March, 09 2023, 02:30pm EDT
Groundwork's Dr. Rakeen Mabud Previews February Jobs Report
Ahead of tomorrow's monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Groundwork's Chief Economist Dr. Rakeen Mabud released the following statement:
"Inflation is coming downin spite of the Federal Reserve's callous rate hiking campaign, not because of it. It's clear that we do not need to create mass joblessness to bring down prices.
"If the Fed doesn't pause rate increases, millions of people will lose their jobs. It's time for Chair Powell to stop gambling with people's lives."
The Groundwork Collaborative is dedicated to advancing a coherent and persuasive progressive economic worldview and narrative capable of delivering meaningful opportunity and prosperity for everyone. Our work is driven by a core guiding principle: We are the economy. Groundwork Collaborative envisions an economic system that produces strong, broadly shared prosperity and power for all people, not just a wealthy few.
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Tlaib Leads Call for $1.2 Billion in Humanitarian Aid for War-Torn Yemen
"Without a significant increase in American assistance... we fear that 2023 will be a heartbreakingly deadly year for everyday Yemenis," Tlaib and 23 other House Democrats wrote.
Mar 27, 2023
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Monday led two dozen House Democrats in urging Congress to allocate at least $1.2 billion in humanitarian aid for Yemen—whose people have suffered eight years of U.S.-backed Saudi war—in next year's budget.
"As we approach the 8th anniversary of the Yemen war, the country remains stuck in a devastating cycle of conflict and humanitarian crisis that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives," Tlaib (D-Mich.) and 23 other lawmakers wrote in a letter to House Subcommittee on State and Foreign Relations Chair Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Ranking Member Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).
"Yemen has the grim title of the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with over 4 million Yemenis displaced and an estimated 80% of the country's 30 million people reliant upon some form of assistance for their survival," the letter, which was first sent last week, asserts.
The letter's authors lament that "international appeals for assistance for Yemen have consistently [fallen] short of their goals by large margins" and that "the continuous reduction in funding has greatly exacerbated the humanitarian suffering."
The United Nations "has had to close over 75% of its lifesaving programs, and the World Food Program has been forced to cut or reduce food distribution to 8 million people, increasing the number of areas at risk of famine," the letter notes.
"Without a significant increase in American assistance (which we believe would incentivize foreign nations to increase their support in turn), we fear that 2023 will be a heartbreakingly deadly year for everyday Yemenis," the signers assert.
The lawmakers urge Congress to include at least $1.2 billion "for humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts in Yemen" in the budget for fiscal year 2024. They also ask the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development "to develop programming that directly invests in sustainably developing long-term economic opportunities for Yemenis."
Tlaib is one of four dozen bipartisan House lawmakers who last June introduced a War Powers Resolution to end "unauthorized" United States military involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen's civil war.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), along with Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), introduced a similar measure in the Senate. Last December, Sanders withdrew the resolution just before it was slated for a floor vote, while vowing to work with the Biden administration on ending U.S. involvement in the war.
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'Aren't You Guys Tired of Covering This?' Illinois Mass Shooting Survivor Speaks Out in Nashville
"How is this still happening? Why are our children still dying and why are we failing them?"
Mar 27, 2023
A gun control activist who survived last year's massacre at an Illinois July 4th parade spoke out at a police press conference on Monday's mass shooting at a Nashville elementary school to make an impassioned plea for gun control legislation.
"Aren't you guys tired of covering this? Aren't you guys tired of being here and having to cover all these mass shootings?" asked Ashbey Beasley. "I'm from Highland Park, Illinois. My son and I survived a mass shooting over the summer. I am in Tennessee on a family vacation with my son visiting my sister-in-law."
Beasley's comments came as TV news crews were wrapping up coverage of a Metro Nashville Police press conference after authorities announced the murder of six people—three staff members and three 9-year-old children—at the Covenant School by a 28-year-old former student armed with two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun.
"I have been lobbying in D.C. since we survived a mass shooting in July," Beasley continued. "I have met with over 130 lawmakers. How is this still happening? Why are our children still dying and why are we failing them?"
"We have to do something. We all have to call our lawmakers and we all have to make our lawmakers make change now," she added. "Or this is gonna keep happening and it's gonna be your kid, and your kid, and your kid, and your kid next."
In a separate interview on CNN, Beasley said that "this is just unacceptable. It's only in America can somebody survive a mass shooting and then go on vacation to visit another person they met through fighting for gun safety and find themselves near another mass shooting."
"Only in America does this happen where we keep seeing this again and again and again," she added, calling for stricter background checks on gun buyers and a ban on assault-style semi-automatic weapons.
Common Dreamsrecently reported on Jackie Matthews, a student during both the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut and the February Michigan State shooting.
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House GOP's Energy Package Slammed as Harmful 'Giveaway to Big Oil'
H.R. 1 "contains more hidden costs that we can count, including more energy waste, more pollution, and a more dangerous future for our kids and grandkids," said one critic.
Mar 27, 2023
As House Republicans prepare to vote on H.R. 1 this week, environmental advocates warned Monday that the sprawling package of fossil fuel-friendly legislation would worsen the climate emergency and biodiversity destruction while saddling U.S. households with higher energy bills.
H.R. 1, misleadingly titled the "Lower Energy Costs Act" and dubbed the "Polluters Over People Act" by opponents, consists of 15 separate bills and a pair of resolutions. As GOP lawmakers made clear at a legislative hearing held last month and through recent amendments, they're seeking to dismantle a wide range of regulations to boost fossil fuel production and exports despite scientists' unequivocal warnings about the need to prohibit new coal, oil, and gas projects to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis.
Environment America explained Monday that if approved, the sweeping proposal introduced earlier this month by Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) would, among other things:
- Expand oil and gas drilling on public lands and in the ocean;
- Speed the construction of polluting projects, including gas pipelines, while limiting the ability of the public, private landowners, and states to weigh in;
- Expand mining without requiring companies to clean up or compensate communities for toxic mining waste;
- Exempt many sources of pollution, including petroleum refineries, from some Clean Air Act and hazardous waste requirements;
- Undo bipartisan reforms to the Toxic Substances Control Act;
- Lower the rates companies must pay for extraction on public lands and allow non-competitive lease sales; and
- Repeal programs that cut energy waste, including the Methane Emissions Reduction Program and rebates for energy-efficient and electric home appliances.
"This bill leads America in so many wrong directions at once, it's making me dizzy," said Lisa Frank, executive director of Environment America's Washington, D.C. legislative office.
"Instead of protecting the great American outdoors, it gives our public lands away to oil, mining, and gas companies," Frank pointed out. "Instead of cleaning up toxic pollution, it guarantees more drilling and more spilling, on land and in our oceans. And instead of slowing climate change or helping Americans save energy, it increases our dependence on dirty, expensive fuels."
"It's 2023. We have so many better options available to us, from the sun shining down on our roofs to the wind blowing off our shores and across our plains," she added. "Congress should reject this outdated and unnecessary push to sacrifice our lands, waters, and health in the name of energy production."
"Given how unpopular its provisions are, it's not surprising H.R. 1's authors also seek to limit public input and legal challenges to wrongheaded energy projects."
Included in the package is a resolution "expressing the sense of Congress that the federal government should not impose any restrictions on the export of crude oil or other petroleum products" and a bill that would "repeal all restrictions on the import and export of natural gas."
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.)—chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Energy, Climate, and Grid Security—argued last month that such measures are necessary because President Joe Biden and Democrats on the panel "have advocated for reinstating the crude oil export ban" that was originally enacted in 1975 and rescinded by congressional Republicans and then-President Barack Obama in 2015.
Last year, the Biden administration suggested—but never followed through on—resurrecting the federal ban on crude exports, a move that progressive advocacy groups urged the White House to make to bring down U.S. fuel prices.
While Duncan insisted that "lifting the export ban... has lowered prices," research demonstrates that precisely the opposite has occurred.
Since 2015, oil and gas production in the Permian Basin has surged while domestic consumption has remained steady, triggering a huge build-out of pipelines and other infrastructure that has turned the U.S. into the world's top exporter of fracked gas—intensifying planet-heating emissions, harming vulnerable Gulf Coast communities already overburdened by pollution, and exacerbating pain at the pump.
Matt Casale of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) said Monday that H.R. 1 "hands taxpayers the bill for expanded fossil fuel extraction and toxic waste clean-up, takes resources away from global warming solutions, and limits Americans' freedom to save energy in their own homes."
"Given how unpopular its provisions are, it's not surprising H.R. 1's authors also seek to limit public input and legal challenges to wrongheaded energy projects," said Casale, who directs PIRG's environmental campaigns.
"Our over-reliance on fossil fuels continues to hold us all over a barrel," he continued. "This bill looks for short-term fixes by doubling down on the energy sources of the past but contains more hidden costs that we can count, including more energy waste, more pollution, and a more dangerous future for our kids and grandkids. To protect ourselves now and in the future, we need to think beyond short-term solutions and take steps to end our fossil fuel dependence once and for all."
"To protect ourselves now and in the future, we need to think beyond short-term solutions and take steps to end our fossil fuel dependence once and for all."
Much to the chagrin of voters who put him in office, Biden has not been an enemy of the fossil fuel industry. His administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first two years than the Trump administration did in 2017 and 2018. Just two weeks ago, the White House ignored the scientists it claims to respect and rubber-stamped ConocoPhillips' massive Willow oil project.
Nevertheless, H.R. 1 even includes a resolution expressing disapproval of Biden's 2021 decision to revoke the presidential permit for the Keystone XL pipeline―part of the GOP's push to blame what they deride as "rush-to-green energy policies" for skyrocketing gas prices, a narrative that obscures Big Oil's profiteering amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, as the GOP's deficit hawks threaten to withhold their support for raising the nation's debt limit unless Biden agrees to devastating social spending cuts, the Congressional Budget Office found that H.R. 1 would increase the federal deficit by $2.4 billion from 2023 to 2033.
Given that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has described H.R. 1 as "dead-on-arrival," it's unlikely the legislation will reach Biden's desk. If it does, however, Biden vowed Monday to veto it.
The GOP's energy package would replace "pro-consumer policies with a thinly veiled license to pollute," the White House said in a statement. "It would raise costs for American families by repealing household energy rebates and rolling back historic investments to increase access to cost-lowering clean energy technologies. Instead of protecting American consumers, it would pad oil and gas company profits—already at record levels—and undercut our public health and environment."
"H.R. 1," the White House added, "would take us backward."
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