April, 05 2018, 10:45am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Dan Beeton, 202-239-1460
Sending Brazil's Former President Lula to Prison an "Assault on Democracy," CEPR Co-Director Says
“Effort to Eliminate the Most Popular Presidential Candidate from Elections”
WASHINGTON
The Supreme Court decision against Brazil's former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's habeas corpus petition, regarding his conviction for charges that he received a bribe, despite lack of evidence, is intended to bar him from upcoming presidential elections, which polls show he could easily win, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot stated in response to the news.
"The case against Lula has always a clear attempt to prevent a return of Workers' Party government," Weisbrot said, referring to the political party of Lula and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, who was ousted in 2016 in a process widely condemned as a coup d'etat. "Brazil's rightwing knows that it wouldn't stand a chance against Lula in this year's elections, just as it twice lost elections to Lula before, and then twice more to Dilma. So, as with Dilma, they are using other means to keep him out of office."
As Weisbrot wrote in The New York Times in January, the evidence against Lula is based on the testimony of one witness, Jose Aldemario Pinheiro Filho, who had his prison sentence reduced in exchange for turning state's evidence, and who reportedly was blocked from plea bargaining when he originally told the same story as Lula. The bribe that Lula is alleged to have been received is an apartment owned by construction company OAS, Pinheiro's former employer. But there is no documentary evidence that Lula or his wife ever received title to, rented, or even stayed in the apartment, or that they tried to accept the alleged gift.
Weisbrot wrote in The Times:
Mr. da Silva remains the front-runner in the October election because of his and the party's success in reversing a long economic decline. From 1980 to 2003, the Brazilian economy barely grew at all, about 0.2 percent annually per capita. Mr. da Silva took office in 2003, and Ms. Rousseff in 2011. By 2014, poverty had been reduced by 55 percent and extreme poverty by 65 percent. The real minimum wage increased by 76 percent, real wages overall had risen 35 percent, unemployment hit record lows, and Brazil's infamous inequality had finally fallen.
US members of Congress and UK members of Parliament, among others, have publicly condemned the persecution of Lula, noting (as US Congress members put it) the lack of "credible evidence" against him.
"This latest move to circumvent democratic process and keep a popular candidate out of office is another serious blow to Brazil's democratic institutions," Weisbrot said. "It's the second in a one-two punch, the first being the unconstitutional impeachment and removal of elected president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 for something that had been done by previous administrations and was not even a crime.
"Democracy and the rule of law are eroding rapidly in Brazil, and Lula's pending imprisonment has hastened this deterioration."
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) was established in 1999 to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. In order for citizens to effectively exercise their voices in a democracy, they should be informed about the problems and choices that they face. CEPR is committed to presenting issues in an accurate and understandable manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among the various policy options.
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Sanders Says 'Political Movement,' Not Murder, Is the Path to Medicare for All
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together."
Dec 12, 2024
Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
Asked about Thompson's alleged killer—26-year-old Luigi Mangione, whose reported manifesto railed against the nation's expensive healthcare system and low life expectancy—Sanders said: "You don't kill people. It's abhorrent. I condemn it wholeheartedly. It was a terrible act. But what it did show online is that many, many people are furious at the health insurance companies who make huge profits denying them and their families the healthcare that they desperately need."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
Sanders—one of the few members of Congress who regularly talks about Medicare for All—isn't alone in suggesting that unsympathetic responses to Thompson's murder can be explained by a privatized healthcare system that fails so many people.
In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
Two other Medicare for All advocates, Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also made clear to Business Insider that they oppose Thompson's murder but understand some of the responses to it.
"Of course, we don't want to see the chaos that vigilantism presents," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We also don't want to see the extreme suffering that millions of Americans confront when your life changes overnight from a horrific diagnosis, and people are led to just some of the worst, not just health events, but the worst financial events of their and their family's lives."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," she continued. "This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the healthcare to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone."
After facing some criticism for those comments, Warren added Wednesday: "Violence is never the answer. Period... I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder."
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Reports released this week from two organizations that advocate for journalists underscore just how deadly Gaza has become for media workers.
Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
The organization has also filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court "for war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists," according to the roundup, which includes stats from January 1 through December 1.
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."
Bruttin added that "many of these reporters were clearly identifiable as journalists and protected by this status, yet they were shot or killed in Israeli strikes that blatantly disregarded international law. This was compounded by a deliberate media blackout and a block on foreign journalists entering the strip."
When counting the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in both Gaza and Lebanon, the tally comes to 155—"an unprecedented massacre," according to the roundup.
Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
IFJ lists out each of the slain journalists in its 139 count, which includes the journalist Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al-Dahdouh, who was killed with journalist Mustafa Thuraya when Israeli forces targeted their car while they were in northern Rafah in January 2024.
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"The FTC is doing what our government should be doing: using every tool possible to make life better for everyday Americans," said one advocate.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits, alleging that the nation's largest alcohol distributor, "violated the Robinson-Patman Act, harming small, independent businesses by depriving them of access to discounts and rebates, and impeding their ability to compete against large national and regional chains."
The FTC said its complaint details how the Florida-based company "is engaged in anticompetitive and unlawful price discrimination" by "selling wine and spirits to small, independent 'mom-and-pop' businesses at prices that are drastically higher" than what it charges large chain retailers, "with dramatic price differences that provide insurmountable advantages that far exceed any real cost efficiencies for the same bottles of wine and spirits."
The suit comes as FTC Chair Lina Khan's battle against "corporate greed" is nearing its end, with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announcing Tuesday that he plans to elevate Andrew Ferguson to lead the agency.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of corporate power at Demand Progress Education Fund, said Thursday that "instead of heeding bad-faith calls to disarm before the end of the year, the FTC is taking bold, needed action to fight back against monopoly power that's raising prices."
"By suing Southern Glazer under the Robinson-Patman Act, a law that has gone unenforced for decades, the FTC is doing what our government should be doing: using every tool possible to make life better for everyday Americans," she added.
According to the FTC:
Under the Robinson-Patman Act, it is generally illegal for sellers to engage in price discrimination that harms competition by charging higher prices to disfavored retailers that purchase similar goods. The FTC's case filed today seeks to ensure that businesses of all sizes compete on a level playing field with equivalent access to discounts and rebates, which means increased consumer choice and the ability to pass on lower prices to consumers shopping across independent retailers.
"When local businesses get squeezed because of unfair pricing practices that favor large chains, Americans see fewer choices and pay higher prices—and communities suffer," Khan said in a statement. "The law says that businesses of all sizes should be able to compete on a level playing field. Enforcers have ignored this mandate from Congress for decades, but the FTC's action today will help protect fair competition, lower prices, and restore the rule of law."
The FTC noted that, with roughly $26 billion in revenue from wine and spirits sales to retail customers last year, Southern is the 10th-largest privately held company in the United States. The agency said its lawsuit "seeks to obtain an injunction prohibiting further unlawful price discrimination by Southern against these small, independent businesses."
"When Southern's unlawful conduct is remedied, large corporate chains will face increased competition, which will safeguard continued choice which can create markets that lower prices for American consumers," FTC added.
Southern Glazer's published a statement calling the FTC lawsuit "misguided and legally flawed" and claiming it has not violated the Robinson-Patman Act.
"Operating in the highly competitive alcohol distribution business, we offer different levels of discounts based on the cost we incur to sell different quantities to customers and make all discount levels available to all eligible retailers, including chain stores and small businesses alike," the company said.
Peterson-Cassin noted that the new suit "follows a massive court victory for the FTC on Tuesday in which a federal judge blocked a $25 billion grocery mega-merger after the agency sued," a reference to the proposed Kroger-Albertsons deal.
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relentless attacks on federal regulations. "We applaud the FTC and Chair Lina Khan for not letting off the gas in the race to protect American consumers and we strongly encourage all federal regulators to do the same while there's still time left."
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