6 Children Reportedly Killed During US Raid in Syria
President Joe Biden said the U.S. Special Forces operation killed ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.

First responders carry the body of a child who was killed in a U.S. raid in northwest Syria on February 3, 2022. 

(Photo: Anas Alkharboutli/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

COMMON DREAMS

February 3, 2022

United States Special Forces carried out a major raid in northwest Syria in the early hours of Thursday morning that reportedly resulted in the killing of more than a dozen people—including six children and four women.

In a statement hours after the operation, U.S. President Joe Biden said that "thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi—the leader of ISIS."

"All Americans have returned safely from the operation. I will deliver remarks to the American people later this morning. May God protect our troops," added the president, who did not mention the reports of civilian deaths.

Addressing the nation, Biden claimed that the ISIS leader detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and "taking several members of his family with him."



In a brief statement earlier in the morning, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby had confirmed that U.S. forces "conducted a counterterrorism mission" inside Syria but did not specify the target of the raid.

Kirby, who called the operation "successful," also made no mention of the reported civilian deaths, saying only that "there were no U.S. casualties." The Pentagon is notorious for underreporting or covering up civilian casualties in U.S.-led military actions.

Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams in an email that the notion that "the killing of 13 civilians in a supposedly counter-terror operation—including six children and four women—is somehow a 'success' flies in the face of the Biden administration's recent claim that it is making protection of civilians a new high priority in its military strategy."

"The so-called 'global war on terror' has, from its origins, been characterized by attacks by U.S. Special Forces, by airstrikes, by armed drones, and more, that routinely kill far more civilians than the targets identified on the 'kill lists' prepared by presidents and top White House officials," she continued. "The routine recitation of 'there is no military solution to terrorism' has always been an anodyne rhetorical ploy, never an actual guide to what actions might actually work to change the conditions that give rise to terrorism."

Bennis went on to note that the "death of founder and former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during a 2019 U.S. helicopter raid (which also led to civilian deaths) was quickly followed by the appointment of a new leader."

"The killing of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi will likely see the same result," she warned, "along with the likelihood of new recruits for ISIS emerging from the families of those other civilians killed and injured in the attack."

Local residents, first responders, and journalists who witnessed the U.S. operation Thursday said it included helicopters and F-16 warplanes, which bombed and shelled the area in northwest Syria ahead of the airdrop raid.


Graphic photos and witness accounts from the scene indicated significant carnage, with blood covering the floors and walls of a building that appeared to be a main target of the operation. Images also showed U.S.-made explosive devices scattered near the scene, including one from the Colorado-based Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense Company.

The Associated Press reported that the targeted building "contained a wrecked bedroom with a child's wooden crib on the floor."

"On one damaged wall, a blue plastic swing for children was still hanging," the outlet observed. "The kitchen was blackened with fire damage."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

USA

Foreign-Influenced Corporate Spending Is Inherently Anti-Democratic

We must commit to immediately end the influence of multinational corporations in our elections.

Campaign contributions from powerful multinational corporations, write Bonifaz and Flores-Quilty, "are troubling and indicative of a larger problem in our political system: the unrestrained financial influence of major multinational corporations flies in the face of everything our democracy is supposed to be."

 (Photo: iStock/via Getty Images)

JOHN BONIFAZ, 

  ALEXANDRA FLORES-QUILTY

February 3, 2022

Following the January 6th insurrection, in which hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair democratic election, major corporations were quick to publicly condemn the violence and said they would stop bankrolling the Members of Congress who sought to block certification of the election results. They stated that these 147 members of the "Sedition Caucus" were to blame for perpetuating the Big Lie and therefore would not receive their campaign contributions.

Nearly one year later, it has become clear that these promises were just lip service. Recent FEC filings show that major corporations and trade groups have already donated over $5.8 million to funds benefiting members of the Sedition Caucus. These corporations and interests have prioritized fueling the political machine for their own self-benefit over the future of our democracy and the American people.

We have the power to put an end to this form of foreign dominance in our elections.

These contributions are troubling and indicative of a larger problem in our political system: the unrestrained financial influence of major multinational corporations flies in the face of everything our democracy is supposed to be. It drowns out the voices of the people our leaders are elected to represent. It also weakens the commitment the United States makes to combat foreign influence in our elections when its largest backers are significantly owned by non-US interests. Because of Amazon's contributions to candidates and PACs, stockholders with Norges Bank have more of a say in labor laws affecting the company than do its own warehouse workers.

We've witnessed money from corporations with significant foreign ownership flowing into our elections, circumventing direct bans on foreign influence enshrined in federal law. The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United created a massive loophole for foreign interests to acquire stakes in U.S. corporations and then use that leverage to influence or control the corporation's political activity, including campaign contributions, contributions to super PACs, and independent expenditures. Across the country, companies like Amazon and Airbnb with partial foreign ownership have used their money to influence the outcome of elections and to advance political agendas in their favor.

It's contributions like these that fuel action (or inaction) on the issues that impact the everyday lives of the American people. Can't afford your prescription medication? Pfizer and Eli Lilly backed representatives who voted against drug price negotiation legislation. Afraid we can't act in time to slow the climate crisis? Global fossil fuel giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron have donated millions to politicians seeking to strip down legislation promoting clean energy. Wanting to break away from services like Amazon that treat their workers poorly and keep tabs on you? Amazon and Facebook are now the country's biggest spenders, giving over $3 million in 2020 to legislators directly responsible for the privacy and antitrust policies that affect them. The list goes on.

We have the power to put an end to this form of foreign dominance in our elections. On Tuesday, December 14, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland introduced the Get Foreign Money Out of U.S. Elections Act. This bill would ban corporations with partial foreign ownership from contributing to candidates, parties, or committees (including super PACs), or from engaging in their own direct election spending.

The City of Seattle has already enacted this legislation, and a version known as the Democracy Preservation Act passed in the New York State Senate in June. Five additional states (Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Oregon) are considering similar bans.

We must commit to ending the influence of multinational corporations in our elections. In a democracy, the people, not multinational corporations, shall govern.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.



JOHN BONIFAZ is co-founder and director of Free Speech For People (www.freespeechforpeople.org), a national nonpartisan campaign working to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and the corporate rights doctrine.



ALEXANDRA FLORES-QUILTY is the Campaign Director of Free Speech For People

Biden Should Free Peltier Right Now

On behalf of all Indigenous people in the U.S. and across the globe, enough is enough. We call on President Biden to commute the sentence of Leonard Peltier.

Chauncey Peltier, son of political prisoner Leonard Peltier (pictured on the video behind him), speaks at Harry Belafonte's Many Rivers Music, Art and Social Justice festival, a two-day event with a star-studded lineup of appearances and performances at the Bouckaert Farm,in Chattahoochee Hills, GA, USA, on October 2, 2016. (Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

LEVI RICKERT

February 2, 2022

 by yahoo!news

The long and sad imprisonment of Leonard Peltier (Turtle Mountain Chippewa Nation) took on a new complication on Friday when it was reported he tested positive for COVID-19 while incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary at Coleman, Fla. (USP Coleman 1).

To many American Indians, Peltier is a symbol of an oppressive federal system that relegates Native people to apartheid and neglect.

Prison is not a great place to have COVID-19, especially if you are a 77-year-old man with comorbidities that include diabetes, hypertension, a heart condition and acute aneurysm, such as Peltier.

The Prison Policy Initiative reported in October 2021 that the COVID-19 death rate in prisons is more than double that of the general U.S. population, as calculated by the UCLA COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project.

Peltier has been incarcerated for 46 years for the killing of two FBI agents at Oglala on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1975.

To many American Indians, Peltier is a symbol of an oppressive federal system that relegates Native people to apartheid and neglect. He is a political prisoner that we may only think about if we happen to see a bumper sticker on the back of a vehicle that reads "FREE Leonard Peltier."

The International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (ILPDC) on Saturday afternoon distributed a news release saying the federal prisons acted recklessly in regard to Peltier's care. Peltier has yet to receive a COVID-19 booster shot, 11 months after his last vaccination.

The ILPDC noted in its news release that visitors to USP Coleman 1 have observed that the facility is not mandating vaccines for guards or staff. Guards and staff have been seen improperly wearing masks or not wearing them at all. Social distancing was not encouraged or enforced and booster shots had not, until recently, been available to any inmate at USP Coleman 1.

Soon after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, then U.S. Attorney General William Barr issued U.S. Department of Justice guidelines for COVID Release to Home Confinement for inmates who were elderly or with compromised immune system or co-morbidities on March 26 and again, April 3, 2020.

Peltier's age and comorbidities unequivocally make him eligible for home release under Department of Justice guidelines. Peltier's tribal community on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota has repeatedly expressed willingness to ensure he is provided adequate housing there.

Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Chairman Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai'i), sent a letter to President Joe Biden last Wednesday urging him to commute Peltier's sentence.

"I commend your administration's commitment to righting past wrongs in our criminal justice system. In continuing that work as you consider recommendations for individuals to receive clemency, I write to urge you to grant a commutation of Leonard Peltier's sentence. Mr. Peltier meets appropriate criteria for commutation: (1) his old age and critical illness, (2) the amount of time he has served, and (3) the unavailability of other remedies. Given these factors, Mr. Peltier should be granted a commutation of his sentence," Chairman Schatz wrote.

Beyond Peltier's current battle with COVID-19, the White House needs to review Peltier's 1977 case, in which two of his co-defendants were acquitted on the basis of self-defense against the FBI.

Peltier was tried separately from his co-defendants.

According to Kevin Sharp, former Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, who Peltier's current attorney, Peltier's trial was replete with prosecutorial misconduct, falsified testimony and fabricated evidence. Even the autopsy presented to the jury was done by an examiner who had never seen the bodies of the two agents.

The former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, James H. Reynolds, who supervised the post-trial sentencing and appeals, admitted they "shaved a few corners" and "we could not prove Leonard Peltier personally committed any crime on the Pine Ridge Reservation" said in a letter to President Biden last year.

Reynolds wrote "enough is enough."

On behalf of all Indigenous people in the U.S. and across the globe, enough is enough. We call on President Biden to commute the sentence of Leonard Peltier.



LEVI RICKERT (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. He can be reached at levi@nativenewsonline.net.

'Major Breakthrough': South African Scientists Replicate Moderna Vaccine

"We didn't have help from the major Covid vaccine producers, so we did it ourselves," said Gerhardt Boukes, chief scientist at the South African company Afrigen.


Employees at the Afrigen biotechnology company and Vaccine Hub facility work in the manufacturing laboratory in Cape Town, South Africa on October 5, 2021.

 (Photo: Rodger Bosch/AFP via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

February 4, 2022

South African scientists have created a close replica of Moderna's mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine without any assistance from the U.S. pharmaceutical giant, a development that could have massive implications for the fight against global vaccine apartheid.

"We were not intimidated, because mRNA synthesis is a fairly generic procedure."

In partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), researchers at the South African company Afrigen Biologics used the sequence of Moderna's vaccine—which was reverse-engineered by Stanford University scientists and published online last year—to produce an mRNA shot of its own, an achievement that vaccine equity campaigners hailed as a "major breakthrough."

"We didn't have help from the major Covid vaccine producers, so we did it ourselves to show the world that it can be done, and be done here, on the African continent," Gerhardt Boukes, chief scientist at Afrigen, told Nature on Thursday.

To date, highly effective mRNA-based coronavirus vaccines have largely been hoarded by rich countries, forcing developing nations to rely on inadequate charity and leftovers. As a result, just 11% of the 1.3 billion people on the African continent have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

More broadly, just 10% of people in low-income countries across the globe have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose, figures compiled by Our World in Data show.

In the face of such vast and dangerous inequities in vaccine distribution, Pfizer and Moderna—the producers of the two available mRNA shots—have refused to share their technology with low-income countries and declined to participate in the WHO's technology transfer hub, of which Afrigen is a key part.

Moderna, headquartered in Massachusetts, was also recently engaged in a heated patent fight with the U.S. government, which played a sizable role in the development of the company's shot—a huge profit-maker for Moderna.

Related Content

Moderna Reports 'Obscene' Profits From Covid Vaccine Funded by US Taxpayers

According to Nature, South African scientists' effort to produce an mRNA vaccine using Moderna's shot as a model began in late September, with a team at the University of the Witwaterstrand in Johannesburg taking "the lead on executing the first step: making a DNA molecule that would serve as a template to synthesize the mRNA needed in the vaccine."

"During this period, having heard about plans to mimic Moderna's shot, scientists from around the world sent Afrigen researchers e-mails offering assistance," Nature reported. "Some of them were researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health who had conducted foundational work on mRNA vaccines."

"This can be a game-changer."

While the executives of major vaccine makers—including Moderna—have claimed that transferring technology would not be productive because lower-income countries lack the capacity to manufacture mRNA shots, South African scientists said they weren't deterred by Big Pharma's self-serving narrative.

"We were not intimidated, because mRNA synthesis is a fairly generic procedure," said Patrick Arbuthnot, director of gene therapy research at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Charles Gore, executive director of the U.N.-backed Medicines Patent Pool, told Reuters Thursday that "if this project shows that Africa can take cutting edge technology and produce cutting-edge products, this will banish this idea that Africa can't do it and change the global mindset."

"This can be a game-changer," said Gore.

Much work remains to be done to usher the new mRNA shot through safety trials—which Afrigen expects to start later this year—and mass-produce the vaccine for distribution across the developing world.

Afrigen said it has agreed to train researchers in Argentina and Brazil on how to make the mRNA vaccine, and the company "expects to get more on board within the next month," Reuters reported.

There is also the future possibility of Moderna attempting to take legal action over Afrigen's use of the corporation's vaccine sequence.

While Moderna has vowed not to enforce coronavirus-related patents, that promise is only set to last for the duration of the pandemic. Moderna's billionaire CEO Stéphane Bancel said in September—prior to the emergence and rapid spread of the Omicron variant—that he thinks the pandemic could officially be over by the tail-end of 2022.

Despite potential obstacles, public health experts around the world are enthusiastic about South African researchers' efforts to overcome barriers erected by rich governments and the powerful pharmaceutical industry.

"About time somebody gave a finger to Moderna!" tweeted Madhu Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health at McGill University in Montreal.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

The Pandemic Proves the Benefits of Universal Health Care

The government saved lives by covering COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatment. What if it treated other diseases this way?


A woman wearing a face mask with Medicare for All written on it, seen near the Capitol as she takes part in the March for Medicare for All in Washington D.C.

 (Photo: Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)

SONALI KOLHATKAR

February 2, 2022

 by OtherWords

There has been a Jekyll and Hyde quality to American health care over the past two years.

One the one hand, the federal government has been actively intervening to help people avoid COVID-19 or recover from it. On the other, it’s standing by as Americans struggle with other ailments, exposing the vast fissures of a broken system.

What would it take to treat these diseases like we’ve treated COVID-19? In short: a centralized, universal health care system.

The government’s pandemic response has been imperfect but successful in many respects. Are there lessons for how we treat other diseases?

For example, the Biden administration is now taking action to ensure that Americans have access to rapid at-home test kits for COVID-19.

Acting quickly if belatedly, the government launched a centralized and straightforward website for people to order free antigen testing kits. The site is stunningly easy to use, does not require any other information besides a name and address, and relies on the U.S. Postal Service for distribution.

That effort came on the heels of an announcement that private health insurance companies would now be required to reimburse their patients for the cost of such tests purchased out of pocket.

The government is also finally providing free masks. With experts now saying reusable cloth masks aren’t sufficient against Omicron, the White House has announced a program to make 400 million N95 masks from the strategic national stockpile available to Americans for free.

Insurance companies even agreed to cover all COVID-19 treatment costs up until last fall, while the uninsured have been covered by the government itself.

Together, these policies signal that the federal government recognizes the prohibitive cost of protecting oneself from a rapidly mutating and increasingly transmissible virus. With vaccines, testing, and even treatment largely free of charge, policy makers have adopted a more interventionist posture on COVID-19 than any other health care issue.

This is commendable. But what about Americans with other conditions?

Cancer affects 1.6 million Americans each year and is the second leading cause of death in the nation. Cancer-related death rates are significantly higher for those who lack health insurance. Similar trends exist for the millions of Americans with heart disease, diabetes, and other common ailments.

What would it take to treat these diseases like we’ve treated COVID-19? In short: a centralized, universal health care system.

We’re the only large, wealthy country without one. Instead, we’ve joined extremely poor nations like Afghanistan and Yemen on the list of 10 notable countries without a universal government-run health care system.

It shows. According to the Federal Reserve, 17 percent of adults “had major, unexpected medical expenses” in 2020, while nearly a quarter of American adults “went without medical care due to an inability to pay.”

Medicare for All would save money and lives relative to relying on private insurers. It would have improved our pandemic response, too.

The rollout of vaccines and testing was often chaotic precisely because the federal government had to rely on a patchwork system of private and public health care, private for-profit drug store chains, and smaller nonprofit organizations.

According to Public Citizen, “countries with a more unified system are better able to roll out testing, track the spread, and intervene appropriately” because they aren’t forced to navigate around numerous private insurers or to “handle testing and treatment for the uninsured.”

The solution seems simple: Either expand the COVID-19 exception to cover all illnesses, or expand the Medicare program to cover all Americans. Either step would ensure that no Americans would forgo health care due to an inability to pay.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.




SONALI KOLHATKAR is currently the racial justice editor at YES! Media and a writing fellow with Independent Media Institute. She was previously a weekly columnist for Truthdig.com. She is also the host and creator of Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. Sonali won First Place at the Los Angeles Press Club Annual Awards for Best Election Commentary in 2016. She also won numerous awards including Best TV Anchor from the LA Press Club and has also been nominated as Best Radio Anchor 4 years in a row. She is the author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence, and the co-Director of the non-profit group, Afghan Women’s Mission. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawaii, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from The University of Texas at Austin. Watch her 2014 Tedx talk, My journey from astrophysicist to radio host. She can be reached at www.sonalikolhatkar.com

American 'Exceptionalism?' 

Yes, But Not in a Good Way

It can be painful to acknowledge the stone-cold truth that we are indeed exceptional, but by many measures, not in ways we can celebrate.

An American flag in front of a damaged school area in Dayton, Ohio on May 28, 2019. 

(Photo: Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images)


FRANCES MOORE LAPPÉ,

  MAX BOLAND

February 2, 2022

Americans' long-held view of ourselves as the world's "best everything" stands in the way of progress. So, here's my question: Can we absorb our true standing and be motivated—rather than demoralized—by learning from nations that are doing better?

Attributing our democracy's crisis solely to Trump's impact can blind us to causes of disaffection that are not political but are everyday reality for millions.

It is an urgent question because America is in trouble…as you probably don't need me to tell you.

In early January, seven out ten of Americans surveyed agreed U.S. democracy was "in crisis and at risk of failing." Here's alarming evidence backing up the grim assessment.

Whereas in 1995 one in fifteen of us approved "of the idea of having the army rule," by 2014 the share had grown to one in six. Most disturbing, in December one in three Americans agreed that "violence against the government is sometimes justified."

Reading these sentiments, what probably pops to mind for most of us is the 2021 violent assault on our Capitol. But rushing to that frightening day forces us to jump over colossal negative shifts in our culture that have been growing over decades.

Attributing our democracy's crisis solely to Trump's impact can blind us to causes of disaffection that are not political but are everyday reality for millions.

It can be painful to acknowledge the stone-cold truth that we are indeed exceptional, but by many measures, not in ways we can celebrate.

The United States is the 14th happiest country in the World, lagging far behind Switzerland, Germany, and the Nordic countries.

We may take solace in being ranked at least near the top, but for America to be truly "exceptional," shouldn't we be leading the pack?

From our health and education to our safety and well-being, we have not lived up to our self-image as "the world's best."

We fail to meet the needs of our fellow Americans, even from birth. Forty-five countries have achieved lower infant mortality rates than we have. We also fail at providing equity in health outcomes, as the maternal mortality rate for Black women in 2019 was two and a half times higher than white women.

In our schools, we have failed to give our students the education they need to become the leaders of the future. In a standardized test administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to samples of 15-year-old students from around the world, the United States ranked 30th out of 79 countries in math.

Our often-renowned higher education system also fails America's students.

We rank eighth among 46 OECD countries in percentage of adults with a bachelor's degree, but our government invests nearly $4,000 more per student. Couple that with skyrocketing student debt to cover the inflated cost of a 4-year degree, and it is clear that we are not getting enough bang for our buck.

How can the state of our democracy be strong when our people aren't getting the care, education, and safety they need to be "exceptional" in their own lives?

Americans are also deprived of the safety we all need, as violent crimes have been on the rise since the pandemic. The US has a higher homicide rate than over 100 nations, including Myanmar and Lebanon, both of which have Level 4 travel advisories from the Department of State warning about crime and civil unrest.

How can the state of our democracy be strong when our people aren't getting the care, education, and safety they need to be "exceptional" in their own lives?

Our extreme economic disparities also reveal a lot about our democracy deficits. Why? A grounding premise of democracy is equal vote and thus equal voice, expressed in electing representatives to promote our "general welfare"—what is set forth in the preamble of the Constitution as a prime goal of our nation.

On the surface, it's hard to imagine that any political body in which citizens hold power would choose policies generating today's gross disparities. Here is one measure of its depth: Together 90 percent of Americans strive to make do on less total wealth than that in the hands of the wealthiest 1 percent.

And in income disparity?

Here, it has become more extreme than that in more than 100 nations, reports the World Bank. Our gap between income classes is wider than, for example, in Bulgaria and Haiti.

Now, the question: Once motivated by both alarm at our failure as well as inspiration from nations demonstrating that positive change in our personal and political lives is possible, what can American citizens do?

Fortunately, an unprecedented movement of movements for democracy reform now offers many opportunities. Americans with a range of core concerns—from healthcare to racial justice and income inequality—grasp that solutions require accountable democracy. So, the big push for voting-rights legislation that came close to passage last month is not dead.

The Democracy Initiative—an extensive coalition of organizations—and our organization, Small Planet Institute, cosponsor a handy tool for finding your pathway to meaningful action. Jump to www.DemocracyMovement.US and discover many avenues for becoming a democracy champion. Now!

As Dee Hock observed years ago, "It is far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.



Frances Moore Lappé is the author of nineteen books, beginning with the acclaimed "Diet for a Small Planet." Most recently she is the co-author, with Adam Eichen, of the new book, "Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want." Among her numerous previous books are "EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want" (Nation Books) and "Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life." She is co-founder of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Small Planet Institute.



MAX BOLAND is the Democracy Writing and Research Associate at Small Planet Institute and a graduate of the University of Virginia with a bachelor's in American Government and Politics. His interests include civic education, judicial policy, and political history.

US Federal Court Deals Blow to 'Noxious Fracked Gas' Mountain Valley Pipeline

"MVP is not compatible with a healthy planet and livable communities," said a Sierra Club campaigner. "MVP must not move forward."

Opposition to the Mountain Valley Pipeline Project is visible on a roadside sign in Bent Mountain, Virginia.

 (Photo: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)


JESSICA CORBETT

COMMON DREAMS

February 3, 2022

Climate campaigners celebrated Thursday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit delivered yet another blow to a controversial gas project spanning over 300 miles in Virginia and West Virginia.

"This decision again reinforces the truth that this destructive project must not be allowed to continue."

"At a time when we need to urgently move away from fracked-gas pipelines and all the harms they bring—from impacts to endangered species to damage to water quality to climate change—the law and science prevailed in this case," declared Anne Havemann, general counsel of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

A three-judge panel from the Richmond-based federal appeals court threw out the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services' assessment of how the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) would impact two endangered fish species: the Roanoke logperch and the candy darter.

"If a species is already speeding toward the extinction cliff, an agency may not press on the gas. We urge the Fish and Wildlife Service to consider this directive carefully while reassessing impacts to the two endangered fish at issue, especially the apparently not-long-for-this-world candy darter," Judge James Wynn wrote in the court's opinion.

"We recognize that this decision will further delay the completion of an already mostly finished pipeline," Wynn added, "but the Endangered Species Act's directive to federal agencies could not be clearer: 'halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost.'"


While the five companies behind the pipeline said that "we remain committed to completing the MVP project and believe the concerns associated with MVP's biological opinion can be addressed by the agency," climate campaigners expressed hope this will help kill the project.

"Sacred life prevailed today with the court's acknowledgment of the harmful impact MVP has on everything in its path, specifically endangered and threatened species," said Russell Chisholm, co-chair of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) Coalition. "Holding MVP accountable to the law is key to the ultimate cancellation of this noxious fracked gas pipeline."

"This decision not only protects the candy darter and other endangered species," he continued, "it sets us on course to stop MVP, decisively transition away from deadly fossil fuels, and reroute towards a renewable economy on a livable planet."


Calling the court's move a "sweetly welcome decision in our fight to stop the ravage of MVP," Roberta Bondurant of Preserve Bent Mountain—which is part of the POWHR Coalition—pointed out that the local opponents along the pipeline's route "have fought relentlessly, and at unspeakable costs, to protect forest, meadow, and waters of our venerable Appalachians."

Peter Anderson, Virginia policy director for Appalachian Voices, noted that "communities in this region rely on its rich biodiversity to support many recreational and economic opportunities."

While lambasting the failure of "agencies that should be guardians of our most precious resources and the public interest, Wild Virginia conservation director David Sligh welcomed the win for "sensitive and valuable species, which have already been harmed by MVP's pollution."

"This decision again reinforces the truth that this destructive project must not be allowed to continue," Sligh said. "The company needs to face that fact now and should be forced to help heal the wounds it has inflicted."

Along with cheering the "incredible victory" in court, Jared Margolis, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, put the controversial project into a broader context.

"The Mountain Valley Pipeline is a fossil fuel nightmare that threatens the essential habitat of imperiled wildlife," he said. "These projects lock us into an unsustainable spiral of climate change that inflicts incredible damage to vulnerable species. That cycle must end."

"The Mountain Valley Pipeline is a fossil fuel nightmare that threatens the essential habitat of imperiled wildlife."

Thursday's decision is "the third blow the pipeline has received in just over a week," Virginia Mercury reported, noting that on January 25, the same court "yanked the project's Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management approvals, finding that those agencies' evaluations of impacts had been inadequate."

Acknowledging the project's recent setbacks, Sierra Club senior director of energy campaigns Kelly Sheehan—whose group argued the case on behalf of conservation groups—said that "the previous administration's rushed, shoddy permitting put the entire project in question."

"Now, the Biden administration must fulfill the commitments it has made on climate and environmental justice by taking a meaningful, thorough review of this project and its permitting," she said. "When they do, they will see the science is clear: MVP is not compatible with a healthy planet and livable communities. MVP must not move forward."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

$778 Billion and Counting: Who's Paying for All This Pentagon Waste? (Hint: It's You)

It can't be emphasized enough just how many taxpayer dollars are now being showered on the Pentagon.


Antiwar protesters gathered in front of City Hall in downtown Philadelphia for an emergency rally demanding America not further entrench itself in the Syrian conflict and that American forces be pulled out of all middle east countries on April 14, 2018. (Photo: Cory Clark/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

WILLIAM HARTUNG

February 3, 2022

2021 was another banner year for the military-industrial complex, as Congress signed off on a near-record $778 billion in spending for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy. That was $25 billion more than the Pentagon had even asked for.

It can't be emphasized enough just how many taxpayer dollars are now being showered on the Pentagon. That department's astronomical budget adds up, for instance, to more than four times the cost of the most recent version of President Biden's Build Back Better plan, which sparked such horrified opposition from Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and other alleged fiscal conservatives. Naturally, they didn't blink when it came to lavishing ever more taxpayer dollars on the military-industrial complex.

Without a significant change of course, 2022 will once again be a banner year for Lockheed Martin and other top weapons makers at the expense of investing in programs necessary to combat urgent challenges from pandemics to climate change to global inequality.

Opposing Build Back Better while throwing so much more money at the Pentagon marks the ultimate in budgetary and national-security hypocrisy. The Congressional Budget Office has determined that, if current trends continue, the Pentagon could receive a monumental $7.3 trillion-plus over the next decade, more than was spent during the peak decade of the Afghan and Iraq wars, when there were up to 190,000 American troops in those two countries alone. Sadly, but all too predictably, President Biden's decision to withdraw U.S. troops and contractors from Afghanistan hasn't generated even the slightest peace dividend. Instead, any savings from that war are already being plowed into programs to counter China, official Washington's budget-justifying threat of choice (even if outshone for the moment by the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine). And all of this despite the fact that the United States already spends three times as much as China on its military.

The Pentagon budget is not only gargantuan, but replete with waste—from vast overcharges for spare parts to weapons that don't work at unaffordable prices to forever wars with immense human and economic consequences. Simply put, the current level of Pentagon spending is both unnecessary and irrational.

Price Gouging on Spare Parts

Overcharging the Pentagon for spare parts has a long and inglorious history, reaching its previous peak of public visibility during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Then, blanket media coverage of $640 toilet seats and $7,600 coffee makers sparked public outrage and a series of hearings on Capitol hill, strengthening the backbone of members of Congress. In those years, they did indeed curb at least the worst excesses of the Reagan military buildup.

Such pricing horror stories didn't emerge from thin air. They came from the work of people like legendary Pentagon whistleblower Ernest Fitzgerald. He initially made his mark by exposing the Air Force's efforts to hide billions in cost overruns on Lockheed's massive C-5A transport plane. At the time, he was described by former Air Force Secretary Verne Orr as "the most hated man in the Air Force." Fitzgerald and other Pentagon insiders became sources for Dina Rasor, a young journalist who began drawing the attention of the media and congressional representatives to spare-parts overcharges and other military horrors. In the end, she formed an organization, the Project on Military Procurement, to investigate and expose waste, fraud, and abuse. It would later evolve into the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), the most effective current watchdog when it comes to Pentagon spending.

A recent POGO analysis, for instance, documented the malfeasance of TransDigm, a military parts supplier that the Department of Defense's Inspector General caught overcharging the Pentagon by as much as 3,800%—yes, you read that figure right!—on routine items. The company was able to do so only because, bizarrely enough, Pentagon buying rules prevent contract officers from getting accurate information on what any given item should cost or might cost the supplying company to produce it.

In other words, thanks to Pentagon regulations, those oversight officials are quite literally flying blind when it comes to cost control. The companies supplying the military take full advantage of that. The Pentagon Inspector General's office has, in fact, uncovered more than 100 overcharges by TransDigm alone, to the tune of $20.8 million. A comprehensive audit of all spare-parts suppliers would undoubtedly find billions of wasted dollars. And this, of course, spills over into ever more staggering costs for finished weapons systems. As Ernest Fitzgerald once said, a military aircraft is just a collection of "overpriced spare parts flying in formation."

Weapons This Country Doesn't Need at Prices We Can't Afford

The next level of Pentagon waste involves weapons we don't need at prices we can't afford, systems that, for staggering sums, fail to deliver on promises to enhance our safety and security. The poster child for such costly, dysfunctional systems is the F-35 combat aircraft, a plane tasked with multiple missions, none of which it does well. The Pentagon is slated to buy more than 2,400 F-35s for the Air Force, Marines, and Navy. The estimated lifetime cost for procuring and operating those planes, a mere $1.7 trillion, would make it the Pentagon's most expensive weapons project ever.

Once upon a time (as in some fairy tale), the idea behind the creation of the F-35 was to build a plane that, in several variations, would be able to carry out many different tasks relatively cheaply, with potential savings generated by economies of scale. Theoretically, that meant the bulk of the parts for the thousands of planes to be built would be the same for all of them. This approach has proven a dismal failure so far, so much so that the researchers at POGO are convinced the F-35 may never be fully ready for combat.

Its failures are too numerous to recount here, but a few examples should suffice to suggest why the program minimally needs to be scaled back in a major way, if not canceled completely. For a start, though meant to provide air support for troops on the ground, it's proved anything but well-designed to do so. In fact, that job is already handled far better and more cheaply by the existing A-10 "Warthog" attack aircraft. A 2021 Pentagon assessment of the F-35—and keep in mind that this is the Department of Defense, not some outside expert—found 800 unresolved defects in the plane. Typical of its never-ending problems: a wildly expensive and not particularly functional high-tech helmet which, at the cost of $400,000 each, is meant to give its pilot special awareness of what's happening around and below the plane as well as to the horizon. And don't forget that the F-35 will be staggeringly expensive to maintain and already costs an impressive $38,000 an hour to fly.

In December 2020, House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith finally claimed he was "tired of pouring money down the F-35 rathole." Even former Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Brown acknowledged that it couldn't meet its original goal—to be a low-cost fighter—and would have to be supplemented with a less costly plane. He compared it to a Ferrari, adding, "You don't drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays." It was a stunning admission, given the original claims that the F-35 would be the Air Force's affordable, lightweight fighter and the ultimate workhorse for future air operations.

It's no longer clear what the rationale even is for building more F-35s at a time when the Pentagon has grown obsessed with preparing for a potential war with China. After all, if that country is the concern (an exaggerated one, to be sure), it's hard to imagine a scenario in which fighter planes would go into combat against Chinese aircraft, or be engaged in protecting American troops on the ground—not at a moment when the Pentagon is increasingly focused on long-range missiles, hypersonic weapons, and unpiloted vehicles as its China-focused weapons of choice.

When all else fails, the Pentagon's fallback argument for the F-35 is the number of jobs it will create in states or districts of key members of Congress. As it happens, virtually any other investment of public funds would build back better with more jobs than F-35s would. Treating weapons systems as jobs programs, however, has long helped pump up Pentagon spending way beyond what's needed to provide an adequate defense of the United States and its allies.

And that plane is hardly alone in the ongoing history of Pentagon overspending. There are many other systems that similarly deserve to be thrown on the scrap heap of history, chief among them the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), essentially an F-35 of the sea. Similarly designed for multiple roles, it, too, has fallen far short in every imaginable respect. The Navy is now trying to gin up a new mission for the LCS, with little success.

This comes on top of buying outmoded aircraft carriers for up to $13 billion a pop and planning to spend more than a quarter of a trillion dollars on a new nuclear-armed missile, known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, or GBSD. Such land-based missiles are, according to former Secretary of Defense William Perry, "among the most dangerous weapons in the world," because a president would have only minutes to decide whether to launch them on being warned of an enemy nuclear attack. In other words, a false alarm (of which there have been numerous examples during the nuclear age) could lead to a planetary nuclear conflagration.

The organization Global Zero has demonstrated convincingly that eliminating land-based missiles altogether, rather than building new ones, would make the United States and the rest of the world safer, with a small force of nuclear-armed submarines and bombers left to dissuade any nation from launching a nuclear war. Eliminating ICBMs would be a salutary and cost-saving first step towards nuclear sanity, as former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg and other experts have made all too clear.

America's Cover-the-Globe Defense Strategy

And yet, unbelievably enough, I haven't even mentioned the greatest waste of all: this country's "cover the globe" military strategy, including a planet-wide "footprint" of more than 750 military bases, more than 200,000 troops stationed overseas, huge and costly aircraft-carrier task forces eternally floating the seven seas, and a massive nuclear arsenal that could destroy life as we know it (with thousands of warheads to spare).

You only need to look at the human and economic costs of America's post-9/11 wars to grasp the utter folly of such a strategy. According to Brown University's Costs of War Project, the conflicts waged by the United States in this century have cost $8 trillion and counting, with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, thousands of U.S. troops killed, and hundreds of thousands more suffering from traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. And for what? In Iraq, the U.S. cleared the way for a sectarian regime that then helped create the conditions for ISIS to sweep in and conquer significant parts of the country, only to be repelled (but not thoroughly defeated) at great cost in lives and treasure. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, after a conflict doomed as soon as it morphed into an exercise in nation-building and large-scale counterinsurgency, the Taliban is now in power. It's hard to imagine a more ringing indictment of the policy of endless war.

Despite the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, for which the Biden administration deserves considerable credit, spending on global counterterror operations remains at high levels, thanks to ongoing missions by Special Operations forces, repeated air strikes, ongoing military aid and training, and other kinds of involvement short of full-scale war. Given the opportunity to rethink strategy as part of a "global force posture" review released late last year, the Biden administration opted for a remarkably status quo approach, insisting on maintaining substantial bases in the Middle East, while modestly boosting the U.S. troop presence in East Asia.

As anyone who's followed the news knows, despite the immediate headlines about sending troops and planes to Eastern Europe and weapons to Ukraine in response to Russia's massing of its forces on that country's borders, the dominant narrative for keeping the Pentagon budget at its current size remains China, China, China. It matters little that the greatest challenges posed by Beijing are political and economic, not military. "Threat inflation" with respect to that country continues to be the Pentagon's surest route to acquiring yet more resources and has been endlessly hyped in recent years by, among others, analysts and organizations with close ties to the arms industry and the Department of Defense.

For example, the National Defense Strategy Commission, a congressionally mandated body charged with critiquing the Pentagon's official strategy document, drew more than half its members from individuals on the boards of arms-making corporations, working as consultants for the arms industry, or from think tanks heavily funded by just such contractors. Not surprisingly, the commission called for a 3% to 5% annual increase in the Pentagon budget into the foreseeable future. Follow that blueprint and you're talking $1 trillion annually by the middle of this decade, according to an analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense. Such an increase, in other words, would prove unsustainable in a country where so much else is needed, but that won't stop Pentagon budget hawks from using it as their North Star.

In March of this year, the Pentagon is expected to release both its new national defense strategy and its budget for 2023. There are a few small glimmers of hope, like reports that the administration may abandon certain dangerous (and unnecessary) nuclear-weapons programs instituted by the Trump administration.

However, the true challenge, crafting a budget that addresses genuine security problems like public health and the climate crisis, would require fresh thinking and persistent public pressure to slash the Pentagon budget, while reducing the size of the military-industrial complex. Without a significant change of course, 2022 will once again be a banner year for Lockheed Martin and other top weapons makers at the expense of investing in programs necessary to combat urgent challenges from pandemics to climate change to global inequality.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.



WILLIAM HARTUNG

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He is the author of "Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex" (2012) and "How Much Are You Making on the War Daddy?: A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration" (2003). He is the co-editor of "Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War "(2008).

SEE PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

Economists Say Raise Pay to Solve Public School Staffing Crisis

"This moment of crisis for the country's schools," says the co-author of a new report, "could be a turning point."

A teacher instructs first-graders at Telfair Elementary School in Pacoima, California on February 8, 2019. (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

KENNY STANCIL

COMMON DREAMS

February 4, 2022

A new report out Thursday documents growing staffing shortages in public K-12 schools throughout the U.S. and makes clear that the crisis cannot be solved without raising pay and investing in the education workforce—starting by using unspent federal Covid-19 relief funds as a "down payment."

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which first presented its research last week to a task force of the American Federation of Teachers, employment in public elementary and secondary schools decreased by nearly 5% overall from fall 2019 to fall 2021. The number of people employed as teachers fell by 6.8%, bus drivers by 14.6%, and custodians by 6%.

Almost every state has experienced a substantial decrease in public education staffing during the coronavirus pandemic. According to the report, the largest declines have occurred in Alaska (-17.5%), Vermont (-11.6%), and New Mexico (-10.7%). A total of 16 states have experienced losses of 5% or more, with seven states seeing losses of 8% or more.

Related Content

'Five Alarm Crisis': Teachers Union Warns Pandemic Burnout Destroying Schools

Health concerns are one significant factor likely fueling nonteacher staff shortages. As the report explains, "education support staff tend to be older—and thus more at risk of severe Covid—than the average U.S. worker. Less than a third (31.6%) of U.S. workers overall are age 50 or older, compared with 66.2% of bus drivers, 55.4% of custodians, and 50.4% of food service workers in the K–12 public education workforce."

Another key issue likely driving support staff shortages is the extremely low pay. "From 2014 to 2019, the median weekly wage (in 2020$) for food service workers in K–12 education was $331, while school bus drivers received $493 and teaching assistants $507," states the report. "In contrast, the median U.S. worker earned $790 per week."

Inadequate pay is also "a long-standing issue for teachers," the report notes. "Past EPI research shows that public K–12 school teachers are paid 19.2% less than similar workers in other occupations."

Related Content

'Tax Billionaires Already': Viral Video Shows Teachers Scramble for Cash in 'Dystopian' Contest

The good news, a summary of the report points out, is that "many states and localities confronting shortages right now have more capacity to address funding and pay issues than they have had in decades. Congressional pandemic relief measures have provided unprecedented levels of federal funding to states, counties, municipal governments, tribal territories, and school districts."

David Cooper, co-author of the report and director of EPI's Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN), said in a statement that "public officials should seize this moment of greater fiscal flexibility to begin making the reforms needed to attract, keep safe, and retain high-quality teachers and support staff."

"That means raising pay, enacting strong Covid protections, investing in teacher development programs, and finding ways to support part-time and part-year staff when school is not in session," said Cooper.

In addition to tapping into hundreds of billions of dollars in available pandemic-related aid, policymakers "also need to plan for sustainable long-term investments in the K–12 public education workforce," says the report, which stresses that this will require expanding state and local revenues through progressive taxation.

As EPI's summary notes:


The current gap in K–12 education employment comes on the heels of huge employment losses in public education after the Great Recession that were never fully restored. Previous EPI research has shown that budget cuts, lack of investment in schools, low relative pay, challenging school climates, and inadequate early career supports led to rising teacher turnover and a shrinking pipeline of qualified teachers in the country’s schools long before the pandemic began.

Among other things, the pandemic has demonstrated that "continuing to underinvest in public education... is not tenable if we want schools to be open and children to have a safe and supportive place to learn," EPI adds.

Sebastian Martinez Hickey, co-author of the report and research assistant at EARN, argued that "this moment of crisis for the country's schools could be a turning point—when communities begin funding schools at the levels required to recruit, train, and retain high-quality educators and support staff—but it will require public officials to choose to make those investments."

"Federal Covid relief funds offer a down payment on these investments," he added, "but making them sustainable will require an overhaul of how many states fund schools."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

In a Single Year, $1.78 Trillion Was Stolen From the Working Class

The wealth workers should have received, had wages kept up with productivity, was instead given to shareholders.

Workers against wage theft protest against Gov. Cuomo for failing to act in Wage Theft problem that steals $1 Billion in wages from workers each year. 

(Photo: Steve Sanchez/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

COLLEEN BOYLE, ERIC DIRNBACH

February 3, 2022 by In These Times

The fate of the Build Back Better Act is currently unknown. The bill would be the largest social spending achievement in decades and provide needed services and support to millions of families—with more than half of the proposed $1.75 trillion in spending going to child care, preschool, affordable housing, higher education and healthcare.

But this proposed spending, over 10 years, is barely noticeable compared with the wages workers have lost over the past 40 years. In terms of productivity, wages should be significantly higher than they are, and the average worker continues to be shortchanged thousands of dollars annually. And much of the money workers should be getting is instead being pumped up to the top 0.3% of income earners.

How Much Money Have Workers Lost?

The following chart from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), an independent think tank, shows the growing gap between productivity and worker pay since 1979, during which productivity grew 3.5 times as much as pay.


A number of factors have contributed to this productivity-wage gap. According to EPI, starting in the late 1970s, more unemployment has been tolerated to reduce inflation, the federal minimum wage has been raised less often, the deregulation of a number of industries has kept wages lower, corporate globalization has increased, wage theft has grown, and labor laws have failed to stop growing employer hostility toward unions. As unions declined, they had less power in their industries and therefore less ability to negotiate better wages to capture productivity gains.

In the chart, the line tracking productivity soars while the line tracking wages stagnates. As the two diverge, income inequality increases.

Less explored than the causes of the productive-wage gap is how much this gap is actually costing workers in real dollars—and where that lost income is going instead. As EPI's Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens calculate, if wages had kept pace with productivity, then the median hourly wage (adjusted for inflation) in 2017 would have been $33.10. The actual median hourly wage in 2017 was $23.15, a gap of $9.95 per hour.

We calculated what that gap has cost the average worker. According to the Current Employment Statistics (Establishment Survey), produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average weekly hours of production and nonsupervisory employees for private sector employers in 2017 was 33.6 hours.

33.6 hours per week x 52 weeks = 1,747.2 annual hours worked
1,747.2 annual hours x $9.95 per hour in lost wages = $17,385 in lost annual pay

In 2017 alone, then, the average worker lost $17,385—because wages have not kept up with productivity.

In July 2017, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the total number of production and nonsupervisory employees to be 102.5 million workers.

$17,385 x 102,500,000 workers = $1,781,962,500,000 in lost income for workers

Which means—in 2017 alone—the total amount of income lost to all production and nonsupervisory workers was $1.78 trillion.


Where did that money go?

Basically, corporate profits have been soaring. In the chart below, based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, this tremendous rise in corporate profits becomes apparent.



So companies have been paying employees an increasingly smaller share of the value their labor produces, which is another way of seeing what the productivity-wage gap already showed us. But there are many things corporations can do with profits, and they usually don't hoard the money in corporate bank accounts.


What did they do with the extra wealth they were extracting from their workers? Partly, they increased dividend payments to shareholders.

In 2017 alone, dividends paid by U.S. businesses totaled $1.5 trillion. Between 1979 and 2020, domestic corporations paid shareholders $27 trillion.

Here's the productivity and worker-pay chart from EPI again, but with annual corporate dividends added:



The wealth workers should have received has, arguably, instead been given to shareholders through dividends—a mechanism which functions like an upward distribution of wealth.

Of the $1.8 trillion not paid to workers in 2017, $1.5 trillion went to shareholders instead.

But aren't a lot of workers also shareholders? In a sense, aren't they just getting their money another way? Not really, according to the data.

For the 2017 tax year, aggregate data from the IRS shows that 83% of dividends went to filers with an adjusted gross income of more than $100,000—roughly the top 18% of filers.

What's more, 37% of all dividend income went to the top 0.3% of filers—those who took home more than $1 million.



These individual tax filings don't account for the dividends given to institutional investors—the primary shareholders of publicly traded companies, which include financial management companies and pension funds. Of course, some workers could, eventually, receive some of this dividend income through their pensions, though pensions are becoming relatively rare. A similar argument could be made regarding other retirement plans, like 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts, but these accounts mostly help the wealthy—the richest 10% of Americans own 84% of the value of shares of stock.

The consequences of this massive upward wealth transfer are enormous, which has turbocharged the domination of our political system by corporations and the wealthy. Excessive corporate profits have even contributed to the higher rate of inflation over the past year. Meanwhile, total household debt has increased as workers take out loans to cover the wages they used to get.

Inequality Increases as Union Density Decreases

This next chart from EPI shows the rise and fall of union membership over the past century, as the percentage of all workers who are union members. It also tracks the share of incom

Inequality Increases as Union Density Decreases

e going to the top 10% of earners.

An inverse relationship between the two quickly becomes apparent: As union membership goes up, the income share to the top 10% goes down; when union membership goes down, the income share to the top 10% goes up.

As unions gained strength in the 1940s and could negotiate higher wages for more workers, the relative amount of income that went to the top 10% necessarily came down. Since the 1970s, as unions declined, the reverse has been true. As EPI calculates it, ​"deunionization explains a third of the growth of the wage gap between high- and middle-wage earners over the 1979 – 2017 period."



Labor's Share of National Wealth is Declining


The factors above have also contributed to labor's falling share of our gross domestic product—the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States.

The chart below, sourced from the University of Groningen and the University of California, Davis, tracks labor's share of GDP since 1950. The data includes managerial salaries and therefore somewhat overstates what we would consider ​"labor," but the trend line is clear.



Labor's average share of GDP in the 1950s was 63.6%. In the 2010s, that share was 59.4%—a downward shift of 4.2 percentage points. (To be clear, the decline in union membership is only one of many causes for this shift.)

While a difference of 4.2 percentage points may seem small, the current GDP is $24 trillion—4.2% of that marks about $1 trillion of lost labor compensation each year. (While one might expect the difference to be roughly $1.8 trillion—the amount workers are losing in lost wages—the $800 billion difference is largely due to the inclusion of managerial salaries in the data, and the inclusion of various benefits in the calculation of labor's share of GDP.)

The Answer is More Worker Power

The Build Back Better Act would fund social investments by increasing taxes on corporations and the very, very wealthy, and by closing various tax loopholes. But those reforms are addressing only a symptom of the problem; they don't create a more equitable distribution of income. Spending per production/​nonsupervisory worker under the Build Back Better Act would be less than $1,800 per year—a tenth of the additional income workers should be seeing each year.

From 1948 to 1979, when union density in the United States was higher, productivity growth and wage growth were nearly equal. During that same period, corporate profits and dividends were very low. Worker power—as seen in high levels of unionization—ensured that workers took home a larger share of the wealth they created. Imagine how different the United States would be today if the working class had received, since 1979, the trillions of dollars that has instead gone to shareholders.

The best way to ​"strengthen the middle class," as President Joe Biden has framed the Build Back Better agenda, is to increase workers' ability to share in the wealth they create. There are some policy tools that would encourage a more equitable distribution of income—such as reinstating a very high marginal tax rate on the highest incomes, highly taxing or limiting shareholder dividends, or reinstating the prior ban on corporate share repurchases. But we're unlikely to win policies that meaningfully raise taxes on the wealthy or interfere with dividend payments while our current political parties see no upside for themselves in a realignment of economic power.

The most effective way to ensure the equitable distribution of income is to increase worker power. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, would strengthen the ability of workers to form and join unions and passed the House in March 2021—but has since languished in committee in the Senate.

Workers themselves must rebuild the power they once held. Union membership has again declined this past year, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but there are also encouraging signs of worker organizing and militancy. Workers at John Deere won 10% raises after a five week strike, and Kellogg's workers struck for 11 weeks to fight off a permanent two-tiered wage system. Since the first Starbucks Workers United win in Buffalo, N.Y., workers from at least 23 other Starbucks locations in 13 states have filed election petitions.

It's time for unions to invest much more in new worker organizing—and harness the power of an active, engaged and militant membership.

 

© 2021 In These Times



COLLEEN BOYLE  is a union researcher and organizer.


ERIC DIRNBACH is a union researcher