October, 28 2021, 02:57pm EDT
Building Back Better Could Be Better, Say CEPR Experts
President Joe Biden's Build Back Better framework is a welcome, transformational investment in the care infrastructure that working families in America need, but it is disappointing that paid leave, prescription drug price negotiation, and other popular progressive policies were left out. Moreover, too many key provisions are temporary or unnecessarily complex, and the unpopular Trump tax cuts are largely left in place. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) responds with these comments:
WASHINGTON
President Joe Biden's Build Back Better framework is a welcome, transformational investment in the care infrastructure that working families in America need, but it is disappointing that paid leave, prescription drug price negotiation, and other popular progressive policies were left out. Moreover, too many key provisions are temporary or unnecessarily complex, and the unpopular Trump tax cuts are largely left in place. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) responds with these comments:
"For too long, the United States has lagged far behind other wealthy countries when it comes to family and economic security policy. The new BBB framework is a major step toward closing that gap.
"Universal Preschool for all 3 and 4-year-olds will enable more than 6 million children to benefit from quality early education, and increase the health and well-being of all children, but especially working-class and disadvantaged children, over the long term. Unfortunately, this provision, as well as the framework's childcare provisions, expire after six years.
"The framework's childcare provisions will ensure that all parents can afford high-quality childcare and boost the wages of child care workers. Unfortunately, the framework has an unnecessary means test that will exclude about 5 percent of parents from eligibility. This should be eliminated and replaced with an additional copay tier for families with incomes over 250 percent of median income.
"Extending the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) will provide 35 million American households with a $3000 to $3600 per child benefit. Regrettably, this is just a one-year extension. However, the framework does make the Child Tax Credit fully refundable on a permanent basis, so that even if the expanded CTC is not extended beyond 2022, all low-income children will continue to receive the same $2,000 benefit provided to middle- and higher-income children in 2023 and subsequent years.
"The framework includes $150 billion in funding to build new housing, improve existing public housing, and make housing more affordable for the working-class. Unfortunately, this is a more than 50 percent cut in housing funding from the House's BBB bill, and the funds are spread too thin across multiple programs. It would be better to concentrate the funding in three major housing programs: the Housing Trust Fund, tenant vouchers for affordable rental housing, and public housing.
"Assuring affordable home care for hundreds of thousands of older Americans and people with disabilities will relieve an untenable burden on families, and improve the working conditions of home care workers.
"We welcome the benefits these programs will provide for families, children, the elderly, and disabled, but are deeply disappointed that paid family and medical leave -- a popular program that would benefit the 70 percent of working families with no family leave -- has been dropped from the framework. All workers deserve paid leave to care for new children, family members who are ill, disabled, or elderly, and themselves, when they are sick or temporarily disabled.
"The exclusion of paid leave particularly disadvantages working-class parents, women workers, Black and Hispanic workers, and those who work part-time. President Biden knows from painful personal experience how important paid leave for all is, making it doubly disappointing that it has been left out of the BBB framework.
"It is also deeply disappointing that the framework does not include any language on negotiating drug prices. The public pays for drug research, and federal law gives the pharmaceutical industry patent monopolies on the products produced with this publicly funded research.The industry should not be allowed to charge whatever it wants for drugs that are needed for people's lives or health.
"Finally, progressive executive actions implement pre-existing law and many are long overdue. There never was any good reason to delay implementing laws passed by a prior Congress that empowers the Biden Administration to make progress on core priorities, such as cutting prescription drug prices and reining in pollution that undermines public health and exacerbates the climate crisis. Aggressive executive action is needed all the more urgently now that it is clear that new legislation will be inadequate to fully address so many pressing needs."
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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Henry Kissinger Dies at 100 Without Facing Justice for His War Crimes
"A true tally will probably never be known of everyone who died so Kissinger could be national security adviser," wrote journalist Spencer Ackerman.
Nov 30, 2023
Henry Kissinger, the former diplomat whose efforts to prolong and expand the U.S. war on Southeast Asia and undermine democracy in Latin America and elsewhere took millions of lives, died Wednesday at 100 years old.
Treated like royalty in elite U.S. political circles until his death at his home in Connecticut, Kissinger—who served as secretary of state and national security adviser under Nixon and Ford—never faced justice for the secretive carpet bombing of Cambodia that he helped orchestrate, the overthrow of Chile's democratically elected president, or the murderous "dirty war" in Argentina that killed tens of thousands.
The scope of his crimes was so vast that he had to watch where he traveled, lest he be detained to face questioning for his role in assassinations, massacres, and violent military coups whose reverberations are still felt in the present.
"The covert justifications for illegally bombing Cambodia became the framework for the justifications of drone strikes and forever war. It's a perfect expression of American militarism's unbroken circle," historian Greg Grandin, author of "Kissinger's Shadow," toldThe Intercept earlier this year. Grandin has estimated that Kissinger was responsible for at least 3 million deaths.
Observers of Kissinger's impact have said it's difficult to convey the true extent of the destruction he inflicted across the globe.
In his obituary of Kissinger for Rolling Stone, journalist Spencer Ackerman wrote that "measuring purely by confirmed kills, the worst mass murderer ever executed by the United States was the white-supremacist terrorist Timothy McVeigh."
"McVeigh, who in his own psychotic way thought he was saving America, never remotely killed on the scale of Kissinger, the most revered American grand strategist of the second half of the 20th century," Ackerman continued. "Every single person who died in Vietnam between autumn 1968 and the Fall of Saigon—and all who died in Laos and Cambodia, where Nixon and Kissinger secretly expanded the war within months of taking office, as well as all who died in the aftermath, like the Cambodian genocide their destabilization set into motion—died because of Henry Kissinger."
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Youth advocates with the Green New Deal for Schools campaign notched up their first victory on Tuesday when Colorado's Boulder Valley School District Board of Trustees unanimously approved a resolution drafted by students at Fairview High School.
"This is a project of our generation, and we're not gonna stop until every school across the country has a Green New Deal and the kind of schools we deserve," said 16-year-old Emma Weber, a student leader in the district. "The Green New Deal for Schools is the kind of action and urgency that we need in order to address the climate crisis and prepare students to live with the realities of it."
The Daily Camerareported that the board's president, Kathy Gebhardt, "urged the students to take their advocacy beyond Boulder Valley to local governments and the state Legislature, saying most school districts in the state are struggling to pay teachers and don't have the resources to add solar panels or buy electric buses."
Colorado Public Radio on Tuesday laid out the long history of such policies in the district, which serves over 30,000 students:
Resolutions on the environment go back to 1978. In 2009, BVSD created a sustainability action plan, with updates in later years with a long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 80% and also committed to a goal of zero net energy by 2050. It was one of the first school districts in the nation to make such a commitment.
As a part of its efforts to track carbon and lower emissions, the district has increased the number of buildings with renewable energy, purchased 19 electric buses, reduced greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter, reduced water consumption by 11% in three years, and hit a target of diverting 50% of waste from landfills. BVSD has already become a leader in providing locally sourced lunch to students.
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The Sunrise Movement—which is behind the national Green New Deal for Schools campaign—said on social media that the resolution also commits the district to "pathways to green union jobs for students, and increased collaboration with local, state, and federal agencies to strengthen responses to climate disasters."
With the resolution, the board is also asking U.S. President Joe Biden—who plans to skip COP28, the United Nations climate summit beginning this week—and Congress "to support the Green New Deal for Public Schools Act, reinforcing the call for a nationwide commitment to an education that prepares our generation to navigate the realities of the climate crisis," according to Sunrise.
Spearheaded by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a former educator and principal, the legislation would invest $1.6 trillion to transform the country's education system while "creating 1.3 million jobs and eliminating 78 million metric tons of carbon emissions" over a decade.
While the win in Colorado was a first for the campaign, Sunrise and students across the United States are pushing for more. The group noted Wednesday that young people in dozens of districts—from Bozeman, Montana to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—have recently testified at school board meetings and attended daylong trainings in cities including Chicago, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; and Washington D.C.
"Shoutout to the incredible students and their tireless advocacy that led to the Green New Deal for Schools resolution, which passed the Boulder Valley school board this week!" Bowman said Wednesday on social media. "Thank you for your incredible work. Now let's make this happen everywhere!"
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"The people have spoken and expressed that they don't want more mines, that they want sustainable economic development, and have no intention of destroying the country for profit," said one campaigner.
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Indigenous and environmental campaigners this week hailed a landmark win for the Rights of Nature movement, the Panamanian Supreme Court's unanimous ruling that the contract for the Cobré mineral mine—one of the world's largest—is unconstitutional and must be shut down.
The November 24 ruling against Minera Panamá, a subsidiary of the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals, followed weeks of nationwide protests against the open-pit mine, which began operations in 2019 and where mainly copper, but also gold, silver, and molybdenum, are extracted. Opponents say the mine threatens area water supplies. A gunman shot and killed two people at a protest against the mine earlier this month.
Last year, the Cobré mine produced over 86,000 tons of copper, approximately 1% of the world's total production, 5% of Panama's gross domestic product, and 75% of the Central American country's export revenue. More than 2% of Panama's workforce is employed at the mine.
Cobré—which is located in a biodiverse area on Panama's Caribbean coast—will now shut down as a result of the ruling.
"The Panamanian people have spoken," Kherson Ruiz, executive director of the London-based Sustainable Development Foundation, toldMongabay. "The people have spoken and expressed that they don't want more mines, that they want sustainable economic development and have no intention of destroying the country for profit."
Referring to his introduction of Panama's Rights of Nature law, Juan Diego Vásquez Gutiérrez, an independent—and, at age 27, the youngest—member of Panama's National Assembly, said Wednesday that "I am very happy to have been part of a fundamental legal instrument to end the metal mining industry in the country."
"This is one of many tangible effects that we must repeat in defense of the environment thanks to legislation like this," Vásquez added.
Rengifo Navas Revilla, secretary of the National Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples of Panama, said in a statement that "when all this nature is contaminated, we all die."
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Since Ecuador became the first country to constitutionally enshrine the Rights of Nature in 2008, more than 30 nations have taken similar actions to protect their environment.
The advocacy groups Leatherback Project and Earth Law Center noted Wednesday that the Panamanian ruling "comes after a similar blocking of a copper mine earlier this year in Ecuador, where a provincial court ruled a mining project violated the constitutional Rights of Nature in the Intag Valley of the tropical Andes."
Constanza Prieto Figelist, Latin America legal director at Earth Law Center—which provided input and expertise on the Rights of Nature as the law was being drafted—said of the Panama ruling that "this case demonstrates that under a Rights of Nature framework, governments must give stronger consideration to the health and intrinsic value of nature when overseeing mining and other activities, elevating the interests of species and ecosystems to a higher status alongside human interests."
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