September, 05 2019, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Mike Stankiewicz, mstankiewicz@citizen.org, (202) 588-7779
Angela Bradbery, abradbery@citizen.org, (202) 588-7767
Congress Must Stop Big Business, Wealthy Donors From Influencing Our Elections
100-Plus Groups Call on Congress to Overturn Citizens United
WASHINGTON
More than 100 organizations, including major civil rights, environmental, labor, LGBTQ and good government groups, today called on members of the U.S. House of Representatives to co-sponsor H.J. Res. 2, the bipartisan Democracy For All constitutional amendment that would return democracy to the people.
The 123 signers include American Federation of Teachers, AFSCME, American Promise, Center for Biological Diversity, Color of Change, Common Cause, Communications Workers of America, Courage Campaign, Daily Kos, the Democratic Coalition, End Citizens United, Franciscan Action Network, Greenpeace, League of Conservation Voters, LeftAction, Modern Military Association of America, MoveOn, National Black Justice Coalition, National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund, Peace Action, People For the American Way, Public Citizen, SEIU, UniteBlue and dozens of others. They asked House members to support the amendment and restore the authority of Congress and the states to set commonsense rules for the raising and spending of money on elections to advance political equality for all Americans.
The letter coincides with a national call-in day that urges constituents to demand their member of Congress support H.J. Res. 2.
The amendment would overturn the disastrous Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed unlimited amounts of political spending to influence our elections. There are 139 co-sponsors in the House, including one Republican cosponsor. All 47 Democrats have signed on to the Senate version of the amendment.
"The Supreme Court's decisions have pushed America to a tipping point in which big-moneyed interests exert control over all levers of government," the letter said. "America needs to be responsive to the people, not to corporations and special interests, or it is no longer a democratic republic."
For years, the American people have demanded lawmakers curb the influence of money in politics. In June, New Hampshire became the 20th state to call on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to address the harm caused by Citizens United. These 20 states as well as more than 800 localities across the country, representing more than 140 million Americans, have expressed support for an amendment.
Read the letter here.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
(202) 588-1000LATEST NEWS
US Rep. Henry Cuellar and Wife Indicted on Bribery Charges
"In exchange for the bribe payments to Imelda Cuellar, Henry Cuellar agreed to perform official acts in his capacity as a member of Congress," the indictment states.
May 03, 2024
The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Friday that Democratic Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, were indicted last week for allegedly "participating in two schemes involving bribery, unlawful foreign influence, and money laundering."
According to the indictment, between at least December 2014 and November 2021, the Cuellars allegedly took approximately $600,000 in bribes from a fossil fuel company owned by the Azerbaijani government and an unnamed bank headquartered in Mexico City. The congressman, who has served on Capitol Hill for nearly two decades and is seeking reelection, previously co-chaired the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus.
"The bribe payments were laundered, pursuant to sham consulting contracts, through a series of front companies and middlemen into shell companies owned by Imelda Cuellar," the document states. "In exchange for the bribe payments to Imelda Cuellar, Henry Cuellar agreed to perform official acts in his capacity as a member of Congress, to commit acts in violation of his official duties, and to act as an agent of the government of Azerbaijan and [the foreign bank]."
NBC News first reported early Friday that the Justice Department was expected to release the indictment, which came more than two years after a Federal Bureau of Investigation raid of the couple's Laredo home. Before the document was unsealed, the congressman claimed in a statement that his actions were "consistent with the actions of many of my colleagues and in the interest of the American people."
"I want to be clear that both my wife and I are innocent of these allegations," Cuellar said Friday. "Before I took any action, I proactively sought legal advice from the House Ethics Committee, who gave me more than one written opinion, along with an additional opinion from a national law firm."
The Cuellars "made their initial court appearance today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dena Palermo in Houston," the Justice Departmnet said Friday. If convicted of all the charges, the 68-year-old congressman and his 67-year-old wife could face decades in prison.
Congressional Democratic leadership last year endorsed Cuellar for reelection in November, despite his opposition to abortion rights—a key issue for this cycle at all levels of politics. During the 2022 cycle, after nearly losing to progressive primary challenger Jessica Cisneros, he beat the Republican nominee, Cassy Garcia, 57% to 43%.
A spokesperson for U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Christie Stephenson, saidin a Friday statement that "Henry Cuellar has admirably devoted his career to public service and is a valued member of the House Democratic Caucus. Like any American, Congressman Cuellar is entitled to his day in court and the presumption of innocence throughout the legal process."
"Pursuant to House Democratic Caucus Rule 24, Congressman Cuellar will take leave as ranking member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee while this matter is ongoing," Stephenson added.
Cuellar isn't the only Democrat in Congress battling allegations of corruption and bribery charges. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were indicted last September and accused of accepting bribes in the form of "cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and other things of value."
The following month, the Justice Department accused the senator of acting as an unregistered agent for the government of Egypt. Menendez has denied wrongdoing and refused to resign. Although he is not seeking reelection as a Democrat, he has teased a possible independent run if he is exonerated.
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'Absurd!': US Billionaires Pay Lower Tax Rate Than Working Class for First Time
"It's time to tax the billionaires," economist Gabriel Zucman argues in a new analysis.
May 03, 2024
An analysis published Friday by the renowned economist Gabriel Zucman shows that in 2018, U.S. billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans for the first time in the nation's history, a data point that sparked a new flurry of calls for bold levies on the ultra-rich.
Published in The New York Times with the headline "It's Time to Tax the Billionaires," Zucman's analysis notes that billionaires pay so little in taxes relative to their vast fortunes because they "live off their wealth"—mostly in the form of stock holdings—rather than wages and salaries.
Stock gains aren't currently taxed in the U.S. until the underlying asset is sold, leaving billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk—a pair frequently competing to be the single richest man on the planet—with very little taxable income.
"But they can still make eye-popping purchases by borrowing against their assets," Zucman noted. "Mr. Musk, for example, used his shares in Tesla as collateral to rustle up around $13 billion in tax-free loans to put toward his acquisition of Twitter."
To begin reversing the decades-long trend of surging inequality that has weakened democratic institutions and undermined critical programs such as Social Security, Zucman made the case for a minimum tax on billionaires in the U.S. and around the world.
"The idea that billionaires should pay a minimum amount of income tax is not a radical idea," Zucman wrote Friday. "What is radical is continuing to allow the wealthiest people in the world to pay a smaller percentage in income tax than nearly everybody else. In liberal democracies, a wave of political sentiment is building, focused on rooting out the inequality that corrodes societies. A coordinated minimum tax on the super-rich will not fix capitalism. But it is a necessary first step."
Responding to those who claim a minimum tax would be impractical because "wealth is difficult to value," Zucman wrote that "this fear is overblown."
"According to my research, about 60% of U.S. billionaires' wealth is in stocks of publicly traded companies," the economist observed. "The rest is mostly ownership stakes in private businesses, which can be assigned a monetary value by looking at how the market values similar firms."
Since 2018, the final year examined in Zucman's analysis, the wealth of global billionaires has continued to explode while worker pay has been largely stagnant. As of last month, there were a record 2,781 billionaires worldwide with combined assets of $14.2 trillion.
The U.S. has more billionaires than any other country, with 813 individuals worth a combined $5.7 trillion.
"The ultra-wealthy are paying less in taxes than the bottom half of income earners. That's absurd!" Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, wrote in response to Zucman's analysis. "We've got to raise taxes on the wealthy and large corporations. Enough with the wealth hoarding. It's past time for us to take back what's ours."
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, called the figures assembled by Zucman "disgraceful" and said that "not only can we fix this, we can make Social Security and Medicare safe and sound as far as the eye can see."
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UN Warns Israeli Ground Invasion Rafah Will Lead to 'Slaughter of Civilians'
"The simplest truth is that a ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words," said a top U.N. aid official. "No humanitarian plan can counter that."
May 03, 2024
The United Nations' humanitarian aid agency warned Friday that an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah would put hundreds of thousands of Palestinians "at imminent risk of death."
"Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death" for the approximately 1.5 million Palestinians—including around 1.2 million people forcibly displaced from other areas of the embattled enclave—sheltering in Gaza's southernmost city, U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva on Friday.
"The hundreds of thousands of people who are there would be at imminent risk of death if there is an assault," he added, warning of not only "a slaughter of civilians, but also at the same time an incredible blow to the humanitarian operation in the entire strip, because it is run primarily out of Rafah."
Gaza: “This contingency plan is Band-Aids. It will absolutely not prevent the expected substantial additional mortality and morbidity caused by a military operation.” - Dr Richard Peeperkorn of @WHOoPt
“Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death” - @UNOCHA
. pic.twitter.com/tJHt8dh3D7
— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) May 3, 2024
According toPolitico, Israel has shared with the U.S. government its plan to move the civilian population out of Rafah ahead of a looming ground assault the Wall Street Journalreported earlier on Friday could begin next week.
Conditions in Rafah are already dire. The city—which was home to fewer than 300,000 people before the war—is now one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are crowded together in tents and other makeshift shelters. Water and other necessities are in desperately short supply. According to James Elder, the global spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), there is approximately one toilet for every 850 people in Rafah and one shower for every 3,500 people.
"Try to imagine, as a teenage girl, or elderly man, or pregnant woman, queueing for an entire day just to have a shower," Elder wrote for The Guardian this week.
There are nearly 600,000 children in Rafah, nearly all of whom are "injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities," UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said Wednesday.
The war in Gaza is taking an unimaginable toll on children.
In Rafah, a city of children, the impact of a further escalation would be devastating.
The lives of children must be protected.
All the hostages must be released.
The nightmare for so many families must end. pic.twitter.com/5kOye5VySZ
— Catherine Russell (@unicefchief) May 1, 2024
Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, who represents the U.N. World Health Organization in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, on Friday called contingency response plans for a Rafah invasion a "Band-Aid" solution.
"It will absolutely not prevent the expected substantial additional mortality and morbidity caused by a military operation," he stressed.
Israel's 210-day assault on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 attacks has already killed at least 34,622 Palestinians—a large majority of them civilian men, women, and children—while wounding more than 77,800 others, according to Palestinian and international officials. At least 11,000 other Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of the more than 370,000 homes and other buildings destroyed or damaged during the war.
That means around 5% of Gazans have been killed or wounded during Israel's onslaught, the U.N. Development Program and the U.N. Economic Commission for Western Asia said in a report published Wednesday. The agencies called this an "unprecedented" level of casualties in modern warfare and said it would take until at least 2040 to restore all the homes destroyed or damaged during the war.
As many as 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced by Israeli forces, who despite a January International Court of Justice (ICJ) order to prevent genocidal acts continue to block adequate humanitarian aid from reaching the starving people of Gaza.
Despite pleas and protestations from world leaders including U.S. President Joe Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to invade Rafah to "eliminate Hamas' battalions there."
Earlier this week, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the "total annihilation" of Gaza, specifically mentioning Rafah. The South Africa-led case against Israel at the ICJ has centered similar statements of intent to destroy Palestinians—which are key to proving the crime of genocide—made by Israeli officials since October.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have ramped up aerial attacks on Rafah in what is likely preparation for a ground invasion. Palestinian and international media reported Friday that an overnight Israeli airstrike on a home killed at least eight people, mostly children.
"After almost seven months of brutal hostilities that have killed tens of thousands of people and maimed tens of thousands more, Gaza is bracing for even more suffering and misery," U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said earlier this week.
"The world has been appealing to the Israeli authorities for weeks to spare Rafah, but a ground operation there is on the immediate horizon," he continued. "For the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled to Gaza's southernmost point to escape disease, famine, mass graves, and direct fighting, a ground invasion would spell even more trauma and death."
"The simplest truth is that a ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words," Griffiths added. "No humanitarian plan can counter that. The rest is detail."
U.S. officials have also privately sounded the alarm over the likely consequences of an Israeli invasion of Rafah.
In March, according to a leaked cable obtained by The Intercept, members of the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development warned the State Department that a Rafah invasion "could result in catastrophic humanitarian consequences, including mass civilian casualties, extensive population displacement, and the collapse of the existing humanitarian response."
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