January, 30 2018, 01:45pm EDT
The Environmental State of the Union: Under Attack
Statement of Earthworks’ Executive Director Jennifer Krill
WASHINGTON
"The State of Our Union is a State of Pollution.
Whether it's communities, climate, air or water, all aspects of the environment have been under siege since President Trump took office. Cruelest of ironies, they're under attack by those directly charged with protecting our Union's environment -- primarily EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Secretary Zinke epitomized his environmental attacks by slashing the Bears Ears National Monument. Ignoring Native American sacred sites and bypassing the vast majority of the public, who own the land, he eviscerated the Bears Ears to benefit uranium miners and other extractive industries.
Today, before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, Administrator Pruitt testified that process and the rule of law are his agency's guiding principles. Yet in the service of environmental attacks he has undermined both. His first attempt to put on hold oil and gas methane safeguards was rebuked by a federal judge. And even though EPA promised a federal court they would uphold the Superfund law and protect taxpayers from shouldering the costs of cleaning up after mining companies, Pruitt stunningly refused to make good on that promise.
An administration guts science advisory boards, as Pruitt did, only if one fears that the science will tell you something you don't want to hear. An administration opens all our coasts to offshore drilling except Florida, as Zinke did, only if one cares about rewarding political allies and not the health of our oceans and coasts.
Unfortunately, the worst may be yet to come. Last week, the Trump Administration proposed a wholesale attack on our bedrock environmental laws in the name of "infrastructure". One does not serve the public by gutting the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires public input in decision-making. And Administrator Pruitt has signaled that the Trump Administration intends another giveaway to the mining industry in the form of new Clean Water Act and Superfund loopholes that would allow companies to profit from the polluting abandoned mines the industry created in the first place.
Our environment is more important to the public and to future generations than the Trump administration's blatant cronyism and corporate giveaways. Trump, Pruitt and Zinke are turning us into the United States of the oil, gas and mining industries."
LATEST NEWS
California's $20 Fast Food Worker Minimum Wage Kicks In
"Fast food companies can afford to pay $20/hour without raising prices or cutting hours," said the California Fast Food Workers Union. "Doing either is a choice. Don't let them tell you otherwise."
Apr 01, 2024
A new California law raising the minimum wage for most fast food workers from $16 to $20 an hour took effect Monday, a move cheered by labor advocates who dismissed—and debunked—claims by an industry reaping record profits that the pay hike would force restaurant chains to raise prices and cut jobs.
The law applies to restaurants at national fast food chains with at least 60 locations and that have limited or no table service. Restaurants inside supermarkets and establishments that bake and sell bread are exempt. Twenty dollars is just a starting point, as a state law also established a Fast Food Council that can raise wages by up to 3.5% annually through 2029.
"The vast majority of fast food locations in California operate under the most profitable brands in the world," Joseph Bryant, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, said in a statement. "Those corporations need to pay their fair share and provide their operators with the resources they need to pay their workers a living wage without cutting jobs or passing the cost to consumers."
As the California Fast Food Workers Union noted:
- From 2015 to 2023, California raised the minimum wage by 72%, from $9 an hour to $15.50 an hour;
- While the minimum wage was rising, fast food restaurants in California added 142,000 jobs; and
- The minimum wage has increased every year in California since 2015, and so has the number of fast food jobs in California, except for 2020, when the Covid pandemic hit.
California Fast Food Worker Union also pointed out that "numerous academic studies confirm: When states and cities pass big minimum wage increases, employers either add jobs or there is no or minimal effect on employment."
BREAKING: Today hundreds of fast food workers from across California are in LA to officially launch the California Fast Food Workers Union
We've won a Fast Food Council
We've won $20/hr
Now we're doing whatever it takes to win annual raises, just cause, and more#UnionsForAll pic.twitter.com/pykRKZF0PV
— California Fast Food Workers Union (@CAFastFoodUnion) February 9, 2024
The union highlighted various studies, including one in 2024 that found no fast food jobs were lost when California and New York increased their minimum wage to $15; another in 2018 that showed a slight increase in restaurant and food service employment in six cities that raised their minimum wage; and yet another in 2021 revealing hikes in state and local minimum wages had no effect on McDonald's opening or closing restaurants.
"According to the data, there's no reason why the new fast food minimum wage of $20 per hour in California should mean layoffs or increased prices," Alí Bustamante,deputy director for the Worker Power and Economic Security program at the Roosevelt Institute, said last week. "Profits in the fast food industry are sufficiently high to absorb the greater operating costs and ensure industry workers are paid fairly."
As More Perfect Union noted, McDonald's made $8.5 billion in profit last year, while Burger King's parent company raked in $1.2 billion, and Starbucks enjoyed $4.1 billion in profits.
Additionally, a new Roosevelt Institute analysis co-authored by Bustamante found that the 10 largest publicly traded fast food companies spent $6.1 billion on stock buybacks last year alone. This, while fast food prices soared by 46.8% over the past decade compared with 28.7% for the average of all prices. In 2023, fast food companies charged their customers 27% above their production costs. Critics have accused these and other corporations of "greedflation."
"In 2022, fast food industry employment in California had increased to approximately 553,000 workers—a 20.1% increase since 2014," the analysis notes. "Trends in the California fast food labor market have mirrored the national averages. Yet between 2014 and 2023, the federal minimum wage remained stagnant at $7.25 per hour, while California's minimum wage increased from $9 to $15.50 an hour—further evidence that California fast food firms can readily adjust to minimum wage increases."
The U.S. federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has not been raised since 2009, and that amount is worth far less now than it was then due to inflation.
"This is an insult to American workers and bad for our economy," former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich said in a video published Monday by the Gravel Institute.
"It's simply a myth that raising the wage automatically means lost jobs," Reich asserted. "Here's the bottom line: If your business depends on paying your workers starvation wages, you should not be in business."
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'Let Them Eat GDP Reports': 44 Million Americans Are Food Insecure
"By focusing mostly on economic statistics that benefit mostly the wealthy... the nation's political and media elites blithely overlook the hard evidence that the economy is still structurally unsound for large swaths of the public."
Apr 01, 2024
A U.S. anti-hunger group marked April Fools' Day on Monday with a snarky statement suggesting that hungry Americans "can eat positive economic statistics about the soaring stock market or the growing gross domestic product."
"Let them eat GDP reports," Hunger Free America declared of the 44 million Americans—including 13 million children—who live in food insecure households, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
GDP is the market value of all the finished goods and services produced in a country over a certain time period. Critics have long argued against using it as the premier indicator of how a nation is doing.
"The old school way of the elites fighting hunger was to say, 'let them eat cake,'" said Hunger Free America CEO Joel Berg. "But the more modern approach is to say, 'let them eat a report of the nation's growing GDP, although the report offers empty calories.'"
"By focusing mostly on economic statistics that benefit mostly the wealthy—like stock indexes—the nation's political and media elites blithely overlook that hard evidence that the economy is still structurally unsound for large swaths of the public, and then those same elites are flummoxed as to why the public tells pollsters they are still not satisfied with the economy," Berg explained.
"The country's impoverished multitudes can now get all they can eat—assuming they can digest paper report pages."
"But the good news is that, none of that matters now, because truckloads of positive economic reports are being shipped to food banks, soup kitchens, and food pantries nationwide, and the country's impoverished multitudes can now get all they can eat—assuming they can digest paper report pages and cardboard report covers, and don't mind a bit of poisonous ink," he quipped.
While inflation has eased in the United States over the past two years in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, corporations have engaged in price gouging that has kept costs high for Americans, everywhere from gas pumps to grocery stores to fast food restaurants.
"It's one thing for corporations to pass reasonable increased costs to consumers. It's another for them to line their coffers by exploiting Americans who are just trying to get by," the Groundwork Collaborative's Liz Pancotti said in January, as the group released a related report. "It's time to rein in corporate price gouging—or families will continue to pay the price."
Data released last month by the Federal Reserve shows that the top 1% of Americans are the richest they have ever been, with a collective $44.6 trillion in wealth, a record largely driven by the stock market. President Joe Biden and some progressive Democratic lawmakers recently renewed calls for wealth taxes, but such proposals are not expected to pass the divided Congress.
Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and has been so since 2009. Although state policymakers have taken action to raise pay for some or all workers, national legislation to boost wages also has not been able to get through Congress.
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Election Stakes Surge as Florida Supreme Court Puts Abortion on the Ballot
"Floridians will have the opportunity to reclaim their bodily autonomy and freedom from government interference!" said Florida Planned Parenthood Action.
Apr 01, 2024
The right-wing Florida Supreme Court on Monday effectively greenlighted a six-week abortion ban—but the justices also determined that state voters can weigh in on a ballot measure that would enshrine the right to abortion care in November.
Early last year, the court agreed to hear a challenge to the state's 15-week abortion ban—filed by the ACLU, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and others on behalf of healthcare providers. Just a few months later, the Florida Legislature passed and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the six-week ban. Because of the court's ruling, the stricter ban is now set to take effect in a month.
In response to the court's decisions on Monday,
Slate's Mark Joseph Stern noted that "the justices came mighty close to abolishing constitutional protections for abortion AND barring the citizenry from enacting new ones in one fell swoop."
Reproductive rights advocates pointed to the court's approval of the ban as proof of the need for Floridians to turn out in November for the abortion rights ballot measure, which requires 60% voter support to pass. It states:
No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature's constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.
"Today the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Amendment 4 meets the requirements for this year's ballot," the Floridians Protecting Freedom campaign, which
spearheaded the fight for the measure, said on social media. "Floridians WILL get a chance to vote to reject government interference with abortion."
The campaign—organized by the ACLU of Florida, Florida Rising, Women's Voices of Southwest Florida, Florida Women's Freedom Coalition, SEIU 1199 Florida, and Planned Parenthood organizations in the state—also promoted its Rally to End the Six-Week Abortion Ban in Orlando planned for April 13.
Florida Planned Parenthood Action also celebrated the ballot decision, saying, "Floridians will have the opportunity to reclaim their bodily autonomy and freedom from government interference!"
Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, called the state court's Amendment 4 decision "fantastic news for the movement to defend and expand reproductive rights using ballot measures," which has become an increasingly popular strategy since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022.
"The dedication Floridians Protecting Freedom has shown to fight for abortion rights is remarkable and inspiring, and the Fairness Project congratulates them on this victory," she continued, noting the campaign has gathered over 1 million signatures. "These dual rulings demonstrate why the initiative process is so important."
"Without citizen-initiated ballot measures, the cruel ban affirmed by the Florida Supreme Court today would go into effect with no recourse," Hall added. "Thankfully, voters will have the opportunity to decide in November whether healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and patients, or by politicians and judges."
The Center for Reproductive Rights pointed out that "EVERY SINGLE TIME that states have put abortion directly on the ballot, voters have chosen to protect it, and now, Florida voters will have the chance to do the same."
"A HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to all the reproductive rights advocates in Florida and across the country on this major victory," the center added. "This ballot measure could fundamentally reshape abortion access across the U.S. South and now, the power to make that happen is in the people's hands."
Before DeSantis signed the 15-week ban in 2022—just a couple of months before the Roe reversal, which amplified the efforts of right-wing state policymakers to cut off access to abortion—Florida was long "an oasis of reproductive care in the South."
Reproductive Freedom for All president and CEO Mini Timmaraju stressed Monday that "even as extremists like DeSantis try to impose their backward agenda, the people won't stop fighting for their rights."
Pro-choice Democrats in the state also chimed in. Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-42), said that "the stakes for reproductive rights in Florida are incredibly high. Onward to November for a state where reproductive freedom is a reality for all."
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Democratic congresswoman now challenging U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), highlighted her opponent's support for the six-week ban, which she warned would devastate reproductive care in the state.
"We HAVE to vote this November. We have the chance to protect our rights, and we have to vote like it," she said.In addition to the abortion rights amendment, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday that voters can decide on a measure that would let adults legally buy and consume marijuana—which Smart & Safe Florida called a "big win for liberty and cannabis advocates."
Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) declared: "There you have it Florida! Abortion rights and adult-use marijuana are going to be on the ballot this November. There's so much at stake, we can't stay home."
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