December, 28 2017, 08:15am EDT
Top 10 Environmental Stories in a Difficult Climate
WASHINGTON
Cities and states around the country made substantial progress in 2017 to help us create the clean, green, healthy planet we deserve -- in sharp contrast to the federal government, which spent the year rolling back protections for our air, water, land and health.
After President Trump announced his intention to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate agreement, more than 2,500 governors, mayors and business leaders from across the country signed onto the "We are still in" statement to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions on their own. This bipartisan group, which represents more than 127 million Americans, signaled to the rest of the world that the American people would uphold their commitment to the goals set by the Paris Climate agreement.
We have the power to harness clean, abundant energy from the sun and the wind, and we can do it more efficiently and cheaply than ever before. In March, for the first time ever, renewable energy accounted for 10 percent of total U.S. electricity generation and continued to expand. The U.S. is now the second-fastest growing market for solar energy, which is the fastest growing source of new energy in the world. The cost of solar is down more than 60 percent in the past decade. While some major utility companies pressured lawmakers to stifle the growth of rooftop solar, forward-looking legislators in Nevada changed course in 2017, largely reversing their state's anti-solar policies and bringing rooftop solar back to one of the nation's sunniest states.
Environment Massachusetts, Environment California, PennEnvironment and others helped introduce legislation to move their states toward 100 percent renewable energy and electricity, respectively, in the coming decades. 2017 saw a tidal wave of 50 cities, including Atlanta, plus dozens of business leaders and institutions, making commitments to transition to the use of 100 percent renewables. Many of the institutions leading this shift to clean energy are in higher education. Environment America and our allies have helped college campuses across the U.S., notably Cornell University and Boston University, to pass student government or administrative resolutions to move towards 100 percent renewable energy.
In California, both Los Angeles County and Los Angeles City adopted proposals for an all-electric bus fleet by 2030 or sooner. Together, these two commitments represent one-fourth of all transit buses in California. The Los Angeles Metro plans on spending $1 billion on new bus purchases over the next 10 years and has already entered into contracts for 95 electric buses in the next four years.
Nine Northeastern states strengthened a bipartisan partnership, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which has cut global warming pollution in half since 2005. The new rules will cut pollution by another 30 percent by 2030. The governor-elect of New Jersey pledged that his state will rejoin the partnership in early 2018, and leaders in Virginia are positioning their state to join as well. Congratulations to the governors for transcending partisan politics and making the nation's best regional climate program even better!
After seven years of litigation, a federal judge ordered ExxonMobil to pay a $19.95 million penalty in a Clean Air Act lawsuit brought by Environment Texas and the Sierra Club. The judge found that the company's Houston-area petrochemical complex had unlawfully emitted more than 10 million pounds of hazardous chemicals, defying clean air permits and state and federal law. If upheld on appeal, this would be the largest civil penalty resulting from a citizen suit in U.S. history.
PennEnvironment Director David Masur announces settlement against ArcelorMittal. Photo by Maranie StaabPennEnvironment settled a federal lawsuit against the world's largest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal, securing the largest penalty of its kind under the Clean Air Act in Pennsylvania and obligating the company to make major upgrades to its operations. ArcelorMittal was accused of hundreds of pollution violations of the federal Clean Air Act, many of which involved violations up to eight times higher than the legal limit.
Suwannee River, Florida. Source: U.S. Geological SurveySecuring what is believed to be the largest Clean Water Act penalty in a citizen enforcement suit in Florida history, Environment Florida and co-plaintiff Sierra Club reached a settlement with poultry giant Pilgrim's Pride Corporation over hundreds of alleged violations of the federal Clean Water Act. As part of the settlement, Pilgrim's has agreed to end, or dramatically reduce, its discharge of pollutants to the Suwannee River.
One of the graphics from Environment America Research & Policy Center's 'Get the Lead Out' reportStates and communities took action to protect drinking water from lead contamination. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has ordered new rules to address lead at child care centers; Maryland and Alabama joined a growing number of states that require testing of water at schools; and cities from San Diego to Austin to Washington, D.C., have set strict, new standards for the amount of lead contamination allowable in drinking water at schools. While much more work is needed, these are steps in the right direction for public health efforts after the issue entered the national spotlight with the Flint Water Crisis in 2014.
Delaware Estuary. Source: Partnership for the Delaware EstuaryEarlier this year, Maryland governor Larry Hogan signed into law a fracking ban, joining Vermont and New York as the only three states in the U.S. to ban fracking altogether. More recently, the Delaware River Basin Commission issued draft rules prohibiting fracking in the Delaware River watershed, which provides drinking water to 15 million people in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
With Environment America, you protect the places that all of us love and promote core environmental values, such as clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean energy to power our lives. We're a national network of 29 state environmental groups with members and supporters in every state. Together, we focus on timely, targeted action that wins tangible improvements in the quality of our environment and our lives.
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Biden Budget Includes Over $1 Trillion in 'Militarized Spending': Analysis
"If we are ever going to stop the cycle of endless war, we'll have to invest differently."
Mar 12, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden's new budget proposal calls for more than $1 trillion in military-related spending for the coming fiscal year, according to an analysis released Monday by the National Priorities Project.
That's more than twice as much as the president's proposed discretionary spending on domestic programs related to public health, housing, education, and environmental protection.
The $1.1 trillion in "militarized spending" includes $850 billion for the Pentagon, an agency that recently failed its sixth consecutive audit and can't account for a majority of its roughly $4 trillion in assets. The $850 billion topline is a $9 billion increase over the Pentagon budget that Congress is expected to approve for the current fiscal year.
The president's 2025 request also includes $34 billion in Department of Energy funding for the nation's nuclear stockpile, at least $11.6 billion in international military aid, more than $60 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, and $113 billion for veterans' programs.
"That's not all the militarism in the budget," noted Lindsay Koshgarian, program director of the National Priorities Project. "In reality, the spending on militarization in this budget is even higher. These figures, which come from the administration, treat the militarization of domestic law enforcement—things like the domestic work of the FBI, federal marshalls, and grants to local law enforcement agencies—as domestic expenses. NPP reports from previous years have found that those expenses added tens of billions more in militarized spending."
The $1.1 trillion also excludes money "for the Pentagon's operations in support of various wars," Koshgarian observed.
"That's highly unrealistic given current administration policies," she wrote. "The administration hasn't been making visible efforts to end the war in Ukraine, nor has it responded to demands that it withhold military aid to Israel in light of war crimes the Israeli government continues to perpetrate there. Without—at the very least—some efforts along those lines, it's not reasonable to assume these extra expenses will just drop to zero next year."
"War hawks squealing that a 1% increase to defense spending is 'meager' or 'catastrophic' lack perspective altogether."
Biden's budget request would push U.S. military spending to record levels, but Republican lawmakers immediately criticized the proposal as inadequate—a signal that they are likely to attempt to pile even more money into the Pentagon's bloated coffers, as they do almost every year.
"War hawks squealing that a 1% increase to defense spending is 'meager' or 'catastrophic' lack perspective altogether," Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of Public Citizen, said in a statement Monday. "The true catastrophe is the existing scale of U.S. military spending. The Pentagon is a three-quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar agency that has never once passed an audit. It's infamous for waste, fraud, and bankrolling defense corporations. Roughly half of the total Defense Department of Defense budget goes to contractors each year."
"Reallocating billions away from the Pentagon and into direct human needs instead," Gilbert added, "would benefit everyday Americans far more."
The White House drew praise from progressive advocacy groups for proposing a revival of the expanded child tax credit that slashed youth poverty in 2021, among other domestic investments. The program expired at the end of 2021 due to opposition from congressional Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), causing child poverty to surge.
Groups also contrasted Biden's proposal with the fiscal year 2025 resolution passed last week by the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee, which calls for steep cuts to Medicaid, education, infrastructure spending, and more while backing a "fiscal commission" for Social Security and Medicare.
But Koshgarian wrote Monday that Biden's request would still not provide the "security we need, in terms of costs of living, quality of life, climate change, or securing peace." She noted that the White House proposal would boost the Pentagon budget by "more than 10 times that of the Department of Education" and "330 times that of the State Department."
"If we are ever going to stop the cycle of endless war," she argued, "we'll have to invest differently."
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Union Decries GOP Subpoena Over Gaza Resolution as 'Attack' on Free Speech
"We stand by our resolution in support of a free Palestine, which was passed overwhelmingly after a full membership vote."
Mar 11, 2024
Free speech defenders on Monday condemned Republican North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's subpoena of a labor union after its members overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution calling for a Gaza cease-fire and condemning Israeli genocide, apartheid, and other crimes in Palestine.
The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys (ALAA) Local 2325 of the United Auto Workers (UAW) voted 1,067-570 in December to approve a sweeping resolution endorsing the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights and condemning Israel's "occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide" in Palestine. The measure called for an end to these and other human rights violations as well as "an immediate cease-fire" in Gaza and an end to the Israeli siege on the embattled Palestinian territory.
According toHuffPost, several of the measure's organizers are Jewish. On Monday, ALAA president Lisa Ohta told the outlet that "we stand by our resolution in support of a free Palestine, which was passed overwhelmingly after a full membership vote."
"This is a transparent attack on our union's democratic processes and freedom of speech," Ohta said of Foxx's move.
Foxx—who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce— said she was serving the subpoena because the union was "obstructing" an inquiry into the "divisive, antisemitic resolution."
The congresswoman previously accused the union of supporting a resolution that "calls for an economic boycott of Israel, fails to acknowledge the horrific actions committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and puts Jewish union members in a compromising position."
Foxx further charged that the measure "alienated a sizeable portion" of the union's membership while forcing Jewish members "to take a position critical on their faith, Israel, and Israel's sovereignty."
ALAA had originally planned to vote on the resolution on November 17. However, four union members filed a lawsuit in state court that resulted in a temporary restraining order blocking a vote. In December, a federal judge lifted the order, in part because it violated union members' First Amendment rights.
Foxx, who is 80 years old, has gained national prominence since the October 7 attacks and Israel's genocidal retaliation for
leading congressional probes into antisemitism on college and university campuses.
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Biden 2025 Budget Would Offer 'Welcome Relief,' But Not Enough
One expert said that enacting his reforms "will begin to reverse the 40-year one-way ratchet of falling taxes for the wealthy and corporations and instead invest in workers and families."
Mar 11, 2024
On the heels of delivering the latest State of the Union speech and signing a package of funding bills, U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday unveiled his budget blueprint for fiscal year 2025, a proposal praised by congressional Democrats and progressive advocates who want him to go even further.
The $7.3 trillion budget comes as the divided Congress is still sorting out funding for the current fiscal year. Given those divisions—and that the Republican House majority is already advancing its own budget resolution for the fiscal year that begins in October—the Democratic president's plan is widely seen as a statement of priorities going into the November election.
"Biden used his official budget request as a campaign leaflet, taking a first-term victory lap and calling out Donald Trump by name," Politicoreported, referring to the former president who lost reelection in 2020 and is now the presumptive Republican nominee.
"This budget demonstrates a commitment to ensuring corporations pay more of their fair share."
One key issue is Social Security and Medicare. The GOP blueprint unveiled last week includes a fiscal commission that critics call a "death panel" designed to fast-track cuts. As Common Dreamsreported earlier Monday, Trump made televised comments taken as "support for cutting Social Security and Medicare," which his campaign later claimed were about cutting "waste" in the programs.
Meanwhile, according to a White House fact sheet, Biden's new budget demonstrates his desire to "protect and strengthen Medicare and Social Security for this and future generations," including with improvements to drug price negotiations.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said Monday that the Republican candidate's latest remarks are "consistent with Trump's record as president" and Biden is presenting "a very different vision for Social Security's future" with his proposal to protect the program by boosting taxes on the ultrarich. She emphasized that "Social Security is on the ballot this November."
Raising taxes for the wealthy and corporations—which would not only fund initiatives but also cut an estimated $3 trillion from the national debt over a decade—is a major focus of Biden's blueprint, which takes aim at provisions from Trump's 2017 tax law. Biden calls for imposing a 25% minimum tax for individuals with wealth of more than $100 million, as well as ending capital income tax breaks and closing other loopholes.
BREAKING: President Biden's 2025 budget raises trillions by making the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share\n\n\u201425% minimum tax on billionaires\n\u2014Raise corporate tax rate\n\u2014Close tax loopholes for corporations\n\nTHIS is how you grow the economy and boost the middle class.— (@)
The blueprint also advocates for setting the corporate tax rate at 28%, raising the Inflation Reduction Act's (IRA) minimum rate on billion-dollar corporations to 21%, denying deductions for compensation over $1 million for any C corporation employee, and "reforming the international tax system to reduce the incentives to book profits in low-tax jurisdictions," as the fact sheet details.
Other tax-related proposals include restoring the full IRA investment in the Internal Revenue Service and providing new funds to crack down on rich tax cheats, as well as reviving the expanded child tax credit that led to a historic drop in youth poverty.
"The White House budget's across-the-board increases would be a welcome relief to agencies and programs across the government that have seen their funding cut," said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of Public Citizen, in a statement Monday. "This budget demonstrates a commitment to ensuring corporations pay more of their fair share."
Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, also welcomed the plan, saying that "President Biden's 2025 budget lays out a sound approach to key decisions that need to be made next year, regardless of the outcomes of the elections: a fairer tax code that raises more revenues from wealthy people and profitable corporations to invest in people, communities, and the economy and to improve our fiscal outlook."
Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens offered similar praise, asserting that "the tax reforms in President Biden's 2025 budget are the critical unfinished business of Bidenomics. Enacting the reforms in his budget will begin to reverse the 40-year one-way ratchet of falling taxes for the wealthy and corporations and instead invest in workers and families."
Other priorities for the president include lowering childcare costs, increasing the affordable housing supply, expanding access to homeownership and affordable rent, cutting home energy and water bills, reducing the cost of higher education, investing in family planning services, implementing paid family and medical leave, enabling universal pre-K, and confronting the climate emergency.
The budget includes $23 billion for climate adaptation and resilience; nearly $10 billion to address air pollution, radiation exposure, and legacy waste and contamination in communities nationwide; $3 billion for the international Green Climate Fund; $1.6 billion to support the clean energy workforce and infrastructure projects; and mandatory funding to expand the
American Climate Corps.
"This budget only has a shot at becoming a reality if Biden and Dems win big this November. Biden needs to deliver for young people, otherwise many young people are going to end up staying at home," said the Sunrise Movement, which last week partnered with three other youth-led groups to put forth a sweeping agenda that they believe can energize younger voters.
On the voting front, "the budget provides state and local election officials with $5 billion in new, sustained election assistance funding over 10 years," pointed out Public Citizen's Gilbert. "This follows on essential commitments made by the White House in the State of the Union address to prioritize the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act."
Stand Up America's senior associate of policy and political affairs, Sunwoo Oh, also welcomed the proposal saying that "election funding is critical to ensuring every voice is heard and every eligible vote counted. It's long past time that Congress invest in America's election infrastructure to give states and localities the consistent resources they need to keep our elections, and those who administer them, safe and secure."
However, not all parts of the budget were welcomed by progressive advocacy groups. For example, Gilbert declared that "it's impossible not to comment on the $895 billion defense topline. War hawks squealing that a 1% increase to defense spending is 'meager' or 'catastrophic' lack perspective altogether. The true catastrophe is the existing scale of U.S. military spending."
"The Pentagon is a three-quarters-of-a-trillion dollar agency that has never once passed an audit," she stressed. "It's infamous for waste, fraud, and bankrolling defense corporations. Roughly half of the total... goes to contractors each year. Reallocating billions away from the Pentagon and into direct human needs instead would benefit everyday Americans far more."
The Environmental Working Group criticized another aspect of the Pentagon budget, warning that $1.6 billion is too low for Department of Defense (DOD) cleanup of contaminated sites, including those impacted by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as "forever chemicals."
"The cost of cleaning up the backlog of contaminated sites continues to grow and now exceeds $38 billion, per estimates provided by the Pentagon in 2022," noted John Reeder, the group's vice president for federal affairs. "It's clear that incremental increases in funding cannot possibly catch up to the DOD's rising cleanup obligations. Service members, military communities, and farmers need the cleanup of toxic PFAS pollution to move much more quickly‚ they have waited far too long."
"Reallocating billions away from the Pentagon and into direct human needs instead would benefit everyday Americans far more."
The budget includes a $4.7 billion emergency fund for border security—a top issue in Congress and the presidential contest.
American Immigration Lawyers Association executive director Ben Johnson said that his group supports additional resources for U.S. Customs and Border Protection "to increase capacity at ports, the hiring of 1,600 more asylum officers, efforts to reduce the 3 million-case backlog plaguing the immigration courts, and the targeted use of more than $1 billion to combat cartels and stop fentanyl and other contraband smuggling."
"Lacking in the president's request, but which he has called for in every previous budget, is funding for legal representation that is critical to ensure both fairer and more efficient hearings for people seeking asylum or other legal protection," Johnson added. "More funds could and should also be directed to improve the entire immigration system which will reduce yearslong visa backlogs and help American families, businesses, and the economy."
Another policy that garnered swift criticism was the proposed 2% pay raise for federal civilian employees, which is lower than the president's previous budgets and contrasts with the 4.5% pay raise for military service members.
"We applaud President Biden for taking steps in his proposed budget to ensure corporations and the ultrawealthy are paying their fair share in taxes, to extend the solvency of Medicare, and to increase budgets for critical federal programs," said American Federation of Government Employees National president Everett Kelley. "However, we are extremely disappointed in the way this budget turns its back on the long-standing practice of pay raise parity for civilian and military employees of the federal government."
"Civilian federal workers right now are working for 27.5% less than their private-sector counterparts. A paltry, 2% raise for civilian federal employees will do very little to close that widening gap," the union leader emphasized. "Ultimately, until we are able to address lagging pay for federal workers, other efforts to recruit, hire, and retain top talent will never be successful because of the albatross of low pay."
As Republicans in Congress widely complained about Biden's proposal, top Democrats celebrated it. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that "just as he did in his State of the Union address, President Biden's budget lays out a bold, optimistic, and responsible path for the nation."
"The budget highlights the sharp contrast between Democrats' positive, proactive vision and the Republican negative, regressive vision for our country. Democrats want to grow our economy in a responsible way, while making smart investments in our future," he continued, challenging all of his colleagues looking to succeed outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to "lay out their plan... for all Americans to see."
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said, "Put simply, this budget tells working people and families: 'We have your back—and we're going to keep building a stronger future together."
"As we work to finish negotiating and passing the final six appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024, I look forward to digging into the details of the president's budget request for fiscal year 2025 and working with my colleagues to begin the process of writing serious, bipartisan spending bills that will move our nation forward and continue to build a brighter future for American families," she added.
While that work is still underway, Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young is set to testify about Biden's 2025 proposal before the Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday. The panel's leader, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Monday that the president "has released a fiscally responsible budget that puts the middle class first and lays out a vision for a stronger, safer, and more prosperous America."
On the other side of Capitol Hill, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, also applauded Biden's budget, specifically highlighting the child tax credit and paid leave policies. She said that "I look forward to working with President Biden in shaping a federal budget that delivers a more prosperous future for everyday Americans."
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