July, 25 2019, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Kate Zeller, Campaigns Director
kate@jubileeusa.org / (o) (202) 783-3566 x105
Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello Resigns
Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello resigned Wednesday. Protests engulfed the island for nearly two weeks after Rossello drew criticism for offensive language in leaked communications and the FBI arrested former members of his administration on corruption charges.
WASHINGTON
Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello resigned Wednesday. Protests engulfed the island for nearly two weeks after Rossello drew criticism for offensive language in leaked communications and the FBI arrested former members of his administration on corruption charges.
"The people of Puerto Rico reached a boiling point in recent weeks. People were in the streets about much more than the Governor's inappropriate language," stated Eric LeCompte, the head of Jubilee USA, which works on Puerto Rico corruption, disaster aid and debt relief policies. "Puerto Ricans marched because they are tired of corruption, because 6 out of 10 kids live in poverty, because of hundreds of shuttered schools, an enormous debt crisis, and months of waiting for promised hurricane disaster aid to arrive."
In 2016 the US Congress passed emergency Puerto Rico debt crisis legislation for the US Territory which stopped paying $72 billion in debt. The child poverty rate is nearly 60 percent and in 2017 the island was devasted by two hurricanes.
"Rossello's resignation is not enough to answer Puerto Rico's endemic corruption, high poverty levels, the economic crisis or being forgotten after hurricanes ravaged the island," LeCompte stated. "Puerto Rico needs serious debt relief, sufficient disaster aid, strong public budget transparency laws and economic investments in growth, not more austerity policies."
Jubilee USA Network is an interfaith, non-profit alliance of religious, development and advocacy organizations. We are 75 U.S. institutions and more than 750 faith groups working across the United States and around the globe. We address the structural causes of poverty and inequality in our communities and countries around the world.
(202) 783-3566LATEST NEWS
ABC Anchor Rebuked for Claiming Popular, Cost-Saving Medicare for All Won't Happen
"The D.C. media insists nothing can ever happen," said one progressive journalist. "It's the press corps' Jedi mind trick."
Dec 09, 2024
Advocates for a government-run healthcare program applauded U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna for pushing back during a Sunday morning interview in which ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz casually dismissed Medicare for All as a proposal that has no chance of ever being implemented.
Khanna (D-Calif.) spoke to Raddatz days after the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City—an event that brought to the surface simmering, widespread fury over the for-profit health insurance industry's denial of coverage, high deductibles, and other obstacles placed in the way of Americans when they try to obtain both routine and emergency healthcare.
The congressman said he was "not surprised" by the response to the killing, in which the suspect has yet to be named or found by authorities five days later.
"I mean, people are getting denied cancer treatment," said Khanna. "It's absurd in this country, what's going on."
Raddatz noted that Khanna last week reposted a message from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the social media platform X, in which the senator pointed to the country's exorbitant spending on healthcare administrative costs—15-25% of total healthcare expenditures, or as much as $1 trillion per year.
"'Healthcare is a human right. We need Medicare for All,'" Raddatz read before adding her own perspective: "That's not really going to happen, so what would you say to those Americans who are frustrated right now?"
Khanna quickly pushed back, saying he believes Sanders is "absolutely right."
"I believe we can make Medicare for All happen," he said, pointing out that Sanders was responding to billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk, who President-elect Donald Trump has nominated to lead a proposed body called the Department of Government Efficiency, denouncing high healthcare administrative costs last week.
That spending is far higher than the 2% spent by Medicare on administration and results in lower life expectancy, more preventable deaths, high infant and maternal mortality rates, and other poor health outcomes.
Skepticism of the for-profit healthcare system from one of Trump's closest right-wing allies mirrors public support for Medicare for All, which comes from across the political spectrum.
In 2020, a Gallup poll found that 63% of Americans backed at single national health plan to provide coverage for all Americans, including more than a third of Republicans and Independents who lean Republican, and 88% of Democrats. Another American Barometer survey in 2018 found 52% of Republicans supported Medicare for All.
Khanna said Musk's comments indicate that "finally, after years, Sanders is winning this debate and we should be moving towards Medicare for All."
Kenneth Zinn, former political director of National Nurses United, asked, "Who is Martha Raddatz to say" that Medicare for All—which would cost $650 billion less than the current for-profit system, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis—is "not really going to happen."
"This is how the corporate media tries to shut down the discussion or narrow the parameters. The majority of Americans support Medicare for All," said Zinn.
David Sirota of The Leverapplauded Khanna's "direct pushback" against the commonly accepted assumption that expanding the popular and efficient Medicare program to all Americans is an impossibility.
"The D.C. media insists nothing can ever happen," he said. "It's the press corps' Jedi mind trick. Ro called bullshit—which is the right response. [Medicare for All] won't happen overnight, but it CAN eventually happen."
In 2019, Khanna himself slammed "Beltway pundits" for dismissing Medicare for All as "unrealistic and too expensive" even as the U.S. was shown to spend twice as much per capita on healthcare as other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
"Points well-taken, Congressman," said former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner on Sunday. "The United States is the only industrialized nation without universal healthcare. It is immoral, unacceptable, and costly not to have Medicare for All."
Keep ReadingShow Less
EPA Bans Known Carcinogens Used in Dry Cleaning, Other Industries
"Both of these chemicals have caused too much harm for too long, despite the existence of safer alternatives," said one environmental campaigner.
Dec 09, 2024
The Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a permanent ban on a pair of carcinogenic chemicals widely used in U.S. industries, including dry cleaning services and automative work.
According to the Washington Post:
The announcement includes the complete ban of trichloroethylene—also known as TCE—a substance found in common consumer and manufacturing products including degreasing agents, furniture care and auto repair products. In addition, the agency banned all consumer uses and many commercial uses of Perc—also known as tetrachloroethylene and PCE — an industrial solvent long used in applications such as dry cleaning and auto repair.
Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, applauded the move but suggested to the Post that it should have come sooner.
"Both of these chemicals have caused too much harm for too long, despite the existence of safer alternatives," Kalmuss-Katz.
The EPA's decision, reports the New York Times, was "long sought by environmental and health advocates, even as they braced for what could be a wave of deregulation by the incoming Trump administration."
The Timesreports:
TCE is known to cause liver cancer, kidney cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and to damage the nervous and immune systems. It has been found in drinking water nationwide and was the subject of a 1995 book that became a movie, “A Civil Action,” starring John Travolta. The E.P.A. is banning all uses of the chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which was overhauled in 2016 to give the agency greater authority to regulate harmful chemicals.
Though deemed "less harmful" than TCE, the Times notes how Perc has been shown to "cause liver, kidney, brain and testicular cancer," and can also damage the functioning of kidneys, the liver, and people's immune systems.
Environmentalists celebrated last year when Biden's EPA proposed the ban on TCE, as Common Dreamsreported.
Responding to the news at the time, Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said the EPA, by putting the ban on the table, was "once again putting the health of workers and consumers first."
While President-elect Donald Trump ran on a having an environmental agenda that would foster the "cleanest air" and the "cleanest water," the late approval of EPA's ban on TCE and Perc in Biden's term means the rule will be subject to the Congressional Review Act (CRA), meaning the Republican-control Senate could reverse the measure.
In his remarks to the Times, Kalmuss-Katz of Earthjustice said that if Trump and Senate Republicans try to roll back the ban, they will be certain to "encounter serious opposition from communities across the country that have been devastated by TCE, in both blue and red states."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Sanders Explains Why He's Voting Against the New $850 Billion Pentagon Budget
"We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry," Sen. Bernie Sanders writes in a new op-ed.
Dec 08, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday announced his opposition to an annual military policy bill that would authorize a Pentagon budget of nearly $850 billion, a sum that the progressive senator from Vermont characterized as outrageous—particularly as so many Americans face economic hardship.
"We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian after the House and Senate released legislative text for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025.
Sanders continued:
In this moment in history, it would be wise for us to remember what Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former five-star general, said in his farewell address in 1961: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." What Eisenhower said was true in 1961. It is even more true today.
I will be voting against the military budget.
The senator's op-ed came hours after lawmakers from both chambers of Congress unveiled the sprawling, 1,813-page NDAA for the coming fiscal year. The legislation's topline is just over $895 billion as lawmakers from both parties push annual U.S. military spending inexorably toward $1 trillion, even as the Pentagon fails to pass an audit.
The U.S. currently spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined, and military spending accounts for more than half of the nation's yearly discretionary spending, according to the National Priorities Project.
Sanders wrote Sunday that "very few people who have researched the military-industrial complex doubt that there is massive fraud, waste and cost over-runs in the system." One analysis estimates that over 50% of the Pentagon's annual budget, the subject of aggressive industry lobbying, goes to private contractors.
"Defense contractors routinely overcharge the Pentagon by 40%—and sometimes more than 4,000%," Sanders continued. "For example, in October, RTX (formerly Raytheon) was fined $950 million for inflating bills to the DoD, lying about labor and material costs, and paying bribes to secure foreign business. In June, Lockheed Martin was fined $70 million for overcharging the navy for aircraft parts, the latest in a long line of similar abuses. The F-35, the most expensive weapon system in history, has run up hundreds of billions in cost overruns."
The NDAA could have some trouble getting through the divided Congress—but not because of the proposed size of the Pentagon budget.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement that the legislation includes language that would "permanently ban transgender medical treatment for minors" and other provisions that are expected to draw Democratic opposition.
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement Saturday that "anti-equality House Republican leaders are hijacking a defense bill to play politics with the healthcare of children of servicemembers."
"This cruel and hateful bill suddenly strips away access to medical care for families that members of our armed forces are counting on, and it could force servicemembers to choose between staying in the military or providing healthcare for their children," said Robinson. "Politicians have no place inserting themselves into decisions that should be between families and their doctors. We call on members of Congress to do what's right and vote against this damaging legislation."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular