Advocates call for more rights for migrant workers amid deaths on the job

TEMP WORKERS ARE USED TO AVOID WORKERS RIGHTS
It’s dawn in Batangas, a city more than a hundred kilometres north of the Philippine capital city of Manila, when Eric Gutierrez recalls memories of his college best friend Efren Reyes.

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

Reyes was smart and unassuming, and they would play pool, eat fast food and hang out in the early 2000s. Gutierrez jokingly says without Reyes, he probably would’ve failed all of his courses.

The last time they spoke three years ago, Reyes had just arrived in Canada and told him about his new job working as a chicken catcher and his hope of making the country a permanent home for his family.

But on May 26, while on the job at a poultry farm in Wetaskiwin, Alta., Reyes was struck by a Bobcat machine and died on the spot.

“There are a lot of bad people in the world,” Gutierrez says in Filipino. “Why does it have to be him?”

Reyes was not the first migrant worker to suffer this fate.

According to Syed Hussan, executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, there hasn’t been a national assessment on the number of migrant workers who have died on the job in Canada. However, in the shadow of the pandemic, these deaths and the rights of migrants have found their way to public discussions.

Migrant Workers Alliance says four migrant workers have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began in Canada last year.

Hussan said in 2021 alone, there have been at least 10 migrant workers who died of various causes on farms. One of those, Mexican migrant Fausto Ramirez Plazas, died of COVID-19.

Ramirez Plazas arrived in Canada shortly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a mandatory 14-day quarantine for international arrivals. Five workers, including Ramirez Plazas, have died while in quarantine, but there has been no assessment of the causes of death for the other four migrants, Hussan said.

He said, based on families asking the organization for assistance and on cases it hears about, the number of migrant workers’ deaths in workplaces is severely underreported. Employers are more likely to violate these workers' rights due to their temporary status and fail to report accidents, he said.

In some cases, he said, migrant workers were sent back to their country of origin and ended up dying outside of Canada. In other instances, when migrant workers develop sickness, like cancer due to years of exposure to pesticides, they are sent back to their country and not invited back, he said.

“It’s very difficult to count all of the people who have died as a direct result of working in Canada,” Hussan said, but he believes the numbers are “quite astonishing.”

When a migrant worker gets injured, they are typically supposed to make a claim along with their employer to their province’s workers’ compensation board. However, Hussan said there’s little to no data when it comes to injured migrant workers or one that accounts for the number of deaths.

The federal government, on the other hand, only regulates a number of industries such as airline attendants, interprovincial truck drivers and federal employees.

Chris Ramsaroop is an organizer for the advocacy group Justice for Migrant Workers. He said in some cases when a worker dies on the job, workers’ compensation provides support for the family.

Depending on the number of years the person has been working in Canada, their family could also get survivor benefits from the Canadian pension plan.

“It’s also incumbent on the provincial Ministry of Labour to both prosecute and hold employers accountable,” Ramsaroop added.

In Reyes's case, his family will receive benefits from his employment insurance and from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration in which he’s an active member.

All Filipino temporary foreign workers need to register with OWWA before they work outside the Philippines to ensure coverage in case of their deaths. It also co-ordinates repatriation of remains.

Calgary’s Philippine Consulate General Zaldy Patron said his office, along with OWWA, is in touch with Reyes’ workplace, Elite Poultry Services, with regards to supporting Reyes’ family and in finding a funeral home to lay his body before repatriation to the Philippines.

In a statement, Elite Poultry Services says it’s still investigating the accident and co-operating fully with authorities.

“We are saddened by the loss of one of our team members,” it reads. “Our sympathies and condolences go out to the family and those involved in the incident.”

Hussan says there needs to be a greater push to improve the lives of migrant workers in Canada.

“We have a federal government who are well aware of what the crisis is and what the solutions are,” Hussan said. “Most people will tell you not having permanent residency is the reason people don't have full rights.”

“The question we need to ask is,” Hussan added, “what is politically stopping the decision-makers from doing the right thing?”

When asked who takes responsibility for migrant workers’ deaths in Canada, he answered, “Nobody takes responsibility. That’s the problem.”

“That’s why our people keep dying, and all you get are platitudes.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada as well as Employment and Social Development Canada did not respond in time for publication to requests for comment on the federal government's role when a migrant worker is injured or dies on the job.

Gutierrez recalls Reyes telling him how tough his job as a chicken catcher was. When grabbing chickens for processing, he would hold five of them in his right hand and four in the left.

“He said he felt three times more exhausted in his new job compared to the last one,” Gutierrez remembers. “But he said it was all worth it for his family.”

He wants Reyes to be remembered as a kind friend who had big dreams not just for himself but for his family.

Mostly, his family.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 13, 2021.

Arvin Joaquin, The Canadian Press

Companies like Chipotle are boosting prices, but CEOs multimillion dollar pay packages aren't getting any smaller

mmeisenzahl@businessinsider.com (Mary Meisenzahl) 

© Provided by Business Insider Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Chipotle recently raised prices about 4% across the board.

The company says price increases are due to increased employee wages.

CEO Brian Niccol made $38 million in 2020.

Chipotle raised prices across the menu by about 4% in June, a move the company says was prompted by increased wages for workers.

The average Chipotle meal will cost 30 to 40 cents more than it did before, and a spokesperson told Insider that the price hike will compensate for the recent wage increases for workers. In April, the fast casual chain said it would raise average hourly wages to $15 per hour by the end of June, an increase of $2 over the $13 an hour average pay.

While Chipotle attributes raising menu prices to the growing price of labor, some analysts point to high CEO compensation as another factor. In 2020 CEO Brian Niccol took home $38 million, $1.24 million of which was his base salary. The rest was made up of other incentives and an annual bonus.

"Brian Niccol 's annual compensation package is based on a competitive analysis of CEO pay levels within our peer group and is designed to pay for performance," a Chipotle spokesperson told Newsweek when the pay report was released.

Niccol 's compensation was 2,898 times more than the median Chipotle worker's $13,127 salary in 2020, based on an employee working 25 hours a week in Illinois. Companies are required to disclose the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of a median employee. At Chipotle, that ratio is 1,129 to one. Across the board, the pay ratio of CEOs to workers averaged 830 to 1 in 2020, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.

Higher labor costs do eventually lead to higher prices for customers, but experts say the difference isn't as stark as some might expect. A study from California State University San Bernardino found that for a minimum wage increase of 10%, food prices increase by just 0.36%.

According to Chipotle's proxy statement, executive compensation is aimed at maintaining "a level where we can successfully recruit and retain industry leading talent critical to shaping and executing our business strategy and creating long-term value for our shareholders."

Video: Why Chipotle raising prices may be a good thing for its stock (Yahoo! Finance)

"For 2020, Brian's compensation includes the value of a one-time modification that is not reflective of his ongoing pay package," a Chipotle spokesperson told Newsweek. Niccol made $33.5 million in 2019, an increase of about 13%.

Read more: Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol answers 9 questions about the chain's future including the fight for delivery profits, menu innovation, and franchising

In 2020, Chipotle's revenue grew 7.1% to $6 billion, with much of the growth attributed to an explosion in digital sales. In a year that was disastrous for many restaurants, Chipotle opened 161 new locations, expanded its Chipotlane drive-thru footprint, and stock prices increased 65.7%.

The distance between worker and CEO pay grew wider than ever during the pandemic of the past year, The New York Times reported. The largest CEO compensation packages are for tech company executives. Chipotle does stand out among fast food and fast casual restaurant compensation, though. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson took home $14.7 million. McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski received $10.8 million.

Critics of sky-high CEO pay, like the Economic Policy Institute, say the enormous compensation packages are "a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with."

"This escalation of CEO compensation, and of executive compensation more generally, has fueled the growth of top 1.0% and top 0.1% incomes, leaving less of the fruits of economic growth for ordinary workers, " EPI said in a report released last year.

Labor costs might have increased for restaurants over the last year, but so did the price of ingredients. Staple Chipotle items, like corn and avocados, grew more expensive this year as demand rose and shipping delays drove prices further up.

"Ingredient costs, there's talk about it. We'll see where that leads," Chipotle CFO Jack Hartung said at the Baird Global Consumer, Technology & Services Conference. The company says there are no plans to further increase prices right now.

#15PERHOURNAFTAWAGE

There's a simple solution for the labor shortage: raising the minimum wage, a former Obama economist says

insider@insider.com (Juliana Kaplan,Madison Hoff) 

 An employee of McDonald's protests outside a branch restaurant for a raise in their minimum wage to $15 an hour, in Fort Lauderdale on May 19, 2021. Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

The economy is reopening but millions are still jobless as openings sit at record highs.

In response to this 'labor shortage,' 25 GOP-led states are ending federal unemployment benefits early.

Ex-Obama administration economist Heidi Shierholz says the minimum wage should go up instead.

Everywhere you look in the economy, there seems to be a shortage. The important things missing from shelves can be explained by factors like backed-up supply chains and a shipping crisis.

But another shortage that's emerged - with increasing prominence as America's recovery continues its long and winding path - is labor. Millions of workers are still out of work, even though businesses are reopening and want to hire.

One solution has to do with wages, and simply whether they're enough to get people to do certain jobs after a pandemic. May's jobs report showed wages on the rise for leisure and hospitality workers, but also showed workers quitting at the fastest rate documented in 20 years. While they saw significant pay jumps - by 7.2% from January to May - that only brought average hourly earnings up to $15.68.

"The wage growth that we've seen, say in leisure and hospitality, over the recent months, it's so little more than just getting those wages in that industry back to where they would have been if COVID hadn't happened," Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told Insider. She said talk that such workers are getting more leverage may be "overstated," and it probably won't be sustained or permanent.

GOP governors in 25 states have decided that it's too much leverage anyway, and that federal unemployment benefits in place for much of the pandemic have run their course. They've moved to end them months before their September expiration in President Joe Biden's stimulus. It's a decision that JPMorgan said is "tied to politics, not economics," noting that many of these states didn't have more job openings than jobless people.

Shierholz, a veteran of the Obama administration as chief economist at the Department of Labor, said broad reform is necessary in the labor market, and raising the minimum wage is a key aspect. That could both bring workers back and let higher wages stick, even after enhanced unemployment benefits taper off in September.

"That's smart, and it's good economics," Shierholz said. She also said that things like passing the PRO Act - legislation that could both strengthen unions and offer greater protections to nonunionized workers - would aid recovery.

Shierholz previously told Insider that prematurely ending unemployment benefits could stifle the recovery, especially since workers receiving those benefits are putting that money back into the economy. She said that if the concern is higher benefits keeping workers from work, ending benefits may not be the best route.

"You could quote unquote 'deal with that' by cutting off unemployment insurance benefits, which has all these terrible implications" - like stifling recovery and leave millions without income - "or you could do something like raise the minimum wage," she said

Boosting wages to $15 may be helping with hiring and retention

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the businesses that did raise wages to $15 an hour succeeded in luring in new workers and boosting morale while cutting turnover. The Washington Post's Eli Rosenberg spoke with several business owners who had done just that. Progressives have long wanted to raise the federal minimum wage to exactly that $15-per-hour number.

At the 5th Street Group - which owns several restaurants in Charlotte and Charleston - raising starting wages to $15 an hour, and enacting new tipping measures for staffers who aren't normally tipped, helped the group go from being 50% to 60% staffed to nearly fully staffed in a matter of three weeks, according to the Post.

However, the likelihood of a $15 minimum wage being enacted anytime soon is low. Progressives led by Sen. Bernie Sanders pushed for its inclusion in President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan, but the measure ultimately didn't survive under reconciliation rules. Eight Democrats voted against it, signaling even party-line support was not quite there. Talks on what, exactly, a minimum wage hike should be have also stalled recently.

The federal minimum wage is still $7.25. Although the above map shows that many states have opted to increase the minimum beyond that level, several remain at the federal rate.

Rhode Island recently passed a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2025, becoming the ninth state to pass a $15 minimum wage.

"Take a look at nationally - right now, states that are taking away the unemployment benefit of $300," Gov. Dan McKee said in a press conference after signing the minimum wage bill into law. "Those states are at $7.25 cents an hour. So Rhode Island is a leader on this."

But while raising the minimum wage might be key to an equitable recovery, according to Shierholz, it doesn't look like the proposition is going anywhere anytime soon - even if it could help solve the labor shortage that's holding back a full economic recovery.

STATE MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M
Toshiba's chairman says wants to stay on, says new directors needed
By Makiko Yamazaki 

REUTERS

 Reuters/KIM KYUNG-HOON FILE PHOTO: The logo of Toshiba Corp. is seen at the company's facility in Kawasaki,

TOKYO (Reuters) -Toshiba Corp's chairman of the board on Monday pushed back against investor calls to resign, saying he wanted to help right the crisis-hit Japanese conglomerate and would bring in new directors.

Toshiba has come under fierce scrutiny after an independent investigation last week revealed management colluded with Japan's powerful trade ministry to block foreign investors from gaining board influence, in what one leading shareholder has called the world's worst corporate scandal in a decade.

In response to the investigation, the once-storied conglomerate said over the weekend it would no longer be putting forward the names of two directors for re-election and that two other executives would also resign.

Those changes were not enough for proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services Inc (ISS) which on Monday reiterated that Board Chairman Osamu Nagayama should step down - a call that has been echoed by other investors.

At a news conference, Nagayama apologised and said there were lapses in governance, but the former pharma executive said he wanted to stay on and help reconstruct management at Toshiba.

The company needs directors with a "global perspective" and a background managing similar firms, he said, adding Toshiba would call an extraordinary general meeting and speed up plans for a strategic review.

Toshiba said on Sunday the chair of its audit committee, Junji Ota, and another committee member, Takashi Yamauchi, will retire as directors. The audit committee has come under criticism from investors for failing to take action even after its members became aware of the collusion against shareholders.

The two other company executives who will depart allegedly reached out to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) seeking support in Toshiba's battle against foreign shareholders over board nominees ahead of an annual general meeting last July, according to the investigators' report.

Though oft-battered by scandal, as a manufacturer of nuclear reactors and defence equipment Toshiba remains hugely important to the Japanese government. Japan's trade minister on Friday denied his officials directed an adviser to lean on Toshiba's foreign shareholders.

THE BLAME GAME

The shareholder-commissioned investigation has marked an explosive turn in a long battle between the company's management and foreign shareholders and has renewed concern about governance in the world's third-largest economy and its openness to foreign investors.

Toshiba's second-largest shareholder, 3D Investment Partners - one of the investors that the investigators' report said was targeted by METI - on Sunday also called for the resignation of Nagayama, Ota, Yamauchi as well as another audit committee member, Nobuyuki Kobayashi.

Nagayama blamed Toshiba's former CEO, Nobuaki Kurumatani, for helping pitch the company into crisis.

"There was a somewhat confrontational stance towards shareholders brewing from some time ago," Nagayama said, when asked about the responsibility of the former chief executive.

"That's an underlying cause in one sense for the current state of affairs."

Nagayama on Monday said some of the information detailed in the investigators' report had been previously been mentioned in an earlier internal Toshiba report - an acknowledgement that provoked ire from some investors.

"It rings hollow for Chairman Nagayama...to try and shift the blame to just Kurumatani alone. If anyone should resign to take responsibility over the governance failures in monitoring management, it should be him," said an investor in Toshiba declining to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Since the push by activist shareholders this year for greater accountability, Toshiba has faced and dismissed a $20 billion bid from CVC Capital. But leading shareholders have called on it to explicitly seek offers from potential suitors.

Nagayama said the company has not received offers from private equity funds since CVC but a planned strategic review committee would be looking at various options including taking Toshiba private.

He added that he wanted to include two of the company's foreign directors in the four- or five-member committee. Toshiba currently has four foreign directors among its 11-member board.

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

State monopoly capitalism - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism

The theory of state monopoly capitalism (also referred as stamocap) was initially a Marxist thesis popularised after World War II. Lenin had claimed in 1916 that World War I had transformed laissez-faire capitalism into monopoly capitalism, but he did not publish any extensive theory about the topic. The term refers to an environment where the state intervenes in the economy to protect larger mon…

Cambodia evicts floating homes despite villagers' protests

Story by Reuters 

Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh has started evicting its famous "floating villages" on the banks of the Tonle Sap River, despite the objections of longtime residents who say they have nowhere else to go.

 Cindy Liu/Reuters Residents demolish floating houses on the Tonle Sap river after being ordered to leave by local authorities in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on June 12.

For generations, the floating wooden houseboats of Phnom Penh have been both livelihood and way of life for mostly ethnic Vietnamese families, home to fish farming and interconnected by warrens of hand-built bridges interspersed with sunken poles and small boats.

"Our ancestors have always been here," said Kith Dong, 54, as he and relatives dismantled his home, consisting of a timber platform with a sloped tin roof off the shore of Phnom Penh's Prek Pnov district.

He said the city order did not give his family enough time to relocate.

"If they extended by a few more months, we would have time to build a home," he said.

The Phnom Penh Municipality says the communities amount to floating slums that are eyesores and health hazards, with trash bags and raw sewage floating alongside the houseboats.

Si Vutha, head of Prek Pnov district's land management office, oversaw the dismantling on Friday.

"There are 316 homes that we have to evict today. This really affects the beauty of the city, the environment. You sit on a boat, it smells very bad," Si Vutha told Reuters.

Si Vutha said the evictions are intended to clean up the capital ahead of Phnom Penh's hosting of the 2023 Southeast Asian Games, as the newly built stadium is only a few kilometers away.

"There are hundreds of viruses here, foreign tourists come and see our country like this?" he said.

But residents say the crackdown came too soon and questioned why they needed to move with the Games still more than a year away.

Si Vutha did not specify why the cleanup had to come now, and Phnom Penh city spokesperson Met Meas Pheakdey could not be reached for comment by Reuters on Saturday.

Dang Van Chou, 57, moved to Cambodia more than 20 years ago from neighboring Vietnam.

His family makes a living farming fish in enclosures off their dwelling, but this year's fish are too small to sell to raise money for a move, he said.

"I don't know where to go," he said. "I don't have any land."

 Heng Sinith/AP Local authorities order villagers to dismantle their floating houses along the Tonle Sap river bank, near the village of Prek Pnov in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on June 12.

American Millennials are about to get screwed yet again if Biden doesn't cancel student-loan debt

hhoffower@businessinsider.com (Hillary Hoffower) JUNE 13,2021

 Provided by Business Insider If Biden doesn't cancel student debt, millennials are in store for another economic challenge. TIMOTHY A. CLARY/Getty Images

Federal student-loan debt payments are set to resume this fall, coupled with higher interest rates.
Biden has yet to fulfill his campaign promise to cancel $10,000 in student debt per person.

If he doesn't, it would be just another way millennials get economically screwed.

Millions of Americans have enjoyed a reprieve from the squeeze of student debt during the pandemic. But, come fall, the student-debt crisis could pick up where it left off - or snowball into an even bigger problem.

The pause on student-loan payments and zero interest accrual that have been in place since March 2020 will lift at the end of September. When it does, borrowers will be paying 1% more in interest than they did in 2019. Although rates are still relatively low compared to previous years, Forbes reported that the new interest rates will cost borrowers as much as an additional $590 per $10,000 borrowed on a 10-year repayment term.

The impending lift on the payment pause, coupled with rising interest rates, doesn't bode well for millions of borrowers, who have been able to stay financially afloat during the pandemic without the burden of paying off their student-loan debt. That's especially true for millennials, for which student-loan debt has been one of many balls in a long-time juggling act of financial challenges.

Many have been hoping they wouldn't have any student-loan debt at all come fall - or at least, a much lighter load.

Joe Biden campaigned on supporting $10,000 in student debt cancelation per person, but since becoming president, he's given no clear timeline for doing so. He hasn't included his campaign promise in his stimulus plan, infrastructure plan, or his budget, and has resisted calls from Democratic lawmakers to cancel up to $50,000 per person using his executive powers. While he released a regulatory agenda on Friday that plans to improve student-loan forgiveness programs by 2022, it's not the immediate relief Democrats are looking for, and its details are vague.

Millennials have had bad economic luck. They've ventured through one financial woe after another since the oldest of them graduated into the dismal job market of the 2008 financial crisis. A dozen years later, many are still grappling with the lingering effects of The Great Recession, struggling to build wealth while trying to afford soaring living costs for things like housing and healthcare. The pandemic threw yet another wrench into their plans by giving them their second recession and second housing crisis before the age of 40.

And the generation has dealt with all of this while shouldering the lion's share of student-loan debt. If Biden continues not to act on debt relief, the student-loan crisis has the potential to intensify, adding to the pile of millennial economic challenges.
Student debt has left a stain on millennials' adulthood

Forty-three million borrowers currently share the $1.7 trillion of national student-loan debt. As of 2019, the 15.1 million borrowers ages 25 to 34 - a large chunk of the millennial population - owed an average of $33,000.

The burden is so great that it's prevented many millennials from achieving life milestones like buying a house, having kids, or moving to their dream city.

"I still haven't been able to save enough to put a down payment on a house and commit to another 30-year loan," Daniela Capparelli, who graduated with $150,000 debt, told Insider in the beginning of 2020, when she was 35. "I often feel like I already have a mortgage without the house."

  Student debt has been one of millennials' many economic woes. 

MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Images

Read more: Millennials are finally catching up in earnings and homeownership, but student debt is keeping the generational wealth gap as vast as ever

Student loans are also keeping the generational wealth gap as vast as ever. If student loans didn't exist, millennials ages 28 to 38 would have a 76% net wealth-to-income ratio, higher than their current 56% wealth-to-income ratio, per a report by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

For the millennials who have found themselves at the bottom of the intragenerational millennial wealth gap that the pandemic has exacerbated, student debt is especially painful. This group was more likely to already have lower earnings pre-pandemic, and to burn through savings when hit by unemployment or pay cuts.

The pause in payments has been a temporary solution to the nation's debt burden. Borrowers have saved $2,000 on average in interest during this time, per a report by travel research group Upgraded Points which also noted, "while those couple thousand dollars could have been imperative in keeping borrowers in the black during pandemic-related hardships, these borrowers are still far from climbing out of the holes they dug in college."

When the pause lifts, it has the potential to leave struggling millennials feeling more slammed with student debt than before, after a year spent falling further financially behind on other areas.

Video: Will President Biden cancel student loan debt? (NBC News)

Biden has canceled billions of student loans that are only 0.2% of the total

Now, Biden has taken some steps toward student-loan debt assistance. He extended the payment pause, which was set to end in January, through September 30. And, through the Department of Education, he cleared up billions of dollars in debt in just a few months for borrowers defrauded by for-profit schools and borrowers with disabilities.

But, as Insider's Ayelet Sheffey reported, this still left trillions of outstanding debt. Alan Collinge, the founder of Student Loan Justice, told her that compared with the scale of the student-debt crisis, canceling debt for defrauded borrowers and borrowers with disabilities is "massively unimpressive."

"We're in a pandemic, and we've lost tens of millions of jobs," he said. "The people who are hurt the worst tend to be the people who have student-loan debt."

© Provided by Business Insider Millions of borrowers are waiting for Biden to fulfill his campaign promise of cancelling $10,000 in student debt per borrower.

ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

Read more: The case for cancelling student debt isn't political - it's practical. Here are the benefits of erasing $1.6 trillion, no strings attached.

So far, $2.3 billion in student debt has been cancelled - only 0.2% of student loans swimming through the system.

In February, he effectively rejected a plan put forward by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer to wipe out $50,000 in student-loan debt per borrower.

"I will not make that happen," he had said to a CNN town-hall audience, adding that he believed loan forgiveness depends on whether borrowers attended a private or public college. "I'm prepared to write off $10,000 in debt, but not 50. I don't think I have the authority to do it."

Both Democrats and cities have urged Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower, arguing that it would provide immediate relief to borrowers if Biden used his executive authority to do so. But there's a discrepancy among Biden and lawmakers on whether he can actually use his executive powers to cancel debt.

He told The Washington Post that it is "arguable" the president can use executive powers to cancel student debt, and he would be unlikely to do so. That means the status of the cancelation of a minimum of $10,000 of debt remains in Congress' hands.
Student-loan forgiveness would be a 'lifeline' for millennials

Student-loan relief would benefit millions.

A Department of Education (DOE) analysis obtained by Yahoo Finance found that $50,000 in student-loan forgiveness per person would erase the entire debt for 84% of borrowers in the US with federal loans, while $10,000 in forgiveness would erase the entire debt for 35% of these borrowers.

That includes everyone from Gen Z to those over the age of 50. But millennials, facing one economic conundrum after another, have adopted new social norms to suit the times, hitting milestones like marriage and homeownership later than their parents, if they happen at all. The pandemic has created a whole new slew of crises for them that have exacerbated existing ones, student debt chief among them.

 Student-debt forgiveness would help narrow the generational wealth gap. 

Andrew Burton/Reuters

Read more: College is more expensive than it's ever been, and the 5 reasons why suggest it's only going to get worse

Student-loan forgiveness was a top priority for voters in the election. If Biden doesn't fulfill his campaign promise to relieve $10,000 in student debt, he'd be leaving the generation, many of whom were banking on him to absolve at least a portion of their biggest burdens, screwed yet again.

"We need some help, and that forgiveness, for a lot of us, would just be a lifeline," Alexander Cockerham, 38, who took out $42,000 in federal in private loans to attend school, previously told Insider.

But the resumption of student loan payments is drawing near, with little to no action in sight. In early April, Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, told Politico that the White House was "looking into" its legal authority to cancel $50,000 per person. Shortly afterward, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said that option wasn't being ruled out.

An Education Dept. spokesperson told Insider that the agency remains "committed to delivering" targeted relief to borrowers and helping all of them manage repayment, and continues to closely review data related to return to repayment. It is also working with the Department of Justice and White House "as quickly as possible" to review all student debt cancellation options. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment).

While cancellation doesn't exactly need to happen before the pause lifts, it would be even more beneficial to borrowers if it did, helping them lower the amount they would pay interest on or even preventing them from ever having to pay again altogether. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in May he has not ruled out further extending the pause, but, again, no action has been taken yet to do so.

If Biden fails to cancel student debt, he's sacrificing opportunities to help narrow the racial wealth gap, assist low-income borrowers, and boost the economy. For millennials, specifically, it would just be the latest way they can't catch a break.

Read the original article on Business Insider

US documents solve mystery of war criminal Tojo's remains

TOKYO (AP) — Until recently, the location of executed wartime Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo's remains was one of World War II's biggest mysteries in the nation he once led.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Now, a Japanese university professor has revealed declassified U.S. military documents that appear to hold the answer.

The documents show the cremated ashes of Tojo, one of the masterminds of the Pearl Harbor attack, were scattered from a U.S. Army aircraft over the Pacific Ocean about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city, south of Tokyo.

It was a tension-filled, highly secretive mission, with American officials apparently taking extreme steps meant to keep Tojo's remains, and those of six others executed with him, away from ultra-nationalists looking to glorify them as martyrs. The seven were hanged for war crimes just before Christmas in 1948, three years after Japan’s defeat.

The discovery brings partial closure to a painful chapter of Japanese history that still plays out today, as conservative Japanese politicians attempt to whitewash history, leading to friction with wartime victims, especially China and South Korea.

After years spent verifying and checking details and evaluating the significance of what he'd found, Nihon University Professor Hiroaki Takazawa publicly released the clues to the remains' location last week. He came across the declassified documents in 2018 at the U.S. National Archives in Washington. It’s believed to be the first time official documents showing the handling of the seven war criminals’ remains were made public, according to Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies and the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records.

Hidetoshi Tojo, the leader's great-grandson, told The Associated Press that the absence of the remains has long been a humiliation for the bereaved families, but he's relieved the information has come to light.

“If his remains were at least scattered in Japanese territorial waters ... I think he was still somewhat fortunate,” Tojo said. “I want to invite my friends and lay flowers to pay tribute to him" if further details about the remains' location becomes available.

Hideki Tojo, prime minister during much of World War II, is a complicated figure, revered by some conservatives as a patriot but loathed by many in the West for prolonging the war, which ended only after the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

About a month after Aug. 15, 1945, when then-Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s defeat to a stunned nation, Tojo shot himself in a failed suicide attempt as he was about to be arrested at his modest Tokyo home.

Takazawa, the Nihon University professor specializing in war tribunal issues, found the documents during research at the U.S. archives into other war crimes trials. The documents, he said, are valuable because they officially detail previously little-known facts about what happened and provide a rough location of where the ashes were scattered.

He plans to continue research into other executions. More than 4,000 people were convicted of war crimes in other international tribunals, and about 920 of them were executed.

Tojo and the six others who were hanged were among 28 Japanese wartime leaders tried for war crimes at the 1946-1948 International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Twenty-five were convicted, including 16 sentenced to life in prison, with two getting shorter prison terms. Two others died while on trial and one case was dropped.

In one of the newly revealed documents — dated Dec. 23, 1948 and carrying a “secret” stamp — U.S. Army Maj. Luther Frierson wrote: "I certify that I received the remains, supervised cremation, and personally scattered the ashes of the following executed war criminals at sea from an Eighth Army liaison plane."

The entire operation was tense, with U.S. officials extremely careful about not leaving a single speck of ashes behind, apparently to prevent them from being stolen by admiring ultra-nationalists, Takazawa said.

“In addition to their attempt to prevent the remains from being glorified, I think the U.S. military was adamant about not letting the remains return to Japanese territory ... as an ultimate humiliation," Takazawa said.

The documents state that when the cremation was completed, the ovens were "cleared of the remains in their entirety.”

“Special precaution was taken to preclude overlooking even the smallest particles of remains,” Frierson wrote.

Here's how the operation went.

At 2:10 a.m. on Dec. 23, 1948, caskets carrying the bodies of Tojo and the six others were loaded on a 2.5-ton truck and taken out of the prison after fingerprinting for verification, Frierson wrote in a Jan. 4, 1949 document.

About an hour and a half later, the motorcade guarded by truckloads of armed soldiers to protect the bodies arrived at a U.S. military graves registration platoon in Yokohama for a final check.

The truck left the area at 7:25 a.m. and arrived at a Yokohama crematorium 30 minutes later. The caskets were unloaded from the truck and placed directly “in the ovens” in 10 minutes, while soldiers guarded the area.

The remains were then transported under guard to a nearby airstrip and loaded onto a plane that Frierson boarded. “We proceeded to a point approximately 30 miles over the Pacific Ocean east of Yokohama where I personally scattered the cremated remains over a wide area.”

Today, even without the ashes, bereaved families and conservative Japanese lawmakers such as former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe regularly pay tribute at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where the executed war criminals are enshrined with 2.5 million war dead considered “sacred spirits” in the Shinto religion. No remains are enshrined at Yasukuni.

After the seven executed war criminals were enshrined there in 1978, Yasukuni has become a flashpoint between Japan and its neighbors China and South Korea, who see the enshrinement as proof of Japan’s lack of remorse over its wartime aggression. Yasukuni also enshrines five other convicted wartime leaders and hundreds of other war criminals.

Hidetoshi Tojo said his great-grandfather was consistently made a taboo in postwar Japan, never glorified.

“Everything about my great-grandfather was sealed, including his speeches. Taking that into consideration, I think not preserving the remains was part of the occupation policy,” he said. “I hope to see further revelations about the unknown facts of the past.”

Mari Yamaguchi, The Associated Press

OBJECTIVE NON-UCP STUDY
University of Alberta study links increased supervised consumption site visits to decreased fentanyl overdose deaths

Anna Junker 

EDMONTON JOURNAL

 12 hrs ago

A new study out of the University of Alberta shows a correlation between increased visits to supervised consumption sites and decreased fentanyl overdose deaths.

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© Provided by Edmonton Journal Syringes available for clients at the supervised drug consumption site at Boyle Street Community Services.

The study, published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry , used publicly available data from opioid-response reports between 2017 and 2020 published by the Government of Alberta along with the number of visits to supervised consumption sites.

Researchers found a “statistically significant” link between the two data sets, suggesting increased visits to supervised consumption sites play a role in fewer overdose deaths.

Lead researcher Tyler Marshall said fentanyl-related overdose deaths dropped to 103 by Q4 2019 from 178 at Q4 2017 while at the same time, supervised consumption site visits were increasing. But as the pandemic hit at the beginning of 2020, overdose deaths doubled while supervised consumption site visits decreased by 64 per cent.


“From our data, they’re clearly playing some type of role. We know that when people use alone, that is a serious risk of overdose. You can’t administer Naloxone on yourself,” Marshall said.

“So if somebody is there and overdoses, or if people are injecting drugs like methamphetamine and opioids (and) someone’s there, the probability of dying is substantially less … so it makes sense, the more people that use the service, you would expect fewer deaths.”

The research led by Marshall, a doctoral candidate, and U of A psychiatry professor Andrew Greenshaw, also shows that as visits to safe consumption sites decrease due to the COVID-19 pandemic, fentanyl-related overdose deaths increased by 118.4 per cent.

The study comes at a time when Alberta is facing an overdose crisis. Between January and March of this year, 346 Albertans died of an accidental opioid overdose, and of those, 109 were in Edmonton, the latest provincial data shows.

In late May, three men died together of suspected overdoses in a central Edmonton park.

Alberta Health Services also had to issue a public alert after paramedics responded to 55 opioid-related calls over two days in the Edmonton Zone.

There’s a strong indication that more people are using substances alone during the pandemic, which is a “huge risk factor,” but more data is needed to confirm it, Marshall said.

Marshall, who has a master’s degree in public health, has been interested in drug policy work and harm reduction for a while. He has also done volunteer work at a harm reduction centre in Red Deer.

He noted the public might not be aware that safe consumption sites also offer services other than a safe place to use drugs.

“I saw wound care and Hepatitis-C testing, education around Naloxone, drug abuse education, referral to several different other health and social services, income support. And then there’s a wide variety of staffing, too — there are paramedics, nurses, LPNs, peer support workers.”

While the study’s findings are only a correlation, more overdose data continues to be published. Marshall said he hopes this study prompts more research into safe consumption sites.

“We hope it’s just kind of a foot in the door for balanced research on the topic,” he said. “Hopefully, people will see it and take a similar approach.”

ajunker@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/JunkerAnna

South Dakota rocked again as a wind turbine plant shuts


John F. Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, said only months ago that those losing fossil fuel jobs in coal and hydraulic fracturing will find they have a better choice in jobs in either the solar industry or as wind turbine technicians.

THE ABOVE IS THE EDITORIAL OPINION OF THE RIGHT WING WRITER

© Provided by Washington Examiner

That was then. Now, a wind blade manufacturing plant located in Aberdeen, South Dakota has announced it is shutting its doors permanently in less than two months.

The disappearance of Molded Fiber Glass will displace over three hundred workers and their families. It marks another major loss of energy jobs in the state following President Joe Biden's halting of the Keystone Pipeline on the first day of his administration.

MFG said in a news release that the closure will happen because of changing market conditions, foreign competition, and proposed revisions to tax policies affecting the wind energy industry in the United States.

Since 2007, the Aberdeen plant has been producing wind turbine blades. The plant will remain in operation for the next two months until it has have fulfilled existing orders.

A family member of one of the workers said they were informed of the closure last Monday. Employees was completely taken off guard by the announcement. She was also perplexed by it. “They should be swimming in orders right now," she said.

THEY HAVE USED THIS TACTIC BEFORE FOR TAX BREAKS

In 2017 MFG threatened to kill 400 jobs at the plant and shut down because of the “proposed revisions to tax policies.” At that time, Republican U.S. Sen. John Thune stopped the closure by pushing revisions of the 2017 tax bill to be more favorable to the industry.

Thune, in an emailed statement, said that it is troubling that at a time when wind energy is seeing record investment that this growth is not translating to American jobs. It’s especially hard for those working these good-paying jobs in Aberdeen to face uncertainty yet again. Thune criticized Biden's statement from his address to Congress — "There’s no reason, Biden said, "the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing.” But Beijing is getting all the business.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance recent ranking of global wind turbine manufacturers last year showed that 7 of the top 10 wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese companies. General Electric, an American company, is first, but Goldwind of China is in second place. The study also found more than half of the world’s newly installed wind power capacity was built in China in 2020.

Last month, Thune proposed an amendment to the Democrats’ expansive energy tax credit bill, requiring the administration to certify that U.S. manufacturers would not be undercut by foreign suppliers using low-cost labor and creating higher emissions. MFG, in closing its 14-year-old plant, cited precisely these two adverse factors as its reasons.

One day after the announcement, TC Energy, the Canadian pipeline company that sought to build the Keystone XL pipeline, announced that it was terminating the project, a 1,700-mile pipeline intended to carry 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the Gulf Coast, passing through five states, including South Dakota.

Although the wind and pipeline industries are different sides of the climate change coin, both were considered economic lifelines to small-town South Dakota. Both promised economic stability and a revenue stream that would keep many towns hopping until tourism hit its stride once again.

“We are a smallish community of 28,000 people, so 300 jobs is a big deal,” said the family member of a worker. “Granted, two facilities in town, 3M and Banner Engineering, have recently doubled capacity, so most of the hourly employees should be absorbed by that,” she said. "However, some of these people have been with the company since 2008. How do you start over after 13 years?”

It is a question that has been asked by many Americans in manufacturing jobs, who have had to compete with cheaper overseas products for generations. And it is a question many workers in the energy industry may be asking soon.

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Original Author: Salena Zito

Original Location: WASHINGTON EXAMINER

French authorities race to clean up oil spill drifting to Corsica's coast

By Martin Goillandeau, CNN 

French authorities were racing to clean up an oil spill approaching the island of Corsica on Saturday, launching an "anti-pollution plan" to prevent the slick from reaching sunbathers on the coast.

© Florian Roussard/AFP/Getty Images This handout picture, taken and released on June 12 by the French Air Force, shows an oil spill approaching eastern Corsica which appears to have leaked from a ship.

The spill was spotted on Friday by the French navy during an exercise carried out from the Solenzara air base in Ventiseri, Corsica, according to maritime officials.

By Saturday morning, officials had detected two oil slicks over 19 nautical miles (35 kilometers), which were drifting about 5 nautical miles from Corsica's east coast, between Aléria and Solenzara, France's Mediterranean Maritime Prefecture said in a statement.

Pollution experts concluded the spill was heavy-grade oil and likely the result of a "degassing," which involves the release of any gases left in fuel tanks or crude oil tanks after they've been emptied.

"The size and nature of the products involved do not allow for natural dilution and require specific anti-pollution units and equipment," the prefecture said, adding that "the pollution (is) currently drifting towards the coast."

"Some materials are visible up to 800 meters from the coast," Christine Ribbe, a prefecture spokeswoman told French radio station France Inter on Saturday morning. "We fear that some of this pollution will reach the Corsican coast today," she added.

France's environment minister Barbara Pompili said she would visit the site on Saturday with maritime minister Annick Girardin.

Pompili said France's maritime police had opened an investigation into the spill. "Thank you to the professionals mobilized to fight against this environmental scourge," Pompili said on Twitter.

Authorities in the Haute-Corse department, the northern part of Corsica, have blocked access to the beaches in the towns of Aleria until Ventiseri and told residents "not to touch collect any oil clumps they find on beaches." Fishing was also prohibited in the same areas on Friday night.