Thursday, August 27, 2020
Just Two States Have Begun Paying Out Boosted Unemployment Aid 15 Days After Mnuchin Promised Benefits in a 'Week or Two'
"The American people need real relief that fights the pandemic and puts money in workers' pockets—posturing and gimmicks will not solve the enormous problems they face."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/25/just-two-states-have-begun-paying-out-boosted-unemployment-aid-15-days-after-mnuchin
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin vowed on August 10 that "within the next week or two," most states would be able to set up and carry out President Donald Trump's makeshift program authorizing a $300-per-week federal boost to unemployment benefits.
As of Tuesday, more than two weeks after Mnuchin's comments, just Arizona and Texas have begun distributing the $300 weekly payments, leading Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) to declare that "Trump's smoke-and-mirrors executive orders are simply not good enough."
Earlier this month, after the White House and Democratic congressional leaders failed to reach a deal extending the federal unemployment supplement that lapsed at the end of July, Trump signed an order redirecting up to $44 billion in disaster funds into a new program that lawmakers and experts criticized as illegal, unworkable, and woefully inadequate. The president promised the benefits would be "rapidly distributed."
The Lost Wages Assistance program greenlights a $300-per-week federal supplement to existing state unemployment benefits, with cash-strapped states expected to kick in an additional $100 each week. The $300 weekly federal boost represents just half of the $600-per-week supplement that officially expired on July 31 thanks to opposition from congressional Republicans and the Trump administration.
As Bloomberg reported Tuesday, 30 states have been approved for the federal benefits but many are struggling to get the program up and running due to its design. Officials from Utah and New Mexico, two states that have been approved for the program, told Bloomberg that "they anticipate it will be a few weeks before payments reach residents."
Beyer, the vice chair of the congressional Joint Economic Committee, noted in a statement Tuesday that "it has been a month now since Senate Republicans shamefully allowed enhanced unemployment benefits to expire," drastically cutting the incomes of around 30 million Americans.
"The American people need real relief that fights the pandemic and puts money in workers' pockets—posturing and gimmicks will not solve the enormous problems they face," said Beyer. "If the White House does not get serious about the level of aid that is needed, it will imperil the economic recovery."
Beyer's warning comes amid numerous signs—including surging unemployment claims—that the recovery is sputtering as Covid-19 continues to spread across the United States. Some analysts have linked the expiration of the $600-per-week federal unemployment boost to faltering consumer spending:
Despite the worrying trajectory of the overall economy and the dire financial conditions that tens of millions of Americans are currently facing, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has shown no interest in calling his chamber back from summer recess to work with House Democrats on a Covid-19 relief package.
"Thirty million don't have enough to eat, 22 million are behind on rent," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Monday. "It is morally obscene that the American people have to rely on GoFundMe to pay for rent and food. Mitch McConnell: End your vacation. Pass emergency relief now."
'What's Radical Is Doing Nothing': Attacked as an Extremist, Sanders Condemns GOP for Ignoring Climate Crisis at Convention
"It would be a moral disgrace if we left to future generations a planet and that was unhealthy, unsafe, and uninhabitable."
by
Lisa Newcomb, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/25/whats-radical-doing-nothing-attacked-extremist-sanders-condemns-gop-ignoring-climate
As wildfires burn through California and the western United States, the Gulf Coast prepares for two potential hurricanes within a 48-hour timeframe, and record high temperatures dominate the summer, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday noted the resounding absence of any mention of the climate crisis during the first night of the Republican National Convention.
In what NowThis described as a "Carnival of Misinformation," the GOP managed to attack Sanders and other progressive political leaders Monday night, calling them "radical" and "Marxist," and to vilify the state of California—which has lost 1.4 million acres to wildfires so far this year—but failed to even mention climate or environmental concerns."You wouldn't know it if you watched the first night of the Republican National Convention, but we are in the middle of a climate emergency with scientists telling us we have just a few years to act in order to save our planet for future generations," Sanders said in an email to supporters Tuesday.
"Don't tell me the Green New Deal is radical," Sanders continued in his email. "What is radical is doing nothing to take on the existential threat of climate change while the world burns."
President Donald Trump criticized Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his state's wildfire mitigation strategies earlier this month, harkening to comments the president has made in the past about clearing forest floors of debris as the key to preventing the destruction caused across the west in recent years.
"I see again the forest fires are starting," the president said at a rally in Pennsylvania. "They're starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests—there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they're like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up." Trump went on to threaten withholding federal funds, though he did promise aid last weekend.
The president, a notorious denier of human-caused climate change, has called the crisis a "hoax invented by the Chinese."
"Here is the truth," Sanders wrote. "In the midst of everything going on right now, a global pandemic, an economic meltdown, a struggle for racial justice, and more, we simply cannot lose sight of the existential threat of climate change which puts at risk the very survival of this planet."
The senator from Vermont, a champion of the Green New Deal, warned that the time of incremental action in dealing with the climate crisis has passed.
"We cannot go far enough or be too aggressive on this issue," he said.
Sanders isn't the only one who noticed the RNC's dismissal of environmental and climate concerns Monday night. Conservative climate activist Benji Backer expressed his frustration on Twitter, saying he's "feeling as disenfranchised as ever."
Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), whom League of Conservation Voters gives a 3% rating on its environmental scorecard, told attendees at an unrelated event Monday that his party has to start taking the climate crisis seriously.
"As a conservative, I regret that we have let ourselves be branded as not caring about the Earth," Curtis said. "It's time to stop being on the defensive and go on the offensive."
He continued: "We don't need to destroy the U.S. economy to be successful. As a matter of fact, I believe a once-in-a-generation opportunity is in front of us."
But Curtis remains in the minority of Republican lawmakers, and, Sanders wrote, tackling the climate crisis is a duty we share as global citizens.
"We are custodians of the Earth," he wrote. "All of us. And it would be a moral disgrace if we left to future generations a planet and that was unhealthy, unsafe, and uninhabitable."
'Underwhelming and Inadequate': Green Groups Slam New Senate Democrats' Climate Report
The Green New Deal is mentioned only once in the 263-page report—in the footnotes.
by
Brett Wilkins, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/25/underwhelming-and-inadequate-green-groups-slam-new-senate-democrats-climate-report
A climate action report released Tuesday by Senate Democrats drew disappointed reactions from green groups and progressive campaigners who say it does not do nearly enough to combat the potentially existential threat of catastrophic global heating caused by human activity.
The report—titled "The Case for Climate Action: Building a Clean Economy for the American People" (pdf)—was authored by 10 Democratic senators, including Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) introduced a Green New Deal resolution in Congress last year. However, the 263-page plan mentions the Green New Deal only once—as a footnote on Page 228.
In March 2019, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) launched the Senate Democrats' Special Committee on the Climate Crisis to study the impact of climate change and devise a strategy to mitigate its damage.
The newly-released report, which is the result of dozens of hearings and closed-door meetings, calls on the government to spend over $400 billion annually with the goal of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. It also aims to create at least 10 million new U.S. jobs in clean energy manufacturing, research, and development, while reforming lobbying laws to curtail the outsize influence of the fossil fuel industry.
According to the report, the price tag of the plan is equal to about 2% of U.S. gross domestic product. It claims that at least 40% of the benefits from these investments will "help communities of color and low-income, de-industrialized, and disadvantaged communities."
"We have the opportunity to build more and better jobs for the American people, jobs that'll help re-stimulate the economy and aid in our transition to clean energy," Sen. Schumer told reporters on Tuesday. "When Democrats retake the majority in the Senate, we will unify to move swiftly on legislation to tackle the climate crisis," he added. "Passing climate legislation will be a top priority for Senate Democrats and me."
However, climate activists blasted the report as woefully inadequate to deal with what is arguably the greatest threat facing humanity today.
Mitch Jones, director of policy for Food & Water Action, said in a statement that the report "completes a trifecta of underwhelming and inadequate proposals from Democratic leadership," adding that the plan "relies on false solutions designed to placate the oil and gas lobby."
"Further, it fails to address the vital need to end the extraction, processing, and burning of fossil fuels, and instead sees a future for fossil fuels tied to the false promise of carbon capture," Jones said. "It even fails to include a call to ban new fossil fuel extraction on public lands, a position that was endorsed by vitrually all candidates in the Democratic presidential primary."
Brett Hartl, director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson, Arizona-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting endangered species, called the Democrats' plan "weak."
"By ignoring fossil fuel extraction and the urgent need to slash planet-warming emissions 50% by 2030, Senate Democrats have utterly failed to make the case for climate action," Hartl said in an email to Common Dreams. "If these weak recommendations are turned into law, future generations will know that the desire to please a few special-interest polluters left them with a devastated planet."
"We need strong action now to curb drilling and fracking and move quickly toward cleaner forms of energy" Hartl added.
"Strong action now," at least on paper, is being promised in Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's recently-unveiled climate plan, which proposes $2 trillion be spent over the next four years boosting clean energy in the transportation, power and building sectors as part of an ambitious economic recovery plan.
The proposal by the former vice president—who served in an administration that promoted fracking at home and abroad and was itself assailed for not doing enough in the face of the growing climate threat—has drawn praise from some activists and climate-minded political leaders.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who made climate change the central focus of his failed 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, called Biden's plan "visionary."
"This is no status quo plan," Inslee told the New York Times last month. "It is comprehensive. This is not some sort of, 'Let me just throw a bone to those who care about climate change.'"
Biden's plan stands in stark contrast with the policies of the Trump administration, which earlier this month finalized plans to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—one of the largest intact unspoiled wildernesses on the planet and home to indigenous peoples who rely upon the healthy ecosystem for their physical and spiritual survival—to oil and gas development.
During Trump's tenure, the U.S. has become the world's largest crude oil producer, a position it had not held since 1973.
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