SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
August, 25 2014, 12:00pm EDT
Contact:
CAIR-St. Louis Executive Director Faizan Syed, 636-207-8882, 314-330-2946, fsyed@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com
National Director of Muslim Civil Rights Group Attends Michael Brown Funeral
WASHINGTON
Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, is attending today's funeral for Michael Brown, the unarmed African-American teenager who was shot to death by police in Ferguson, Mo.
"I believe it is important for all Americans to show their support for racial equality and social justice and to be part of the national discussion on these important issues," said Awad.
Last week, CAIR joined the NAACP and other civil rights groups in calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the shooting.
CAIR representatives also took part in a national American Muslim call-in discussion of the Michael Brown and joined almost 100 national civil rights groups, coordinated by The Leadership Conference and Civil and Human Rights, in calling for federal action to prevent discriminatory profiling.
SEE: National American Muslim Call-In on Ferguson, Michael Brown Movement
CAIR: Almost 100 Organizations Call for Federal Action to Prevent Discriminatory Profiling
Previously, CAIR's St. Louis chapter called for a federal probe of the shooting and CAIR called on Muslim prayer leaders nationwide to devote their Friday sermons to the issues of racial equality and social justice.
SEE: CAIR-St. Louis Asks Feds to Probe Police Shooting of Unarmed Black Teen
CAIR Asks Imams to Devote Sermons to Racial Equality in Response to Missouri Police Shooting
Video: CAIR-MI Director Discusses Protests of Michael Brown Shooting in Ferguson
CAIR-CT: 'Black is Not a Crime' Rally to Be Held Today in New London
Photos: CAIR Participates in NAACP Maryland Prayer Vigil Calling for Healing After Ferguson Shooting
Ferguson Tension: American Muslims Will Relate
CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group. CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.
(202) 488-8787LATEST NEWS
'Baffling Capitulation to Wall St': Harris Breaks With Biden on Capital Gains Tax
"Harris seems to be making a policy choice based on the disproven, failed ideology of trickle-down economics, and giving petulant billionaires a gift in the process," said one progressive advocacy group.
Sep 05, 2024
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris broke with President Joe Biden on Wednesday by proposing a smaller capital gains tax increase for wealthy Americans, a decision that one progressive advocacy group decried as a "baffling capitulation to Wall Street billionaires" who have vocally complained about the vice president's embrace of higher taxes on the ultra-rich.
Harris said at a campaign event in New Hampshire on Wednesday that "if you earn a million dollars a year or more, the tax rate on your long-term capital gains will be 28% under my plan," broadly confirming earlier reporting by The Wall Street Journal.
"We know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad-based economic growth and it creates jobs, which makes our economy stronger," said Harris, who previously signaled support for Biden's tax agenda.
A 28% top tax rate on long-term capital gains—profits from the sale of an asset held for more than a year—would be significantly lower than the 39.6% rate that Biden proposed in his most recent budget.
The Patriotic Millionaires, a group of rich Americans that advocates for a more progressive tax system, said it was "appalled" by Harris' decision to pare back Biden's proposed capital gains tax increase.
"Vice President Harris is making a catastrophic mistake by capitulating to the petulant whining of the billionaire class," said Morris Pearl, the group's chair. "Harris seems to be making a policy choice based on the disproven, failed ideology of trickle-down economics, and giving petulant billionaires a gift in the process."
"Both on the economics and on the politics, this is a serious unforced error."
Details of Harris' capital gains tax plan began to emerge days after ultra-rich investors and other major donors to the vice president's 2024 campaign took to the pages of The New York Times to express concerns about Harris' support for Biden's tax agenda, which also calls for taxing the unrealized capital gains of households worth over $100 million.
The Financial Timesdescribed Harris' break with Biden on long-term capital gains as "an olive branch to Wall Street"; The New York Times similarly characterized the move as a message to the business community that she is "friendlier than Biden."
But Pearl of the Patriotic Millionaires warned that the policy shift "demonstrates a concerning lack of commitment to reversing destabilizing economic inequality."
"Both on the economics and on the politics, this is a serious unforced error," said Pearl, the former managing director at the investment behemoth BlackRock. "You don't need my years of experience on Wall Street to grasp the obvious. Big investors invest to make serious money, not to save a few percentage points on their tax bill. No one has ever made a lucrative investment decision based on a preferential tax rate. The incentive to invest is making money, not lowering tax rates."
"This ill-advised, destructive policy is a giveaway to the ultra-rich," he added. "We hope Vice President Harris will reconsider her position."
Even with a smaller proposed capital gains tax increase, Harris' tax agenda stands in stark contrast to that of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has called for massive additional tax cuts for the rich and large corporations while attacking Harris' support for progressive—and widely popular—tax proposals.
While Trump has not yet outlined a capital gains proposal during the 2024 campaign, the former president said in the final year of his first term that he would propose cutting the top capital gains rate to 15% in a second term.
Steve Wamhoff of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy noted at the time that 99% of the benefits of such a cut "would go to the richest 1% of taxpayers."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Poster Child for...Corporate Greed': Sanders Slams Health Industry CEO's Subpoena Refusal
"It is time for Dr. de la Torre to get off of his $40 million yacht and explain to the American people how much he has gained financially while bankrupting the hospitals he manages."
Sep 04, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday blasted Dr. Ralph de la Torre—the CEO of a bankrupt health services company "who has made hundreds of millions of dollars ripping off patients and healthcare providers"—for refusing to comply with a bipartisan subpoena compelling him to testify about his company's insolvency.
"Perhaps more than anyone else in America, Dr. de la Torre is the poster child for the type of outrageous corporate greed that is permeating through our for-profit healthcare system," said Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP).
"Working with private equity vultures, he became obscenely wealthy by loading up hospitals across the country with billions in debt and selling the land underneath these hospitals to real estate executives who charge unsustainably high rent," the senator added. "As a result, Steward Health Care, and the more than 30 hospitals it owns in eight states, were forced to declare bankruptcy with some $9 billion in debt."
Steward is trying to sell all 31 of its hospitals in order to pay down its debt.
As Common Dreamsreported on July 25, the HELP committee, which includes 10 Republicans, voted 20-1 to investigate Steward Health Care's bankruptcy, and 16-4 to subpoena de la Torre.
"I am now working with members of the HELP committee to determine the best path forward," Sanders said on Wednesday. "But let me be clear: We will not accept this postponement. Congress will hold Dr. de la Torre accountable for his greed and for the damage he has caused to hospitals and patients throughout America. This committee intends to move forward aggressively to compel Dr. de la Torre to testify to the gross mismanagement of Steward Health Care."
"It is time for Dr. de la Torre to get off of his $40 million yacht and explain to the American people how much he has gained financially while bankrupting the hospitals he manages," Sanders added, referring to the 190-foot megayacht the CEO purchased as Steward hospitals failed to pay their bills.
Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—a HELP committee member—and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also slammed de la Torre on Wednesday, calling his failure to appear before the panel "outrageous."
"De la Torre used hospitals as his personal piggy bank and lived in luxury while gutting Steward hospitals," the senators said. "De la Torre is as cowardly as he is cruel. He owes the public and Congress answers for his appalling greed—and de la Torre must be held in contempt if he fails to appear before the committee."
De la Torre's attorney, Alexander Merton, lashed out against the Senate subpoena Wednesday in a letter
accusing HELP committee members of being "determined to turn the hearing into a pseudo-criminal proceeding in which they use the time, not to gather facts, but to convict Dr. de la Torre in the eyes of public opinion."
The same day the HELP Committee voted to probe Steward and subpoena de la Torre, Markey and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, introduced the Health Over Wealth Act, which would increase the powers of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to block private equity deals in the healthcare industry.
Last month, Markey and Warren expressed concerns over the proposed $245 million sale of Steward Health Care's nationwide physician network to a private equity firm.
"Two Massachusetts hospitals are closing and communities are suffering because of private equity's looting of Steward," said Warren. "Selling Massachusetts doctors to another private equity firm could be a disaster. We can't make the same mistake again. Regulators must scrutinize this deal."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'It's a Disgrace': Biden Weighs Making Temporary Asylum Limits Harder to Lift
"We already know how devastating the Biden asylum shutdown is and it should be ended immediately rather than expanded," said one campaigner.
Sep 04, 2024
Two months after U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order barring migrants who cross the southern border without authorization from receiving asylum, senior administration officials are reportedly considering making the policy—which was meant to be temporary—much harder to lift.
Biden's June directive invoked Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—previously used by the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, to deny migrants asylum—"when the southern border is overwhelmed."
The policy shuts down asylum requests when the average number of daily migrant encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500. Border entry points may allow migrants to seek asylum when the seven-day average dips below 1,500.
"The move to make the asylum restrictions semi-permanent would effectively rewrite U.S. asylum law."
The changes under consideration would reopen entry only after the seven-day average for migrant encounters remains under 1,500 for 28 days.
"The asylum ban itself is arbitrary and duplicative. It has no relation at all to a person's asylum claims, meaning even a person with an extraordinarily strong claim would be denied for crossing at a time when many others, potentially thousands of miles away, are doing the same," Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group, said Wednesday.
"There is no doubt that we need to rethink the current asylum system, which would include giving it an infusion of resources so that people don't have to wait five years for a decision," he continued. "But cutting it off to whole swathes of people for reasons unrelated to their claims isn't a fix."
"The move to make the asylum restrictions semi-permanent would effectively rewrite U.S. asylum law, which since it was created in 1980 has mandated that all people on U.S. soil be permitted to request humanitarian protections, regardless of how they got here," Reichlin-Melnick added.
U.S. officials say Biden's order has resulted in a dramatic decrease in asylum claims.
According toThe New York Times:
Since Mr. Biden's executive order went into effect, the number of arrests at the southern border has dropped precipitously. In June, more than 83,000 arrests were made, then in July the number went down further to just over 56,000 arrests. Arrests in August ticked up to 58,000, according to a homeland security official, but those figures still pale in comparison to the record figures in December when around 250,000 migrants crossed.
Migrant rights advocates condemned the new rules. Less than two weeks after Biden issued the order, a coalition of rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the administration, arguing the policy was illegal and endangered migrant lives.
"We already know how devastating the Biden asylum shutdown is and it should be ended immediately rather than expanded," Amy Fischer, Amnesty International USA's director of refugee and migrants rights, said Wednesday on social media. "High numbers of people being denied their human rights is not a sign of success, it's a disgrace."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular