April, 07 2016, 11:30am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Emily Pomilio (480) 286-0401, emily.pomilio@sierraclub.org
Emily Norton, (508) 397-6839, emily.norton@sierraclub.org
Sierra Club: Massachusetts Solar Bill Must Be Fixed
Organization Urges Legislature to Revisit Solar in Omnibus Energy Bill
BOSTON
Massachusetts House members yesterday voted 152-1 in favor of legislation (H. 4173) that raises the solar net metering cap by 3 percent, but slashes the net metering reimbursement rate by 40 percent. The bill also expressly authorizes electric utilities to petition the Department of Public Utilities to add a minimum charge, with no ceiling, to all solar customers' bills. Municipal solar projects are exempted from the cut in net metering reimbursement rates, but are still subject to the net metering cap.
The cap increase of 3 percent goes beyond the 2 percent increase that had been proposed in the House and Senate bills that passed last fall and will allow projects to move forward that have been stalled due to the previous cap set in both National Grid and Eversource territories.
The Senate is expected to vote on the bill today, approximately thirteen months after the net metering cap was first reached in National Grid territory. The solar industry employs over fifteen thousand Massachusetts workers.
In response, Emily Norton, Massachusetts Chapter Director for the Sierra Club, issued the following statement:
"House and Senate conferees deserve credit for coming together to raise the cap on solar net metering. This will allow stalled projects to move forward, and that means a paycheck to thousands of Massachusetts families.
However, the work is not done. The new cap is expected to be reached within 6 to 9 months, which means risk to investors, and to the 15,000 Massachusetts residents who rely on solar jobs to put food on the table.
In addition, because rooftop solar is reimbursed at the retail rate, slashing net metering reimbursement rates to community and low-income solar customers by 40 percent means residents who happen to have homes suitable for rooftop solar will be reimbursed much more generously than the 80 percent of Massachusetts residents in apartments and other residences not suitable for rooftop solar, who are often low-income, who want to participate in community solar. This inequity does not represent Massachusetts' values and must be fixed as legislators turn their attention to the wider energy omnibus bill in the coming weeks.
New York and California faced the same decision as Massachusetts; while they undertake a wider study on the value of solar they eliminated net metering caps and they maintained retain net metering rates for all - there was no disproportionate hit to lower income residents.
The bill as it stands sends a clear message that Massachusetts is not a safe place to invest in solar, even though it's a clean energy resource that has brought increased economic investment and jobs to the state. We should be embracing clean, renewable energy, not suppressing it, and that means setting up a clear and fair net metering program that investors and consumers can trust."
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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Corporate Profiteering Schemes That Drive Inflation Detailed at Senate Hearing
"At every turn, companies are cutting corners on the path to record profits, and American consumers are paying the price," one expert testified.
May 02, 2024
Progressive policy experts took aim at corporate greed and profiteering during a Thursday U.S. Senate hearing on "shrinkflation," the process of reducing the size or quantity of a product while selling it at the same price.
At the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing—entitled "Higher Prices: How Shrinkflation and Technology Can Impact Consumers' Finances"—Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) began by acknowledging that "prices today are far too high, and families are having a harder time finding a fair price, seeing more of their paycheck vanish into thin air."
"All of this is happening while corporate profits hit record highs," the senator continued. "Let's be clear: The fact that prices and corporate profits are going up at the same time is no coincidence. A study by the Kansas City Fed found that corporate profits drove half of the price increases in 2021."
Bilal Baydoun, director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, testified that "in America today, a fair price, let alone a sweet deal, is harder and harder to come by. In the age of corporate concentration and high-powered algorithms, pricing is in the midst of a troubling transformation, and the price tag as we know it may become a relic of the past."
"At every turn, companies are cutting corners on the path to record profits, and American consumers are paying the price," he continued. "In a practice known as 'shrinkflation,' companies discreetly reduce the size or volume of common household items—everything from jars of peanut butter to bars of soap—to charge consumers more for less."
"For some essential goods like household paper towels, shrinkflation accounted for roughly 10% of the price increase consumers experienced over the last four years," Baydoun added. "Indeed, big profits increasingly come in smaller packages."
Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone and other executive members of the group submitted a statement for the record asserting that "the American people are fed up with corporate greed and price gouging."
The statement continues:
Even as inflation has gone down, prices remain too high. Americans understand that corporate greed is a major driver of costs that make it difficult for their families to make ends meet.
Corporate profits have exploded since 2020, and a recent study by our partners at the Groundwork Collaborative found that for much of 2023, corporate profits drove 53% of inflation. Comparatively, over the 40 years before the pandemic, profits drove just 11% of price growth. In the final three months of 2023, corporate profits reached an all-time high of $2.8 trillion, according to Commerce Department data.
"From Big Food to corporate landlords to Big Pharma, CEOs across industries keep raising prices despite bragging of bigger and bigger profits and stock rewards for wealthy investors," said Liz Zelnick, director of Accountable.US' Economic Security & Corporate Power program. "These executives clearly didn't need to raise prices so high, but they did it anyway because they could."
"Yet one by one," she added, "conservative Senate Banking Committee members today gave a free pass to their corporate megadonors and instead disingenuously blamed the Biden administration's actions against junk fees and price gouging that are actually working to lower costs for everyday families. They should get their priorities in check."
Earlier this year, Brown and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) introduced a bill "to crack down on companies shrinking their products and raising their prices."
The Shrinkflation Prevention Act would:
- Direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to promulgate regulations to establish shrinkflation as an unfair or deceptive act or practice, prohibiting manufacturers from engaging in shrinkflation;
- Authorize the FTC to pursue civil actions against corporations who engage in shrinkflation; and
- Authorize state attorneys general to bring civil actions against corporations engaging in shrinkflation.
"We need members of Congress to grow spines and stand up to more of these corporate lobbyists," Brown said during Thursday's hearing. "We need our colleagues to join us in efforts like this, to lower prices and stop these tactics that distort the market, stifle competition, and make it harder for Americans to afford the cost of living."
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Professors, Speakers Cut Ties With Universities Over Police Crackdowns on Protests
"What President Shafik did at Columbia moved the whole world a step closer to universally criminalizing direct action, and direct action is the ONLY thing that is going to help the world halt global heating," said one climate scientist as she canceled a planned speech at the school.
May 02, 2024
Repercussions of American universities' crackdowns on student protesters are becoming increasingly evident this week as faculty members, public speakers, and others who collaborate with higher education institutions announced they would cut ties with schools that have repressed students' constitutional right to protest against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza.
On Thursday, Dipali Mukhopadhyay, a former Columbia University professor who is still affiliated with the school's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, announced on social media that she had written to Columbia President Minouche Shafik to ask that her "current affiliation with the university be removed."
"I have watched with horror as your administration has responded with breathtaking incompetence and inhumanity to peaceful student protest against genocidal violence ongoing in Gaza," wrote Mukhopadhyay. "As a teacher and a scholar, I can no longer justify my association with this institution so long as you are at the helm."
Mukhopadhyay's letter to the prestigious Ivy League school came two days after the New York Police Department forcibly removed student protesters from Hamilton Hall, which they had occupied to demand that Columbia divest from companies that contract with the Israeli government. The officers entered the building—which the students had renamed Hind's Hall in honor of a six-year-old girl who was killed by Israeli forces in January—with guns drawn, and reportedly used tear gas to disperse demonstrators outside.
On Wednesday, End Climate Silence founder Genevieve Guenther announced she was canceling her scheduled keynote address at Columbia's symposium on climate and language, which she was supposed to give Friday.
Guenther expressed sorrow that she would not move forward with the talk, but said that being associated with Columbia "at this political moment" was equivalent to ignoring the school's "authoritarian response to protest."
"Climate protest is being systematically criminalized in the U.S. and even in Europe and the U.K.," said Guenther. "And these authoritarian, anti-First Amendment tactics are not only deployed by the right. Yes, the right wing is targeting climate protests. But Democrats are deploying the same tactics to prevent direct action in support of the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza."
Guenther added that she was "deeply ashamed to be associated with this university" as a Columbia graduate, and that she "would FEAR to send [her] son to a place that turns the NYPD in full riot gear on students occupying a building that has been occupied many times before and survived just fine."
Also in New York, Deborah Archer, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, said this week that she would no longer be speaking at the City University of New York School of Law's (CUNY Law) commencement ceremony due to the school's decision not to allow students to give speeches at the event.
The law school quietly made its decision last September, weeks before Israel began bombarding Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, in response to last year's commencement speech by Fatima Mousa Mohammed, who spoke about Israel "murdering" Palestinian civilians. The school publicly disavowed Mohammed's comments under pressure.
As the school community learned of the prohibition on student commencement speakers, eight students filed a lawsuit last week, and on Monday, Archer said she was withdrawing from her speaking engagement.
"I cannot, as a leader of the nation's oldest guardian of free expression, participate in an event in which students believe that their voices are being excluded," said Archer. "I feel compelled to decline the invitation under the circumstances."
Two renowned authors also informed University of Southern California (USC) on Sunday that they will not speak at upcoming events due to the school's deployment of armed officers to arrest 93 student protesters in recent weeks and its decision to keep 2024 valedictorian Asna Tabassum, a Muslim supporter of Palestinian rights, from delivering a commencement address.
"To speak at USC in this moment would betray not only our own values, but USC's too," wrote C Pam Zhang and Safiya Noble. "We cannot overlook the link between recent developments and the ongoing genocide in Palestine."
"Our withdrawal is in no way a condemnation of USC's graduating class, who deserve to be celebrated; nor do we condemn the countless USC faculty, staff, students, and administrators whose views are not represented by university leadership's authoritarian decision-making," the authors added.
Zhang and Noble, who had been scheduled to speak at USC's doctoral and master's degree commencement ceremonies, called on speakers at the graduations of 38 USC satellite campuses "to join us by signing this letter; withdrawing from USC events; and supporting USC students, as well as thousands of students nationwide who deserve respect, not arrest and punishment by their own universities, for courageously speaking truth to power."
Last week, more than 2,100 academics from across the globe signed a statement expressing solidarity with student and faculty protesters and supporting an "academic and cultural boycott" of the school.
Former New Yorker editor Erin Overbey on Wednesday called on "all journalists of conscience" to boycott the Pulitzer Prizes, which are administered by Columbia and are set to be awarded next week. The NYPD threatened student journalists and Columbia School of Journalism Dean Jelani Cobb with arrest during its raid of Hamilton Hall this week.
"Can't wait for the president of Columbia University to tell my industry what's good journalism at the Pulitzers next week," said Matt Pearce, president of the Media Guild of the West. "Try not to trip over any hogtied student journalists while collecting your award."
While the Pulitzer Prize Board on Thursday put out a statement praising "the tireless efforts of student journalists across our nation's college campuses, who are covering protests and unrest in the face of great personal and academic risk," it faced criticism for using passive voice when noting that the NYPD "was called onto campus" at Columbia.
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Tax Rates for Big Corporations Fell by Nearly Half After Trump Cuts
And this is the policy Republicans and their presumptive presidential nominee are vowing to extend if they win in November.
May 02, 2024
Large, profitable U.S. corporations have seen their effective tax rates fall by more than 40% since Republicans and their presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, Donald Trump, rammed through an unpopular law that they want to preserve and extend.
According to a new report published Thursday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the tax rates paid by big and consistently profitable corporations dropped from 22% to 12.8% after the enactment of Trump's tax law, which slashed the statutory corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
"In 2017, Congress and President Trump had a chance to reform our corporate tax system," Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at ITEP and co-author of the new report. "Instead, they just gutted it."
ITEP's analysis examines 296 Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies that were consistently profitable between 2013 and 2021. Even as the companies' combined profits surged by 44%, they "paid $240 billion less in taxes from 2018 to 2021 than they would have paid under the effective rates they paid before the Trump law," according to ITEP.
Verizon, for instance, went from paying an effective tax rate of 21% in the several years preceding the Trump tax cuts to paying 8% in the three years following the law's enactment. Walmart's effective rate fell from 31% to 17%, Meta's fell from 28% to 18%, and Lockheed Martin's dropped from 33% to 15%.
"The signature legislative accomplishment of the Trump administration was the 2017 corporate tax cut," said ITEP senior fellow Michael Ettlinger, a report co-author. "This study shows that the largest of companies, from Verizon to Walmart, have been the biggest beneficiaries."
Critics of the Trump-GOP tax law have from the beginning derided it as a "scam," denouncing Republicans' false promise that the cuts would deliver significant benefits to working- and middle-class families. In reality, the measure's benefits have flowed disproportionately to wealthy individuals and large corporations.
During a fundraiser last month at the home of billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, Trump pledged to his donors that he would work to keep their taxes low by extending the 2017 law if he's reelected. Extending provisions of the tax law that are set to expire at the end of next year would overwhelmingly benefit rich households, according to the Tax Policy Center.
ITEP noted Thursday that in the wake of the tax law's passage, the number of major U.S. corporations paying an effective tax rate of less than 10% rose from 56 to 95, and the number paying less than 5% rose from 41 to 53.
"The primary reasons these large corporations have seen tax cuts of this magnitude are clear," the new report states. "Most importantly, the 2017 tax law drastically cut the statutory corporate tax rate from 35 to 21%. It also expanded tax breaks for corporate expenses characterized as capital investment and expanded other ways to minimize U.S. tax liability. The law also reduced some tax avoidance mechanisms but, taken as a whole, it increased these companies' ability to take advantage of tax breaks."
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