July, 20 2021, 11:07am EDT
"If Jeff Bezos Can Afford to Go to Space, He Can Afford to Pay More in Taxes"
"If we ever want to return to an era where we accomplish incredible things together as a society, we need to start taxing the rich again."
WASHINGTON
This morning, in the first manned spaceflight by his company Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos went to space. In response, Stephen Prince, Vice Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and owner of National Business Products, Inc., issued the following statement:
"Fifty years ago, we sent the first American into space, and the top income tax rate was 91%. Today, a billionaire launched himself into space after paying a true tax rate of less than 1% for years. This may be a good day for Jeff Bezos, but it's a sad reminder of just how far our country has fallen. If we ever want to return to an era where we accomplish incredible things together as a society, we need to start taxing the rich again. If Jeff Bezos can afford to go to space, he can afford to pay more in taxes."
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
(202) 446-0489LATEST NEWS
Israeli Newspaper Details IDF's Creation of 'Kill Zones' in Gaza
"In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate," said one Israeli reservist.
Apr 01, 2024
Israel's military says it has killed around 9,000 militants in Gaza since October 7—and adamantly denies targeting civilians.
But new reporting published Sunday by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz casts serious doubt on the IDF's estimate and details how the U.S.-armed military has established combat zones that have become death traps for ordinary Gazans.
The boundaries of such "kill zones" are not clearly marked, making it almost impossible for Palestinian civilians to know whether they are entering one. An Israeli reserve officer told Haaretz that "as soon as people enter" a kill zone, "orders are to shoot and kill, even if that person is unarmed."
"To a large extent, the tragedy in which three hostages were killed by the IDF is such a story," the newspaper reported, "since in fleeing from their captors the three entered a kill zone in the middle of the Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City."
Significant discretion is given to Israeli commanders to decide whether to open fire on people near a kill zone. Unnamed Israeli soldiers told Haaretz that "there are commanders who will shoot at a building with a suspect in it even if there are civilians in the vicinity, while other commanders will act differently."
"For our commanders, if we identified someone in our area of operation who was not part of our forces, we were told to shoot to kill," said one soldier. "We were explicitly told that even if a suspect runs into a building with people in it, we should fire at the building and kill the terrorist, even if other people are hurt."
One Israeli commander described to Haaretz "incidents in which civilians tried to reach areas they thought the army had left, possibly in the hope of finding food left behind."
"When they went to such places, they were shot, perceived as people who could harm our forces," the commander said.
"One reason why the Israeli government, media, the Biden administration, et al. have been trying to undermine the credibility of Gazan casualty figures is to deflect from the fact that the IDF's own figures are almost certainly bullshit."
The new reporting points to a recent example documented by Al Jazeera in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it attacked "a terrorist" who was allegedly behind a rocket attack on southern Israel.
"Ostensibly, this was another statistic in the roster of dead Hamas militants," Haaretz reported. "However, over a week ago, other documentation of the incident surfaced on Al Jazeera. It showed four men, not one, walking together on a wide path, in civilian clothing. There is no one nearby, only the ruins of houses where people once lived. This apocalyptic silence in the Khan Younis area was shattered by a loud explosion. Two of the men were killed instantly. Two others were wounded and tried to continue walking. Perhaps they thought they had been saved, but seconds later, a bomb was dropped on one of them. You can then see the other one falling to his knees and then, a boom, fire, and smoke."
A senior IDF officer told the Israeli newspaper that the individuals who unwittingly entered a kill zone "were unarmed" and "didn't endanger our forces in the area in which they were walking." It was also not clear they were involved in the rocket attack.
"It's quite possible that Palestinians who never held a gun in their lives were elevated to the rank of 'terrorist' posthumously, at least by the IDF," Haaretz noted. As one officer who served in Gaza told the newspaper, "In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate."
Last week, Al Jazeera published video footage showing Israeli forces gunning down two unarmed Palestinians in northern Gaza, one of whom was waving a piece of white fabric. They are believed to have entered an Israeli "kill zone."
.@ajimran on reports of 'kill zones' being operated by the IDF in Gaza - if unarmed Palestinian civilians enter these areas Israeli soldiers kill them and then label them as 'terrorists' to justify their murder. pic.twitter.com/XtQyXAAljU
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 1, 2024
Israeli forces have killed more than 32,600 people in Gaza since October 7, according to Gaza health officials. One human rights monitor recently estimated that 90% of those killed were civilians, contradicting the Israeli military's estimate of the civilian-to-militant death ratio.
"One reason why the Israeli government, media, the Biden administration, et al. have been trying to undermine the credibility of Gazan casualty figures is to deflect from the fact that the IDF's own figures are almost certainly bullshit," foreign policy analyst Derek Davison wrote Sunday in response to the Haaretz story.
Brianna Rosen, a senior fellow at Just Security, argued that the "kind of indiscriminate killing" detailed in Haaretz's reporting "is illegal and falls far short of any gold standard for civilian harm."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Conservative Texas District Court Won't Implement Anti-Judge Shopping Policy
The chief judge of the Northern District of Texas indicated the court will not follow new guidance, while a lower court judge called out a pro-business group's use of "judge shopping."
Mar 31, 2024
Right-wing groups will still be able to pick and choose the judges who hear their cases in one of the most conservative federal court districts in the United States, following a decision by the Northern District of Texas on Friday that goes against new anti-"judge shopping" guidance.
Chief U.S. District Judge David Godbey of the Northern District wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that the court would not abide by new guidance from the Judicial Conference, which said earlier this month that the court system should randomly assign lawsuits to any judge throughout the district where they're filed.
"The consensus was not to make any change to our case assignment process at this time," wrote Godbey, an appointee of former President George W. Bush.
The policy, announced on March 12, would require lawsuits that challenge federal or state laws to be assigned to a judge randomly throughout a federal district rather than staying in the specific smaller division where they were initially filed, a practice known as "judge shopping" or "venue shopping."
The practice has garnered scrutiny in recent months as right-wing groups have filed numerous lawsuits in the court of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who presides over a federal court in Amarillo, Texas—also in the state's Northern District.
Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, ruled last year that the Food and Drug Administration's approval of mifepristone, a drug used for medication abortion, should be suspended. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in an appeal last week, and the justices signaled that they were unlikely to impose new restrictions on the medication.
After Republican lawmakers wrote to federal judges telling them to disregard the Judicial Conference's guidance—which the body noted is discretionary—Schumer called on the courts to apply the new reforms to stop "extremists" from handpicking judges.
Godbey's letter signaled that the court will continue allowing conservative plaintiffs to select the venue where their cases are heard.
Judiciary observers noted that another judge in the Northern District—Mark Pittman in the Fort Worth division—suggested that chief judges may not have the final word on whether judge shopping continues to be tolerated.
Pittman, who was also appointed by Trump, ruled that a case filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other banking industry groups against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) should be transferred to a federal court in Washington, D.C.
The judge agreed with the CFPB, which had argued the banking lobby had filed its lawsuit over the bureau's slashing of credit card late fees in the Northern District of Texas in order to secure a favorable ruling.
"Venue is not a continental breakfast; you cannot pick and choose on a plaintiff's whim where and how a lawsuit is filed," said Pittman. "Federal courts have consistently cautioned against such behavior."
"Even the judges you least expect," said David Dayen of The American Prospect, "are pissed at being pawns in a conservative game."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Right-Wing Court's PFAS Ruling Will Impede Regulation of Harmful Chemicals, Advocates Say
Public health groups are "fully committed to taking all steps available to assure that the Inhance fluorination no longer produces dangerous PFAS which put workers, consumers, and communities at risk."
Mar 31, 2024
As public health experts raise alarm over the prevalence of highly toxic "forever chemicals," as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS are commonly known, one nonprofit investigative journalism outlet warned Saturday that a recent ruling could further tie up the regulatory process for the chemicals and other harmful substances.
"This ruling is likely to impede already excruciatingly slow efforts to regulate the presence of health harming chemicals in products people use in every part of their lives," said Watershed Investigations of a decision handed down earlier this month by the right-wing Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
The case is one of several involving Inhance Technologies, a Houston-based company that manufactures an estimated 200 million plastic containers each year using the fluorination process, which creates perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a toxic PFAS compound.
In 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began requiring companies to submit notices regarding "significant new uses" of PFAS under Section 5 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as officials identified the chemicals as an "urgent public health and environmental issue" due to their links to cancer, liver and kidney disease, reproductive harms, and other serious health problems.
The agency found that PFAS were leaching into pesticides held in containers produced by Inhance.
In December, the agency prohibited Inhance from using the fluorination process because it had identified PFAS as an "unavoidable aspect" of its operations. Inhance sued the EPA soon after.
Inhance said that ending its fluorination practices would ultimately force the company to shut down and fought the EPA's order, arguing that it had created its plastic containers in the same way for decades, and therefore was not subject to the TSCA provision regarding "significant new use."
The EPA argued it only became aware of Inhance's process in 2020, but the conservative court disagreed that it could regulate the company under the "new use" rule—even as the judges acknowledged the company's products are harmful.
"The court did not dispute EPA's underlying decision that this is a danger to human health, what they did was say it's not a new use, which I think is wrong... but this case isn't over by any stretch," Kyla Bennett, a former EPA official who is now director of science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), told The Guardian Saturday.
The judges said the EPA would have to regulate Inhance's containers under Section 6 of the TSCA, which it said requires the EPA to take into account the economic impact any regulations would have on Inhance.
PEER noted that Section 6 also states that health risks should be considered.
"The court erroneously limits EPA's authority to issue significant new use rules (SNURs) under the TSCA, seriously weakening this important tool for managing chemical risks to health and the environment which has been a mainstay of the TSCA program since the law's enactment in 1976," the group said.
Another case is playing out in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where the EPA sued Inhance in 2022 for violating the TSCA. The Center for Environmental Health and PEER also took legal action against Inhance for the same reason, and against the EPA last month for withholding test data regarding PFAS in plastic containers.
"There are several paths forward," said PEER, "and our groups are fully committed to taking all steps available to assure that the Inhance fluorination no longer produces dangerous PFAS which put workers, consumers, and communities at risk."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular