September, 12 2019, 12:00am EDT
WASHINGTON
The following is a statement from Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, on Senator Elizabeth Warren's newly released plan to expand Social Security:
"Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is a powerful leader in the movement to expand Social Security. Her bold new plan tackles the nation's looming retirement income crisis head-on, as well as rising income and wealth inequality and the squeeze on working families. It is a solution for all generations.
Warren recognizes that Social Security's retirement, disability and survivor benefits are vital, but inadequately low. Her plan increases benefits significantly for both current and future beneficiaries. To ensure that benefits do not erode over time, she proposes a more accurate measure for calculating yearly cost-of-living adjustments.
She knows that caregivers -- disproportionately women -- who take time out of the workforce to care for loved ones provide invaluable work for their families and the nation. Her plan gives those family caregivers credit towards their future Social Security benefits, so that those who perform this essential work will have the secure retirements they have earned.
To ensure that no one retires into poverty after a lifetime of hard work, she updates and improves the special minimum benefit. In addition, knowing that widows disproportionately live in poverty, she improves their benefits.
Warren understands that parents help their children pay for higher education and, when those parents have died or become disabled, Social Security should step into that role. Until 1981, Social Security did. Warren restores this vital student benefit and extends it to age 24, because most students today do not complete their college degrees by age 22.
Warren appreciates the important contributions of state and local employees. She repeals the WEP/GPO provisions, which substantially reduce their Social Security benefits. She also fully funds the Social Security Administration (which Republicans have slashed over the last decade) so all of us can promptly and conveniently access our earned benefits. After all, those administrative costs do not add a penny to the deficit. America's working families have prepaid for them through our dedicated Social Security contributions.
Warren's bold plan expands Social Security and ensures that all benefits can be paid in full and on time. Her plan addresses rising income and wealth inequality by requiring the wealthiest two percent to contribute their fair share.
All Americans owe her a debt of gratitude for standing up for our Social Security system."
Social Security Works' mission is to: Protect and improve the economic security of disadvantaged and at-risk populations; Safeguard the economic security of those dependent, now or in the future, on Social Security; and Maintain Social Security as a vehicle of social justice.
LATEST NEWS
UN Experts Allege Human Rights Violations by PFAS Chemical Giant in North Carolina
In a letter to Chemours, the experts said they were worried about the company's "apparent disregard for the well-being of community members, who have been denied access to clean and safe water for decades."
Nov 28, 2023
United Nations human rights experts have expressed concerns over "alleged human rights violations and abuses" against people living along the lower Cape Fear River in North Carolina due emissions of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from a Fayetteville chemical plant.
Five U.N. experts signed letters to Chemours—the plant's current operator—as well as DuPont, Corteva, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Dutch environmental regulators. The action marks the U.N. Human Rights Council's first investigation into an environmental problem in the U.S., The Guardianreported Tuesday.
"We are especially concerned about DuPont and Chemours' apparent disregard for the well-being of community members, who have been denied access to clean and safe water for decades," the U.N. experts wrote in the letter to Chemours.
"We hope the U.N.'s action will induce shareholders to bring DuPont and Chemours in line with international human rights law."
The Fayetteville Works manufacturing plant has been releasing toxic PFAS into the environment for more than four decades, according to the allegations detailed in the letter. PFAS dumped in the Cape Fear River have made it unsafe to drink for 100 river miles, and pollution from the plant has contaminated air, soil, groundwater, and aquatic life.
PFAS are a class of chemicals used in a variety of products from nonstick, water-repellent, or stain-resistant items to firefighting foam. They have been linked to a number of health issues including cancers and have earned the name "forever chemicals" for their ability to persist in the environment and the human body. One study found PFAS in 97% of local residents who received testing.
The letter also repeated allegations that DuPont, the plant's previous owner, and Chemours, a spinoff company, had not taken responsibility for cleaning up the local environment and compensating community members, and that DuPont had known about the dangers of PFAS for several years, but chose to hide this information from the public.
"We remain preoccupied that these actions infringe on community members' right to life, right to health, right to a healthy, clean, and sustainable environment, and the right to clean water, among others," the U.N. experts wrote.
The letters were sent in response to a request made in April by Berkeley Law's Environmental Law Clinic on behalf of local environmental advocacy group Clean Cape Fear. In the request, the groups said the matter was particularly urgent because Chemours plans to expand its making of PFAS at the plant.
The U.N. experts, or special rapporteurs, reviewed existing legal and scientific documents and media reports, rather than completing their own investigation, NC Newsline reported. They sent the letters in September, but made them public on Thanksgiving, 60 days later, according to Clean Cape Fear. During that time, Chemours, Corteva, and the Dutch regulator responded, but DuPont and the EPA did not.
"We are grateful to see the United Nations take action on behalf of all residents in our region suffering from decades of human rights abuse related to our PFAS contamination crisis," Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan said in a statement. "Clearly, the U.N. recognizes international law is being violated in the United States. We find it profoundly troubling that the United States and DuPont have yet to respond to the U.N.'s allegation letters."
Clean Cape Fear called Chemours' response "classic corporate gaslighting." Chemours claimed to be "a relatively new company," despite being staffed by senior DuPont executives, focused mainly on the PFAS GenX despite the presence of several other pollutants, and focused on the impacts on private well owners, ignoring public utility customers who must pay to filter their own water because of PFAS contamination. However, the letter did acknowledge that Chemours knew about the PFAS pollution before the public learned of it in 2017 and tried to both resolve it internally and prevent the public from finding out.
"If corporate malfeasance had a name in N.C., it would be Chemours," said Rebecca Trammel, leadership team member of Clean Cape Fear and founder of Catalyst Consulting & Speaking. "Impunity is the accomplice of injustice. It is the obligation of governments and regulatory agencies to ensure that innovation, economic gain, and progress are in service of humanity, not at its expense. I extend my deepest thanks to the United Nations for its defense of our right to safe water and life itself."
The letter to the EPA focused in part on its failure to study the health impacts of PFAS exposure on the community, while the letter to the Netherlands focused on imports of GenX from that country to Fayetteville Works.
Clean Cape Fear said it hopes the letters will put pressure on both the private companies and the government regulators to act.
"We hope the U.N.'s action will induce shareholders to bring DuPont and Chemours in line with international human rights law," the group tweeted, noting that both companies are publicly traded.
"We also hope that the risk of being named a violator of international human rights laws will give the U.S. EPA the political courage to do what it must to curb toxic PFAS pollution in North Carolina and nationwide," the group added.
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'Epic Humiliation': GOP Mocked for Rejecting Hunter Biden Testimony Offer
"Chairman Comer's insistence that Hunter Biden's interview should happen behind closed doors proves it once again. What the Republicans fear most is sunlight and the truth," said Rep. Jamie Raskin.
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Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin on Tuesday issued a scathing statement mocking Republicans on the House Oversight Committee after the GOP chair of the panel rejected Hunter Biden's offer to testify publicly next month as part of an ongoing impeachment probe into his father, President Joe Biden.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who leads the oversight committee, accused Hunter Biden of "trying to play by his own rules instead of following the rules required of everyone else."
"Our lawfully issued subpoena to Hunter Biden requires him to appear for a deposition on December 13," Comer said in a statement, adding that the president's son could get a chance to testify publicly at an unspecified "future date."
Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in response that "after wailing and moaning for ten months about Hunter Biden and alluding to some vast unproven family conspiracy, after sending Hunter Biden a subpoena to appear and testify, Chairman Comer and the oversight Republicans now reject his offer to appear before the full committee and the eyes of the world and to answer any questions that they pose?"
"What an epic humiliation for our colleagues and what a frank confession that they are simply not interested in the facts and have no confidence in their own case or the ability of their own members to pursue it," said Raskin. "After the miserable failure of their impeachment hearing in September, Chairman Comer has now apparently decided to avoid all committee hearings where the public can actually see for itself the logical, rhetorical, and factual contortions they have tied themselves up in."
"The evidence has shown time and again President Biden has committed no wrongdoing, much less an impeachable offense," Raskin added. "Chairman Comer's insistence that Hunter Biden's interview should happen behind closed doors proves it once again. What the Republicans fear most is sunlight and the truth."
Hunter Biden's offer to appear publicly before the House Oversight Committee came in a letter that his attorney, Abbe Lowell, wrote to Comer. The push for a public appearance stems from concerns that Republicans would selectively leak any closed-door testimony.
"Your empty investigation has gone on too long wasting too many better-used resources. It should come to an end," the letter reads. "Consequently, Mr. Biden will appear at such a public hearing on the date you noticed, December 13, or any date in December that we can arrange."
"If, as you claim, your efforts are important and involve issues that Americans should know about," the letter adds, "then let the light shine on these proceedings."
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Disease, Fueled by Blockade, Could Be Bigger Killer Than Bombs in Gaza: WHO
"Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system," said a spokesperson for the global health agency.
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With the brief "humanitarian pause" between Israel and Hamas so far failing to result in the delivery of sufficient aid in Gaza, United Nations officials on Tuesday warned that the spread of disease could soon begin killing more Palestinian people than Israel's bombs and raids.
Humanitarian groups have warned for weeks that Israel's total blockade of Gaza—cutting off deliveries of fuel, water, food, and electricity access—quickly fueled outbreaks of gastrointestinal illnesses as sanitation and water treatment services ground to a halt.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has now recorded more than 44,000 cases of diarrhea and 70,000 acute respiratory infections in Gaza since Israel began its latest bombardment of the enclave on October 7, with cases of gastrointestinal illness for those aged five and older rising to more than 100 times the normal level earlier this month.
"Everybody everywhere has dire health needs now because they are starving, because they lack clean water and they're crowded together," said Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for WHO, at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. "Basically, if you're sick, if your child has diarrhea, if you've got a respiratory infection, you're not going to get any [help]."
"Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system," she added.
On social media, WHO reiterated its call for a permanent negotiated cease-fire and sustained aid access in Gaza to allow health officials to rebuild the decimated medical system.
Out of 36 hospitals in Gaza, about 26—or three-quarters—have entirely shut down due to damage from bombings and an inability to provide care to patients. Without fuel shipments and reliable electricity, doctors have been unable to run machinery needed to properly sterilize medical equipment, among other necessities.
Although the current truce has been in place for four days and was extended by two days on Tuesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that no fuel has arrived in northern Gaza for hospitals to run generators.
One doctor from al-Shifa Hospital, which was raided by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) earlier this month, told the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) that primary threats to children's safety were previously "very much from the air and now very much on the ground," as gastrointestinal and respiratory infections continue spreading.
"He was terrified as a medical professional in terms of the disease outbreak that is that is lurking here and how that will devastate children whose immune systems and lack of food…is making them perilously weak," UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said Tuesday.
At hospitals throughout Gaza, Elder said in a video briefing, "I met a lot of parents... They know exactly what their children need. They don't have access to safe water and it's crippling them."
Since last month, United Nations agencies and groups including Oxfam have warned that, cut off from access to clean water, Palestinians face an even more dire public health threat than the diseases that are already spreading: a potential cholera outbreak like the one that killed at least 97 people in 2022 in Syria and Lebanon.
"It's conceivable that the bacterium has been brought in and the conditions are now ripe for its spread," Richard Brennan, regional emergency director for WHO, toldAl Jazeera in October.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) told the BBC Tuesday that about 200 aid trucks per day have been allowed into Gaza since the humanitarian pause began last week—an improvement over the roughly 45 trucks that entered the enclave each day before the truce, but only half the amount that brought aid to Gaza's 2.3 million residents daily before October 7.
"The situation has become more than dire and this aid is urgently and critically needed," PRCS spokesperson Nebal Farsakh told the BBC.
Amnesty International warned that Palestinian civil society groups are struggling to serve injured, ill, displaced, and traumatized residents as a number of European countries and the European Commission have suspended or restricted aid funding due to "unfounded allegations that funding has been diverted to 'terrorist organizations' or used for 'incitement to hatred and violence'."
The European Commission introduced "anti-incitement" clauses in all new contracts with Palestinian NGOs, subjecting them to third-party monitoring, even as it announced on November 21 that "no evidence has been found to date that money has been diverted for unintended purposes."
"Restricting the funding of Palestinian organizations only is discriminatory and would silence them by hampering their vital work and would further deprive victims of any prospect of protection," said Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International's European Institutions Office.
"The credibility of European states who claim to champion human rights has already been already weakened by their failure to call for a cease-fire and by continuing to arm Israel as it kills thousands of Palestinians with impunity," added Geddie. "These discriminatory funding restrictions are damaging their credibility even further."
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