June, 29 2021, 12:54pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Michael O’Neil, Communications Manager, meo@gp.org, 202-804-2758
Diana C. Brown, Co-chair, Media Committee, media@gp.org, 202-804-2758
Philena Farley, Co-chair, Media Committee, media@gp.org, 202-804-2758
Green Party Decries Biden's Retreat on Climate in Infrastructure Stimulus, Line 3 Pipeline
WASHINGTON
The Green Party of the United States faults President Biden for putting the interests of Republicans and fossil fuel donors ahead of saving life on the planet in the new infrastructure stimulus legislation, largely excluding climate action in the deal.
"We are in a climate emergency, with time rapidly running out to avoid climate collapse. Sacrificing needed action on climate in order to get sign-off from the climate-denying Republicans and their hordes of special interest donors is a crime against humanity. Biden says he understands the need to halt fossil fuels but his actions continue to prove otherwise," said Mark Dunlea, Co-chair of the Green Party's EcoAction Committee.
Biden's deal with the Republicans would spend most of the $579 billion allocated on expanding fossil fuel infrastructure (airports, freeways) over five years while promoting privatization. Greens advocate for much larger investments to expand and electrify mass transit.
Biden's deal does not include investments in green energy jobs, funds to combat the climate crisis and it omitted programs supporting energy efficiency for buildings. Biden originally asked for $213 billion to improve the energy efficiency of homes and $100 billion for energy-efficient schools.
The Green Party also slammed the Biden administration's decision to uphold permits issued to Enbridge Energy to construct the Line 3 pipeline to bring nearly a million barrels of tar sands oil per day through untouched wetlands and the treaty territory of the Anishinaabe peoples in Minnesota. The Green Party EcoAction Committee is co-sponsoring a protest at the White House on June 30.
The decision was the latest in a series of actions taken by Biden to back Trump-era approvals of oil and gas infrastructure. Greens support the call for Biden to appoint anew commissioner to FERC (Federal Energy and Regulatory Emission) who supports stopping new fossil fuel projects.
The Green Party said that they will continue to advocate for a green economic stimulus package based on an ecosocialist Green New Deal, which Green candidates first campaigned for in 2010. The Green Party supports a $2.7 trillion annual investment in climate measures along with a $1.4 trillion annual investment in an Economic Bill of Rights, including a guaranteed living wage job, single-payer healthcare, housing and education.
Greens advocate for a Just Transition and ensuring that significant funding is given to environmental justice and frontline communities. It embraces the principles of sustainability including conservation, natural measures, the precautionary principle and reduction of consumption (especially in the U.S.).
The Green Party called on Congressional Democratic Party leaders to follow through with the claim they will seek to first pass a green stimulus reconciliation package before moving the infrastructure bill.
"We need a formal Presidential declaration of a climate emergency, marshaling all of the nation's resources to build an energy system with zero emissions and 100% renewable energy by 2030. We need to democratically plan and control our energy future. The Democrats want to tinker with the capitalist market that has caused climate change; enriching hedge funds and private investors who put the wealth of the 1% ahead of the common good will deny future generations a livable planet," said National Green Party Co-Chair Gloria Mattera.
The Green Party also opposes the financing mechanism for Biden's infrastructure deal, which relies on "public-private partnerships, private activity bonds, direct pay bonds, and asset recycling for infrastructure investment" rather than raising taxes on the wealthy and large corporations and enacting polluter penalties (e.g., a carbon tax).
"Asset recycling" involves the sale or lease of public assets to the private sector so the government can put that money toward new investments. For example, this would facilitate a Wall Street takeover of public services like water. The Green Party supports democratic, public ownership rather than privatization of such common goods.
As a record heatwave bakes the Pacific Northwest, a draft report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change leaked last week highlighted the need for urgent climate action. It warns that unless drastic and immediate action is taken to limit greenhouse gas emissions, life on earth is poised for a catastrophic reckoning. The reports warned that humans may have already missed its opportunity to keep global warming below the tipping point.
The Green Party of the United States is a grassroots national party. We're the party for "We The People," the health of our planet, and future generations instead of the One Percent.
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'The Next Recession Starts Here': Trump Team Weighs Abolishing Bank Regulators
The president-elect's advisers are reportedly discussing plans to shrink or eliminate key bank watchdogs, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Dec 13, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump and his advisers are reportedly considering plans to weaken—or abolish altogether—top bank regulators, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that members of Trump's transition team and the new Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency have asked nominees under consideration to head the FDIC and OCC if the bank watchdogs could be eliminated and have their functions absorbed by the Treasury Department, which is set to be run by a billionaire hedge fund manager and crypto enthusiast.
"Bank executives are optimistic President-elect Donald Trump will ease a host of regulations on capital cushions and consumer protections, as well as scrutiny of consolidation in the industry," the Journal reported. "But FDIC deposit insurance is considered near sacred. Any move that threatened to undermine even the perception of deposit insurance could quickly ripple through banks and in a crisis might compound customer fears."
The Trump team's internal and fluid discussions about the fate of the key bank regulators broadly aligns with Project 2025's proposal to "merge the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Federal Reserve's non-monetary supervisory and regulatory functions."
The FDIC, which is primarily funded by bank insurance premiums, was established during the Great Depression to restore public trust in the nation's banking system, and the agency played a central role in navigating the 2023 bank failures that threatened a systemic crisis.
Observers warned that gutting the FDIC and OCC could catalyze another economic meltdown.
"The next recession starts here," tech journalist Jacob Silverman warned in response to the Journal's reporting.
Eric Rauchway, a historian of the New Deal, wrote that "even Milton Friedman appreciated the FDIC," underscoring the extreme nature of the incoming Trump administration's deregulatory ambitions.
Musk, the world's wealthiest man, is also pushing for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency established in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The Journal noted Thursday that "Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky and Trump ally on the House Financial Services Committee, has backed the plan to eliminate or drastically alter the CFPB and said he wants to get rid of what he calls 'one-size-fits-all' regulation for banks."
Barr has received millions of dollars in campaign donations from the financial sector and "introduced many pieces of pro-industry legislation, including significant rollbacks of protections stemming from the 2008 financial crisis," according to the watchdog group Accountable.US.
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UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."
Dec 12, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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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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