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US Chamber of Commerce Tour Ignores 250 Years of Socialism
To the people of America: You have a people’s economy—much of it still intact—to preserve, strengthen, and bring up to date.
Sep 27, 2026
On September 18, the US Chamber of Commerce announced it is launching a six-week, 20-state “Free Enterprise Express Bus” tour to back Republican candidates and “fight for free enterprise.” This big business lobby ignores the fact that, just like “capitalism,” American “democratic socialism” (supported by the voters for generations) is everywhere in our mixed-economy country.
Here is an incomplete list of public goods, services, benefits, and institutions that Democratic candidates can invoke in asking their GOP opponents: “Which one of the following will you tell voters you want to get rid of?”
- Public Lands - Parks and National Forests
- Public Schools and Universities
- Public Transit
- U.S. Postal Service
- Public Drinking Water Departments
- Public Electric Utilities
- Public Fire Departments
- Public Libraries
- Public Roads and Highways
- VA hospitals
- Mandatory Minimum Wages
- SNAP Food Stamps
- Unemployment Compensation Payments
- Social Security
- Medicare
- Medicaid
- Head Start
- Peace Corps and AmeriCorps
- Meals on Wheels
- Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
The list can go on. During the Vietnam War, the Pentagon begged the big drug companies to work on anti-malaria medicines. Malaria was the second leading cause of hospitalization for US soldiers in that undeclared war. Big Pharma refused, saying there was too little profit in one-time anti-malarial shots, compared with medicines soldiers were taking every day. So, the Pentagon chose socialism, setting up its own drug development entity in its two military hospitals. Pentagon scientists and doctors developed three of the four anti-malaria drugs in use and offered them to any country for use, without imposing patent monopolies.
Probably one of the nation’s earliest and foremost mixed-economy-minded civic founders was Ben Franklin. A successful businessman, he also knew the meaning of the phrase later coined by Amory Lovins: “Markets make a good servant, a bad master, and a worse religion.” Societies have many necessities that markets—meaning private companies—don’t supply when immediate profits are insufficient. Franklin helped create institutions to meet some of those needs: Philadelphia’s subscription Library Company, the volunteer Union Fire Company, and the Academy and College of Philadelphia, a precursor to the University of Pennsylvania. He also played an important role in colonial postal administration. These were not all government-operated public agencies, but they were civic institutions intended to serve broad public purposes.
Public works were crucial in enabling private business enterprises to flourish. Consider the Erie Canal, which opened in 1825 and linked the Hudson River at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo. It created a navigable commercial route between the Atlantic economy and the Great Lakes interior, reducing transportation costs and accelerating settlement and trade. The growth of the nation-building national post office is an example of a spectacular universal “democratic socialistic” public institution.
When these and other socialistic enterprises generated consumer or worker demand, private corporate usurpers moved to undermine them, seize a piece of this governmental success and their publicly created value, rip them off as vendors, or persistently disparage these services to get the public to lose confidence in them. This corporate propaganda never stops.
For years, health insurance companies have carved out or hollowed out parts of Medicare and Medicaid. For the former, it is called “Medicare Advantage” (we call it Medicare Disadvantage), a cleverly deceptive trap, heavily advertised for elderly beneficiaries, costing traditional Medicare many billions of dollars a year, going for profits to the likes of giant United Health Care Corp. and Aetna. Both the Biden and Trump Justice Departments have gone after these in-built long exposed corporate frauds.
For example, the Justice Department has pursued Medicare Advantage fraud and False Claims Act cases involving inflated risk scores, unsupported diagnosis codes, and other practices that increase taxpayer payments. Recent settlements include $556 million from Kaiser Permanente affiliates, $172.3 million from Cigna, and up to $98 million from Independent Health. Medicare and Medicaid are highly vulnerable to waste, overpayments, and fraud. Federal estimates placed combined improper payments in the two programs at more than $100 billion in fiscal year 2023 (See Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Fiscal Year 2023 Improper Payments Fact Sheet).
For years, private freight companies have been undermining and restricting the Postal Service’s business—using Congress, for example, to ban the US Postal Service from transporting beer and wine, among other limitations while private carriers may transport alcohol.
The hyper-corporatists do not like to talk about the democratic socialist institutions listed above in taking today’s Democratic Socialists of America to task. So, they seize on some DSA apparatchiks’ media-grabbing declarations such as calls for closing down prisons or defunding the police. Like right-wing extremists, they have learned that to start getting media attention, they have to say off-the-wall or extreme things in absolutist language.
In contrast, elected democratic socialists or candidates generally focus on expanding the frayed “social safety net” for many millions of Americans, restoring taxes on the undertaxed giant companies that pay little or no US income tax or the superrich with their clever tax lawyers, and cracking down on corporate crooks ripping off hard-earned consumer dollars and savings.
To illustrate how modest these elected self-described democratic socialists are, consider New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He has never supported, even while a state assemblyman in Albany, repeal of an enormous daily electronic rebate of a tiny sales tax on stock sales. Under legislation signed by Gov. Hugh Carey in 1977 and fully phased in by 1981, Carey agreed to a deal with the stock market brokerage industry, that has rebated hundreds of billions of dollars back to Wall Street. Still, Mamdani, who needs money for his free childcare, free buses and other programs, is unwilling to demand a stop to the rebate. We’re also still waiting for Mayor Mamdani to call for greater enforcement against corporate crime, fraud, and abuses in the city. (See my columns: Mamdani’s Magnificent Primary Win—What Follows, June 27, 2025 and Open Letter to Zohran Mamdani – Political Moderate, December 5, 2025).
To the people of America: You have a people’s economy—much of it still intact—to preserve, strengthen, and bring up to date. Greet the Chamber’s Free Enterprise Bus when it comes to your state (check the Chamber’s website) with signs like: “Stop the Corporate Crime Wave,” or “Get the Rich Off Welfare.”
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Trump's Military Occupation of DC Egged On by Corporate Lobbyists: Report
In some cases, corporate groups have posed as small business owners besieged by rising crime rates.
Aug 13, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's military occupation of Washington, D.C. has been egged on for months by corporate lobbyists. In some cases, they have posed as small business owners besieged by rising crime rates.
According to a report Tuesday in The Lever:
Last February, the American Investment Council, private equity's $24 million lobbying shop, penned a letter to D.C. city leaders demanding "immediate action" to address an "alarming increase" in crime.
That letter was published as an exclusive by Axios with the headline: "Downtown D.C. Business Leaders Demand Crime Solutions."
But far from a group of beleaguered mom-and-pops, the letter's signatories "included some of the biggest trade groups on K Street," The Lever observed:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which boasts its status as the largest business organization in the world; the National Retail Federation, a powerful retail alliance representing giants like Walmart and Target; and Airlines for America, which represents the major U.S. airlines, among others. These lobbying juggernauts spend tens of millions of dollars every year lobbying federal lawmakers to get their way in Washington."
It was one of many efforts by right-wing groups to agitate for a more fearsome police crackdown in the city and oppose criminal justice reforms.
On multiple occasions, business groups and police unions have helped to thwart efforts by the D.C. city council to rewrite the city's criminal code, which has not been updated in over a century, to eliminate many mandatory minimum sentences and reduce sentences for some nonviolent offenses.
The reforms were vetoed by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser in 2023. After the veto was overridden by the city council, Democrats helped Republicans pass a law squashing the reforms, which was signed by then-President Joe Biden.
In 2024, groups like the Chamber of Commerce pushed the "Secure D.C." bill in the city council, which expanded pre-trial detention, weakened restrictions on chokeholds, and limited public access to police disciplinary records.
At the time, business groups lauded these changes as necessary to fight the post-pandemic crime spike D.C. was experiencing.
But crime rates in D.C. have fallen precipitously, to a 30-year low over the course of 2024. As a press release from the U.S. attorney's office released on January 3, 2025 stated: "homicides are down 32%; robberies are down 39%; armed carjackings are down 53%; assaults with a dangerous weapon are down 27% when compared with 2023 levels."
Nevertheless, as Trump sends federal troops into D.C., many in the corporate world are still cheering.
In a statement Monday, the D.C. Chamber of Commerce described itself as a "strong supporter" of the Home Rule Act, which Trump used to enact his federal crackdown.
The Washington Business Journal quoted multiple consultancy executives—including Yaman Coskum, who exclaimed that "It is about time somebody did something to make D.C. great again," and Kirk McLaren who said, "If local leaders won't protect residents and businesses, let's see if the federal government will step in and do what's necessary to create a safe and prosperous city."
Despite crime also being on the decline in every other city he has singled out—Los Angeles, Baltimore, Oakland, New York, and Chicago—Trump has said his deployment of federal troops "will go further."
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Trump-Appointed Judge Strikes Down FTC Ban on Noncompete Agreements
"Thirty million workers who were trapped by these agreements will now stay trapped thanks to this ruling," an expert said.
Aug 21, 2024
A U.S. District Court judge in Texas on Tuesday struck down a Federal Trade Commission ban on noncompete agreements that was set to go into effect nationwide in September, drawing condemnation from workers' rights advocates who supported the ban.
Judge Ada Brown, who was appointed to the federal bench by then-President Donald Trump in 2019, ruled that the FTC didn't have the authority to issue substantive rules such as the noncompete ban, which was issued following a 3-2 vote of the agency's commissioners in April.
Noncompetes bar workers from getting jobs with competitors or leaving to start their own company. Commissioners in the majority, including FTC Chair Lina Khan, said the agreements suppress wages, stifle entrepreneurship, and distort labor markets. Advocates have long argued that the agreements are anti-worker.
The FTC has estimated that 30 million U.S. workers are subject to noncompete agreements. Had the rule gone into effect—voiding most existing agreements and prohibiting new ones—workers would have collectively increased their earnings by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade, the agency said.
"We are disappointed by Judge Brown's decision and will keep fighting to stop noncompetes that restrict the economic liberty of hardworking Americans, hamper economic growth, limit innovation, and depress wages," Victoria Graham, an FTC spokesperson, told The Washington Post.
Bharat Ramamurti, a former deputy director of the National Economic Council who's now a senior adviser at the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), an anti-monopoly advocacy group, said on social media that "30 million workers who were trapped by these agreements will now stay trapped thanks to this ruling."
30 million workers who were trapped by these agreements will now stay trapped thanks to this ruling. The FTC estimated that banning noncompetes would empower workers and raise wages by nearly $200 billion over the next decade, which is why big business lobbyists fought it. https://t.co/G79l9l5UWs
— Bharat Ramamurti (@BharatRamamurti) August 20, 2024
Ryan LLC, a tax services firm based in Dallas, sued to block the FTC regulation as soon as it was issued in April. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable later joined the case, which is in a jurisdiction friendly to their interests. If the case is appealed, which Graham said the FTC is "seriously considering," it would go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit—the most right-wing, pro-business appeals court in the country.
Tuesday's ruling, though momentous, didn't come as a surprise. Judge Brown signaled her intent to side with the plaintiffs last month when she partially blocked the FTC rule and placed a temporary injunction on it.
Similar cases involving the FTC noncompete ban have recently appeared in federal courts in Florida and Pennsylvania, with different and less consequential outcomes, raising the possibility that the matter will be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court's right-wing majority would make a ruling favorable to the FTC unlikely, so congressional action could be necessary to institute a ban on noncompete clauses, experts say.
Banning noncompetes is popular among the general public and has some bipartisan support, with a number of prominent Republicans having come out in favor of a ban or narrower reforms, such as prohibiting such agreements for low-wage workers.
Khan, an antitrust leader beloved of progressives, received 21 confirmation votes from Republicans in 2021, and parts of her agenda are supported by the GOP.
Khan is far from universally loved among Democrats. She's recently been the target of Democratic megadonors such as LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who's pushed Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, to sack Khan if elected. However, even Hoffman has indicated support for the noncompete ban.
HuffPost reporter Daniel Marans on Saturday wrote that the noncompete ban was "Khan's most ambitious initiative" and cited expert opinion that even if the rule didn't hold up, it was part of a broader push that could ultimately lead to reform.
"Even if the FTC rule is overturned, there are still many other efforts afoot to undermine the use of these agreements," Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at AELP, told Marans. "It's a multi-pronged strategy."
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Trump-Appointed Judge Halts Biden Rule Capping Credit Card Fees
"The U.S. Chamber got its way for now—ensuring families get price-gouged a little longer with credit card late fees as high as $41," one advocate said of the ruling.
May 12, 2024
A Trump-appointed judge on Friday delivered a win for big banks when he granted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce a temporary injunction halting a Biden administration rule that would cap credit card fees at $8.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule, which would have gone into effect May 14, could save U.S. consumers more than $10 billion each year. The decision to pause its implementation, issued by U.S. District of the Northern District of Texas Judge Mark Pittman, will cost ordinary Americans around $27 million each day it is in effect.
"In their latest in a stack of lawsuits designed to pad record corporate profits at the expense of everyone else, the U.S. Chamber got its way for now—ensuring families get price-gouged a little longer with credit card late fees as high as $41," Liz Zelnick, the director of the Economic Security and Corporate Power Program at Accountable.US, said in a statement.
"It's time the U.S. Chamber stops clogging the courts with baseless lawsuits designed to enrich corporate CEOs on the backs of working families—and it's time the judiciary stops legitimizing venue shopping from big industry."
The CFPB issued the rule on March 5 as part of the Biden administration's commitment to crack down on "junk fees." However, the Chamber of Commerce and other banking trade associations—including the American Bankers Association and the Consumer Bankers Association—quickly sued to block it. The executives of Bank of America, Capital One, Citibank, and JPMorgan Chase sit on the boards of the groups behind the suit, according to The Washington Post.
"Banks make billions in profits charging excessive late fees," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on social media Saturday in response to the ruling. "Now a single Trump-appointed judge sided with bank lobbyists to block the Biden administration's new rule capping these junk fees."
Accountable.US also criticized the fact that the suit was before Pittman at all, arguing that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed the suit in Texas federal court so that it would end up under the jurisdiction of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has 19 Republican-appointed justices out of a total of 26. The chamber has filed nearly two-thirds of its lawsuits since 2017 with courts covered by the 5th Circuit.
"The U.S. Chamber and the big banks they represent have corrupted our judicial system by venue shopping in courtrooms of least resistance, going out of their way to avoid having their lawsuit heard by a fair and neutral federal judge," Zelnick said. "It's time the U.S. Chamber stops clogging the courts with baseless lawsuits designed to enrich corporate CEOs on the backs of working families—and it's time the judiciary stops legitimizing venue shopping from big industry."
The 5th Circuit's treatment of the case has also come under fire, as Trump-appointed Judge Don Willett has not recused himself despite the fact that he owns tens of thousands of dollars in Citigroup shares. While Willett has argued that Citigroup is not a party to the case, it belongs to trade groups that are, and any ruling on credit card fees would significantly impact the bank. Collectively, all the judges on the 5th Circuit have invested as much as $745,000 in credit card or credit issuing companies, according to the most recent publicly available information.
Donald Sherman, Gabe Lezra, and Linnaea Honl-Stuenkel of Citizens for Ethics in Washington wrote: "Judge Willett's refusal to recuse, and the lack of transparency about the rationale, reinforces the need for more judicial ethics reform to ensure that everyday Americans and government agencies have a level playing field when they go into court against corporate interests."
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'Scathing Indictment' of Big Oil Lies Unveiled on Eve of Senate Hearing
The report details a "campaign of deception, disinformation, and doublespeak waged using dark money, phony front groups, false economics, and relentless exertion of political influence."
Apr 30, 2024
Two U.S. congressional committees on Tuesday released a report that "provides a rare glimpse into the extensive efforts undertaken by fossil fuel companies to deceive the public and investors about their knowledge of the effects of their products on climate change and to undermine efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions."
The report—titled Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil's Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change—was released after nearly three years of investigation by the Democratic staffs of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Senate Budget Committee.
"For decades, the fossil fuel industry has known about the economic and climate harms of its products but has deceived the American public to keep collecting more than $600 billion each year in subsidies while raking in record-breaking profits," said Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
"As this joint report makes clear, the industry's outright denial of climate change has evolved into a green-seeming cover for its ongoing covert operation—a campaign of deception, disinformation, and doublespeak waged using dark money, phony front groups, false economics, and relentless exertion of political influence—to block climate progress," the senator added.
Big Oil’s 4 phases on climate change:
1.Learn of the danger posed by climate change from their own scientists
2.Form an armada of front groups to cover it up
3.Deny a problem exists
4.Engage in doublespeak by pretending to care for a solution
Now we're holding them accountable. pic.twitter.com/YlqztAZgo1
— Senate Budget Committee (@SenateBudget) April 30, 2024
In a statement welcoming the report, Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said that "this new evidence of Big Oil's climate lies will likely be used to hold these companies accountable in court—and it should generate renewed calls for the U.S. Department of Justice to finally open its own investigation into the fossil fuel industry."
The congressional probe targeted four companies and two industry allies: BP America, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell USA as well as the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Chamber of Commerce. As the report details, the committee staffers found:
- Documents demonstrate for the first time that fossil fuel companies internally do not dispute that they have understood since at least the 1960s that burning fossil fuels causes climate change and then worked for decades to undermine public understanding of this fact and to deny the underlying science.
- Big Oil's deception campaign evolved from explicit denial of the basic science underlying climate change to deception, disinformation, and doublespeak.
- The fossil fuel industry relies on trade associations to spread confusing and misleading narratives and to lobby against climate action.
- The fossil fuel industry strategically partners with universities to lend an aura of credibility to its deception campaigns while also silencing opposition voices.
- All six entities—Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, API, and the Chamber—obstructed and delayed the committees' investigation.
The report was released on the eve of a Wednesday morning Senate hearing hosted by Whitehouse. The House panel's ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—who participated in a related October 2021 event in the lower chamber—is expected to join multiple experts in testifying.
"We applaud Sen. Whitehouse, Rep. Raskin, and their committees for helping to shine further light on Big Oil's ongoing climate deception," said Wiles. "Communities across the country are already taking these polluters to court to make them pay for their deceit, and many of their lawsuits have cited documents unearthed by Congress as evidence."
"Big Oil's concerted efforts to mislead the public about their destructive industry are the most consequential corporate fraud in history," he continued. "Tomorrow's hearing should make clear that it's time for the U.S. Justice Department to get off the sidelines and take action to hold Big Oil accountable for lying to the American people for decades."
Wiles was far from alone in demanding action from the Biden administration based on the committees' findings.
"This report is a scathing indictment of the fossil fuel industry's lies and corruption," declared Cassidy DiPaola, a spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay campaign. "As the impacts of the climate crisis worsen, from deadly heatwaves to devastating floods and wildfires, it's never been more important to hold polluters accountable for the damage they've knowingly caused. The Senate Budget Committee's investigation is a critical step towards justice, and it's time the Biden administration follows suit."
Sunrise Movement executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay urged President Joe Biden—who is seeking reelection in November—to "fight for young people by holding companies like Exxon accountable for their climate lies."
"President Biden must hold Big Oil responsible by declaring a climate emergency and suing fossil fuel companies for creating the climate crisis and lying to the public about it," Shiney-Ajay said. "For too long we've seen fossil fuel companies like Exxon and Chevron deny the cause of the climate crisis and pretend to fight for climate action, all the while lining their pockets with bigger and bigger returns. This must stop and the president can do something about it."
"Biden must direct the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute fossil fuel companies like Exxon for their disinformation," she argued. "Until the administration starts treating Big Oil like Big Tobacco, everyday Americans will continue to pay for their lies with flooded homes, hotter summers, and more extreme weather."
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Chamber of Commerce Sues to Block FTC Ban on Anti-Worker Noncompete Agreements
"Why does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hate dynamism in the American economy, where workers are free to move to the best opportunities, and companies are free to recruit the best talent?" asked one economist.
Apr 24, 2024
The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday in an effort to block the agency's widely celebrated new rule banning most noncompete clauses, pervasive contract agreements that restrict employees' ability to work for or start a competing business.
The Chamber filed its lawsuit alongside the Business Roundtable and other corporate lobbying groups in a federal court in Texas. The suit came shortly after Ryan LLC, a tax service firm, filed the first legal challenge to the FTC's rule in a separate Texas venue.
"The commission's categorical ban on virtually all non-competes amounts to a vast overhaul of the national economy," reads the Chamber's complaint against the rule, which the FTC finalized in a 3-2 vote on Tuesday.
The agency, led by Biden-appointed Commissioner Lina Khan, estimates that roughly 30 million U.S. workers are subject to a noncompete agreement, limiting their ability to start their own companies or switch jobs in pursuit of better wages and benefits.
"Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned," Khan said in a statement Tuesday. "The FTC's final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market."
"Noncompetes are about reducing competition, full stop. It's in their name."
The Chamber, the largest corporate lobbying organization in the United States, signaled its intent to sue the FTC immediately after the agency finalized its new rule on Tuesday.
"The Federal Trade Commission's decision to ban employer noncompete agreements across the economy is not only unlawful but also a blatant power grab that will undermine American businesses’ ability to remain competitive," Chamber president and CEO Suzanne Clark said in a statement following the FTC's vote.
While the organization claims to fight for the interests of businesses small and large, a Public Citizen report published earlier this year found that the majority of the Chamber's legal work supports big corporations.
The Chamber acknowledged in response to questioning from a pair of Democratic senators last year that its corporate members use noncompete clauses—though the group did not specify which members.
"Why does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hate dynamism in the American economy, where workers are free to move to the best opportunities, and companies are free to recruit the best talent?" asked University of Massachusetts Amherst economics professor Arin Dube in response to the Chamber's pledge to sue over the FTC's rule.
According to the FTC, its ban would boost the average U.S. worker's earnings by $524 a year, increase new business formation by close to 3% annually, and lower national healthcare costs by nearly $200 billion over the next decade.
"Noncompetes are about reducing competition, full stop. It's in their name," Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said Tuesday. "Noncompetes are bad for workers, bad for consumers, and bad for the broader economy. This rule is an important step in creating an economy that is not only strong but also works for working people."
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SEC Accused of Bending to Industry Pressure by Omitting Key Measure in New Climate Rule
"The SEC's decision to bow to industry pressure against comprehensive climate disclosure requirements is a disservice to both the planet and investors," said one expert.
Mar 06, 2024
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released a climate disclosure rule on Wednesday that will require public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks, but the new rule does not include requirements for companies to report emissions related to their supply chains.
The SEC seemingly bent to big business interests after many major companies pressured the commission to omit the supply chain aspect of the rule.
"Under the original proposal, large companies would have been required to disclose not just planet-warming emissions from their own operations, but also emissions produced along what's known as a company's 'value chain'—a term that encompasses everything from the parts or services bought from other suppliers, to the way that people who use the products ultimately dispose of them. Pollution created all along this value chain could add up," The New York Times reports.
The new rule only requires that companies report their direct greenhouse gas emissions and the risks they're exposed to from climate-related natural disasters and extreme heat.
Climate risks are financial risks. This @SECGov decision will let big corporations off the hook by not requiring disclosure of emissions throughout their supply chains. That means big promises with little accountability to deliver emissions reductions. Unacceptable. https://t.co/HjO4d1XyZu
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) March 6, 2024
Charles Slidders, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, criticized the weakened rule in a statement.
"The SEC's decision to bow to industry pressure against comprehensive climate disclosure requirements is a disservice to both the planet and investors," Slidders said. "In an era of urgent need for more sustainable practices, greater transparency, and reliable information on corporate climate impacts and risks, the lack of ambition reflected in this rule represents a step backward that could ultimately undermine efforts to mitigate climate change and protect investors' interests."
David Arkush, director of Public Citizen's climate program, said in a statement that the SEC had "caved to special interests and was cowed by litigation risk." Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said it was "unfortunate" that the SEC had watered down the rule.
"Climate-related risks are financial risks, and investors have a right to know the full scope of a public company's emissions profile. This SEC decision will let big corporations off the hook in the United States, allowing them to avoid disclosure of emissions from throughout their supply chains," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
While the SEC may be refusing to require that companies disclose how their supply chains affect the climate, the state of California doesn't have any problem doing that. The state passed a bill in September that requires large companies to disclose this information.
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The SEC Should’t Let Business Interests Call the Shots on Stock Buybacks
After the Chamber of Commerce successfully challenged one version of a disclosure regulation in court, the commission should come back with a revised, stronger proposal.
Feb 13, 2024
The corporate flacks over at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are clearly fretting about the growing movement to crack down on stock buybacks—and for good reason.
For years now, public outrage has been growing over rampant corporate spending on buybacks, a financial maneuver that generates huge windfalls for CEOs while siphoning resources from worker wages and productive investments. In response, federal officials have taken a series of whacks at this shady form of stock manipulation.
In 2020, Congress banned airlines that got pandemic relief aid from spending funds on stock buybacks. In 2022, federal lawmakers adopted a new excise tax on buybacks. That same year, the Biden administration announced plans to make it hard for buyback-spending companies to win a cut of new mega-billion-dollar semiconductor subsidies.
Then, in 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a new rule that arguably poses the most direct threat to CEOs who’ve been milking the buyback scam. The regulation requires companies to increase buyback activity reporting from monthly to daily and to reveal whether top executives or directors bought or sold company shares during the four days before or after a buyback announcement.
None of these companies want to see their executives in the headlines for unloading boatloads of stock after a buyback announcement. At best, it would be embarrassing. At worst, it could be the beginning of the end of the buyback bonanza.
To be clear, this is just a disclosure regulation. No company would pay more in taxes or lose a lucrative government contract as a result of it. But America’s top corporate executives are not stupid when it comes to protecting their own paychecks. Stock-based pay makes up the vast bulk of their compensation. And they know what could happen if these reports show a pattern of executives timing their trades to profit from buyback-fueled bumps in share values. This damning data could build the case for restoring the effective ban on stock buybacks that existed until 1982, when President Ronald Reagan’s SEC legalized the maneuver. Not that we don’t already have ample evidence indicating that CEOs are opportunistically timing their trades around buybacks. A 2018 SEC investigation found that executives cash out much more of their personal stock immediately after announcing a buyback than on an ordinary day.
But that SEC study relied on non-public data. The new regulation would shine a bright light on individual corporate insiders who appear to be gaming buybacks to pad their own pockets.
The Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors is stacked with representatives of companies that have spent billions on buybacks in recent years, including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Comcast, Hilton, Cognizant, and Pfizer. None of these companies want to see their executives in the headlines for unloading boatloads of stock after a buyback announcement. At best, it would be embarrassing. At worst, it could be the beginning of the end of the buyback bonanza.
Immediately after the SEC issued the new regulation, the Chamber of Commerce sued to block it. Of course their lawsuit downplays their self-centered concerns and instead focuses on legal technicalities, mostly related to the SEC’s cost-benefit analysis of the regulation.
In perhaps the lobby group’s most imaginative argument, they assail the commission for insufficiently analyzing the impact of the new excise tax, which went into effect in 2023. If this tax reduces buyback activity, the chamber reasons, companies would still bear the administrative costs of disclosure but the benefits would be lower. Less buybacks, less need for transparency. This would be like arguing that if federal fines are effective in reducing industrial pollution, then companies no longer need to report their toxic emissions data.
The Chamber has never been afraid of putting forth absurd arguments to shield greedy executives. For five years, they hurled one ridiculous claim after another against a provision in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law requiring disclosure of the gap between CEO and median worker pay. In one particularly hilarious “report,” they claimed that accountants would need an average of 1,825 number-crunching hours to figure out the median salary in their own company’s payroll.
Fortunately, the SEC stood up to the Chamber on the CEO-worker pay ratio disclosure regulation, and companies have been reporting that information since 2018. But the battle over buybacks disclosure has been rockier.
On October 31 of last year, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals partially sided with the chamber and gave the SEC 30 days to correct supposed “defects” of the regulation. The commission requested a 60-day extension, but the court refused and struck down the rule in December.
The question now: jill the SEC simply roll over and let the Chamber of Commerce call the shots on buybacks? In a joint petition to the agency, Americans for Financial Reform and several other groups are calling on the SEC to forge ahead with a revised, stronger proposal.
Without strong action from our regulators, stock buyback abuse will only escalate.
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In 'First Major Blow to Big Pharma,' Federal Judge Blocks Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Injunction
The judge said plaintiff the Chamber of Commerce "demonstrated neither a strong likelihood of success nor irreparable harm."
Sep 30, 2023
A federal judge in Ohio on Friday blocked an attempt by corporate interests to stop Medicare's historic negotiation of certain drug prices with pharmaceuticals.
Medicare gained the power to negotiate drug prices as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), but the several industry groups and drug makers have sued to forestall the program, arguing that it is unconstitutional, CNN explained. One of those groups was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which filed its lawsuit in June. The Ohio judge Friday rejected its request for a preliminary injunction to block the program before October 1, the date by which pharmaceuticals must agree to negotiate or not.
"This is the first major blow to Big Pharma in its legal battles to block the drug price negotiation provisions under the Inflation Reduction Act," Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines program at Public Citizen, said in a statement.
"The Biden-Harris Administration won’t stop fighting for what we know to be true: that nothing in the Constitution prohibits Medicare from negotiating drug prices."
"The Chamber’s lawsuit lacks merit," Maybarduk contined. "The court made the right decision not to grant the injunction, which would have caused needless patient suffering and treatment rationing."
Judge Michael Newman of the Southern District of Ohio, a Trump appointee, ruled that the chamber "demonstrated neither a strong likelihood of success nor irreparable harm," as CNBC reported.
"Consequently, their request for immediate preliminary injunctive relief... is denied," Newman concluded.
Newman also rejected the Biden administration's request to dismiss the case. Instead, he gave the Chamber of Commerce until October 13 to answer some questions about its argument and the administration until October 27 to renew its motion to dismiss.
While the chamber had argued the negotiation program was unconstitutional for multiple reasons, Newman pointed out that drug companies are not forced to participate in Medicare.
"As there is no constitutional right (or requirement) to engage in business with the government, the consequences of that participation cannot be considered a constitutional violation," he said.
The Biden administration celebrated the news.
"Today’s ruling from the Southern District of Ohio affirms that Medicare will move forward with negotiating lower prices for millions of seniors," Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement. "And, the Biden-Harris Administration won’t stop fighting for what we know to be true: that nothing in the Constitution prohibits Medicare from negotiating drug prices."
The administration announced the first 10 drugs to be subject to negotiations in August. They included the blood-clot treatment Eliquis, Jardiance, Xarelto, Januvia, Farxiga, Entresto, Enbrel, Imbruvica, Stelara, and several Novo Nordisk insulins, according to CNN.
With the injunction blocked, "drug companies should agree to participate in the negotiation program in good faith," Maybarduk said. "The program is an important first step in ending the exorbitant prices charged to Medicare enrollees. It’s time for Big Pharma to drop their lawsuits and drop their prices.”
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Why the Nation's Nurses are Supporting Bernie Sanders for President
Aug 13, 2015
The more than 100,000 people jammed into arenas in Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Madison, and other cities should be a wake-up call for anyone still on the sidelines in the critical 2016 election campaign.
I'm proud to say National Nurses United has endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for many of the same reasons that have brought those 100,000 people to their feet.
Bernie Sanders aligns perfectly with nurses on our nation's most critical problems, from income inequality to guaranteeing healthcare, holding Wall Street and corporations accountable, and opening the doors to college education for everyone, racial justice, and the climate crisis.
"All the establishment pundits scrambling for ways to dismiss the outpouring of excitement for his campaign and to marginalize those who have filled the stadiums increasingly look like cranks trying to stop an approaching train."
Those issues animate nurses when voting for nurses' values - caring, compassion, and community to Heal America.
However, we also support Sanders's moment because of the rare opportunity his campaign represents to speak truth to power and join movements together to change our country. To stand as a social movement against the obscene wealth that controls our lives, starves our communities, destroys our people, and expands a populist movement that puts human life before profit.
All the establishment pundits who are scrambling for ways to dismiss the outpouring of excitement for his campaign and to marginalize those who have filled the stadiums increasingly look like cranks trying to stop an approaching train.
The myths
Bernie can't win. That is precisely what they said about Barack Obama at this parallel point in 2007. American history, of course, is filled with examples of change that could never occur until it does - abolition of slavery, voting for women, ending legal segregation, and the right to same-sex marriage. Sanders is used to the naysayers. They said he couldn't win running for mayor of Burlington, as an independent running for Congress and then Senate, and he won them all. That's why we have elections - to let the voters, not the "experts," decide.
He's not drawing black and Latino voters. As his campaign and platform become better known, that is changing, evident in the multi-racial crowd at his overflow Los Angeles rally and support from young artists like Lil B and Killer Mike. At a time when Cecil the lion evokes more outrage than the death of Sandra Bland, Bernie is increasingly speaking out. He has advanced a platform with a call for a "societal transformation" to end police violence, mass incarceration, and "institutional racism." Nurses hold every life in their hands. Nurses know why Black Lives Matter needs to be amplified, and so does Bernie Sanders.
He's an "avowed democratic socialist." That fear-mongering has lost much of its resonance. What does democratic socialism mean in America? It's how we teach our children, put out fires, pay for our libraries, and build roads, bridges, highways, and street lighting. It's how we inspect our food to make it safe, provide oversight for clean air and water, develop life-saving medications and vaccines, and provide Social Security and Medicare. Every governor, mayor, and school board member who uses public funds to pay for basic services could be called a socialist.
As nurses, an organization of predominantly women, I have been asked, don't you want to break the glass ceiling with Hillary Clinton?
Yes. We'd love it if Hillary had Bernie's politics, his unequivocal opposition to a dreadful Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that would expand big pharma's monopoly control over high-priced drugs and hand corporations increased ability to overturn public protections. And if she opposed the toxic, polluting climate disaster known as the Keystone XL pipeline.
"While other candidates are intrinsically tied to Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce, Bernie not only calls for repeal of Citizens United and public financing of campaigns, but he is also the only candidate not taking money from big corporations and PACs."
We'd especially love to see her advocate for single-payer Medicare for all at a time when millions remain uninsured, skipping needed care, or facing bankruptcy due to inflated medical bills.
But, at a time of the greatest income disparity in nearly a century, Citizens United's corruption of our political system, an all-out assault on workers' lives, and a threat to our planet and our future, our first challenge today must be to break the Wall Street, corporate stranglehold over our economy, our politics, our nation.
"You'll never have to wonder which side I am on," he says. While other candidates are intrinsically tied to Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce, Bernie not only calls for repealing Citizens United and public financing campaigns but is also the only candidate not taking money from big corporations and PACs.
Bernie wants to take money from Wall Street, too—by taxing them to fund a civil society with the health care, jobs, housing, and environmental protections people need.
Bernie Sanders knows that his campaign is not about him. It's about all of us. And it will take all of us to change the course of history. It's time to start now.
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