September, 22 2008, 04:02pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Michelle Chan, 415-544-0790 ext. 14
Erich Pica, 202-222-0739
Friends of the Earth Opposes Bush's Trillion-Dollar Blank-Check Bailout
Government response to financial crisis must include fundamental structural reforms;
WASHINGTON
Friends of the Earth announced its
opposition to the Bush administration's proposed trillion-dollar bailout
of the financial system today, and called on elected officials to ensure that
any government action related to the financial crisis fixes deep structural
flaws in the financial system that have spawned not only the current financial
crisis but are also jeopardizing our planet's future.
Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder had the
following statement:
"This financial crisis has exposed
the right-wing's anti-regulation philosophy as an abject failure.
This hands-off approach to managing the economy has resulted in greedy
corporate titans getting rich on the backs of working people. This same
philosophy is causing irreparable harm to the planet. And now we face a
trillion-dollar taxpayer-funded bailout. Enough is enough.
"Friends of the
Earth opposes the Bush administration's proposed blank-check bailout for
these wealthy financiers. What is needed is truly fundamental reform, not
this no-strings-attached proposal.
The government must impose oversight and re-regulation on the financial
system. The days of the fox guarding the henhouse, with corporate
lobbyists writing the laws that regulate their industries, must end. And we must consider
environmental impacts to be economic impacts as we move forward. While
the risks posed to the economy by the current financial crisis are indeed dire,
we also face long-term risks posed by the climate crisis. These problems
are intertwined, and reforms of the financial system must take this into
account.
"Reform must be conducted in a
just way that helps people on Main
Street more than it helps corporate fat cats on
Wall Street. Taxpayer funds taken from the treasury to prop up Wall
Street must be replaced so they can be used to fund other
necessary initiatives.
"It's ironic that when many
countries run into financial trouble, the International Monetary Fund imposes
serious economic restructuring, but President Bush and Secretary
Paulson now see no need for restructuring at all. They're
wrong, and their proposal should be rejected."
This unprecedented bailout not only imposes a hefty
monetary cost on taxpayers and future generations, but it represents enormous
opportunity costs. In response, Friends of the Earth is calling on
Congress to consider the following specific reforms, which adhere to the
principles stated above:
Any bailout
package should be just.
-
Financial
institutions should bear the brunt of the losses from this crisis; taxpayer monies
should be used to only cover the bare minimum to keep our banking system
functional.
-
The
government should acquire an ownership stake in the institutions that are
bailed out.
-
Bailing out Wall Street banks
without making proportionate efforts to keep American families in their homes
is unfair. Friends of the Earth supports organizations such as the Center
for Responsible Lending, National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the
National Council on Civil Rights, who are advocating Chapter 13 judicial
modification relief to keep homeowners from losing their homes.
-
In
addition, failing to hold executives accountable for the disastrous
consequences of their actions is unconscionable; those who were responsible
should be persecuted to the full extent of the law. In the future, fines
and penalties for financial and corporate malfeasance must be increased, and
executive compensation must be reigned in at all companies that are being
bailed out.
Any bailout package must be tied to a restoration of regulation and supervision
of the financial services industry.
-
Decades of deregulation have
allowed this industry to "innovate" new financial products,
structures, and vehicles at an astonishing rate without monitoring and
supervision. Friends of the Earth supports the call from Center for
Economic and Policy Research to require tradable instruments, such as credit
default swaps, to be standardized and traded on exchanges, which would subject
them to regulation and transparency.
-
Now is the time to ensure proper
oversight over the financial services sector, and tighten up rules on
accounting and offshore tax havens which allow clever financial engineering to
hide real risks and liabilities. It is time to bring hedge funds under
supervision; and no hedge funds (which have refused to even register with the
SEC) should be bailed out.
-
Congress must also reinstate the
Glass-Stegall Act, which paved the way for massive overleveraging among
financial institutions, increased the risk of conflicts of interest, and put
consumers real savings at risk.
Any bailout package
should include measures to cool down
speculative hot money flows and asset bubbles.
-
The Fed should take on a new role
of proactively preventing asset bubbles, and take measures to cool down overheating
parts of the financial markets.
-
As Friends of the Earth has
proposed since 1995, a Tobin-style tax (for example, 0.25 percent tax on stock
trading, and 0.02 percent tax on options, futures, swaps, and currency trading)
should be introduced to curb excessive speculation and promote longer-term
investing that serves the real economy. Tobin-style tax revenue could be
used to help pay for the bailout and address critical social and environmental
needs.
Government-owned financial institutions have
the ability and responsibility to foster an environmentally sound future.
-
AIG, as it becomes a federally
controlled entity, should cease underwriting fossil fuel energy projects
and focus on facilitating a clean energy transformation. The same principle
should apply to other new federal entities that are created via this bail
out. The National Environmental Policy Act should apply to such
entities.
-
In the future, Fannie and Freddie
Mac should institute a policy to require an increasing percentage of the
mortgages they purchase to be "green" (location efficient, energy
efficient, and/or sustainably designed). It should phase out purchasing
mortgages for development in flood plains and coastal hazard zones.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
(202) 783-7400LATEST NEWS
A Secretive Program Has Let Cops Spend Hundreds of Millions on Weapons of War, Report Shows
“Our tax dollars are being weaponized against us,” said the head of the Center for International Policy.
Oct 31, 2025
State and local governments have spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars helping cops wage “war” against their own residents under a secretive and opaque program that allows the police to purchase discounted military-style equipment from the federal government.
Over the past three decades, the obscure 1122 Program has let states and cities equip local cops with everything from armored vehicles to military grade rifles to video surveillance tech, according to a report published Thursday by Women for Weapons Trade Transparency, part of the Center for International Policy.
Using open records requests, which were necessary due to the lack of any standardized auditing or record-keeping system for the program, the group obtained over $126 million worth of purchasing data across 13 states, four cities, and two counties since the program's creation in 1994. Based on these figures, they projected the total spending across all 50 states was likely in the "upper hundreds of millions of dollars."
“The 1122 Program diverts public money from essential community needs and public goods into military-style equipment for local police,” said Rosie Khan, the co-founder of Women for Weapons Trade Transparency. “The $126.87 million spent on militarized police equipment and surveillance technology could have instead provided housing support for 10,000+ people for a year, supplied 43 million school meals, or repaired roads and bridges in dozens of communities.”
Congress created the 1122 Program at the height of the War on Drugs, authorizing it under the 1994 National Defense Authorization Act to provide police departments with equipment to carry out counter-drug operations. It was not the first program of its kind, but followed in the footsteps of the more widely known 1033 Program, which has funneled over $7 billion of excess military equipment to police departments.
But there are a few critical differences: 1033 is subject to rigorous federal record-keeping, while 1122 has no such requirement. And unlike 1033, which transfers equipment that was already purchased but not needed, 1122 allows states and cities to spend money to purchase new equipment.
The program's scope ballooned dramatically in 2009 after another NDAA added "homeland security" and "emergency response" missions to its purview. As the report explains, "no regulatory mechanisms are ensuring that equipment is used for counter-drug, homeland security, or emergency response purposes. In fact, the scope of these missions was never defined."
Increasingly, it has been used to provide police with equipment that has often been deployed against protesters, including $6.2 million for weapons, weapons training, and riot gear. Among the equipment purchased in this category was pepper spray, batons, gas masks, and riot shields.
By far, the largest expenditures under the program have been the more than $85 million spent on various armored trucks, vans, and sedans.
Police departments have spent an additional $6 million to purchase at least 16 Lenco BearCats, which cost around $300,000 apiece. These were among the military vehicles used by police to suppress the racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020.
As recently as October 3, 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were documented aboard a Bearcat in full military garb and menacing protesters with sniper rifles outside the notorious immigrant detention facility in Broadview, Illinois.
In July, Los Angeles ICE agents were filmed using a vehicle to run over multiple protesters who attempted to block their path.
Another $9.6 million was spent on surveillance equipment, including license plate readers, video and audio recording devices, and subscriptions to spying software that uses sophisticated facial recognition and social media monitoring technology to track people's movements and associations.
The report highlights the increasing use of this technology by college police departments, like Northern Virginia Community College, which spent over $2.7 million on surveillance tech through 1122. College police departments have used this sort of technology to go after student protesters and activists, especially amid last year's nationwide explosion of pro-Palestine demonstrations across campuses.
At Yale, which has made "surveillance cameras, drones, and social media tracking... standard tools in the police department's arsenal," one student was apprehended last year and charged with a felony for removing an American flag from its pole using the school's surveillance system.
The report's authors call for Congress to sunset the 1122 Program and direct its funding toward "a version of public safety that prioritizes care, accountability, and community well-being rather than militarized force."
“Lawmakers, including federal and state legislators and city council representatives," it says, "must act with the urgency that this moment requires to prevent a catastrophically violent takeover of civil society by police, federal agents, and corporations profiting from exponentially increasing surveillance, criminalization, and brute force.”
They note the increasing urgency to end the program under President Donald Trump, who—on the first day of his second term—reversed an executive order from former President Joe Biden that restricted the sale of some of the most aggressive weaponry to local police forces.
“Local police have been given more avenues to arm themselves with military-style equipment during an era of heightened arrests, forced removals, and crackdowns on free speech. These disturbing political shifts have undermined the crucial work of coalitions for police accountability," the report says.
Nancy Okail, president and CEO of the Center for International Policy said: "Our tax dollars are being weaponized against us under the guise of ‘domestic terrorism.'”
"As talk of a ‘war from within’ grows louder," she says, the new report "exposes how this rhetoric fuels real assaults on democracy and civil rights.”
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‘Scarier Than Halloween Costumes’: Trump Policies Blamed for Jacking Up Candy Prices
"From the grocery aisles to the doctor’s office, Trump’s economic circus keeps jacking up costs and squeezing household budgets."
Oct 31, 2025
President Donald Trump's economic policies have put a damper on this year's Halloween festivities, as his tariffs on imported chocolate in particular have helped jack up the price of candy.
CNBC reported on Friday that data from research firm Circana and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that chocolate prices in the US have jumped by 30% over the last year since Trump began slapping hefty tariffs on foreign goods, including staple products such as cocoa, coffee, and bananas that cannot be grown at sufficient scale in the US.
The increased cost of chocolate has now been passed on to consumers in the form of higher candy prices, according to a joint study released this week by The Century Foundation and Groundwork Collaborative.
According to the organizations' analysis, candy prices as a whole have gone up by just under 11% over the last year, which is more than triple the current overall rate of inflation.
Unsurprisingly, the analysis showed that these increases were particularly severe in candies that had significant chocolate inputs, as it found that "variety packs from Hershey’s (maker of KitKats, Twizzlers, Reeses, and Heath bars) are up 22%, while variety packs from Mars (maker of Milky Way, M&Ms, Three Musketeers, and Skittles) are up 12%."
The analysis also cited recent quotes from the CEOs of retail giants Target and Walmart indicating the president's tariffs were having a major impact on US consumers. Target CEO Brian Cornell, for instance, said on a recent earnings call that the tariffs had created a "challenging and highly uncertain" environment, while Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said that "costs increase each week" thanks to Trump's trade wars.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) used the organizations' study to rip the president for raising the price of Halloween candy in a video posted on social media.
"Do you remember when Donald Trump told American families to cut back on buying kids' dolls?" she asked, in reference to Trump earlier this year suggesting parents buy fewer toys for their children after his tariffs on imports raised their costs. "Well now he's making candy more expensive too, just in time for Halloween."
Donald Trump's jacked up candy prices — just in time for Halloween. pic.twitter.com/f3glomQbUK
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 31, 2025
The American Federation of Teachers, whose members have likely experienced the increased cost candy first hand, also took a shot at Trump's economic policies while posting a graph illustrating The Century Foundation and Groundwork Collaborative's study.
"The only thing scarier than Halloween costumes? The rising price of candy from Trump's tariffs," the union wrote on X.
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, said that the increase in Halloween candy prices was just one source of pressure facing US families as a result of Trump's economic policies.
In particular, Jacquez pointed to the cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid in the Republican Party's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as well as the GOP's inaction on extending tax credits for buying health insurance, as major pain points.
"While inflation eats through paychecks and House Republicans hide in plain sight, working families are slammed by soaring healthcare premiums, frozen food assistance, and rising bills," he said. "From the grocery aisles to the doctor’s office, Trump’s economic circus keeps jacking up costs and squeezing household budgets."
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Classified US Report Finds 'Many Hundreds' of Alleged Israeli Human Rights Violations in Gaza
The long backlog and a reporting protocol developed especially for Israel are likely to keep Israeli forces from being held accountable, said officials.
Oct 31, 2025
Progressive lawmakers and rights groups have long warned that by arming the Israel Defense Forces and providing the IDF with more than $21 billion, the US has violated its own laws barring the government from sending military aid to countries accused of human rights abuses and of blocking humanitarian relief.
On Thursday, a classified report by the US State Department detailed for the first time the federal government's own acknowledgment of the scale of alleged human rights abuses that the IDF has committed in Gaza since it began bombarding the exclave in October 2023.
The Office of the Inspector General's document, reported on by the Washington Post, which spoke to US officials about it, also detailed how allegations of human rights abuses against the Israeli military are made harder to prove by a vetting process that is only afforded to Israel—not other countries accused of violations.
The US officials said the long backlog of "many hundreds" of possible violations of the Leahy Laws, which bar US military assistance from going to units credibly accused of human rights abuses, would likely take years to review—calling into question whether the IDF will ever be held accountable for them.
"The lesson here is that if you commit genocide and war crimes, do as much as possible because then it becomes difficult to investigate everything," said journalist and Northwestern University professor Marc Owen Jones grimly in response to the Post's report.
The government report was described by the Post days after the State Department dismantled a website used to report human rights violations by foreign militaries that receive US aid, which was established in 2022 to ensure the US was in compliance with the Leahy Laws.
The Biden administration flagged at least two 2024 attacks by Israeli forces—one that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers and one known as the "flour massacre," in which more than 100 Palestinians were killed and nearly 800 were injured as they tried to get flour from aid trucks—as ones that may have used US weapons, signaling that continuing US aid to Israel would break the Leahy Laws.
“To date, the US has not withheld any assistance to any Israeli unit despite clear evidence."
A report by Amnesty International last year focused on several IDF attacks on civilian infrastructure—which killed nearly 100 people including 42 children—in which Israel used bombs and other weapons made by US companies such as Boeing.But just a week after the Amnesty analysis, the Biden administration told Congress in a mandated report that it was "not able to reach definitive conclusions" on whether Israel had used US-supplied weapons in attacks such as the one on the World Central Kitchen workers.
After the report of the new analysis, said University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami, former President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Antony Blinken "cannot hide from responsibility" after they persistently defended and funded Israel's attacks on Gaza.
But along with the long backlog of potential human rights abuses, the so-called Israel Leahy Vetting Forum, which dates back to 2020, is likely to prevent the State Department from reviewing the allegations against the IDF.
The government's protocol for reviewing allegations against Israel differs from that of other countries; a US working group is required to “come to a consensus on whether a gross violation of human rights has occurred," with representatives of the US Embassy in Jerusalem among those who participate in the working group.
“To date, the US has not withheld any assistance to any Israeli unit despite clear evidence,” Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in the early weeks of Israel's war on Gaza over the Biden administration's military support, told the Post.
Shahed Ghoreishi, a former State Department communications official who was fired earlier this year after pushing for the agency to condemn ethnic cleansing and other abuses in Gaza, said it was "predictable" that the State Department declined to answer questions from the Post about the inspector general's report.
"There may be nothing that can excuse the brushing of crimes under the rug," said Ghoreishi, "but ducking questions and hoping it goes away (including no more State Department press briefings) is an abdication of responsibility to the American people."
The inspector general's report was compiled days before Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement earlier this month; the deal is still formally in place, but Israel has continued carrying out strikes, killing more than 800 Palestinians since it was signed.
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