Saturday, July 11, 2020
Sanders Calls on 'Do-Nothing' Senate to Approve $2,000 Monthly Checks, Cancel Rent, and Expand Medicare
"This I know: nothing will happen unless the American people stand up, fight back, and demand, in overwhelming numbers, that the Senate act."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/06/sanders-calls-do-nothing-senate-approve-2000-monthly-checks-cancel-rent-and-expand
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday slammed the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate for refusing to act to address the coronavirus-induced public health and economic crises that continue to intensify, throwing millions more out of work, overwhelming hospitals, and endangering countless lives.
"As you read this, the number of Covid-19 cases is skyrocketing in this country to levels far greater than at any point in this crisis," Sanders wrote in an email to supporters Sunday evening. "The United States—with just 4 percent of the world's population—accounts for 25% of the world's coronavirus cases and deaths. And the Republican Senate is doing nothing."
The Senate is not expected to return to session until July 20, just 11 days before the $600 weekly boost in unemployment benefits is set to expire.Last Thursday, the Senate departed the nation's capital for a two-week recess without taking any action on Covid-19 relief—even amid dire warnings that millions of additional workers could lose their jobs if Congress doesn't urgently approve aid to state and local governments.
"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has focused on other issues in recent weeks, such as an annual defense policy bill and confirming President Trump's nominees," the Washington Post reported Monday. "When the Senate comes back into session July 20, McConnell plans to turn his attention back to the coronavirus, giving lawmakers just three weeks to negotiate and pass a big rescue bill before they adjourn again through Labor Day."
McConnell said last week that he has no intention of delaying the August 10 recess.
Sanders condemned the Senate for dragging its feet "in the midst of these unprecedented crises" and noted that the pandemic has been made worse by "a president who thinks the coronavirus will just 'disappear' and that he has a 'natural ability' to understand this deadly virus."
"It will not, and he does not," the Vermont senator said. "People are dying every day because of his lies and incompetence."
Upon its return, Sanders wrote, the Senate must approve sweeping Covid-19 stimulus legislation that:
Uses federal funds to cover workers' paychecks and prevent more layoffs;
Extends the $600-per-week boost in unemployment benefits;
Expands Medicare to cover the uninsured;
Provides emergency funding to prevent the collapse of the U.S. Postal Service;
Sends a $2,000 monthly check to every working-class person in the U.S. until the end of the pandemic;
Cancels rent and mortgage payments until the end of the pandemic;
Increases federal nutrition benefits; and
Requires the federal government to manufacture and distribute free face masks to everyone in the U.S.
The Vermont senator urged his supporters to sign a petition pressuring the Senate to "act and pass legislation to protect the health and economic well-being of the American people."
"These are ideas that the American people support, and it is time that the do-nothing Senate implement them," Sanders wrote. "But this I know: nothing will happen unless the American people stand up, fight back, and demand, in overwhelming numbers, that the Senate act."
'The Swamp Is Alive and Well': Trump-Connected Lobbyists Have Raked in $10 Billion in Covid-19 Aid for Corporate Clients
"The crisis offered an especially lucrative opportunity for those lobbyists who enjoy close ties to President Donald Trump and his administration—and they seized it."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/06/swamp-alive-and-well-trump-connected-lobbyists-have-raked-10-billion-covid-19-aid
In yet another sign that the "swamp is alive and well in Washington, D.C." despite President Donald Trump's repeated promises to drain it, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen released a new report Monday morning identifying at least 40 Trump-connected lobbyists who have raked in over $10 billion in federal Covid-19 relief for their corporate clients since the pandemic began.
The dozens of lobbyists with ties to Trump through his campaigns, his administration, and/or his transition team "collectively have represented at least 150 clients on Covid matters," Public Citizen notes in its new report titled "COVID Lobbying Palooza" (pdf). Those clients include such corporate behemoths as Pfizer, Comcast, McDonald's, MasterCard, and American Airlines.
Public Citizen found that 27 clients of Trump-connected lobbyists have secured $10.5 billion in taxpayer coronavirus aid—a sum that is likely an underestimate because it does not include data from the $650 billion Paycheck Protection Program, which the White House has worked to keep under wraps."The crisis offered an especially lucrative opportunity for those lobbyists who enjoy close ties to President Donald Trump and his administration—and they seized it," reads the report, which briefly profiles all 40 of the lobbiysts and details some of their activities. "They have reported lobbying to obtain special industry carveouts for aid, government approval of their clients' products and, most commonly, Covid-related aid across a myriad of programs."
The $10.5 billion total, according to Public Citizen "consists of $6.3 billion in grants, $4.2 billion in loans, and $67 million worth of support in the form of corporate bond purchases by the Federal Reserve."
Five of the lobbyists identified by Public Citizen—including former Transportation Department official Geoffrey Burr and former Treasury adviser Jordan Stoick—"may have violated a Trump executive order that restricts lobbying activities by former officials," the group said.
"In many cases, the forms indicate that the former officials' agencies were directly lobbied," the report reads.
Craig Holman, a registered lobbyist for Public Citizen and a campaign finance expert, told the Associated Press that the group is planning to file ethics complaints with the White House over the apparent violations.
"There does not appear to be anyone who is enforcing the executive order," said Holman. The report says an investigation into the activity is warranted.
Arguing that sweeping reforms will be necessary to prevent such profiteering in the future, Public Citizen said "few scenarios would better embody most people's image of the Washington 'swamp' than dozens of hired-gun lobbyists cashing in on their government connections during a public health emergency."
"In the short term, the government, of course, should do everything it possibly can to offer the public an unobstructed window into the details of where the trillions in public dollars are going," the group said. "In the long term, future administrations and the Congress should embrace systemic reforms to sever the conflicts of interest that incentivize government officials to favor the wealthy and well-connected over the constituents whom they are hired to serve."
'They Are Failing': Nationwide Day of Action to Target GOP Senators for Going on Vacation as Pandemic Surges
"Millions of workers—essential and unemployed—do not have the luxury of a vacation and our elected officials are not entitled to take one during this crisis."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/06/they-are-failing-nationwide-day-action-target-gop-senators-going-vacation-pandemic
A coalition of dozens of progressive advocacy groups and labor unions is planning a nationwide day of action in battleground states Wednesday targeting Republican senators for going on a two-week vacation as Covid-19 infections surge and millions of people teeter on the brink of financial ruin.
In Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Iowa, and other states, activists will hold socially distant rallies and deliver "failing" report cards to Republican senators reminding them that "they are responsible for the massive amount of suffering that people are experiencing across the country," the coalition said in a press release Monday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is set to face Democratic nominee Amy McGrath for his seat in November, has refused to allow a floor vote on the Democratic legislation.The Service Employees International Union, the American Postal Workers Union, Greenpeace USA, and other groups are calling on the Republican-controlled Senate to take up and pass the HEROES Act, a sweeping stimulus package the House of Representatives approved on May 15.
While many progressives consider the HEROES Act insufficient, the bill would extend the $600-per-week boost in unemployment benefits, provide hazard pay for frontline workers, and shore up the finances of the U.S. Postal Service.
"The inaction of the senators is inexcusable," said the Labor Network for Sustainability. "Communities across the country are preparing to welcome the senators home with a clear message that they are failing. Teachers, students, and parents are preparing report cards to deliver to their senators in many states."
"Millions of workers—essential and unemployed—do not have the luxury of a vacation and our elected officials are not entitled to take one during this crisis," the group added. "We will not allow them to ignore us!"
The Republican-controlled Senate adjourned for July 4 recess last Thursday without passing or advancing coronavirus relief legislation despite the dire need for additional relief for frontline workers, the unemployed, and state and local governments. The New York Times reported Saturday that "nearly 28 million households are at risk of being turned out onto the streets because of job losses tied to the pandemic."
Senators are not expected to return to Washington, D.C. until July 20, by which point they will have just three weeks to negotiate and pass legislation before leaving for another scheduled recess on August 10.
"Over 40,000 Americans are diagnosed with Covid-19 every day, thousands are hospitalized, and states are being forced to halt their re-openings to save lives," the coalition said. "Americans are protesting on behalf of Black lives in the streets. Meanwhile, the Senate has left to go on a vacation after refusing to pass the HEROES Act, abdicating its responsibility to do something to protect Americans."
'Hunger Clock' Billboards Blast McConnell and GOP Senators for Blocking $16 Billion in Food Aid
"Let's be clear: this delay in food aid may lead to even more Americans unnecessarily dying."
by
Jessica Corbett, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/06/hunger-clock-billboards-blast-mcconnell-and-gop-senators-blocking-16-billion-food
The nonprofit group Hunger Free America announced Monday that it is running "Hunger Clock" billboard ads across the country to call out GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other Republican senators for blocking $16 billion in food assistance for Americans struggling in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
The group has billboards not only in Kentucky targeting McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) but also in five other states—targeting Sens. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), David Perdue (R-Ga.), Pat Toomey (R-Penn.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas)."It is simply unconscionable that Leader McConnell and the Senate GOP are playing politics with food aid while massive numbers of their own constituents struggle against hunger," Hunger Free America CEO Joel Berg said in a statement. "Food delayed is food denied."
"Most of them represent states with hunger rates higher than the national average," said Berg. "Not only would this food support feed hungry people in their home states, but it would also preserve or create local jobs, and thereby help the economy get back on its feet. It is simply shocking that, by his own admission, McConnell is blocking these and other vital aid measures in that bill because he says he doesn't want to help 'blue states.'"
In April, McConnell referred to demands for more pandemic relief as "blue state bailouts" in a conversation with right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt.
"While we want to be clear that both sides are not equally to blame for this delay," Berg explained, "we are also disappointed that Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has not spoken out publicly in favor of the immediate passage of this vital food support at a time when so many Arizona families are going hungry, which is why we also included her in this ad campaign."
The billboards highlight that it has been 51 days since the Democrat-controlled House passed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act and the Republican-controlled Senate has not acted on the bill. Although progressives have charged that the coronavirus relief legislation does not go far enough, it does include some much needed food aid.
As Hunger Free America summarized Monday:
The HEROES Act passed by the House provides a 15% increase in benefits for SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program). That hike would increase the average SNAP benefit nationwide by about 20 cents per meal, from the current level of $1.34 per meal to about $1.54 per meal. The bill also includes a $150 million increase for funding to charitable food banks, soup kitchens, and food pantries, many of which are faith-based. Additionally, the bill boosts nutrition support for low-income pregnant women and infants, provides extra food help to children whose school meals programs have been closed during the pandemic, and reimburses school districts for extra food distribution costs during this crisis.
"Let's be clear: this delay in food aid may lead to even more Americans unnecessarily dying," declared Berg. "The opposition of congressional Republicans and President Trump to increasing domestic food support during the worst health and hunger crises in modern times is not only morally outrageous and economically self-defeating, but it is also, frankly, dumb politics."
"Once the American people learn about this food aid holdup, they will be incensed. That is why we urge the public to help us ramp up pressure on Senate Republicans to pass this food assistance immediately," he added. "Only people power can force an end to this deadly political grandstanding."
Hunger Free America is encouraging critics of Senate GOP inaction to sign a petition urging the upper chamber to take immediate action, donate to the group to support the billboards and other initiatives, and share personal stories about struggling during the pandemic on social media with the hashtag #PassHeroesAct.
Key US Ally Indicted for Organ Trade Murder Scheme
Nicolas J. S. Davies July 6, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/key-us-ally-indicted-for-organ-trade-murder-scheme/
When President Clinton dropped 23,000 bombs on what was left of Yugoslavia in 1999 and NATO invaded and occupied the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, U.S. officials presented the war to the American public as a “humanitarian intervention” to protect Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanian population from genocide at the hands of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. That narrative has been unraveling piece by piece ever since.
In 2008 an international prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, accused U.S.-backed Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of Kosovo of using the U.S. bombing campaign as cover to murder hundreds of people to sell their internal organs on the international transplant market. Del Ponte’s charges seemed almost too ghoulish to be true. But on June 24th, Thaci, now President of Kosovo, and nine other former leaders of the CIA-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA,) were finally indicted for these 20-year-old crimes by a special war crimes court at The Hague.
From 1996 on, the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies covertly worked with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to instigate and fuel violence and chaos in Kosovo. The CIA spurned mainstream Kosovar nationalist leaders in favor of gangsters and heroin smugglers like Thaci and his cronies, recruiting them as terrorists and death squads to assassinate Yugoslav police and anyone who opposed them, ethnic Serbs and Albanians alike.
As it has done in country after country since the 1950s, the CIA unleashed a dirty civil war that Western politicians and media dutifully blamed on Yugoslav authorities. But by early 1998, even U.S. envoy Robert Gelbard called the KLA a “terrorist group” and the UN Security Council condemned “acts of terrorism” by the KLA and “all external support for terrorist activity in Kosovo, including finance, arms and training.” Once the war was over and Kosovo was successfully occupied by U.S. and NATO forces, CIA sources openly touted the agency’s role in manufacturing the civil war to set the stage for NATO intervention.
By September 1998, the UN reported that 230,000 civilians had fled the civil war, mostly across the border to Albania, and the UN Security Council passed resolution 1199, calling for a ceasefire, an international monitoring mission, the return of refugees and a political resolution. A new U.S. envoy, Richard Holbrooke, convinced Yugoslav President Milosevic to agree to a unilateral ceasefire and the introduction of a 2,000 member “verification” mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). But the U.S. and NATO immediately started drawing up plans for a bombing campaign to “enforce” the UN resolution and Yugoslavia’s unilateral ceasefire.
Holbrooke persuaded the chair of the OSCE, Polish foreign minister Bronislaw Geremek, to appoint William Walker, the former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador during its civil war, to lead the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM). The U.S. quickly hired 150 Dyncorp mercenaries to form the nucleus of Walker’s team, whose 1,380 members used GPS equipment to map Yugoslav military and civilian infrastructure for the planned NATO bombing campaign. Walker’s deputy, Gabriel Keller, France’s former Ambassador to Yugoslavia, accused Walker of sabotaging the KVM, and CIA sources later admitted that the KVM was a “CIA front” to coordinate with the KLA and spy on Yugoslavia.
The climactic incident of CIA-provoked violence that set the political stage for the NATO bombing and invasion was a firefight at a village called Racak, which the KLA had fortified as a base from which to ambush police patrols and dispatch death squads to kill local “collaborators.” In January 1999, Yugoslav police attacked the KLA base in Racak, leaving 43 men, a woman and a teenage boy dead.
After the firefight, Yugoslav police withdrew from the village, and the KLA reoccupied it and staged the scene to make the firefight look like a massacre of civilians. When William Walker and a KVM team visited Racak the next day, they accepted the KLA’s massacre story and broadcast it to the world, and it became a standard part of the narrative to justify the bombing of Yugoslavia and military occupation of Kosovo.
Autopsies by an international team of medical examiners found traces of gunpowder on the hands of nearly all the bodies, showing that they had fired weapons. They were nearly all killed by multiple gunshots as in a firefight, not by precise shots as in a summary execution, and only one victim was shot at close range. But the full autopsy results were only published much later, and the Finnish chief medical examiner accused Walker of pressuring her to alter them.
Two experienced French journalists and an AP camera crew at the scene challenged the KLA and Walker’s version of what happened in Racak. Christophe Chatelet’s article in Le Monde was headlined, “Were the dead in Racak really massacred in cold blood?” and veteran Yugoslavia correspondent Renaud Girard concluded his story in Le Figaro with another critical question, “Did the KLA seek to transform a military defeat into a political victory?”
NATO immediately threatened to bomb Yugoslavia, and France agreed to host high-level talks. But instead of inviting Kosovo’s mainstream nationalist leaders to the talks in Rambouillet, Secretary Albright flew in a delegation led by KLA commander Hashim Thaci, until then known to Yugoslav authorities only as a gangster and a terrorist.
Albright presented both sides with a draft agreement in two parts, civilian and military. The civilian part granted Kosovo unprecedented autonomy from Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslav delegation accepted that. But the military agreement would have forced Yugoslavia to accept a NATO military occupation, not just of Kosovo but with no geographical limits, in effect placing all of Yugoslavia under NATO occupation.
When Milosevich refused Albright’s terms for unconditional surrender, the U.S. and NATO claimed he had rejected peace, and war was the only answer, the “last resort.” They did not return to the UN Security Council to try to legitimize their plan, knowing full well that Russia, China and other countries would reject it. When UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told Albright the British government was “having trouble with our lawyers” over NATO’s plan for an illegal war of aggression against Yugoslavia, she told him to “get new lawyers.”
In March 1999, the KVM teams were withdrawn and the bombing began. Pascal Neuffer, a Swiss KVM observer reported, “The situation on the ground on the eve of the bombing did not justify a military intervention. We could certainly have continued our work. And the explanations given in the press, saying the mission was compromised by Serb threats, did not correspond to what I saw. Let’s say rather that we were evacuated because NATO had decided to bomb.”
NATO killed thousands of civilians in Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia, as it bombed 19 hospitals, 20 health centers, 69 schools, 25,000 homes, power stations, a national TV station, the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and other diplomatic missions. After it invaded Kosovo, the U.S. military set up the 955-acre Camp Bondsteel, one of its largest bases in Europe, on its newest occupied territory. Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, Alvaro Gil-Robles, visited Camp Bondsteel in 2002 and called it “a smaller version of Guantanamo,” exposing it as a secret CIA black site for illegal, unaccountable detention and torture.
But for the people of Kosovo, the ordeal was not over when the bombing stopped. Far more people had fled the bombing than the so-called “ethnic cleansing” the CIA had provoked to set the stage for it. A reported 900,000 refugees, nearly half the population, returned to a shattered, occupied province, now ruled by gangsters and foreign overlords.
Serbs and other minorities became second-class citizens, clinging precariously to homes and communities where many of their families had lived for centuries. More than 200,000 Serbs, Roma and other minorities fled, as the NATO occupation and KLA rule replaced the CIA’s manufactured illusion of ethnic cleansing with the real thing. Camp Bondsteel was the province’s largest employer, and U.S. military contractors also sent Kosovars to work in occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2019, Kosovo’s per capita GDP was only $4,458, less than any country in Europe except Moldova and war-torn, post-coup Ukraine.
In 2007, a German military intelligence report described Kosovo as a “Mafia society,” based on the “capture of the state” by criminals. The report named Hashim Thaci, then the leader of the Democratic Party, as an example of “the closest ties between leading political decision makers and the dominant criminal class.” In 2000, 80% of the heroin trade in Europe was controlled by Kosovar gangs, and the presence of thousands of U.S. and NATO troops fueled an explosion of prostitution and sex trafficking, also controlled by Kosovo’s new criminal ruling class.
In 2008, Thaci was elected Prime Minister, and Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. (The final dissolution of Yugoslavia in 2006 had left Serbia and Montenegro as separate countries.) The U.S. and 14 allies immediately recognized Kosovo’s independence, and ninety-seven countries, about half the countries in the world, have now done so. But neither Serbia nor the UN have recognized it, leaving Kosovo in long-term diplomatic limbo.
When the court in the Hague unveiled the charges against Thaci on June 24th, he was on his way to Washington for a White House meeting with Trump and President Vucic of Serbia to try to resolve Kosovo’s diplomatic impasse. But when the charges were announced, Thaci’s plane made a U-turn over the Atlantic, he returned to Kosovo and the meeting was canceled.
The accusation of murder and organ trafficking against Thaci was first made in 2008 by Carla Del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTFY), in a book she wrote after stepping down from that position. Del Ponte later explained that the ICTFY was prevented from charging Thaci and his co-defendants by the non-cooperation of NATO and the UN Mission in Kosovo. In an interview for the 2014 documentary, The Weight of Chains 2, she explained, “NATO and the KLA, as allies in the war, couldn’t act against each other.”
Human Rights Watch and the BBC followed up on Del Ponte’s allegations, and found evidence that Thaci and his cronies murdered up to 400 mostly Sebian prisoners during the NATO bombing in 1999. Survivors described prison camps in Albania where prisoners were tortured and killed, a yellow house where people’s organs were removed and an unmarked mass grave nearby.
Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty interviewed witnesses, gathered evidence and published a report, which the Council of Europe endorsed in January 2011, but the Kosovo parliament did not approve the plan for a special court in the Hague until 2015. The Kosovo Specialist Chambers and independent prosecutor’s office finally began work in 2017. Now the judges have six months to review the prosecutor’s charges and decide whether the trial should proceed.
A central part of the Western narrative on Yugoslavia was the demonization of President Milosevich of Yugoslavia, who resisted his country’s Western-backed dismemberment throughout the 1990s. Western leaders smeared Milosevich as a “New Hitler” and the “Butcher of the Balkans,” but he was still arguing his innocence when he died in a cell at The Hague in 2006.
Ten years later, at the trial of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, the judges accepted the prosecution’s evidence that Milosevich strongly opposed Karadzic’s plan to carve out a Serb Republic in Bosnia. They convicted Karadzic of being fully responsible for the resulting civil war, in effect posthumously exonerating Milosevich of responsibility for the actions of the Bosnian Serbs, the most serious of the charges against him.
But the U.S.’s endless campaign to paint all its enemies as “violent dictators” and “New Hitlers” rolls on like a demonization machine on autopilot, against Putin, Xi, Maduro, Khamenei, the late Fidel Castro and any foreign leader who stands up to the imperial dictates of the U.S. government. These smear campaigns serve as pretexts for brutal sanctions and catastrophic wars against our international neighbors, but also as political weapons to attack and diminish any U.S. politician who stands up for peace, diplomacy and disarmament.
As the web of lies spun by Clinton and Albright has unraveled, and the truth behind their lies has spilled out piece by bloody piece, the war on Yugoslavia has emerged as a case study in how U.S. leaders mislead us into war. In many ways, Kosovo established the template that U.S. leaders have used to plunge our country and the world into endless war ever since. What U.S. leaders took away from their “success” in Kosovo was that legality, humanity and truth are no match for CIA-manufactured chaos and lies, and they doubled down on that strategy to plunge the U.S. and the world into endless war.
As it did in Kosovo, the CIA is still running wild, fabricating pretexts for new wars and unlimited military spending, based on sourceless accusations, covert operations and flawed, politicized intelligence. We have allowed American politicians to pat themselves on the back for being tough on “dictators” and “thugs,” letting them settle for the cheap shot instead of tackling the much harder job of reining in the real instigators of war and chaos: the U.S. military and the CIA.
But if the people of Kosovo can hold the CIA-backed gangsters who murdered their people, sold their body parts and hijacked their country accountable for their crimes, is it too much to hope that Americans can do the same and hold our leaders accountable for their far more widespread and systematic war crimes?
Iran recently indicted Donald Trump for the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, and asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant for him. Trump is probably not losing sleep over that, but the indictment of such a key U.S. ally as Thaci is a sign that the U.S. “accountabilty-free zone” of impunity for war crimes is finally starting to shrink, at least in the protection it provides to U.S. allies. Should Netanyahu, Bin Salman and Tony Blair start looking over their shoulders?
Shrink Wall Street to Guarantee Good Jobs
Sarah Anderson July 7, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/shrink-wall-street-to-guarantee-good-jobs/
A new House proposal would ensure that all Americans in hard-hit areas could have a job. A tax on Wall Street windfalls would pay for it.
(Common Dreams) The pandemic has claimed nearly 15 million U.S. jobs. Meanwhile, high flying financial traders are making a killing off the market volatility caused by the crisis. A new House bill would tax Wall Street windfalls to guarantee good jobs for people in high unemployment areas.
The Workforce Promotion and Access Act would ensure employment in jobs that pay at least $15 per hour with benefits and address local needs, such as childcare, eldercare, and infrastructure. Democratic Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman and Ilhan Omar are the bill’s lead sponsors.
In 2018, Watson Coleman joined with Senator Cory Booker to introduce the first federal jobs guarantee bill. The new proposal differs from the original model in two important ways.
First, while the 2018 bill aimed to create pilot programs in no more than 15 communities and regions, the new bill expands the scope to respond to the scale of the current economic crisis. It would provide job creation grants to states and localities where the unemployment rate is higher than 10 percent or 100 percent of the national unemployment rate.
Every adult in these hard-hit areas would have the opportunity to have a job, something Erica Smiley, Executive Director for Jobs with Justice, sees as a way to reduce the excessive power corporations hold over their employees.
“Working people who stand up to corporate bosses and get fired as a result face loss of income, loss of housing, loss of medical care, and food insecurity,” Smiley said in a press release. “The Workforce Promotion and Access Act blunts the threat of firing and allows working people to demand a role in our economic system.”
Smiley also noted that Black people and other communities of color that have been most affected by the twin pandemics would benefit most from the bill. A recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition listed a federal jobs guarantee as one of eight solutions to the racial wealth divide. As of July 2, the Black unemployment rate was 15.4 percent, compared to 12.4 percent for whites.
A second difference in the new bill over the 2018 model is that it includes a mechanism for covering the cost of the jobs program. While lawmakers shouldn’t wait to take crisis response action until they can pay for every dime of spending, this particular “pay for” is worth pursuing because it would have multiple benefits.
The proposal would apply a tax of 0.1 percent on each trade of stocks, derivatives, and other financial instruments. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that such a tax could generate $777 billion over 10 years.
Because the tax applies to every Wall Street trade, high frequency traders who flip stocks every second or even millisecond would pay the bulk of the tax. For pension holders with ordinary turnover rates in their portfolios, the cost would be negligible.
By elevating market volatility, the crisis has increased profits for fast traders who use advanced technologies to spot market movements and capitalize on them before traditional investors. As the Wall Street Journal explains it, “High-frequency traders, which typically deploy sophisticated algorithms and powerful computers to move in and out of markets at lightning speeds, tend to do well when markets are volatile.” High levels of market volatility are expected to continue throughout 2020.
A financial transaction tax would significantly reduce high frequency trading, which has no real economic value, drains profits from traditional investors, and benefits only the wealthy.
Susan Harley, deputy director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, applauded the inclusion of the tax, which has garnered support over the past year from Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
“By implementing a Wall Street tax, the Workforce Promotion and Access Act both provides a focus on equity and redistributing tax responsibility while making real progress on the road to relief for families in America by providing a job to those who need it,” Harley said.
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