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First They Came For My Appliances: We Are Here For the Refrigerator Freedom Act
Okay all you naysayers whining shambolic House GOPers aren't doing their job just 'cause they're blocking border solutions, ignoring infrastructure, enabling Ukrainian deaths and barely keeping the government afloat: Listen up. Boldly showcasing their astute priorities, they will fight Monday to liberate your dishwashers, dryers, fridges and other home gizmos from a Marxist "avalanche" of new "Libby Boogyman" rules aimed at keeping the planet from vaporizing into air, and c'mon who cares about that?!
Ever-steadfast in upholding their tradition of chasing fictional ills - Mike 'Election Chicanery' Johnson is now vowing to require proof of citizenship to prevent (brown-skinned) non-citizens from voting even though it's already illegal, also "not a thing" - the GOP-led House Rules Committee meets Monday to discuss six bills to prep them for final votes on the House floor. The six bills are the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act, the Liberty in Laundry Act, the Affordable Air Conditioning Act, the Clothes Dryer Reliability Act, the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act and the Refrigerator Freedom Act. Yes. They are real. They're in response to a number of Biden regulations or proposals aimed at addressing climate change, part of a $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act that seeks to lower costs, reduce energy use, cut pollutants and move to more green-energy practices.
To Republicans, however, they're aimed at letting tyrants "control everything Americans are able to do on a day-to-day basis," part of an insidious plot to allow "others" to come for their stuff, their choices and their God-given rights, evidently including the right to get a back-alley abortion with a coat hanger. (One sage: "REPUBLICANS: 'Keep gubmint OUT of our toasters and dish washers!' ALSO REPUBLICANS: 'We need surveillance cameras inside every cha-cha so we can keep an eye on what women are doing!'") Thus did Arizona's Rep. Debbie Lesko, declaring she is "proud (to) stand on the side of choice for American consumers," devise the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act to prohibit "federal bureaucrats" from issuing an aforementioned "avalanche" of new energy standards "not technologically feasible and economically justified."
In March, Iowa's Rep.Mariannette Miller-Meeks echoed her, introducing and eventually passing the Refrigerator Freedom Act to prohibit the same offenses - now "not cost-effective or technologically feasible" - because Biden has "done nothing but implement outrageous regulations" that only limit choice, increase prices, disenfranchise toilets and blenders, and move us toward dictatorship. MAGA-ites, of course, applaud these red-meat efforts to rescue heat pumps, gas stoves, washing machines, showers and air fryers from domination. "Finally, following American and not Globalist priorities," said one. "I am sick and tired of the government telling us what we can and cannot buy and use." And after 11 GOP-run states sued over some of the changes, a judge dismissed the rules as "arbitrary and capricious."
That could also apply to a House focused on fighting to be able to buy a $7 toaster even if, okay, so it may burn your house down but FREEDUMB! Of course, confronting issues like national security or infrastructure require actual, unflashy, conciliatory, negotiating, attention-to-detail legislative work, and they're barely able to co-exist with their colleagues, never mind opponents, and anyway it's probably about time for another two-week recess, so let's go with hair dryers and ceiling fans. Along with the petty stupidity is the economic irony: Most appliances are made in China, so they're protecting Chinese companies from U.S. regulations, and for things made here, they're ensuring big business can be left alone to make over-priced, planet-killing, deliberately-soon-obsolete crap. Your tax dollars at work!
Predictably, the cognitive dissonance drew its share of mockery, with Digby noting, "We all know the GOP likes to focus on kitchen table issues, but this is ridiculous." Others argued that, "Insurrectionists are now GOP Congresspersons" and that, thanks in part to such diversionary tomfoolery, "The GOP has Ukrainian blood on their hands." "First they came for my appliances," one intoned. "I was not an appliance, so I said nothing." Another suggested a key addition to the GOP agenda: a "Stop Wasting Our Time on Meaningless Legislation Act." There were also triumphant stories of deliverance born of the GOP's hard and noble work. "In honor of the Refrigerator Freedom Act, I just opened my front door and set my newly liberated Frigidaire free," one reported. "Needless to say, it's running."
Apr 14, 2024
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'Progress Almost Invisible': World Set to Produce 220 Million Tonnes of Plastic Waste
A report released Thursday estimates that countries worldwide are on pace to generate 220 million tonnes of total plastic waste this year, a finding that comes as governments are set to convene in Ottawa, Canada later this month to hash out a binding global treaty to limit the toxic pollution that is inundating waterways and communities across the planet.
The new report from EA – Earth Action (EA) projects that Plastic Overshoot Day—the point at which the amount of plastic waste produced exceeds the capacity of global management systems—will arrive on September 5 this year. Over a third of the total plastic waste created this year will end up in nature, according to the analysis.
On average, each person globally contributes 28 kilograms of plastic pollution per year. Previous research has shown that just 20 companies are responsible for more than half of the world's total single-use plastic waste.
"The findings are unequivocal; improvements in waste management capacity are outpaced by rising plastic production, making progress almost invisible," EA co-CEO Sarah Perreard said in a statement Thursday, criticizing the "assumption that recycling and waste management capacity will solve the plastics crisis."
That assumption has been peddled for decades by the fossil fuel industry, which has a major interest in thwarting attempts to curb the production, use, and waste of plastics. Nearly all plastic is made from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels.
Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet, said the new report underscores that "plastic pollution has set humanity on the road to ecological and humanitarian disaster."
"We have a narrow window of opportunity this year to create a global plastics treaty that will protect not only our ocean, our air, our soil but our own children," said Sutherland. "The question for every government now is this—will you negotiate a treaty to protect the health of your people; or will you negotiate a treaty to protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry? Viable solutions are already available at scale, giving us materials and systems that work in harmony with nature, not against it."
"Close to 50% of the world's population currently lives in areas where waste generated has already exceeded the capacity to manage it."
Late last year, the third round of U.N. plastics treaty talks ended without a breakthrough as major oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia obstructed the proceedings, the fossil fuel industry worked to sabotage the negotiations, and the U.S. declined to forcefully push for a global pact that meaningfully curtails plastics production.
The U.S. is among the world's leading generators of plastic waste, producing nearly 100 kilograms per capita each year. The U.S. and other rich nations also export tremendous amounts of plastic waste around the world, undercutting efforts to tackle the pollution crisis.
A Greenpeace International survey released earlier this month found that two-thirds of the U.S. public wants a global plastics treaty that bans single-use plastic packaging. A separate poll commissioned by WWF and the Plastic Free Foundation showed that 88% of global citizens support banning "unnecessary single-use plastic products" such as shopping bags.
In an op-ed for Euronews Green on Thursday, Perreard of EA wrote that "whilst policy has been mooted, schemes devised, and initiatives launched, plastic has continued to rise, and our planet and its people have sat under an ever-darkening cloud of pollution that showers its toxic consequences upon us."
"Close to 50% of the world's population currently lives in areas where waste generated has already exceeded the capacity to manage it, with the figure projected to rise to 66% by 5 September," Perreard noted. "With the fourth round of negotiations in Ottawa at the end of this month, we can no longer ignore the facts, we can no longer afford to resist the change that should be set in motion through the treaty."
Apr 11, 2024
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Wealth of the Top 1% in US Hits All-Time High of $45 Trillion
Data released by the Federal Reserve on Thursday shows the top 1% of Americans are the richest they've ever been.
The new data reveals that at the end of the fourth quarter last year they had a record $44.6 trillion in wealth. That's up from $30 trillion in 2020.
The main driver of wealth gains last year was from the stock market hitting record highs. While wages are increasing for average Americans, the top 1% is gaining wealth at a much faster pace.
When we talk about global oligarchy this is what we are talking about: Today, the top 1% throughout the world own more wealth than the bottom 95% of humanity combined. Children go hungry. Billionaires buy yachts and take joyrides on rocket ships. Change must come.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 28, 2024
The wealth of U.S. billionaires is currently at $5.5 trillion, which is up 88% since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The nation's rich accruing so much wealth in recent years has renewed calls for a wealth tax.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and others are pushing to pass the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, which would put a 2-cent tax on every dollar of wealth over $50 million. Warren referred to U.S. President Joe Biden calling for higher taxes on billionaires during his State of the Union when the bill was reintroduced earlier this month.
With a two-cent Ultra-Millionaire Tax on every dollar of wealth above $50 million—and another penny on every dollar above $1 billion—we can invest in opportunity for all of our kids.https://t.co/f0dZDOYYCr
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 28, 2024
"As President Biden says: No one thinks it's fair that Jeff Bezos gets enough tax loopholes that he pays at a lower rate than a public school teacher," said Warren. "All my bill is asking is that when you make it big, bigger than $50 million dollars, then on that next dollar, you pitch in 2 cents, so everyone else can have a chance."
As progressives fight to pass a wealth tax at the federal level, legislators in many states are pursuing their own wealth taxes.
Mar 29, 2024
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Sanders, Schakowsky Introduce Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky on Wednesday introduced a bill that aims to close tax loopholes for corporations, end tax breaks for businesses that move jobs abroad, and stop companies from hiding profits in tax havens.
"At a time of massive wealth and income inequality and soaring corporate profits, it is an outrage that many large, profitable corporations continue to pay little to nothing in federal income taxes," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "As working people struggle to pay rent and put food on the table, we have a corrupt and rigged tax code that is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of working families."
"Meanwhile, Republicans would make a bad situation even worse by providing even more tax breaks to their corporate campaign contributors and the billionaire class while proposing massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid," he noted, nodding to GOP budget plans for fiscal year 2025, which begins in October.
"That is unacceptable. We need to create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the top 1%," Sanders asserted. "And, one of the ways we can begin to do that is by making sure that large corporations pay their fair share of taxes. American workers should not be paying more in federal income taxes, in a given year, than profitable companies like Target, Amazon, and T-Mobile."
"We need to create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the top 1%."
The Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act, unveiled as Americans prepare for the federal income tax deadline on Monday, could raise over $1 trillion in revenue over a decade with the tax haven provision alone, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
"Thanks to President Joe Biden, we are growing the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, but we must go even further by passing the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act to help put the interests of everyday Americans ahead of billionaires and transnational corporations," said Schakowsky. "I thank Sen. Sanders for devoting his career to tackling income inequality and am proud to partner with him on this important measure."
Biden's budget blueprint for the next fiscal year, released last month, includes proposals to hike taxes for corporations and ultrarich individuals—whose wealth is soaring to record heights. Such policies are not expected to pass the divided Congress, but they serve as a clear statement of the Democratic president's position just months away from the November election.
When then-President Donald Trump—now the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden—signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017, he infamously declared that "corporations are literally going wild over this, I think even beyond my expectations."
Many of that law's cuts are set to expire at the end of next year. During an exclusive Florida fundraiser at the home of a billionaire investor over the weekend, the former president urged his supporters to help him "turn our country around" by taking steps including "extending the Trump tax cuts."
Apr 10, 2024
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Vietnam Sentences Billionaire to Death for White Collar Fraud
As global billionaires see their wealth soar to record heights, one Vietnamese real estate tycoon was sentenced to death on Thursday in the Southeast Asian nation's largest-ever financial fraud case, part of a government crackdown on corruption.
Tru'o'ng Mỹ Lan, founder of the real estate developer Vạn Thịnh Phát Group, was arrested in October 2022 for illegally controlling and embezzling money from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) for a decade after a 2011 merger she arranged.
"Lan embezzled $12.5 billion, but prosecutors said Thursday the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to $27 billion—a figure equivalent to 6% of the country's 2023 [gross domestic product]," according to Agence France-Presse. "The court ordered Lan, 67, to pay almost the entire damages sum in compensation."
The BCC reported that "according to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4 billion in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement. That much cash, even if all of it was in Vietnam's largest denomination banknotes, would weigh two tonnes."
AFP spoke with one of the 42,000 victims of the scandal identified by authorities:
Nga, a 67-year-old Hanoi resident... told AFP Thursday that she had hoped for a life sentence for Lan so she could live to fully witness the pain her actions had caused ordinary people.
"Many people worked hard to deposit money into the bank, but now she's received the death sentence and that's it for her," said Nga, using a pseudonym to protect her identity.
"She can't see the suffering of the people."
Nga has so far been unable to retrieve the $120,000 she invested with SCB.
Human rights advocates consider Vietnam to be a global leader in death penalty sentences and executions, though data on the topic are considered state secrets, so precise figures are not known.
"From January to early October 2023, at least 189 people have been sentenced to death in Vietnam," The Vietnamese Magazine reported last year, citing state media reports. Among them, "44 were convicted of murder (23%), while the remaining 145 (77%) were involved in illegally trading or transporting narcotic substances."
Amnesty International, which opposes the death penalty in all cases, released its latest annual report on sentences and executions worldwide last May. While noting the Vietnamese government's limits on official data, the group found that in 2022, there were at least 102 sentences handed down and over 1,200 people on death row in the country.
"The death penalty in Vietnam is used to intimidate those who would break the law, while also showing the power of the ruling party," Human Rights Watch's Asia deputy director Phil Robertson told CNN in 2022. "This is a government that chases down dissidents, runs roughshod over civil society, sentences and imprisons people after kangaroo court trials, and now we know, executes far more people than anyone else in [the region]."
"Vietnam's horrendous record of executions dwarfs that of any of its neighbors but it is not surprising that the government has systematically implemented the death penalty and kept executions out of the public eye," Robertson added.
As the BCC noted:
The habitually secretive communist authorities were uncharacteristically forthright about this case, going into minute detail for the media. They said 2,700 people were summoned to testify, while 10 state prosecutors and around 200 lawyers were involved.
The evidence was in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes. Eighty-five others were tried with Tru'o'ng Mỹ Lan, who denied the charges and can appeal.
All of the defendants were found guilty. Four received life in jail. The rest were given prison terms ranging from 20 years to three years suspended.
The trials were part of the ongoing "Blazing Furnace" anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by Nguyễn Phú Trọng, secretary-general of Vietnam's Communist Party.
Multiple top officials have left office during the campaign, including Vietnamese President Võ Văn Thưởng, who resigned last month. The Communist Party did not offer details about the reason for his departure but said that "Thưởng's violations and shortcomings have caused bad public opinion, affecting the reputation of the party, the state, and him personally."
Apr 11, 2024
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'Genocidal Actions' Persist in Gaza as Israel Blocks Aid and US Weapons Flow
A week after Israeli officials promised the Biden administration they would open a border crossing and a port to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, relief organizations and the United Nations reported Friday that life-saving supplies are still being blocked, and warned that the White House must take more decisive action to force Israel to stop starving Palestinians.
The U.N. reported that just 212 aid trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday, far lower than the 467 reported by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who promised to "flood Gaza with aid" after a tense phone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden last Thursday.
The phone call came in response to Israel's bombing of a World Central Kitchen aid convoy that killed seven aid workers. On the call, Biden reportedly threatened to halt weapons deliveries unless a surge in humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza.
But as The Guardian reported Friday, the Ashdod port has not been opened yet, and instead of opening the Erez crossing last Sunday as promised, Israel has opened another crossing into northern Gaza but has not yet allowed U.N. agencies to use it.
"Netanyahu scammed Biden again: A week after he promised to open the Erez crossing and Ashdod port to increase aid to Gaza, the [Israel Defense Forces] & port authorities say they NEVER received any instructions of this nature," said Muhammad Shehada, communications chief for Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, citing reporting from Israel's N12 channel.
The Guardian reports that Israel has set an ultimate target of 500 aid trucks per day to enter Gaza—the same amount that delivered relief to residents before the Israeli bombardment rendered the enclave's food system, healthcare facilities, and other public services inoperable.
"The call for 500 trucks, with a combination of commercial and humanitarian shipments, is the absolute minimum," Juliette Touma, communications director for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) told The Guardian. "Probably what Gaza needs is at least 1,000 trucks a day."
The U.N. found that just 141 aid trucks entered the enclave on Wednesday. The Washington Post reported that Israeli authorities have blocked aid deliveries containing items such as chocolate croissants, maternity kits, sleeping bags, stone fruits, and oxygen cylinders.
Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, said Friday that "very limited" aid deliveries have continued to contribute to low birth weights in babies who have been born in northern Gaza in recent weeks.
"It's very easy for Israel to say, 'We've sent you 1,000 trucks so please deliver them inside Gaza,'" McGoldrick said, noting that Israel has held trucks up at checkpoints "for hours" and that many roads are not open to deliveries.
"At no point in time in the last month and more have we had three or even two of those roads working at the same time simultaneously," said McGoldrick.
The news that Israel has not allowed a "flood" of aid into Gaza since Biden threatened Netanyahu with an end to weapons transfers came days after Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), admitted to U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) that reports of famine in parts of Gaza are now "credible."
Save the Children confirmed on April 2 that at least 27 children have died of starvation and disease as a result of Israel's blockade, and U.N. agencies said in February that 5% of children under age 2 were acutely malnourished.
At least 33,634 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since October, with U.S. weapons used in much of the bombardment.
At Foreign Affairs on Friday, Refugees International's president, Jeremy Konyndyk, and vice president for programs and policy, Hardin Lang, wrote that "as negotiations about a econd cease-fire and hostages-for-prisoners swap gain steam, the United States has a crucial opportunity to press Israel to change course and allow a major famine-prevention effort."
Namely, they said, Biden must make good on his threat to cut off Israel's military aid—of which the U.S. is the largest international provider.
"The United States is likely the only outside power that can ensure a famine is avoided, given the leverage it has with its ally Israel," they wrote. "U.S. President Joe Biden must act now to make famine prevention a top priority and be prepared to deploy meaningful U.S. leverage—including pausing arms sales—if the Israeli government does not comply. Famine would not only constitute a humanitarian cataclysm; it would also represent a geopolitical failure that would damage U.S. credibility in the Middle East for years to come."
Konyndyk and Lang's call was echoed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which said Power's comments must push the president to take action.
"Inducing a famine by besieging an entire population and slaughtering innocent civilians are acts which no one can ignore, let alone justify," said CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad. "President Biden and his administration are enabling this famine and the deliberate cruelty targeting the Palestinian people in Gaza. He must take action to prevent further atrocities by demanding an immediate cease-fire, securing full access to humanitarian aid, ending all weapons transfers and other funding for Israel, and holding the war criminals in the Netanyahu government accountable for their genocidal actions."
Also on Friday, a U.S. coalition of groups including the Working Families Party, the Service Employees International Union, and the National Education Association wrote to Biden and urged him to enforce the Foreign Assistance Act, which bars the government from providing military support to countries that restrict humanitarian aid deliveries.
Ending arms transfers "will send a clear message that the Netanyahu government is not above the law and that the U.S. will not stand by while the war kills innocent Palestinians and continues to drive escalation throughout the region," reads the letter. "U.S. law is unequivocal: Countries that obstruct U.S. humanitarian aid cannot receive U.S. military aid under the Foreign Assistance Act or the Arms Export Control Act."
Apr 12, 2024
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Mehdi Hasan Launches Media Platform With Naomi Klein, Greta Thunberg, and More
The journalist says Zeteo will feature "hard-hitting interviews and unsparing analysis" in op-eds, podcasts, and streaming shows.
Apr 15, 2024
After a few weeks of "soft launch" mode, journalist Mehdi Hasan on Monday officially debuted his new media platform, Zeteo, and declared that "this is not a one-man band."
The former MSNBC and Peacock host—whose show was canceled in November and wrapped up in January, after his incisive criticism of Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip—revealed nine of the contributors he has lined up so far, calling them "some of the biggest, boldest, and best names from media, activism, entertainment, and beyond."
They are Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman, comedian and podcaster W. Kamau Bell, Palestinian Canadian lawyer Diana Buttu, former CNBC and CNN correspondent John Harwood, foreign policy analyst Rula Jebreal, author Naomi Klein, novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, actor and activist Cynthia Nixon, and Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.
"The tough interviews and knowledgeable analysis are all coming back, along with a global cast of contributors," Klein said on social media Monday. "I was honored when Mehdi asked me to be one of them, along with Rula Jebreal and Greta Thunberg and many others yet announced."
"Mehdi and I will be having a regular conversation called 'Unshocked,'" noted Klein, who authored The Shock Doctrine.
Hasan—who has also produced content for Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and The Intercept—has said Zeteo will feature "hard-hitting interviews and unsparing analysis" in a variety of forms, from op-eds and podcasts to streaming shows, beginning with "Mehdi Unfiltered."
“What else do we call this other than the deliberate dehumanization of the Palestinian people?”
I called out media bias and racism, on Gaza, and brought receipts!, in the opening monologue of my new show #MehdiUnfiltered today.
Watch/share/subscribe:https://t.co/20UUcW06TK pic.twitter.com/oHA1bfZqWK
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 15, 2024
"To keep
Zeteo's journalism independent and free of advertiser and corporate influence," Hasan explained ahead of the formal launch, "and to allow us to continue investing in the future, we have to rely on our individual paid subscribers."
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'Catastrophic': Biden Admin Approves Largest Offshore Oil Export Terminal
"Nothing about this project is in alignment with Biden's climate and environmental justice goals," said one campaigner.
Apr 15, 2024
Climate action groups are vehemently rejecting the Biden administration's claim that the approval of a new offshore oil terminal—planned to be the largest in the U.S.—is in the "national interest," after the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the project had met several federal requirements and could begin operations by 2027.
The agency's Maritime Administration said last week that Enterprise Product Partners, a Houston-based pipeline company, had been granted a deepwater port license to build the Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT) near Freeport, Texas following a five-year federal review process.
The federal government determined the $1.8 billion terminal project had undergone sufficient environmental impact reviews and would overall benefit the country—even as it was projected by the Sierra Club, which has fought SPOT for several years, to emit greenhouse gases equivalent to those of nearly 90 coal-fired power plants.
"The evidence is clear that SPOT would be catastrophic to the climate, wildlife, and frontline communities of the Gulf," said Devorah Ancel, senior attorney with the Sierra Club. "It threatens the future existence of the endangered Rice's whale with a population of less than fifty, and its ozone pollution would compromise the health of thousands of Gulf residents who have endured decades of fossil fuel industry pollution. Make no mistake, SPOT is not in the national interest."
The project is expected to include two pipelines that would carry crude oil to the deepwater port each day, enabling the export of 2 million barrels of crude oil, loaded onto two supertankers at once, daily.
"Nothing about this project is in alignment with Biden's climate and environmental justice goals," said Kelsey Crane, senior policy advocate at Earthworks. "The communities that will be impacted by SPOT have once again been ignored and will be forced to live with the threat of more oil spills, explosions, and pollution. The best way to protect the public and the climate from the harms of oil is to keep it in the ground."
Allie Rosenbluth, U.S. manager at Oil Change International, noted that the project has been approved despite the International Energy Agency's clear assessment in 2021 that "all new investments in oil and gas projects must stop if the world is going to reach its climate goals," including limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C.
"The Biden administration's decision to approve the Sea Port Oil Terminal is a grave mistake. This approval will only harm local communities and ecosystems, and lead to even more devastating impacts of the climate crisis," said Rosenbluth. "The U.S. is already the largest producer of oil and gas and has the largest expansion plans globally. Instead of continuing this legacy of harm by approving fossil fuel projects, President Biden should be listening to the science and the masses of his constituents calling for an end to fossil fuels."
The direct action group Climate Defiance expressed doubt that the approval of SPOT will help Biden win over any voters as the 2024 election approaches.
Nine in 10 Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning independents told Pew Research Center last year that they believe the U.S. should prioritize developing renewable energy sources—and two-thirds of Republican voters under age 30 agreed.
"This project would be the single-largest oil export terminal in the U.S." said the group. "We are being boiled alive here, literally burned to death by 'moderate' politicians who see fit to torch us in the name of quarterly profits. How can we live like this? How can this go on?"
Last year was the hottest on record, and the first three months of 2024 have each broken records for high global temperatures. Scientists found last year that climate disasters including wildfires in Canada and extreme heat in Europe were made far more likely by fossil-fueled planetary heating.
Local organizers in Texas condemned the Biden administration's decision to ignore campaigners who have warned of the danger SPOT poses to marine habitats as well as people who live in the area where two crude oil pipelines have now been given final approval to run.
"We continue to struggle to see why Biden and [Transportation Secretary Pete] Buttigieg prefer to protect the corporate profits of billion-dollar oil giants like Enbridge and Enterprise over the hardcore objections of the people who would have to live with the consequences of pipelines criss-crossing our beaches," said Trevor Carroll, Brazoria County lead organizer with Texas Campaign for the Environment. "If you care about environmental justice and the climate, you just can't support a monstrosity like SPOT. The local community and the global climate justice movement are continuing to fight... This is not over."
Melanie Oldham, director of Better Brazoria, said SPOT will be "an oil spill waiting to happen that would not only lower property value, but harm our local ecosystems, ecotourism, beaches, recreation, and kill marine life like the endangered Rice's whale and Kemp's Ridley sea turtles."
"Those of us residents, beachgoers, and voters that have for the past four years opposed the SPOT offshore terminal and pipelines are very disappointed with the approval of the project license," said Oldham. "President Biden has again broken promises to protect frontline communities in Surfside and Freeport."
The administration's approval came three months after the White House announced it was delaying consideration of new gas export terminals, and the same day the federal government said fossil fuel companies will have to pay higher royalties in order to drill on federal lands.
But those climate actions paired with the SPOT approval amount only to "flip flopping," said Climate Defiance.
"It is not enough that the administration stopped new gas exports if they are going to back stab us with this death-sentence decision now," said the group. "This is not us being 'ungrateful.' This is the science. The pure, unvarnished, science."
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One Expert's Tax Day Message: Fight Profiteering by Hiking the Corporate Tax Rate
"We can raise the corporate tax rate and disincentivize this corporate profiteering that's costing Americans so much," said Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens.
Apr 15, 2024
The U.S. Congress should hike taxes on corporations that have been jacking up prices across the American economy to pad their bottom lines, one expert said Monday in a video message marking national Tax Day.
"These days most Americans are thinking a lot more about high prices than they are about taxes. But the two things are actually connected," said Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens, pointing to a 2017 law that delivered massive tax breaks to corporations and the rich.
Portions of that measure, which former President Donald Trump signed into law, are set to expire at the end of next year, prompting fresh calls for reforms aimed at reversing its damaging impacts. Billionaires have collectively gotten more than $2 trillion richer since the law's enactment, and corporate tax dodging has become even more prevalent.
Owens noted that in addition to rewarding themselves and their shareholders, corporations that benefited from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) "also raised your prices."
"Why? Because they got to keep more of the winnings," Owens explained. "It was a lot more fun to overcharge you when they didn't have to send as much of it back to the Treasury Department."
When lawmakers revisit the TCJA, Owens said, they should "tackle this corporate greed at the source." A recent Groundwork analysis found that corporate profits drove 53% of inflation in the U.S. between April and September of last year.
"We can raise the corporate tax rate and disincentivize this corporate profiteering that's costing Americans so much," she added.
What do high prices and tax policy have in common? More than you may think.
On Tax Day, our Executive Director @owenslindsay1 explains — WATCH: pic.twitter.com/lYvJtZZG6j
— Groundwork Collaborative (@Groundwork) April 15, 2024
Owens' remarks came days after Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee made clear they intend to pursue more tax cuts for big businesses and the wealthy if they take full control of Congress and the White House next year.
During a recent fundraiser at the home of a billionaire investor, Trump—the GOP's presumptive 2024 presidential nominee—said he would work to extend the expiring TCJA provisions if reelected. Making the law's tax cuts for individuals permanent, as Trump and Republican lawmakers have proposed, would overwhelmingly benefit the rich.
"If Democrats take over both houses of Congress in 2024, and [President Joe] Biden gets a second term, they must reverse the regressive tilt of the Trump tax law—raising more revenue while advancing the interests of low- and moderate-income families across the country rather than those of the wealthy," former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in a blog post on Monday.
"Tax cuts for people making over $400,000 should end on schedule in 2025," Reich added. "The Trump tax law's provisions primarily benefiting high-income households are costly and do not trickle down."
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