Michigan’s Historic “Right-to-Work” Repeal Goes Into Effect

Michigan is the first state in nearly 60 years to repeal the anti-union law.

By Sharon Zhang , 

TRUTHOUT

February 13, 2024

The Michigan capitol building is pictured in Lansing, Michigan.

REDUNNLEV / ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS

In a major step forward for the labor movement, Michigan Democrats’ repeal of the state’s decade-old anti-union “right-to-work” law went into effect on Tuesday, making the state the first to overturn the law in nearly six decades.

Last March, the Democratically-controlled Michigan legislature passed the bill to toss the law aimed at hurting labor unions by allowing workers to opt out of union dues while still reaping benefits of unionization, costing unions resources and money. “Right-to-work” was originally established in Michigan in 2012, with the backing of right-wing dark money groups, who also lobbied against the bill last year.

Pro-labor groups have celebrated the law’s repeal, saying that it was a victory “decades in the making” as unions and labor advocates have fought against the law. The bill also restored the practice of the “prevailing wage” that requires workers on state projects to pay union wages and benefits.

“By standing up and taking their power back, at the ballot box and in the workplace, workers have made it clear Michigan is and always will be the beating heart of the modern American labor movement,” said Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber in a statement on Monday. “The work to get here after decades of attacks on wages and collective bargaining rights was grueling, but tomorrow, the beginning of a new workers’ rights agenda, where people come before profits, takes effect. I couldn’t be more proud.”

With Michigan’s repeal, there are now 26 states with “right-to-work” laws. Research has found that “right-to-work” laws’ effect of suppressing unions have an active role in suppressing workers. A 2015 paper by the Economic Policy Institute found that wages are 3.1 percent lower in “right-to-work” states than ones without the law, representing a roughly $1,558 drop in wages for a typical full-time worker in a “right-to-work” state.

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By C.J. Polychroniou , TRUTHOUT February 1, 2024

Democratic and progressive advocates have upheld Michigan Democrats’ trifecta control as a show of what Democrats are capable of doing when they act boldly in favor of popular initiatives like workers’ rights. Lawmakers at the federal level have tried to pass legislation that would outlaw “right-to-work,” such as the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, but these bills have failed to gain support of conservatives in Congress.

“This is a big day for workers across our state,” State Sen. Darrin Camilleri, the original sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “In a matter of months, our Democratic majority has been able to get more done for Michigan’s working men and women than we’ve seen in the past decade.”

Under Democratic control of the legislature and the governor’s office, the state has also made moves like banning so-called “conversion therapy” and repealed a decades-old abortion ban. Other measures, like the repeal of a law that requires insurance coverage for abortion to be opt-in and a series of gun control laws, also went into effect on Tuesday.

Illinois also recently made moves against “right-to-work” by enshrining a ban on the proposal into the state constitution in response to a ballot measure passed by voters in 2022, which came as a result of a campaign from labor advocates.

Absent Union Representation, NYC Nail Salon Workers Are Organizing Themselves

A New York bill would give nail technicians a seat at the table to promote sector-wide workplace changes.

By Julia Kopstein ,

TRUTHOUT

PublishedFebruary 13, 2024

Deepa Shrish Singgali (right) and Maya Bhusal Basnet meet at Deepa's workplace the Mt. Everest Nail & Spa in Ridgewood, Queens, New York, on May 11, 2022.

ANDREA RENAULT / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Maya Bhusal Basnet started her career as a nail technician in Manhattan in 2009, introduced to the industry through her friends in the Nepali community. Over the past decade, she has worked at six or seven salons, always forced to leave due to deplorable conditions. Her health has suffered from exposure to toxic chemicals, her wages have furtively been robbed and isolating work conditions have eaten away at her mental health. Basnet is not alone in these experiences.

Nail salons are ubiquitous on New York City street blocks, yet their abundance tends to be overlooked. The windowed storefronts — often littered with posters of dazzling nails, or perhaps sleek eyebrows and lush lashes — often fade into obscurity, regardless of clients’ intimate relationships with their manicurists.

To put this in context, the 241 Starbucks shops located in New York City may evoke the sense that there is a cafe on every corner, but the numbers don’t even compare: New York City is home to 4,240 nail salons.

While working, Basnet hunches over plastic-covered pedicure basins or sterile manicure tables for hours at a time. She thinks about her children at home, who rarely get to spend time with their mother. Over Basnet’s shoulder, in plain view for the clients to see, is a poster, titled “New York and Federal Employee Notices.”

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Most salons in New York City have this poster; they exist in perhaps even more frequency than the notorious green Starbucks logo. The poster’s fine print and government stamps serve as a nod to customers that the salon is compliant with labor, health and safety measures, possibly to rid them of fear of the exploitation of the workers handling their routine appointments.

Basnet has found that these posters, unfortunately, are nothing more than a display. Nail salons in the United States are a booming multibillion-dollar industry, but nearly 8 in 10 of their workers earn only two-thirds of the median full-time wage. Of these workers, 81 percent are women, and 79 percent are foreign-born, primarily immigrants and refugees from the Asian diaspora. Basnet is paid below minimum wage for the grueling hours she works, without even a break for lunch.

In 2014, the New York State Labor Department, in conjunction with a few other agencies, conducted its first nail salon sweep ever. The Labor Department investigated 29 salons and found 116 wage violations.

But the issues Basnet faces don’t end with wage theft. While she ruminates on her lack of a pension plan; worries about being at work, away from her family on public holidays; or runs through her budget when accounting for less hours she is offered in cold weather, Basnet and her colleagues also must grapple with the knowledge of unsafe and hazardous conditions in salons. She says many of her friends in the industry could not get pregnant, and they attribute it to their exposure to unsafe chemicals in nail salons. Hauntingly, in New York, 20 percent of nail technicians reported that they have had issues with their reproductive health, and 25 percent of nail technicians reported complications during their pregnancy. Nail technicians are also more than three times as likely to have babies born with congenital disabilities compared to the general population.

Basnet and her colleagues point to the New York and Federal Employee Notices sign, demanding their bosses, business owners and legislators take action to preserve salon workers’ dignity and livelihood. In addition to calling for more inspections of the noxious salon environments, activists like Basnet are pushing legislation to fix the wide variety of issues plaguing the industry, and for efficient implementation. Time and time again, promises by legislators go unfulfilled.
Organizing Salons Without a Union

At the break of dawn, nail technicians like Basnet mobilize for strenuous days. At the same time, Starbucks employees tie up their aprons, and ready themselves for a fast-paced morning rush. These are the Starbucks that exist on the same streets, whose green logos appear in between storefronts of local salons. Both sectors, no matter how massive in scope, face barriers ranging from outdated labor laws to the inadequacy of federal protections. However, when it comes to organizing for better pay and working conditions, the labor organizing momentum among Starbucks workers stands in stark contrast to the atomized plight of nail salon workers, underscoring how different industries encounter distinct challenges.

Starbucks’s union, Starbucks Workers United, has been organizing store by store for better wages, contracts and hours. Nail salon workers, on the other hand, cannot accomplish the feats of Starbucks Workers United in the same way. There is no conceivable way to organize these salons shop by shop.

Basnet believes the best way to solve these problems would be for New York State to pass the Nail Salon Minimum Standards Council Act. Daisy Chung, director of the New York Healthy Nail Salons Coalition, the organization spearheading this legislation, describes the bill as an effort to create a permanent sectoral council — giving nail salon workers and business owners a seat at the table with government representatives to recommend changes. Instead of a conventional union, the board would support and promote sector-wide changes.

With the creation of this council, nail salon workers, owners and legislators can come together and set standards across the industry without worrying about pitting shop against shop. Chung even notes that Starbucks Workers United-Downstate NY supports the bill.

This sectoral council would not be the first of its kind. Across the country, from nursing home employees in Minnesota, to fast food workers in California, to rideshare drivers in Massachusetts, workers are mobilizing to develop their own versions of these standards boards and councils.

Since 2015, Basnet has been a worker fellow at Adhikaar for Human Rights and Social Justice, facilitating discourse between other Nepali-speaking salon workers about their rights and helping them get their licenses to work at salons in the state. To Basnet, the Nail Salon Minimum Standards Council Act serves as a beacon of hope. Despite not having a powerful union to bring them together, New York City’s nail salon workers are urgently and steadily finding ways to fight for sector-specific solutions to the problems that plague their industry.

JULIA KOPSTEIN is a Brooklyn-based writer specializing in labor and the economy.

OPINION

The monsters we create: Republicans and their battle against the zombie apocalypse

D. Stephen Voss, Kentucky Lantern

February 16, 2024

You can tell a lot about a people from the monsters they use to frighten themselves.

During the height of the Red Scare, Americans feared a communist conspiracy taking over the world — converting their friends and neighbors, staffing U.S. institutions with secret enemies. So their entertainment was filled with extraterrestrials who could mimic humans.

Notably, some of those monsters — such as the “body snatchers” and “The Thing” — reappeared just as the Cold War between Communist Russia and Reagan’s America was about to heat back up.

The late 1980s brought new threats: the scourge of drugs, the AIDS epidemic, contaminated needles. Who better to scare and entice Generation X than vampires – a monster that symbolizes corruption of the blood and stands for appetites that, once fed, might prove irresistible? The vampire genre rose from its coffin.

Trying to identify a monster who embodies the Trump Era gets tricky, because so many things frighten Republicans today.

I don’t solely mean that GOP politicians whip up fears, because Democrats do that, too.

I mean: You should take pity on any conservatives in your life, because they occupy a world much scarier than where everyone else lives.

People who see the world as a hostile place are more likely to lean rightward. Show a video with something lethal, like a snake or spider, and conservatives focus more on the threat. Make a loud noise; they’re more likely to react. Show a yucky photo and their gag reflex kicks in faster.

With so many fears and aversions to encapsulate, it might be tempting to give up on identifying one creature that haunts Republican nightmares – instead settling on a show like “Supernatural,” which sent brothers Sam and Dean careening across the flyover states to battle a rapid rotation of beasts.

But no, one monster did enjoy special cultural resonance leading up to Trump’s presidency: Zombies!!!

It began with a handful of surprisingly popular zombie movies during the Bush years. The Resident Evil franchise — which combined infected former humans with a sinister deep-state conspiracy — also kicked off then, reaching its “Final Chapter” immediately after Trump’s inauguration.

Most obviously, “The Walking Dead” first aired in 2010 and achieved the height of its popularity before Trump’s election.

Created by two Kentuckians and overwhelmingly popular in culturally conservative areas — most notably Appalachia — that show’s central characters were a lawman, a redneck hunter, and a former housewife. Threats included a former high-school staffer, a collectivist artist and, amusingly, a Center for Disease Control scientist.

Zombie entertainment, the non-comedic sort, portrays a constantly threatening setting that demands toughness and favors strongmen. It’s a Trumpian fantasy.

View today’s GOP as though it’s fending off a zombie apocalypse, and disparate policy initiatives suddenly fit together. It’s only partly a tongue-in-cheek observation to note that conservatives see zombies all around them.

A zombie horde shambles toward the southern border, carrying foreign diseases (like drugs and terrorism) with them. Let’s build a wall and send troops!

City-dwelling zombies clamber on top of each other, colors blended until they’re a uniform gray, making metro areas dangerous as they satisfy soulless hungers. Let’s dispatch more cops and militarize them! Let’s make it easier for property owners to run them off and root out their hives!

Big institutions to which citizens are vulnerable — government, corporations — are staffed by inflexible and heartless zombies, bound by rules that ensure nothing gets better. “You can’t even get a human on the phone.” Let’s elect an unpresidential president who ignores the rules and shakes everything up!

Conservatives teach their children, including their daughters, traditional values. But when they’re sent off to school, teachers infect them with a progressive virus that makes them part of the zombie hive. They lose their faith, their self-control, their gender, their identity — returning home uncommunicative (if not hostile), hypnotized by flashing smartphones as they sullenly shovel food into their mouths.

So let’s help keep kids out of public schools! Let’s limit funds for education, try to control teachers and librarians! Let’s ban TikTok and confiscate student phones! Let’s politicize school-board elections and encourage school prayer!

Zombies want nothing except to eat. So maybe that explains the conservative inclination to starve programs that feed people, not just food stamps but also free school lunches and even a program intended to improve nutrition for pregnant Women and Infant Children.

And conservatives envision streams of zombies who know little about government — they vote for Democrats, after all — mindlessly casting ballots (or passively allowing their ballots to be “harvested”) on behalf of the wicked conspirators who set this apocalypse off in the first place.

So their impulse is to make voting harder. Aren’t zombies less likely to surmount small barriers? And in places where Democrats dominate, let’s make elections nonpartisan so it’s harder to cast a brainless party-line vote.

That’s where Republicans lose the plot.

Until now, my zombie analogy has just been a playful way to represent a sad truth about the culture war. Whether progressive or right wing, ideologues view their positions as obviously correct — and so morally superior that opponents must be mindless, soulless, or both.

But at least the policies conservatives usually pursue to combat “zombies” have some hope of beating back their rivals. They’re not irrational.

The same cannot be said for voting restrictions, such as the attempt to gut what remains of early voting in Kentucky or the ongoing effort to make elections in Louisville nonpartisan.

Interfering in Jefferson County’s election rules is unlikely to help conservatives. As I explained to town leaders in Hopkinsville recently, when they brought me in to summarize research on nonpartisan elections, they rarely prevent party-based voting. Usually, a light hint or two is sufficient for almost everyone to identify the “Democratic” candidate and vote accordingly.

To the extent going nonpartisan keeps voters from following their herd, expecting Democrats to struggle reflects an outdated conception that their side relies on, well, zombies.

Listen to what campaign workers out in the field are saying. They’ve never seen Democratic voters so attentive, so fired up (or so networked by smartphones and social media).

Look at the numerous disappointments Republican politicians have suffered since 2018. Educated voters are switching sides.

Note the consistent Republican underperformance in special elections, most recently New York’s.

It’s grassroots Republican supporters who have become listless, unfocused, and unmotivated. Making it harder to participate, such as by hiding who the GOP’s candidates are, just increases the odds their party is the one like a dead man walking.

Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions:

info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter.

Where are record corporate profits coming from? Your thinning wallets

Robert Reich

February 16, 2024

I apologize for beginning this letter to you with a graph. But this is a very important one. It shows corporate profits after taxes, from 1946 through the third quarter of 2023 (the most recent data available).

Notice something?


substackcdn.com

Corporate profits are near a record high.

Inflation is dropping, but prices aren’t coming down because corporations have enough monopoly power to keep prices high. (Or they’re shrinking the size of the products you’re buying without lowering their prices — a variant of the same thing.)

This is one of the biggest reasons the American public is not crediting Biden with a great economy. Most people aren’t feeling it.

Here’s just one example that will make you fizz: Pepsi.

In 2021, PepsiCo, which makes all sorts of drinks and snacks, announced it was “forced” to raise prices due to “higher costs.” Forced? Really? The company reported $11 billion in profit that year.

In 2023 PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said that even though inflation was dropping, its prices would not. Pepsi hiked its prices by double digits and announced plans to keep them high in 2024.

How can they get away with this?

Well, if Pepsi were challenged by tougher competition, consumers would just buy something cheaper. But PepsiCo’s only major soda competitor is Coca-Cola, which — surprise, surprise — announced similar price hikes at about the same time as Pepsi, and also kept its prices high in 2023.

The CEO of Coca-Cola claimed that the company had “earned the right” to push price hikes because its sodas are popular. Popular? The only thing that’s popular these days seems to be corporate price gouging.

We’re seeing this pattern across much of the economy — especially with groceries.

The rate of inflation is down. The rate of inflation measures how quickly prices are rising: Prices are now rising far more slowly than in the past couple of years.

And while supply chain disruptions really did make it more expensive to produce a lot of goods, the cost to produce them now is rising even more slowly than prices.

But consumer prices are still elevated — allowing most corporations to keep their profit margins near a record high.

They can get away with overcharging you because they have monopoly power — or they have so few competitors that they can easily coordinate price increases with them and avoid price decreases.

If Pepsi and Coca-Cola had lots of competitors, they wouldn’t be able to raise prices so high because someone would make cheaper substitutes, and consumers would buy those instead. But Pepsi and Coke own most of the substitutes!

This isn’t happening just with Coke and Pepsi.

Take meat products. At the end of 2023, Americans were paying at least 30 percent more for beef, pork, and poultry products than they were in 2020.

Why? Near-monopoly power!

Just four companies now control processing of 80 percent of beef, nearly 70 percent of pork, and almost 60 percent of poultry. So of course it’s easy for them to coordinate price increases.

And this goes well beyond the grocery store. In 75 percent of U.S. industries, fewer companies now control more of their markets than they did 20 years ago.

So what should be done?

First, antitrust laws must be enforced.

Kudos to the Biden administration for using antitrust more aggressively than any administration in the last 40 years. It’s taken action against alleged price fixing in the meat industry — which has been a problem for decades.

It’s suing Amazon for using its dominance to artificially jack up prices — one of the biggest anti-monopoly lawsuits in a generation.

It successfully sued to block the merger of JetBlue and Spirit Airlines, which would have made consolidation in the airline industry even worse.

But given how concentrated American industry has become, there’s still a long way to go.

Secondly, big corporations must not be allowed to use their power to gouge consumers.

Senator Elizabeth Warren and others recently unveiled the latest version of their Price Gouging Prevention Act.

“Giant corporations are using supply chain shocks as a cover to excessively raise prices and sometimes charging the same price but shrinking how much consumers actually get,” Warren charges.

The bill would empower the FTC (which would also get $1 billion in additional funding) and state attorneys general to stop companies from charging “grossly excessive” prices, regardless of where alleged price gouging took place in a supply chain.

(The legislation would also protect small businesses — those earning less than $100 million — from litigation if they had to raise prices in good faith during crises.)

The bill would also require public companies to disclose more about their costs and pricing strategies.

I don’t have any illusions that this bill will find its way into law soon. Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate, and not all Democrats support it. Meanwhile, Republicans and their business backers are dead set against it — and are eager to blame continued high prices on Biden, not on corporations.

But this bill is just as necessary as aggressive antitrust enforcement — and an example of what could and will be done if Democrats sweep the 2024 elections.

The near-record profits of large corporations are coming, in part, out of the paychecks of average Americans — who are still struggling to get by.

Biden and the Democrats must say this loudly and clearly, and tell the public what they are doing — and will do — to stop it.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Tax-Dodging Jeff Bezos to Save $610 Million With Move to 'Billionaire Bunker' in Florida

"If we had a national billionaire income tax, we'd collect that revenue no matter where he lived," said Americans for Tax Fairness.

SHADY CHARACTERS

Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez arrive at an event in Milan, Italy on January 13, 2024.
(Photo: Jacopo Raule/Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON
Feb 13, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Jeff Bezos, founder of the e-commerce behemoth Amazon and one of the richest men in the world, is poised to save at least $610 million in taxes by moving from Washington state to a hyper-exclusive Miami island that's been dubbed "Billionaire Bunker."

Bezos announced the move from Seattle—home to Amazon's headquarters—to Miami in an Instagram post on November 2. The previous month, Bezos purchased two mansions in Indian Creek Village for $68 million and $79 million. Other prominent figures, including retired NFL superstar Tom Brady and billionaire investor Carl Icahn, own properties on the island, which is only accessible to those with invites.

Bloombergreported last month that "Bezos emissaries have reached out to at least three other homeowners on the island about purchasing their properties, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. Conversations are ongoing."

While Bezos didn't mention the potential tax savings as one of the reasons for his move, the announcement came after Washington state's new 7% capital gains tax on the sale or exchange of stocks and other assets worth more than $250,000 took effect after a lengthy court fight. The tax brought in far more revenue in its first year than supporters expected.

As CNBCreported Monday, Bezos has been selling Amazon shares nearly every year for more than two decades—but he stopped in 2022, the first year of Washington's new tax.

Now that he's in Florida, which doesn't tax income or capital gains, Bezos has resumed selling his Amazon stock, dumping around 12 million shares worth roughly $2 billion last week. CNBC pointed to recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings showing that Bezos has "launched a pre-scheduled stock-selling plan to unload 50 million shares before Jan. 31, 2025. At today's price, that would total more than $8.7 billion."

"On the $2 billion sale last week, he saved $140 million that he would have paid to Washington state," CNBC observed. "On the entire sale of 50 million shares over the next year, he will save at least $610 million. And that's assuming Amazon shares remain flat. If they continue to rise, the value of his shares—and his tax savings—will be even higher."

"If Bernie's Make Billionaires Pay Act was signed into law during the pandemic Bezos would have paid $42,800,000,000 more in taxes and everyone in America would have had healthcare as a right."

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), Bezos' new home state has the most regressive tax system in the U.S.—a title that was held by Washington prior to the enactment of the 7% capital gains tax.

Bezos is currently worth around $197 billion, a number that can fluctuate significantly on a given day based on the movement of Amazon's stock price.

Warren Gunnels, staff director for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), argued in a social media post late Monday that Bezos' exorbitant wealth cries out for more aggressive taxation at the federal level.

"If Bernie's Make Billionaires Pay Act was signed into law during the pandemic Bezos would have paid $42,800,000,000 more in taxes and everyone in America would have had healthcare as a right," Gunnels wrote, noting that revenue from the 2020 bill would have been enough for Medicare to fully pay out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for all Americans for a year.





Right-wing commentators, such as the Cato Institute's Scott Lincicome and FreedomWorks' Stephen Moore, used Bezos' move to suggest that taxing the wealthy only pushes them to move elsewhere in search of lower tax rates.

But ITEP research director Carl Davis told Common Dreams that "when you look at the data, there isn't much support for the view that high-income people are moving in meaningful numbers because of taxes." A 2016 study by Stanford University researchers found that while "millionaire tax flight is occurring," it is "only at the margins of statistical and socioeconomic significance."

"Without good data to back them up," said Davis, "the folks who want to use migration fears to argue against taxing the rich often end up relying on anecdotes to make their point."

Americans for Tax Fairness, a progressive advocacy group, wrote on social media Tuesday that "if we had a national billionaire income tax, we'd collect that revenue no matter where he lived."

"Billionaires can't quit America to avoid paying," the group added. "If they left, we'd collect a fortune in exit taxes."

Labor Leaders Condemn GOP Fiscal Commission as Anti-Worker 'Power Grab'

"The labor movement stands united in our belief that slashing crucial programs like Medicare and Social Security... will make people poorer, sicker, hungrier and even lose their homes," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler.


AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler speaks at a rally in Washington, D.C. on February 28, 2023.
(Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Caring Across Generations)

JAKE JOHNSON
Feb 15, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

A coalition of U.S. labor leaders spoke out forcefully on Thursday against the Republican-led push for a "fiscal commission," denouncing the proposal as an attack on Social Security, Medicare, and other programs that tens of millions of current and retired workers depend on to meet basic needs.

Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said in a statement that a fiscal commission is a "terrible idea that would push older Americans into poverty, take away people's healthcare, and end up costing the government more."

"The labor movement stands united in our belief that slashing crucial programs like Medicare and Social Security—which millions of hardworking individuals rely on and have contributed to—will make people poorer, sicker, hungrier and even lose their homes; it also would put the pay and benefits for federal workers on the chopping block," Shuler added. "This commission is a power grab that is trying to bypass the regular democratic process by hiding behind closed doors and fast-tracking a plan that escapes public scrutiny and accountability, and rips away the security older people rely on and have paid for."

Other union leaders, including American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) president Everett Kelley, joined Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) at a Washington, D.C. press conference on Thursday calling attention to and criticizing the proposed commission, which the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee approved with the support of three Democrats last month.

"Our members know, and they know quite well, what a fiscal commission means, because we have lived through that," said Kelley, pointing to the Bowles-Simpson commission that recommended Social Security benefit cuts in 2010 during the Obama administration.

"The new commission plans mean federal pay freezes," Kelley said. "What do y'all think about that? A commission means retirement cuts. What do you think about that? A commission means sequestration. And yes, a commission means devastating cuts to Social Security and Medicare."




The bill that passed out of the House Budget Committee last month would establish a 16-member bipartisan commission with a mandate to craft reforms to the nation's trust fund programs, including Social Security and Medicare.

If approved by the commission, the recommended reforms would be placed on a fast track in the House and Senate, with no amendments allowed.

During debate over the Fiscal Commission Act last month, Republicans on the House Budget Committee rejected Democratic amendments that would have required the commission to propose changes that would strengthen and secure Social Security and Medicare.

Supporters of the Fiscal Commission Act are hoping to attach the legislation to a must-pass government funding measure that lawmakers are racing to finish by the end of the month.

Larson, a leading advocate of expanding Social Security by requiring the rich to pay more into the program, said during Thursday's press conference that "nothing is more undemocratic" than a fast-tracked vote on policy recommendations crafted behind closed doors by a panel of 16 people.

"We need hearings out in the open on specific proposals so the public can see what's going on and everybody can add to that," said Larson. "We are a body of 435 people. The Senate is a body of 100 people. How about we do something unusual in Congress: we actually vote, actually vote on Social Security and Medicare."

"We know where the American people are," he added. "We don't need a commission."

Genocidal General Declares Victory in Indonesian Election


Prabowo Subianto "is the most notorious massacre general in Indonesia, and he's also the general who was closest to the U.S. as he was carrying out his mass killings," said journalist Allan Nairn.


Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto celebrates with supporters on February 14, 2024 after declaring victory in the country's presidential election, before official results are in.
(Photo: Aditya Irawan/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

BRETT WILKINS
Feb 14, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto—a former U.S.-trained general in an army unit implicated in genocidal violence—declared victory Wednesday after polls closed in the archipelago nation's presidential election, although no winner has officially been announced.

Unofficial results showed Prabowo, of the right-wing populist Gerindra party, with nearly 60% of the vote. His two rivals—former Jakarta Gov. Anies Baswedan of the Coalition of Change for Unity and Ganjar Pranowo of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P)—have not yet conceded defeat. In order to avert a runoff, Prabowo needs more than 50% of all votes and at least 20% in each of the nation's 38 provinces.

"We should not be arrogant. We should not be proud. We should not be euphoric. We still have to be humble," Prabowo told jubilant supporters in a packed Jakarta stadium Wednesday. "This victory must be a victory for all Indonesian people."

U.S. journalist Allan Nairn explained in a Tuesday interview with Democracy Now! how Prabowo ran a "two-pronged" campaign that involved "pressuring and coercing the poor with threats to their well-being" as well as a "PR campaign that portrays the general as a cuddly cartoon character."

Nairn added that "none of it would be possible" without the support of popular incumbent PDI-P President Joko Widodo, whose son Gibran Rakabuming Raka is Prabowo's running mate.

In addition to concerns about potential democratic backsliding, critics noted Prabowo's bloody past.

"Gen. Prabowo is the most notorious massacre general in Indonesia, and he's also the general who was closest to the U.S. as he was carrying out his mass killings, abductions of activists, and systematic tortures," said Nairn. "He was also the son-in-law of the former dictator of Indonesia, Gen. Suharto."



Prabowo, who trained at Fort Benning in Georgia, joined the elite Kopassus commando unit in 1976, shortly after then-U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger greenlighted the genocidal Indonesian invasion of East Timor after the former Portuguese colony declared independence.


Over the following two decades, around 200,000 people—approximately a quarter of East Timor's population—were killed or died from starvation or disease.

"He is the general, most importantly, who led many of the massacres in East Timor after the Indonesian army invaded," Nairn said of Prabowo. "In one case, in the village of Kraras, Prabowo and his forces killed hundreds of fleeing civilians. He later was involved in other massacres and directing assassinations of political activists in Aceh and West Papua."

Nairn and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman witnessed and survived a 1991 massacre of hundreds of East Timorese pro-independence demonstrators in Dili. Nairn was also briefly jailed by Indonesia's military in 1999 and subsequently deported.

Prabowo also allegedly orchestrated the worst atrocity of the period immediately preceding Suharto's 1998 fall from power. Kopassus troops under Prabowo's command led the mass rape and murder of at least 160 Chinese-Indonesian women and girls—many of whom were reportedly burned to death after being sexually assaulted—and the slaughter of hundreds of other Indonesians of Chinese origin.

The Clinton administration cut ties with Kopassus in 1999 and banned Prabowo from entering the United States the following year. However, in 2010 the Obama administration, citing the unit's improved human rights record under a democratic Indonesian government, resumed cooperation. This, despite reports that Kopassus was still committing atrocities against Christians in independence-minded West Papua.

In 2020, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Mike Esper invited Prabowo to the Pentagon as the Trump administration sought to bolster ties with Indonesia to counter the rise of China.

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Big Oil, Plastics Industry Led 'Campaign of Deception' to Push Recycling Fraud


"The oil industry's lies are at the heart of the two most catastrophic pollution crises in human history," one advocate said.


More than 90% of plastics disposed of between 1950 and 2015 were not recycled.
(Photo: Laura Lezza/Getty Images)


OLIVIA ROSANE
Feb 15, 2024

COMMON DREAMS

The petrochemical industry—including major oil companies like ExxonMobil—knew for decades that recycling was not a sustainable solution to the problem of plastic waste, yet continued to promote it in order to avoid regulation and deceive consumers into continuing to buy and use their products, a report released Thursday by the Center for Climate Integrity reveals.

The report, titled The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the Plastics Industry Deceived the Public for Decades and Caused the Plastic Waste Crisis, includes newly disclosed industry documents proving that companies and trade groups knew that plastics could not be recycled indefinitely in the 1980s and 90s even as they launched a massive public relations campaign to sell voters and policymakers on the process.

"This evidence shows that many of the same fossil fuel companies that knew and lied for decades about how their products cause climate change have also known and lied to the public about plastic recycling," Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) president Richard Wiles said in a statement. "The oil industry's lies are at the heart of the two most catastrophic pollution crises in human history."




Plastic pollution is a major environmental and public health crisis. If current trends continue, plastics are expected to outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050, and the toxic fumes from plastic production facilities and incineration are a major environmental justice hazard for frontline communities. Humans in general also ingest an estimated credit-card's worth of plastic each week, with unknown but potentially serious health impacts.

Recycling is often touted as a solution for keeping plastic out of the environment, but this has proven to be ineffective and insufficient: More than 90% of the plastics disposed of between 1950 and 2015 were either burnt, sent to landfills, or dumped into the environment. There are several technical and economic reasons why plastic recycling doesn't work at scale. Plastics lose quality as they are recycled and can only really be reused once or potentially twice. The decline in quality also means that recycled plastics are more likely to leach toxins added during production or picked up from other waste items. Economically, it is cheaper to produce new plastics than recycle older ones, and only two types of plastic—PET and HDPE—actually attract markets that will recycle them.

The industry has long been aware of these limitations. In 1969, the American Chemical Society declared, "It is always possible that scientists and engineers will learn to recycle or dispose of wastes at a profit, but that does not seem likely to happen soon on a broad basis."

"We are committed to the activities, but not committed to the results."

Despite this, petrochemical companies and their trade groups began to push plastic recycling in the 1980s and 90s as a response to growing public concern over plastic waste, and the threat that this would lead to bans on plastic products.

"No doubt about it, legislation is the single most important reason why we are looking at recycling," Wayne Pearson, the executive director of industry front group the Plastics Recycling Foundation and a DuPont marketing director, said in 1988.

The plastics industry used various strategies to sell the public on recycling, according to the report. These included:Funding front groups to promote recycling;
Running ad and PR campaigns;
Investing in recycling research to convince the public that it was taking action;
Setting unrealistic internal recycling goals;
Writing educational material promoting recycling to school children;
Advocating for "advanced recycling," a term for breaking plastics down to chemical components that can theoretically be reused but are not in practice; and
Claiming, against evidence, that recycling can be part of a "circular economy."
CCI provides new evidence that, while the industry was employing these strategies, it was simultaneously aware of recycling's limitations.

For example, a report from the Vinyl Institute trade group concluded in 1986 that "recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution, as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of."

In 1994, Exxon Chemical Vice President Irwin Levowitz told employees of the American Plastics Council that "we are committed to the activities, but not committed to the results."

CCI argued that the petrochemical industry should face legal consequences for its "campaign of deception" similar to suits brought against tobacco and opioid companies.

"When corporations and trade groups know that their products pose grave risks to society, and then lie to the public and policymakers about it, they must be held accountable," Wiles said. "Accountability means stopping the lying, telling the truth, and paying for the damage they've caused."

CCI vice president of legal and general counsel Alyssa Johl added: "Big Oil and the plastics industry's decades-long campaign to deceive the public about plastic recycling has likely violated laws designed to protect consumers and the public from corporate misconduct and pollution."

"Attorneys general and other officials should carefully consider the evidence that these companies defrauded the public and take appropriate action to hold them accountable," Johl said.

ECOCIDE

Trinidad and Tobago Mulls Historic Disaster Declaration After 'Ghost Ship' Oil Spill


"Right now the situation is not under control," the prime minister said Sunday on the eve of the Caribbean nation's world-renowned Carnival.

This February 10, 2024 photo shows blackened ocean waves and shore contamination caused by an oil spill three days earlier off the coast of Tobago island, Trinidad and Tobago.
(Photo: Clement Williams/AFP via Getty Images)


BRETT WILKINS
Feb 11, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

The government of Trinidad and Tobago this weekend said it is considering what would be the island nation's first-ever Level 3 diaster declaration amid a worsening environmental disaster caused by an oil spill from a mysterious ship on the eve of the Caribbean country's famed Carinval.

As more than 1,000 emergency workers and volunteers raced to clean up the massive spill off Tobago's southwestern coast, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley told reporters Sunday that "cleaning and restoration can only begin as soon as we have the situation under control. Right now the situation is not under control."




The spill came from a vessel of indeterminate origin that capsized off the coast of the Cove Eco Industrial Park on Wednesday. As Agence France-Presse reported, the ship—named Gulfstream—"made no emergency calls, with no sign of crew, and no clear sign of ownership."

Officials said the spill has affected over 25 miles of coastline and has damaged a coral reef and Atlantic beaches, threatening not only the environment and residents' health but also the vital tourism industry as the country prepares to host its world-renowned Carnival this week.

Farley Augustine, chief secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly, told reporters Saturday that the government may declare a Level 3 disaster for the first time in the nation's history. Level 3 spills require "substantial" international support.

"Everything indicates that we are going in that direction," Augustine said.

There have been hundreds of oil spills off Trinidad and Tobago's coast over the past decade. These accidents rarely attract international media attention and often go unpunished.

Lawsuit Accuses EPA of Hiding Critical Data About Harms of 'Forever Chemicals'

"By sitting on this critical information, EPA is advancing the private interests of a corporate violator and shirking its public health responsibilities," said one plaintiff's attorney.


A flag with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's logo flies outside the federal agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. 
(Photo: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

BRETT WILKINS
Feb 15, 2024
COMMON FREAMS 

A federal lawsuit filed Thursday by a pair of environmental advocacy groups accuses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of "wrongfully withholding test data and other vital information" regarding the presence of so-called "forever chemicals" in millions of fluorinated plastic containers.

The lawsuit—filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Center for Environmental Health (CEH)—argues that the EPA is violating Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) disclosure requirements by improperly classifying health and safety data as trade secrets.

Referring to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—commonly known as forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—the suit also accuses the EPA of "denying the public access to the results of testing showing the levels of PFAS in fluorinated plastic containers and their contents along with the identities of the products in which these toxic materials are present."

PEER and CEH said that after they filed a Freedom of Information Act request "for documents shedding light on the health risks associated with PFAS in fluorinated containers," the EPA granted trade secret protection sought by Inhance Technologies, LLC.


Fluorination involves the high-temperature application of fluorine gas to plastic containers to make them more resistant to discoloration and permeation by solvents.


As PEER explained:
PFAS chemicals are formed during the fluorination of high-density polyethylene plastic containers by Inhance Technologies, LLC of Houston, Texas. Inhance is the sole U.S. company conducting this type of fluorination. Studies by EPA, independent researchers, and Inhance itself show that PFAS leaches from the walls of containers into their contents, thus exposing millions of people to PFAS without their knowledge...

Inhance fluorinates 200 million containers a year which are used to package diverse products ranging from fuels to foodstuffs, cosmetics, and cleaning products which consumers and workers use on a daily basis.

"EPA has found that these containers constitute a public health threat, a long-awaited determination that also should encompass the public's right to know," CEH counsel Bob Sussman, who is also a former senior EPA official, said in a statement announcing the new lawsuit.


Used in a broad range of products from clothing to nonstick cookware to firefighting foam, PFAS is linked to cancers of the kidneys and testicles, low infant weight, suppressed immune function, and other adverse health effects. It is found in the blood of 99% of Americans and a similar percentage of people around the world.

"Given the unquestionably major public health stakes, EPA should be stepping up and maximizing access to health and safety data, but the agency is disclosing vital information only grudgingly and with lingering secrecy even though disclosure is mandated by TSCA," Sussman lamented.

Colleen Teubner, PEER's litigation and policy attorney, asserted that "the cloak of confidential business information cannot be used to hide health and safety studies as EPA is currently doing."

"By sitting on this critical information, EPA is advancing the private interests of a corporate violator and shirking its public health responsibilities," she added.

The new lawsuit follows a December 2022 court filing by PEER and CEH seeking to stop Inhance from generating forever chemicals during the manufacture of plastic containers.

Thousands of PFAS-related lawsuits have been launched in U.S. courts over recent decades.