged and very rarely the poor or working-class that drive the push for
means testing. That alone should demonstrate how phony this is as a progressive
issue.
The introduction of means
testing creates a layer of bureaucracy to monitor who is eligible and
ineligible for the social program. It produces a completely useless and
unnecessary bureaucracy to eliminate fraud. It drives up the costs of the
program and people become infuriated having to fill out forms and prove they
are eligible. It is as pleasurable as dealing with a health insurance company
or getting a root canal worked on by your dentist. This too plays directly into
the hands of those who wish to establish that progressive government programs
are inherently flawed, inefficient and incapable of being successful. Better to
privatize and turn everything over to profit-seeking corporations in the
marketplace.
Means testing also means
routine humiliation for those who must prove their destitution in order to
qualify for the public good.
So how does a society have
universal social programs without means testing that do not give the wealthy
unfair privileges? That’s easy. Through rigorous progressive taxation,
including wealth taxes, and an end to the income cap on social security taxes.
If the tax code is truly progressive, then, in combination with universal
social programs, there is the foundation of a more humane, egalitarian,
democratic and happier society. Ironically, research shows that rich people are
far happier living in more egalitarian societies. Not that much fun, I guess,
to live in an armed compound to avoid the masses.
This is why all the great
social democratic programs in Scandinavia and around the world are usually
universal. It is why Social Security and Medicare are universal. And it is why
the countries with the most effective and pervasive universal social programs
tend to have the most progressive tax systems and are generally ranked as the
world’s best democracies.
To his immense credit, Bernie
Sanders gets all this. As Bernie states plainly: “I happen to believe in
universality.” As the reporter Ryan Cooper puts it: “The road to hell is paved
with means-testing.”
Elizabeth Warren has been a
disappointment with regard to means testing. She has opened the door for means
testing with her student debt plan, and with this gesture Warren has signaled
to corporate Democrats that they can work with her on social policies and she
should not be feared. Combined with her recent waffling on her commitment to
single-payer and Bernie’s Medicare For All bill—which she co-sponsored!—this
should be an enormous red flag for voters seeking substantive change.
To her credit, Warren recently
backed down from her earlier position that she would accept corporate money in
the general election campaign were she to win the Democratic nomination for
president, because she saw how hypocritical it made her rejection of such money
in the primary season seem. Warren now needs to formally and loudly back down
from her embrace of “means testing” for social programs. The general rule in
politics is that you usually see the very most progressive side of a candidate
during an election campaign, and it only gets worse once the votes are cast and
the office door is shut and elites return to their usual privileged access. So
this is not a minor issue; it pretty much tells voters how serious she is about
representing the needs of the people, not the powerful.
Despite Obstruction by Capitol Police, Progressive Groups Deliver 2.2 Million Petitions to Democrats Still Not Backing Medicare for All
"Healthcare is a right,
not a privilege, and our members will continue to push for it until we get it
over the finish line."
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
A diverse coalition of
progressive advocacy groups on Tuesday delivered 2.2 million petition
signatures to House Democrats demanding that they use their majority to pass
Rep. Pramila Jayapal's gold-standard Medicare
for All bill.
The petition delivery hit a
brief snag when members of the coalition—representing nurses, physicians, and
consumers across the U.S.—were stopped by a Capitol police officer who said the
public is not allowed to "deliver" items to members of Congress.
"Does that mean that
lobbyists can no longer provide any materials to offices, too?" asked activist
Maria Langholz.
Consumer advocacy group Public
Citizen said it has "delivered petitions to Congress countless times"
and "never encountered this before."
The groups were ultimately
able to deliver petition signatures to a number of House Democrats who have yet
to co-sponsor Jayapal's Medicare for All Act of 2019, including Reps. Darren Soto
(D-N.J.), Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Mary Gay
Scanlon (D-Pa.), and Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa).
"Our members are
organizing and pushing other members of Congress to get on board with Medicare
for All," Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, said
in a statement.
"Healthcare is a right, not a privilege, and our members will continue to
push for it until we get it over the finish line."
Melinda St. Louis, director of
Public Citizen's Medicare for All campaign, said the 2.2 million petition
signatures "are reflective of what we're seeing at the grassroots level
through efforts to win city and county council resolutions in support of
Medicare for All."
"As this campaign
continues to gain steam," said St. Louis, "we expect to see more and
more boxes of signatures from Americans demanding guaranteed healthcare for
all."
A majority
of the House Democratic caucus has co-sponsored the Medicare for All
Act, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has refused
to allow the bill to the floor for a vote. Tom Nickels, a lobbyist for
the American Hospital Association, predicted in
April that Pelosi would ensure there is no vote on Medicare for All as long as
she holds the gavel.
Maplight's Andrew Perez reported Tuesday
that the for-profit hospital industry is "leading the fight" against
Medicare for All by bankrolling the Partnership for America's Health Care
Future (PAHCF), a dark-money organization formed
by corporate interests to crush single-payer.
Connie Huynh, healthcare for
all campaign director with People's Action, said in a statement that
"corporate greed keeps healthcare out of reach for millions of
people."
"We can't wait,"
said Huynh. "We need Congress to vote for Medicare for All: it's the best
solution to our healthcare crisis right now."
Watch the petition delivery:
After Shell CEO Claims 'We Have No Choice' But to Invest in Fossil Fuels, McKibben Says, 'We Have No Choice But to Try and Stop Them'
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
With "overwhelming evidence that we are on the brink
of climate and ecological collapse," executive's comment elicits intense
rebuke
Climate activists and experts underscored the necessity of
fighting to urgently end the use of fossil fuels worldwide after Royal Dutch
Shell CEO Ben van Beurden claimed Monday that "we have no choice" but
to invest in long-term oil and gas projects.
On Tuesday, Bill McKibben, co-founder of the global
environmental advocacy group 350.org, declared that "we have no choice but
to try and stop them."
The 61-year-old fossil fuel executive's comment was part of
an exclusive interview published Monday by Reuters. According to the news
agency:
A defiant van Beurden rejected a rising chorus from climate
activists and parts of the investor community to transform radically the
112-year-old Anglo-Dutch company's traditional business model.
"Despite what a lot of activists say, it is entirely
legitimate to invest in oil and gas because the world demands it," van
Beurden said.
"We have no choice" but to invest in long-life
projects, he added.
Shell, which is headquartered in the Netherlands and
incorporated in the United Kingdom, is among the
world's largest energy companies. Last year, the publicly traded
company's revenue was $388.4
billion.
Based on an investor presentation from June, Reuters reported
that "Shell plans to greenlight more than 35 new oil and gas projects by
2025."
On Twitter, biologist and activist Sandra Steingraber
highlighted Shell's plans for the future—plans which directly conflict with
global scientists' warnings that
the world needs to rapidly transform energy systems, replacing fossil fuels with
renewable sources, to prevent climate catastrophe.
Dharini Parthasarathy of Climate Action Network
International (CAN) called out van Beurden as a "climate criminal"
who refuses to abandon oil "despite the overwhelming evidence that we are
on the brink of climate and ecological collapse."
Patrick Galey, a global science and environment
correspondent for Agence France-Presse, posited that "when the trials
of oil and gas executives come, this interview will be Exhibit A."
As Common Dreams reported in
July, "lawsuits that aim to push governments to more ambitiously the
address climate emergency and make polluting corporations pay for the damage
caused by their sizable contributions to the global warming are growing in
popularity around the world."
Examples include the state of Rhode Island's ongoing
lawsuit that aims to make 21 fossil fuel giants—including BP, Chevron,
ExxonMobil, and Shell—pay for knowingly "causing catastrophic consequences
to Rhode Island, our economy, our communities, our residents, our
ecosystems."
Another legal strategy that climate advocates are pursuing
is using courts to force major energy companies to reform their business
practices. In April, a coalition of environmental groups who argue that Shell
has an obligation under Dutch law to act on the Paris climate goals delivered a
court summons to the company in a bid to legally compel Shell to "cease
its destruction of the climate, on behalf of more than 30,000 people from 70
countries."
Earlier this month, in response to Shell's latest quarterly
outlook for investors, Andy Rowell of the group Oil Change International wrote that
"while it may have dipped a toe into the renewable pool, Shell
belligerently refuses to dive in to help achieve a livable future, despite
decades of science imploring Big Oil to act."
"We do not trust Shell. We now know #ShellKnew, but
carried on drilling," he added, referencing evidence that
Shell scientists secretly warned company leaders decades ago about the threat
that fossil fuel emissions pose to the planet.
"It could act, but it cares not to. At the end of the
day, Shell still cares more about its shareholders than it does about
society," Rowell concluded. "It cares more about profit than it does
people. It cares more about cash than a safe climate. And that has to change,
fast, because the hour glass is nearly empty."
The criticism of Shell and its chief executive over the
company's continuing contributions to heating the planet come in the middle of
a two-week series of protests
and civil disobedience, organized by the global movement Extinction
Rebellion, to pressure governments to pursue bold, science-based solutions to
the climate crisis.
"The past week has been a moment in history: to simply
list the thousands of arrests, the many tens of thousands undertaking civil
disobedience, would not do it justice," Extinction Rebellion said Tuesday.
"We have proven to the world that this rebellion is a truly global
movement, growing rapidly within and between nations, and comprised of people
with the selflessness, the creativity, and the courage to resist the madness of
this ecocidal system."
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