September, 08 2009, 12:50pm EDT
Public Citizen President Robert Weissman on ...
Public Citizen President Robert Weissman on ...
Corporate influence over national policy
WASHINGTON
Public Citizen President Robert Weissman on ...
Corporate influence over national policy
"There is a common link between the policy failure to impose
meaningful restraints on Wall Street, drug companies marketing unsafe
drugs, a deeply flawed climate bill, a dysfunctional health insurance
system that results in 18,000 preventable deaths a year, cable
companies' ability to impose onerous contractual terms, and a global
trading system that undermines our government's authority to adopt
consumer, environmental and worker protections. That common link is
excessive and unchecked corporate power. Public Citizen has always been
a leader not only in addressing issues directly related to health,
safety and environmental protection, but also in working directly to
curb excessive corporate power.
"I hope to help us continue to challenge - and break down - the
false boundaries corporations have successfully imposed on policy
debates. In healthcare, the Obama administration and congressional
leaders have refused to consider the only approach - a
Medicare-for-All, single-payer system - that can cure the system's dual
ills: runaway costs and denial of coverage to tens of millions. In
climate, the legislation that has passed the House of Representatives
utterly fails to produce the economic transformation that the science
tells us we must undergo to avert climate catastrophe. In financial
regulation, the banks have defeated the most important legislative
proposals to mitigate the mortgage epidemic - leading Senate Majority
Whip Dick Durbin to say the banks 'own the place.' The banks have
announced they intend to "kill" the most important regulatory proposal
from the Obama administration - a proposed new financial consumer
protection agency. Our job at Public Citizen is to refuse to let
corporations impose these kinds of limits on policymaking."
Climate change
"Climate change is the greatest threat to the well-being of the
planet and its people. It is going to be the defining issue of the next
50 years - and the world is right now on a terribly worrisome
trajectory.
"It is good to have an administration that acknowledges the reality
of climate change and wants to address it, but the proposals on the
table are woefully inadequate. King Coal, Big Oil and the utilities,
among other industrial and agribusiness interests, have joined together
to, so far, thwart an appropriate policy response.
"There is great opportunity in responding to the crisis, with more
attention to the vibrancy of local communities, the creation of
millions and millions of new jobs, greater equity, and a sense of
shared national and global mission.. New efficiency and energy
technologies can be the engine for an economy that has lost its drivers
- which, for this decade, were the financial sector and housing.
Decentralized generation and distribution offer the possibility for
more independent and livable communities.
"But to respond to the crisis will require first recognizing it for
what it is - not just another in the list of important issues, but an
existential threat to the planet. We - all of us together, with
government in the lead - have to mobilize resources and organizational
might commensurate with the scale of the threat. In the United States,
we have to mobilize the way the country did for World War II.
"Public Citizen brings a long history of working on climate-related
policies like fuel economy standards, subsidies for fossil fuels,
stopping new coal plant construction, and promoting the development of
solar and renewable energy technologies. We are going to build on that
tradition and leverage our collective expertise in matters from global
trade to administrative law. We are going to engage our members and
allies so that together we build a strong citizen movement to overcome
the fossil fuel lobby and avert climate catastrophe."
The financial crisis
"Through its avarice and recklessness, Wall Street has sunk us into
the worst recession of the past 70 years - and, not so incidentally,
destroyed many of its leading firms. Those that survive are dependent
on the trillions of dollars in public funds used to bail out Wall
Street and the big banks.
"Yet rather than express shame and apologize, these institutions
continue to dominate the policymaking debate. Senator Durbin says the
banks "own the place," in the context of their defeat of mortgage
cramdown legislation - a modest measure to address foreclosures that
would very likely benefit banks but would contravene their ideological
opposition to adjusting loan principle. The banking industry openly
announces its plans to 'kill' the most significant Obama
administration financial regulatory proposal - to create a new
financial consumer protection agency.
"We need a smaller financial sector. We need to shrink the size of
the giant banks, impose meaningful restraints on compensation for
executives and highly paid employees (because pay packages incentivized
reckless risk-taking), impose a financial transaction tax, empower
consumers, and offer much more institutional support for community
development banks and credit unions."
Health care reform
"The richest country in the world spends far more than other wealthy
nations on healthcare (at least 50 percent more than every country
except Luxembourg) but sports middling health indicators. It permits 45
million people to live without health insurance, denying them access to
preventative and routine care, resulting in the death of 18,000 people
a year. It tolerates private health insurance companies making
life-and-death rationing decisions for millions of people with only
minimal accountability. It lets private health insurers refuse to take
sick people as customers and engage in endless manipulations to discard
its customers if they do become sick. It features a system in which
medical bills and illness contribute to almost two out of three
personal bankruptcies - even though three-quarters of these bankrupt
people had insurance when they became sick.
"There is a cure all for these ills. It is a Medicare-for-All,
single-payer system, in which everyone is guaranteed access to
healthcare as a matter of right and the government pays medical bills
(thus operating as the "single payer").
"Unfortunately, instead of advocating for this approach - which
President Obama supported as a state senator, and which he still says
would be superior if the system was being designed from scratch - the
Obama administration has sought to reach an accommodation with the
insurance industry, hospitals and Big Pharma."
Money in politics/public financing of elections
"We now have a president eager to take on the big issues -
healthcare, climate change, financial regulatory reform. But in each
case, things are going very wrong. That's because of excessive
corporate power in general, and the distorting power of corporate money
in politics in particular. Indeed, the extraordinarily serious problems
with health care, climate and the financial system are traceable in
large part to money in politics. Wall Street invested more than $5
billion in campaign contributions and lobbying in the decade preceding
the financial meltdown, for example. That money bought them a series of
deregulatory moves that paved the way for the financial meltdown. Now,
with it no longer possible to deny that these problems need addressing,
corporate money is working - all too successfully - to prevent
meaningful remedies.
"With the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court appears poised to
make a bad situation much worse. The court may permit corporations to
spend unlimited amounts of money from the company treasury to support
electoral candidates. Such a decision will unleash a tsunami of
corporate money - probably the best investment a business can make - to
slant elections in favor of corporate-friendly candidates. That money
not only will affect the outcome of races, it will further lead
candidates to engage in self-censorship when they risk offending
powerful business interests.
"Running effective campaigns that engage voters costs money. But it
is equally obvious that elections funded by private money give
disproportionate influence to the wealthy. The simple solution is to
treat elections as a public good (we do, after all, still have public
financing of the electoral apparatus itself) and to provide public
financing for candidates."
Pending free trade agreements
"Designed by the world's largest corporations, our global trading
system benefits those who designed it. Trading rules, including those
in existing and pending free trade agreements, strip power away from
democratically elected governments. Trade rules prevent our federal
government and our states (as well as other governments) from
protecting consumers and the environment. They interfere with efforts
to promote community development and the preservation of good-paying
jobs. They give pharmaceutical companies the right to price gouge the
world's poor, and help agribusiness eliminate family farms.
"When it comes to trade, we need a redirection. We need trade rules
that enhance democracy and ensure that trade advances rather than
undermines the things we want from an economy: safe products,
good-paying jobs and decent livelihoods, vibrant communities and a
healthy planet.
"The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment
(TRADE) Act offers us a way to achieve this redirection. There is
overwhelming public support for the course correction that the TRADE
Act would achieve; the only question is whether the public can be
organized to overcome the entrenched interests supporting the trade
status quo."
The state of the regulatory system
"Whether it comes to health and safety, environmental protection or
maintaining a working financial system that serves all people, our
regulatory system is broken. It is the victim of more than two decades
of deregulatory ideology, misguided court decisions, inappropriate
budget cutbacks, inappropriate reliance on partnership with industry,
distorted cost-benefit analyses and simple corporate capture.
"We need more funding for regulatory agencies - which more than pays
for itself in injuries and illness prevented, lives saved and
environmental space preserved. We need to validate the work of food
inspectors and drug regulators who help keep us safe. We need to ensure
regulatory independence, and empower and direct regulatory agencies to
prioritize their health, safety and related missions over accommodating
the industries they regulate. We need to make sure the courts remain
available for victims of corporate violence, irrespective of whether
their actions were blessed by regulators. And we need to organize and
create mechanisms so citizens can band together to hold regulators (and
the corporations they regulate) accountable."
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
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"The violent repression we're facing as peaceful anti-war protesters is appalling."
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A day after Columbia University officials warned it may call on the National Guard to remove nonviolent student protesters who have been occupying campus lawns since last week in solidarity with Gaza, advocacy group Palestine Legal on Thursday filed a federal civil rights complaint demanding an investigation into the school's "discriminatory treatment of Palestinian students and their allies."
The school discriminated against pro-Palestinian protesters last week when President Minouche Shafik summoned New York Police Department officers in riot gear to arrest more than 100 students, said Palestine Legal.
The complaint details how the escalation against students, who have set up an encampment on campus to demand Columbia divest from companies that work with the Israeli government and to support calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, is part of a monthslong pattern of the university's targeting of pro-Palestinian students.
According to Palestine Legal, students of all backgrounds who have demanded an end to Israel's U.S.-backed massacre of Palestinians in Gaza "have been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment, including receiving multiple death threats, being harassed for wearing keffiyehs or hijab, doxxed, stereotyped, being treated differently by high-ranking administrators including... Shafik, an attack with a chemical agent that led to at least 10 students requiring hospitalization and dozens of others, including a Palestinian student, seeking medical attention, and more."
Columbia student Maryam Alwan, who Palestine Legal is representing in the complaint to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, said the university has "utterly failed to protect [her] from racism and abuse."
"Beyond that, the university has also played a role in this repression by having me arrested and suspended for peacefully protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza," said Alwan. "The violent repression we're facing as peaceful anti-war protesters is appalling. Palestinian students at Columbia deserve justice and accountability, not only for Israel's decadeslong oppression and violence against our people, but for the racism and discrimination we've experienced here on Columbia's campus."
Palestine Legal is representing four students in the case, as well as Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, which was suspended from the campus late last year after holding anti-war protests.
The group called Columbia's threat to call in the National Guard "gravely concerning."
"Columbia's vicious crackdown on student protests calling for Palestinian freedom amidst an ongoing genocide should alarm us all. Students have always been at the forefront of the most pressing social issues of the day," said Palestine Legal staff attorney Sabiya Ahamed.
College campuses have been the sites of frequent pro-Palestinian protests since October, and the NYPD's crackdown on Columbia students last week galvanized students at universities across the country.
The Biden administration has said little about the student demonstrations, but President Joe Biden referred to them broadly as "antisemitic protests" this week.
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Fernando Haddad, Brazil's finance minister; Svenja Schulze, Germany's minister for economic cooperation and development; Enoch Godongwana, South Africa's finance minister; Carlos Cuerpo, Spain's minister of economy, trade, and business; and María Jesús Montero, Spain's first vice president and finance minister, made their case in an opinion piece for The Guardian.
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"What the international community managed to do with the global minimum tax on multinational companies, it can do with billionaires."
Brazil, Germany, and South Africa are all Group of 20 members while Spain is a permanent guest. The ministers noted that "Brazil has made the fight against hunger, poverty, and inequality a priority of its G20 presidency, a priority that German development policy also pursues and that Spain has ambitiously addressed domestically and globally."
"By directing two-thirds of total expenditure on social services and wage support, as well as by calibrating tax policy administration, South Africa continues to target a progressive tax and fiscal agenda that confronts the country's legacy of income and wealth inequality," they wrote.
The ministers continued:
It is time that the international community gets serious about tackling inequality and financing global public goods. One of the key instruments that governments have for promoting more equality is tax policy. Not only does it have the potential to increase the fiscal space governments have to invest in social protection, education, and climate protection. Designed in a progressive way, it also ensures that everyone in society contributes to the common good in line with their ability to pay. A fair share contribution enhances social welfare.
With exactly these goals in mind, Brazil brought a proposal for a global minimum tax on billionaires to the negotiation table of the world's major economies for the first time. It is a necessary third pillar that complements the negotiations on the taxation of the digital economy and on a minimum corporate tax of 15% for multinationals. The renowned economist Gabriel Zucman sketched out how this might work. Currently, there are about 3,000 billionaires worldwide. The tax could be designed as a minimum levy equivalent to 2% of the wealth of the superrich. It would not apply to billionaires who already contribute a fair share in income taxes. However, those who manage to avoid paying income tax would be obliged to contribute more towards the common good.
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"Of course, the argument that billionaires can easily shift their fortunes to low-tax jurisdictions and thus avoid the levy is a strong one. And this is why such a tax reform belongs on the agenda of the G20," they added. "International cooperation and global agreements are key to making such tax effective. What the international community managed to do with the global minimum tax on multinational companies, it can do with billionaires."
Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott reported Thursday that "Zucman is now fleshing out the technical details of a plan that will again be discussed by the G20 in June. France has indicated support for a wealth tax and Brazil has been encouraged that the U.S., while not backing a global wealth tax, did not oppose it."
The French economist told Elliott that "billionaires have the lowest effective tax rate of any social group. Having people with the highest ability to pay tax paying the least—I don't think anybody supports that."
Except the billionaires, of course. "I don't want to be naive. I know the superrich will fight," Zucman added. "They have a hatred of taxes on wealth. They will lobby governments. They will use the media they own."
A few months ago, no one wanted to talk int. taxes, let alone on the super rich. Now we have a process (#G20), finance ministers (\ud83c\udde7\ud83c\uddf7 \ud83c\uddeb\ud83c\uddf7 \ud83c\uddff\ud83c\udde6 \ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddf8 & others) supporting it, \ud83c\udde9\ud83c\uddea in part & everyone agreeing that proceeds should help fund climate and dev: https://t.co/ZldF557pAL— (@)
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Oxfam America policy lead Rebecca Riddell declared Thursday that "extreme inequality stands in the way of solving our most urgent global challenges. We need to tax the ultrawealthy."
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"This suffering does not advance any rational policy goal," said the advocacy groups. "It merely exists to further the political goal of deterrence, which is cruel, inhumane, and misguided."
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Citing ample evidence of human rights abuses in U.S. immigration detention centers, 200 advocacy groups on Thursday demanded that the Biden administration reverse course on a planned expansion of detention facilities and said President Joe Biden's "further entrenching" of the government's reliance on detaining migrants marks "an utter betrayal" of his campaign promises.
The president's signing of a spending bill last month provided $3.4 billion for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), clearing the way for the agency to make space to jail 41,500 immigrants per day in facilities across the country.
After Biden campaigned on ending the use of for-profit detention centers, said the groups, he took office at a time when fewer than 15,000 people were being held in immigration detention facilities—which gave him "a remarkable opportunity to wind down a wasteful and abusive system."
But after the president's 2023 and 2024 budget requests signaled an intention of reducing detention funding—with ICE itself recommending that numerous facilities be closed due to "critical staffing shortages that have led to safety risks and unsanitary living conditions"—Biden last year requested supplemental detention funding as commentators and Republicans in Congress hammered the administration for allowing so-called "chaos" at the U.S.-Mexico border.
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The administration is seeking to expand a system, said the groups, in which the jails and prisons used have been found to "operate under insufficient standards."
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