#The Sunrise Movement
Leanna First-Arais, "Sunrise in Nashville," Sierra, May/June 2020.
"The Sunrise Movement was founded in 2017 by a group of 1`2 recent college graduates who were seeing signs of climate breakdown -- devastating hurricanes, floods,fires, and droughts -- and were frustrated by the widespread failure of elected officials to enact policies to aggressively curb climate change. And they played a role in getting scientists with the United Nations to call for carbon neutrality around 2050,which must be well underway by 2030.
#Voter Registration
Sophia Demlding, "Are You Registered to Vote?" Sierra, May/June 2020.
"Thirty-eight states make it possible to register online. Eleven states automatically register eligible voters when they are of voting age. Twenty-one states allow voters to register on the same day as an election. Then there's Texas, which has honed voter suppression to an art." "A voter registration system this inefficient is a waste of money. It is also one of the reasons -- along with harsh ID laws -- that the state has such a dismal voter turnout."
"It was recently reported that for the first time in its history, Texas has more that 16 million voters. The ranks of the registered are growing faster than the population."
#Google Workers Walk Out
Clio Chang, "Company Culture," The Nation, April 20/27, 2020.
"In 2018, more than 20,000 Google workers walked out on their jobs for a few hours to protest, among other issues, the way companies paid off top executives accused of sexual harassment." "In many workplaces, obscuring power differentials is management's favorite tool to keep those who don't have its [power] from agitating for it." "No matter the determining of any one particular person, their people in charge are still more likely than not to be able to subject their workers to any sort of mistreatment, and get away with it."
#The Bailout Bill
"A Bigger Bailout," The Nation, April 20/27, 2020.
The bailout bill provides $500 billion as a backstop for the Federal Reserve to pump trillions of dollars into banks and corporations. With that, the latter will pocket over 80 percent of the total package, while workers and families will get about 8 percent. States, localities, hospitals, and schools will be left with even less." "The Fed will flood banks with money -- which corporations can than use to finance mergers, take over distressed rivals, and lard-up on debt. Wall Street can use the crisis to increase concentration, not competition, adding to the country's already obscene inequality."
"Far greater support for states and localities -- all now headed into crippling budget crises -- is imperative. Extending paid sick leave and funding voting by mail to secure elections are both vital, as are further payments to individuals and continued protections against foreclosures and evictions." "Medicare should cover all coronavirus testing and treatment costs -- an obvious step for Medicare for All."
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Thanks to the ACA, and Much More
#Thanks to the Affordable Care Act
Abigail Adams, "Ten Years in Obama..." TIME, March 30, 2020.
"Thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), 20 million people in the U.S. gained heath coverage and early studies show that the law improved the health of Americans across a range of measures. It also helped narrow racial, gender, and ethnic gaps in coverage. Between 2013 and 2018, the uninsured rate dropped 10% for back adults, and by more than a third for Hispanic adults."
"Fourteen states, most with Republican governors, still refuse to opt in to the law's Medicaid expansion." "The ACA also eliminated annual and lifetime limits on coverage, a change that protects people who have prior heath emergencies. More broadly, researchers have found that the ACA reduced medical debt nationwide, lowering bankruptcy and poverty rates."
"Pew research shows that the majority of Americans have come to believe that it is the federal government's responsibility [to provide health insurance] -- through the ACA,or its eventual replacement."
#Trump Warned on Virus
Haley Sweetland Edwards, "Opportunity Cost..." TIME, March 30, 2020.
"A few weeks after the outbreak in China's Hubei province in December, U.S. health officials warned Trump of the severeness of the threat, but in his first public comments about the virus, on January 22, Trump told the public he wasn't worried. "Not at all," he said. "We have it totally under control." Throughout February, Trump dismissed [the Democrats'] about the virus, as their new 'hoax,' and blamed the 'Democrat's policy of open borders.' He insisted that his January 21 decision to restrict travel from China had contained the outbreak." In May 2018, he authorized his then-National Security Adviser, John Bolton, to eliminate the National Security Council's global health security unit, and demote its pandemic experts.
#Antidote to Epidemics
Yeural Noah Harari, "Disease in a world..." TIME, March 30, 2020.
"The real real antidote to epidemics is cooperation. Despite horrendous outbreaks, such as AIDS, and Ebola, epidemics kill a far smaller proportion of humans in the 21st century than in any precious time since the Stone Age. Second, history indicates that real protection comes from the sharing of reliable scientific information, and from global solidarity." "Quarantine and lockdown are essential for stopping the spread of epidemics."
"The current U.S. Administration has cut support for international organizations, and has made it very clear to the world that the U.S. no longer has any friends, only interests."
#Retailer Death Blow
Megan Meardle, "The pandemic delivers a death blow..." The Albuquerque Journal, April 4, 2020.
"A recent analysis by Miquel Faria-e-Castro, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis, projected that one-third of Americans could end up unemployed. But many businesses are too indebted to survive a long period with no revenue, while others will discover that a post-pandemic America no longer demands their services so much. But that's paltry comfort to those who have sunk decades of their lives into building businesses that are threatened, or gaining skills and industry contacts that could suddenly become useless."
#Chronic Pain Suffering
Atul Gawande, "The Blight," The New Yorker, March 23, 2020.
"Some hundred million Americans now suffer from chronic pain -- that is, they've been in pain on most days for the past three months. And the rates are especially high in middle age" Americans in their fifties, unlike their counterparts in other countries, have higher rates of chronic pain than those i their seventies and eighties." "Between 1999 and 2017, more than six hundred thousand deaths in excess of the demographically predicted number -- occurred just among people aged forty-five to fifty-four."
"Studies revealed that three to eight per cent of surgery patients who take narcotics for the first time after brief hospital stays were still taking the drugs as much as twelve months later."
Abigail Adams, "Ten Years in Obama..." TIME, March 30, 2020.
"Thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), 20 million people in the U.S. gained heath coverage and early studies show that the law improved the health of Americans across a range of measures. It also helped narrow racial, gender, and ethnic gaps in coverage. Between 2013 and 2018, the uninsured rate dropped 10% for back adults, and by more than a third for Hispanic adults."
"Fourteen states, most with Republican governors, still refuse to opt in to the law's Medicaid expansion." "The ACA also eliminated annual and lifetime limits on coverage, a change that protects people who have prior heath emergencies. More broadly, researchers have found that the ACA reduced medical debt nationwide, lowering bankruptcy and poverty rates."
"Pew research shows that the majority of Americans have come to believe that it is the federal government's responsibility [to provide health insurance] -- through the ACA,or its eventual replacement."
#Trump Warned on Virus
Haley Sweetland Edwards, "Opportunity Cost..." TIME, March 30, 2020.
"A few weeks after the outbreak in China's Hubei province in December, U.S. health officials warned Trump of the severeness of the threat, but in his first public comments about the virus, on January 22, Trump told the public he wasn't worried. "Not at all," he said. "We have it totally under control." Throughout February, Trump dismissed [the Democrats'] about the virus, as their new 'hoax,' and blamed the 'Democrat's policy of open borders.' He insisted that his January 21 decision to restrict travel from China had contained the outbreak." In May 2018, he authorized his then-National Security Adviser, John Bolton, to eliminate the National Security Council's global health security unit, and demote its pandemic experts.
#Antidote to Epidemics
Yeural Noah Harari, "Disease in a world..." TIME, March 30, 2020.
"The real real antidote to epidemics is cooperation. Despite horrendous outbreaks, such as AIDS, and Ebola, epidemics kill a far smaller proportion of humans in the 21st century than in any precious time since the Stone Age. Second, history indicates that real protection comes from the sharing of reliable scientific information, and from global solidarity." "Quarantine and lockdown are essential for stopping the spread of epidemics."
"The current U.S. Administration has cut support for international organizations, and has made it very clear to the world that the U.S. no longer has any friends, only interests."
#Retailer Death Blow
Megan Meardle, "The pandemic delivers a death blow..." The Albuquerque Journal, April 4, 2020.
"A recent analysis by Miquel Faria-e-Castro, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis, projected that one-third of Americans could end up unemployed. But many businesses are too indebted to survive a long period with no revenue, while others will discover that a post-pandemic America no longer demands their services so much. But that's paltry comfort to those who have sunk decades of their lives into building businesses that are threatened, or gaining skills and industry contacts that could suddenly become useless."
#Chronic Pain Suffering
Atul Gawande, "The Blight," The New Yorker, March 23, 2020.
"Some hundred million Americans now suffer from chronic pain -- that is, they've been in pain on most days for the past three months. And the rates are especially high in middle age" Americans in their fifties, unlike their counterparts in other countries, have higher rates of chronic pain than those i their seventies and eighties." "Between 1999 and 2017, more than six hundred thousand deaths in excess of the demographically predicted number -- occurred just among people aged forty-five to fifty-four."
"Studies revealed that three to eight per cent of surgery patients who take narcotics for the first time after brief hospital stays were still taking the drugs as much as twelve months later."
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Trump Watch; Racial Profiling; and Corporate Power
I. Trump Watch: Dim Bulbs in the White House
#President Donald Trump's Energy Department rescinds a Bush-era ban on incandescent lightbulbs, which was to have taken effect on January 1. The move will generate 38 million tons of CO2 and cost U.S. consumers $14 billion a year.
#President Trump wants to change the National Environmental Policy Act so that fewer major infrastructure projects will require environmental review, and the climate consequences will no longer need to be considered. The Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program (ELP) will be part of a large litigation team challenging the rollback.
#Responding to a challenge from the ELP and others, the U.S Court of Appeals from the Ninth Circuit rules that the Trump administration cannot exclude chemicals from risk evaluation just because they are no longer being manufactured.
#The Federal Emergency Management Agency's 2019 National Preparedness Report, an annual review of threats to the nation, does not mention climate change or sea level rise.
#Peter Gaynor, President Trump's nominee to head FEMA, says that he doesn't know why the climate is changing.
#Under a new Trump administration interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the killing of migratory birds by oil spills, chemical contamination, and construction activity will no longer be punished or fined.
#The Department of Transportation announces $900 million in infrastructure grants, 72 percent of which will go to roads and bridges in states that voted for Trump. Funding for mass transit has declined to 8.5 percent of total grants, with pedestrian and bicycle improvements zeroed out.
II. Racial Profiling by the Numbers
91% - Share of those arrested in New York City for violating coronavirus guidelines who are black or Hispanic.
20x - Increased likelihood, from 2010 to 2012, for a black male teenager in the U.S. to be shot and killed by police, compared with white one, according to ProPublica.
2.6x - Increased likelihood for a black person in the U.S. to be arrested for marijuana possession, versus a white one.
1,356 - Racial profiling complaints filed with the Los Angeles Police Department from 2012 to 2014.
0 - Number of those complaints upheld by the LAPD.
54% - Share of people who thought burning down a Minneapolis police building was fully or partly justified. (Source: Daniel Fernandez, "By the Numbers," The Nation, June 29/July 6, 2020.)
III. Major Corporate Power
"Last August, the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of America's biggest corporations -- announced with great fanfare a 'fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders' and not just their shareholders. They said 'investing in employees, delivering value to customers, and supporting outside communities' is now at the forefront of their business goals -- not maximizing profits."
A record 76 percent of U.S. adults believe major corporations have too much power.
"The chairman of the Business Roundtable is Jamie Dimon, CEO of Wall Street's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase. Dimon lobbied Congress personally and intensively for the biggest corporate tax cut in history, and got the Business Roundtable to join him. JPMorgan raked in $3.7 billion from the tax cut. Dimon alone made $31 million in 2018."
"The only way to make corporations socially responsible is through laws requiring them to be -- for example, giving workers a bigger voice in corporate decision making; requiring that corporations pay severance to communities they abandon, raising corporate taxes, busting up monopolies, and preventing dangerous products ( including faulty airplanes) from ever reaching the light of day." (Source: "Corporations Will Not Save Us: The Shame of Corporate Social Responsibility," The PeaceWorker, May 2020.)
#President Donald Trump's Energy Department rescinds a Bush-era ban on incandescent lightbulbs, which was to have taken effect on January 1. The move will generate 38 million tons of CO2 and cost U.S. consumers $14 billion a year.
#President Trump wants to change the National Environmental Policy Act so that fewer major infrastructure projects will require environmental review, and the climate consequences will no longer need to be considered. The Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program (ELP) will be part of a large litigation team challenging the rollback.
#Responding to a challenge from the ELP and others, the U.S Court of Appeals from the Ninth Circuit rules that the Trump administration cannot exclude chemicals from risk evaluation just because they are no longer being manufactured.
#The Federal Emergency Management Agency's 2019 National Preparedness Report, an annual review of threats to the nation, does not mention climate change or sea level rise.
#Peter Gaynor, President Trump's nominee to head FEMA, says that he doesn't know why the climate is changing.
#Under a new Trump administration interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the killing of migratory birds by oil spills, chemical contamination, and construction activity will no longer be punished or fined.
#The Department of Transportation announces $900 million in infrastructure grants, 72 percent of which will go to roads and bridges in states that voted for Trump. Funding for mass transit has declined to 8.5 percent of total grants, with pedestrian and bicycle improvements zeroed out.
II. Racial Profiling by the Numbers
91% - Share of those arrested in New York City for violating coronavirus guidelines who are black or Hispanic.
20x - Increased likelihood, from 2010 to 2012, for a black male teenager in the U.S. to be shot and killed by police, compared with white one, according to ProPublica.
2.6x - Increased likelihood for a black person in the U.S. to be arrested for marijuana possession, versus a white one.
1,356 - Racial profiling complaints filed with the Los Angeles Police Department from 2012 to 2014.
0 - Number of those complaints upheld by the LAPD.
54% - Share of people who thought burning down a Minneapolis police building was fully or partly justified. (Source: Daniel Fernandez, "By the Numbers," The Nation, June 29/July 6, 2020.)
III. Major Corporate Power
"Last August, the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of America's biggest corporations -- announced with great fanfare a 'fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders' and not just their shareholders. They said 'investing in employees, delivering value to customers, and supporting outside communities' is now at the forefront of their business goals -- not maximizing profits."
A record 76 percent of U.S. adults believe major corporations have too much power.
"The chairman of the Business Roundtable is Jamie Dimon, CEO of Wall Street's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase. Dimon lobbied Congress personally and intensively for the biggest corporate tax cut in history, and got the Business Roundtable to join him. JPMorgan raked in $3.7 billion from the tax cut. Dimon alone made $31 million in 2018."
"The only way to make corporations socially responsible is through laws requiring them to be -- for example, giving workers a bigger voice in corporate decision making; requiring that corporations pay severance to communities they abandon, raising corporate taxes, busting up monopolies, and preventing dangerous products ( including faulty airplanes) from ever reaching the light of day." (Source: "Corporations Will Not Save Us: The Shame of Corporate Social Responsibility," The PeaceWorker, May 2020.)
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