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It’s Time to Start Taking UFOs Seriously
Brief # 50 – Technology
By Scout Burchill
By the end of this month a long-anticipated report will be released by the U.S. Intelligence community on UFOs. A once fringe, conspiracy-laden topic, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs as they are called by the Pentagon, have infiltrated the Washington establishment as of late and captured the fascination of the wider public.
Global Perspectives: India’s Draconian New Digital Media Laws and the Responsibilities of U.S. Tech Companies
Brief # 49 – Technology
By Scout Burchill
In late May, the Indian government enacted sweeping new laws to regulate social media companies and digital platforms. The laws will require digital content providers, from Twitter and Facebook to Netflix and independent news organizations, to remove content that government authorities find objectionable within 36 hours of being flagged.
Free Speech vs. Hate Speech and Conflict At The ACLU
Brief #164 – Civil Rights Policy
By Rodney A. Maggay
On June 7, 2021 the New York Times published an article that illustrated conflicting priorities in the ongoing free speech vs. hate speech debate.
The First Amendment of the United States Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….” On the other hand “hate speech” has no precise definition.
Obamacare Lives for Another Day
Brief #110 – Health and Gender Policy
By S. Bhimji
Healthcare is the one topic that concerns all Americans, irrespective of their political affiliation. For the past 40 years, the privileged Americans with private medical insurance have received first-rate healthcare from the top medical institutions in the country.
Review of the Biden–Putin Summit
Brief # 117 – Foreign Policy
By Abran C
Presidents Joe Biden and Putin’s meeting on June 16th came after months of tensions, cyberattacks, and both leaders acknowledging that relations between the two nations are at a historic low point. Not much was expected from this meeting and as thought not much was gained.
The Unemployment Disconnect in California
Brief # 120 – Economic Policy
By Patrick Dwire
As restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues begin to open up in California as the state officially re-opens with virtually no Covid restrictions, many of these employers are having trouble finding workers. Low-income workers are getting blamed for not jumping at these job openings, which seems to lead many Republican policy makers immediately to the conclusion that unemployment benefits must be too generous.
Drought and Plans to Deal with Running Dry
Brief # 116 – Environmental Policy
By Todd J. Broadman
A prolonged period with little or no precipitation combined with an extended period of abnormally high temperatures has created “extreme” drought conditions in much of the western half of the U. S. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has placed 41 counties under a state of drought emergency. In some areas of Oregon and California, scientists conclude the drought is the most severe it has been in centuries.
A Preview of the Biden–Putin Summit
Brief # 116 – Foreign Policy
By Abran C
Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin are having their first meeting on June 16 in Geneva, Switzerland. The two have a history that goes back a decade, their first meeting was in 2011 when Biden was the U.S. vice president and Putin Russia’s prime minister. They now sit as the head of their nuclear-armed states and are scheduled to meet in Biden’s first overseas trip since taking office and after the first face-to-face meetings between the leaders of the G7, which now excludes Russia.
Department of Homeland Security Sets Sights on Domestic Extremism Online
Brief # 17 – Social Justice
By Erika Shannon
The rise of the use of social media has also led to a rise in crimes that can be tied back to social media. We have seen murders on Facebook Live, events for extremist groups to gather and spread propaganda, as well as events planned such as the Capitol riots on January 6th, where lives were lost. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is aiming to fight domestic extremism and terrorism online with a new Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or “CP3.”
Fishing Boat Dispatch
Changing Tides: A new blog post on the marine environment written by U.S. RESIST NEWS Reporter Katherine Cart
# 1 Fishing Boat Dispatch
February 22, 2021
The Gulf of Alaska last summer was warm. The edge of wind was warm. The water in Yakutat Bay, when I jumped from the boat to swim, was warm. When the July storms came, waves swamped decks. The entirety of our horizon would be green water and foam for days. At night deck lights showed rain and rime flying laterally, our flags ironed straight out, as though the wind would carry what it caught until land’s mountains put up a wall.
That storms at sea are swelling, budding like an unquittable pathogen is not news. It is the failure of fishing that felt everyday, every hour, like a hard slap to the face, and like something very old that has come very suddenly to the end of itself. In the Gulf of Alaska last summer, we dragged for spiny perch and dusky rockfish, for yellowfin sole and flathead. More than once, what the captain hauled onto deck was more black mud than fish. Deckhands with hoses broke apart mud balls the size of cars; the few fish we had caught drowned in silt and air.
We were not alone in the bad fishing. Often, on deck or from the captain’s wheelhouse, I could see many other boats on the horizon, like little floating castles, pulling up bags as empty as ours. The fleet moved generally en masse; one boat struck fish on her own, word would get out, the rest of us would follow. You can imagine us like children running between tidal pools, collecting limpets. The pools are not infinite, nor are the limpets.
It is the Magnuson Stevens Act (MSA) that provides most regulation for fishing U.S. Federal Waters. The MSA has been through several iterations since its passing in 1976, when Alaskan fishing grounds were booming and the Aleutian Basin’s “Donut Hole” had not yet been fished clean of pollock. Denoted in the MSA is regional management of waters, which specifies quota of target and bycatch species. In the Gulf, on Amendment 80 vessels (large, factory trawlers generally targeting flatfish and rockfish), there is now very little allowance for blackcod (sablefish) and no allowance for halibut bycatch. These species, however, live in the same areas as targeted flat and rockfish. Often, captains play obscure balancing acts: should I risk catching ten tons of blackcod for fifty tons of flathead sole? Or should I move, once again, and risk catching nothing? By the end of the desperate summer, my captain was opting for the first. Again and again, we hauled bags filthy with bycatch, corals, rock, mud. And, because part of my job was to document for NOAA the biodiversity of catch, I spent many hours of many days watching on a conveyor belt in the gut of boat tens of tons at a time of blackcod, sculpin, dogfish, skates be shipped overboard. These fish do not live; they have been hauled to the deck from many fathoms, suffocate in holding tanks, and, by the time they are propelled off the boat, are mangled and bleeding internally. On another boat that was targeting pollock in the Bering Sea, several years earlier, I once saw 120 tons of red rockfish floating in our teal wake. The factory on that boat could not process the fish’s spiny bodies, nor did they have a buyer lined up on shore. The captain is not autonomous, but an employee of a mega-corporation; in 2018, commercial fishing in Alaska was valued at nearly $5 billion. This is big business. We are strip mining the sea.
Our nonrelationship with food supply is the problem. The luxury of selectivity that is the modern consumer’s is the problem. The imbecilic notion that the state and federal government can predict and regulate fisheries stocks uninfluenced by lobbyists is the problem. At the fish counter, there are no records indicating the heinous waste necessitated for one fillet of yellowfin sole. A cod choking on offal is not a marketable scene. At the nice restaurant, you will choose from such a miniscule range of products that it would seem there are perhaps only five or ten species in the ocean, and all of them fat, flavorful. It is no fault of the consumer that the global food supply is teetering. Nor is it the captain’s, investor’s, conglomerate CEO’s. Solid land’s free market, in which the consumer can choose the overfished blackcod over the relatively more abundant (but still overfished) yellowfin sole, forces a snarl of regulation in fisheries. Some vessels, like longliners, can specifically target blackcod. Longliners would rather not compete with the mammoth codends of trawler vessels who can, in a few hours, sweep tons of marine meat from the benthos. This competition would drive prices down, depleting the resource further.
That Amendment 80 trawl boats have quotas at times necessitating abhorrent waste is one byproduct of the attempt to regulate the molestation of an ecosystem. To expect to find a sustainable way to pull millions of tons of matter from a marine environment is absurd, and yet – year over year – because fishermen must work and companies must oblige investors and restaurants must run and stores must stock shelves and we must eat the choicest fillets, we subscribe to shoddy regulatory dogma. Innovations of industry and market are abiotic forces, with no inherent capacity for morality or logic. Though I would like to believe that we would step away before the seas are exhausted, muddied pools, I cannot help but remember the words of my captain this summer: “I’ve fished here, right here, for forty years. Never seen storms like these. Never seen fishing so bad.”
Biden Pledges to Admit 125,000 Asylum Seekers Annually
Policy Summary
The Biden Administration has pledged to increase the annual refugee admissions cap to 125,000 and has already begun efforts to undo the effects of the Trump era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy that left up to 20,000 in Mexican tent camps while they await their judicial proceedings in the US. Biden plans to enact this new process of bringing asylum seekers, particularly with active Migrant Protection Protocol (Remain in Mexico) cases in phases. Eligible migrants are to be registered and tested for COVID-19 before entering the US at three ports of entry. About 300 migrants may be admitted daily before the need to expand to other ports of entry.
Analysis
Many migrants who are waiting for their hearings in Mexico have told reporters they are frustrated and weary about Biden’s promises. A concern commonly voiced was why the Trump Administration was able to make drastic changes that negatively impacted migrants on a daily basis, but the Biden Administration needs time to undo such policies. Justifiably, for those most impacted by Trump-era policies, it is torturous to continue waiting while the Biden Administration attempts to undo xenophobic measures over time, even though the impacts of the negative policies were felt almost immediately.
Engagement Resources
- The National Immigration Law Center: an organization that exclusively dedicates itself to defending and furthering the rights of low income immigrants and strives to educate decision makers on the impacts and effects of their policies on this overlooked part of the population.
- The ACLU: a non-profit with a longstanding commitment to preserving and protecting the individual rights and liberties the Constitution and US laws guarantee all its citizens. You can also donate monthly to counter Trump’s attacks on people’s rights. Recently, the ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging the separation of families at the border.
- Center for Disease Control: the CDC provides updated information surrounding COVID-19 and the US responses
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA): Through the Department of Homeland Security’s website, this link provides additional information regarding the Obama era program.
California Introduces Bill Banning Non – Disclosure Agreements (NDA’s) In Workplace Discrimination Cases
Policy Summary: On February 8, 2021 California State Senator Connie Leyva (D-Chino) introduced Senate Bill (SB) 331, popularly known as the Silenced No More Act. The bill is intended to supplement the Stand Together Against Non – Disclosures (STAND) Act which was also introduced by State Senator Leyva and which was signed into law in California in 2018.
The 2018 STAND Act banned the use of secret settlements and non – disclosure agreements (NDA) in cases of sexual misconduct in both the private and public workplace in California. The STAND Act applied only to sexual misconduct incidents and includes sexual assault and sexual harassment. The 2021 Silenced No More Act goes further and extends the ban of the use of secret settlements and NDAs to all protected categories of discrimination as well as incidents of harassment. This bill would now prevent employers, as part of a settlement of legal claims, from requiring an employee to sign a non – disclosure or confidentiality agreement if the employee is the victim of discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, disability and religion while at work. The bill is scheduled to be analyzed in a state senate committee in mid – March and after passage in committee and likely passage in the state senate the bill will be sent to the CA Assembly. Due to the popularity of the 2018 STAND Act, Governor Newsom is expected to sign the bill into law but not until early Fall 2021 at the earliest. LEARN MORE, LEARN MORE
Policy Analysis: The 2018 bill introduced by State Senator Leyva was partly due to the #MeToo movement that erupted in 2017. Far too often, powerful men who had been accused of sexual misconduct used secret settlements and NDAs to prevent their accusers from speaking about the facts underlying their accusations. Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein used NDAs to keep his predatory sexual behavior from becoming public and to protect his career all while continuing to engage in the same predatory sexual behavior against other women. And, the tactic of silencing women from revealing what happened was even used by President Donald Trump to protect him from the accusations of a number of women even before his election in 2016. Women who broke these agreements would often be sued which created a chilling effect for women who wanted to speak out on their experiences and try to help other women who found themselves in a similar position.
But the tactic of using NDAs was not used only for sexual misconduct cases. The STAND Act introduced by State Senator Leyva expands the law by banning NDA’s in instances of discrimination and harassment. Too many times, employees who had suffered harassment or discrimination based on one of the protected categories had to sign an NDA when the case was settled. That led to the same problem that emerged in the use of NDAs in sexual misconduct cases – that the employer would not be punished for the initial behavior and could continue with the offensive behavior. Additionally, the victim would be vulnerable to being sued for violating the NDA or confidentiality agreement by merely speaking out. State Senator Leyva’s bill seeks to include harassment and discrimination as a category that cannot use NDA’s to silence victims. As with the 2018 STAND Act, the expansion of that law with SB 331 to include workplace harassment and discrimination is a critical component to help prevent workers from being silenced and encourage them to speak out on unacceptable conduct. And, it encourages accountability of behavior of powerful employers who preyed on women, which had been going on in the workplace unchecked for far too long. LEARN MORE, LEARN MORE
Engagement Resources:
Workplace Fairness – workers rights organization’s infopage on NDA’s.
Harvard Business Review – article in respected business journal advocating for change in use of NDA’s.
This brief was compiled by Rod Maggay. If you have comments or want to add the name of your organization to this brief, please contact Rod@USResistnews.org.
The Importance of Preserving the Biodiversity of Our Planet
Brief # 109 Environmental Policy
The Importance of Preserving the Biodiversity of Our Planet
By Jacob Morton
February 19, 2021
Review
The biodiversity of our planet is declining at an accelerated rate. Populations of plant and animal species around the world are dwindling to the point of near extinction, more rapidly than at any other time in our planet’s history. Sir Partha Dasgupta, an economist at Cambridge University, says this rampant and unheeded degradation of our planet “could have catastrophic consequences for our economies and wellbeing,” pointing to Covid-19 as “just the tip of the iceberg.” Earlier this month, Dasgupta and the UK Treasury released an independent report on the economics of biodiversity. The main takeaway? We are draining the bank of our most valuable asset, natural capital. And the consequences are not going to be pretty.
Dasgupta explains it like this, “Just as diversity within a portfolio of financial assets reduces risk and uncertainty, diversity within a portfolio of natural assets increases nature’s resilience in withstanding shocks.” The widespread impacts of climate change and a coronavirus run rampant across the globe are just a couple examples of nature’s loss of resilience. As the report points out in its opening remarks, “Our economies, livelihoods and wellbeing all depend on our most precious asset: nature. We are part of nature, not separate from it.”
The report points out that the demands we have placed on nature far exceed nature’s capacity to supply us with all the resources we ask of it. For too long we have enjoyed the spoils, at no cost to us, of our fruitful soils, waters, and forests. Now, the costs to our global ecosystems have piled too high to be ignored. Dasgupta says, at this rate “We would require 1.6 Earths to maintain the world’s current living standards.” To frame these demands as costs, Dasgupta notes that “most governments pay people more to exploit nature than to protect it and that destructive farming subsidies cause … $4 trillion – $6 trillion [worth of damage] per year.”
The report presents humanity with “an urgent choice,” neither of which will be easy: continue business as usual or ensure that humanity’s demands do not exceed nature’s capacity to supply. According to the report, “Continuing down our current path presents extreme risks and uncertainty for our economies.” However, the alternative “will require transformative change, underpinned by levels of ambition, coordination and political will akin to, or even greater than, those of the Marshall Plan (under which Europe was rebuilt after the second world war).”
The report suggests six areas in which our global community must seek reform, ranging from food production to education. First, our food production systems must be redesigned to employ progressive practices such as “precision agriculture and genetic breeding.” For example, developing perennial wheat varieties that do not require annual tillage, using geospatial technologies to improve crop yields and reduce inputs, and transitioning from gillnetting to reef-netting practices in our oceans to reduce harm to unwanted by-catch, to name a few. Though these practices will help immensely, the most profound changes to our food systems must start with the consumer. Dasgupta says that overconsumption of food products known to cause the most ecological damage, such as beef, “must be cut.”
Second, the growing human population must be addressed. Dasgupta’s report argues that “Addressing the shortfall [in women’s access to education and family planning] is essential, even if the effects may not be apparent in the short-term.” The report suggests that “There has been significant underinvestment in such programs,” and that “improving women’s access to finance [and increasing] support for community-based family planning programs can shift preferences and behavior and accelerate the demographic transition.”
Third, conservation efforts must be greatly expanded. As the report notes, “It is less costly to conserve nature than to restore it once damaged or degraded.” The report suggests that we ought to be “expanding and improving the management of [already] protected areas,” and that “large-scale and widespread investment in nature-based solutions would help us to address biodiversity loss and significantly contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, not to mention wider economic benefits, including creating jobs.” Dasgupta also notes that most low-income countries acquire much of their wealth from “natural capital,” as well as “tend to rely more directly on nature.” Thus, “conserving and restoring our natural assets also contributes to alleviating poverty.”
Fourth, Dasgupta implores us to change the way we measure economic success, steering our focus away from GDP. He argues that as a measure of economic activity, GDP “is needed for short-run macroeconomic analysis and management. However, GDP does not account for the depreciation of assets, including the natural environment. As our primary measure of economic success, it therefore encourages us to pursue unsustainable economic growth and development.” Instead of simply focusing on GDP, Dasgupta recommends we develop a more “inclusive measure of wealth” as a means of judging the sustainability of economic development. The report demonstrates that, “By measuring our wealth in terms of all assets, including natural assets, ‘inclusive wealth’ provides a clear and coherent measure that corresponds directly with the well-being of current and future generations.” To do this, Dasgupta suggests, “Introducing natural capital into national accounting systems would be a critical step towards making inclusive wealth our measure of progress.”
Fifth, the report proclaims that we must unite ourselves around the protection of those biomes considered “global public goods,” such as tropical rainforests, whose impacts transcend national borders. The report suggests we ought to explore a system in which payments are made to the nations in which these biomes exist, to protect and conserve those vital ecosystems. Similarly, for the ecosystems that lie beyond national borders, such as the high seas, the global community should consider “imposing charges, or rents, for their use (for example, ocean traffic and ocean fisheries) and prohibiting their use in ecologically sensitive areas should be instituted.” Dasgupta proposes that perhaps the revenue from such charges and rents could serve as the funds for the payments to the nations charged with protecting those biomes considered global public goods.
Sixth, Dasgupta’s report highlights the critical need to begin incorporating the study of nature as a key component of our education systems. Dasgupta says that “The discipline to draw on nature sustainably must, ultimately, be provided by us as individuals;” arguing that the increased urbanization of our societies has created a disconnect between humans and nature. Dasgupta proposes that, “Interventions to enable people to understand and connect with nature would not only improve our health and well-being, but also help empower citizens to make informed choices and demand the change that is needed.” The report firmly states that, “Establishing the natural world in education policy is therefore essential,” and explains that “the development and design of environmental education programs can help to achieve tangible impact” through collaboration with scientists and community organizations to address local environmental issues. Additionally, the report argues, “Our education systems should introduce nature studies from the earliest stages of our lives and revisit them in secondary and tertiary education. … We [must] create an environment in which, from an early age, we are able to connect with nature.”
Analysis
Environmentalists and economists alike have praised the report for its ability to highlight the services we take for granted from our natural environments, and the impacts on our global economy from our failure to protect them. The report has received acclaim for its reinterpretation of economic health as a measure of our natural assets, and its proposal of a new economic model that factors in the sustainability of our natural capital. Peter Blom, Chief Executive at Triodos Bank N.V., says, “The decisions that the financial sector continue to make do not reflect today’s reality, let alone the future we face. … If we do not act on the recommendations of the Dasgupta Review, we risk bankrupting our greatest asset.”
Nina Seega, from the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership, says, “The review’s focus on completely rewiring mainstream economic and financial models is key to moving the nature debate on to the agenda of governments, financial regulators and individual financial firms.” Seega and Mauricio Claver-Carone, President of the Inter-American Development Bank, both point to the timely nature of the report as nations work to recover from a debilitating pandemic. Claver-Carone writes, “As we look to a post-COVID-19 economic recovery, the Review highlights evidence that all of us in development can agree with, that greater investment in biodiversity could help boost employment and support a green and inclusive recovery.”
Jennifer Morris, CEO of the Nature Conservancy, acknowledges the urgent need to act now on the recommendations of the report. Morris says, “The upcoming UN summits on climate and biodiversity in 2021 provide an unparalleled opportunity to redefine the relationship between people and nature. Our shared planet is counting on all of us to step up and protect our natural world for generations to come.” Professor Justin Yifu Lin, Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics, and Honorary Dean of the National School of Development at Peking University shares Morris’s sense of urgency. In reaction to Dasgupta’s report, he says, “Decisive biodiversity actions at the community, national and global levels should be followed immediately for preventing devastating impacts on our health, well-being and economy from pandemics, similar to COVID-19, and other risks fueled by the accelerating loss of biodiversity.”
Dasgupta concludes his report with a sage and optimistic revelation, “To detach nature from economic reasoning is to imply that we consider ourselves to be external to nature. The fault is not in economics; it lies in the way we have chosen to practice it. Transformative change is possible – we and our descendants deserve nothing less.”
Engagement Resources
The Nature Capital Project
- Pioneering science, technology, and partnerships that enable people and nature to thrive. The Natural Capital Project aims to improve the well-being of people and our planet by motivating targeted investments in nature. Natural Capital Project | (stanford.edu)
Network for Greening the Financial System
- At the Paris “One Planet Summit” in December 2017, eight central banks and supervisors established the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS). The Network’s purpose is to help strengthen the global response required to meet the goals of the Paris agreement and to enhance the role of the financial system to manage risks and to mobilize capital for green and low-carbon investments. The Network defines and promotes best practices to be implemented within and outside of the Membership of the NGFS and conducts or commissions analytical work on green finance. NGFS
The Nature Conservancy
- Conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. The Nature Conservancy: A World Where People & Nature Thrive
References
Carrington, D. (2021, February 02). Economics of biodiversity review: What are the recommendations? Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/02/economics-of-biodiversity-review-what-are-the-recommendations
Dasgupta, P. (2021), The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. (London: HM Treasury). Retrieved February 14, 2021, from Final Report – The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Einhorn, C. (2021, February 2). Study Recasts Biodiversity as a Vital Economic Asset and Warns of Depreciation. Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://blendle.com/i/the-new-york-times/study-recasts-biodiversity-as-a-vital-economic-asset-and-warns-of-depreciation/
The Minimum Wage of $7.25 Has Not Been Raised Since 2009
Brief #110 Economic Policy
The Minimum Wage of $7.25 Has Not Been Raised Since 2009
Rosalind Gottfried
February 15, 2021
Policy
The debate regarding the efficacy of a $15 minimum wage is heating up since Biden included it in his Corona virus stimulus package. The bill would have a gradual phasing in of the wage over the next four years. Currently, it would be $9.50 and go to $11, then $12.50, then $14 annually until it reaches $15 in 2025. Future increases would be tied the median wage rate, thereby assuring the consistent value of the minimum wage.
The consequences of the increase are debated and the research demonstrates some mixed outcomes but overwhelmingly it supports the increase. Most show it does not actually decrease jobs. One study shows no impact on jobs in 138 state and local areas, over five years and another shows no impact in thirty years. One analysis of 60 studies of wages and jobs shows no net loss of jobs. Increased wages actually are more likely to increase jobs due to the enhanced purchasing power of the lowest income groups. More money would be spent in local businesses and services, increasing revenue and creating jobs.
In contrast, the Congressional Budget Office estimates a loss of 1.4 million jobs over five years, though other experts contest this asserting if job losses occurred they would be much less. For small businesses, temporary reprieves from the higher wage could be granted in times of economic constriction like recessions and/or subsidies could be made available to help defray costs. The benefits of the rising wage would accrue to 95% of people affected by it. Proponents risk/cost analysis weigh these potential losses against data showing that up to 40 million people would be lifted out of poverty (conservative estimates are closer to 32 million or 21% of the workforce). Women and people of color, who generally comprise a larger portion of low wage workers, would benefit most. Sixty percent of the gains would be to women workers. One third of all African Americans workers and one quarter of Hispanics workers would have increased incomes. One half of workers 25-54 and ten percent of youths also would benefit. Those making slightly above the minimum age would also gain an increase in wages. Twenty percent of the entire workforce would see income gains.
The history of the minimum wage dates to 1968 and had its origin in President Johnson’s War on Poverty. Since then the minimum wage has lost 31% of its buying power. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 dates back to 2009 and represents the longest stagnation of the wage since its inception. For the wage to remain equivalent in value to the earlier years of the wage, the hourly figure would be over $20. These data give support to the contention that the inequality between low and high wages workers has dramatically increased since the 1980s, indicating serious consequences for the lower wage workers standard of living and their lifelong outcomes.
Some people argue that the higher minimum wage is not necessary outside of high cost areas concentrated in the coastal areas but research shows this is a fallacy and the need extends to the Midwest, South, and Southwest. The annual income $31,200 is a figure estimated to be the minimum to take a single person out of poverty. To take a person out of poverty in high cost areas an hourly wage would need to be in the upper twenties. Currently, one quarter of Americans struggle to make ends meet while a whopping 40% could not cover an emergency bill of $400, as found in amuch cited study.
Analysis
The probability of passing the legislation is tenuous at best. To pass the bill in Congress would require bipartisan support unlikely to be gained in the Senate. Utilizing the Budget Reconciliation Act would require agreement among all the Democratic senators though two seem to be on the fence. Recent attention has been focused on the increasing gap in low and high wage earners.
This gaping income inequity among workers has occurred in a time of record breaking job creation, prior to the pandemic, and record breaking levels of corporate profits. Workers and their families should be able to live a life secure that they can handle an emergency such as a medical expense, a family crisis, a household or car repair without risking hunger or homelessness, situations which are all too common today. MIT researchers assert that a family of four, with two working parents, needs an hourly wage of $22.52 to get out of poverty.
Many people debate the short term pros and cons of a wage hike but there is ample evidence that the net outcome is beneficial for both individuals/families and the society. Experts who study poverty would point to the long term expenses related to poverty which often do not figure into the debate about increasing wages. Poverty is highly correlated to all types of lifelong measures of well-being which have budgetary consequences. Poverty increases the number of residential changes affecting schooling, family stability, and access to sufficient neighborhood resources such as quality of education, recreation, safety, and livability. The health of people in poverty shows higher levels of diabetes; coronary, stroke, and vascular diseases; depression and other psychiatric syndromes; and obesity. Lower levels of educational attainment in impoverished children result in greater unemployment; lower wages; and erratic work histories, all of which increase societal costs. Low educational attainment and joblessness are also factors increasing the prevalence of incarceration.
Supporting low wage workers would also potentially go a long way in reducing the boiling point of the political animosity currently plaguing the country. Even in the state of Florida, where 51% of voters supported President Trump, 60% of the population supports increasing the minimum wage.
Given the recent public discussion of income inequality and lack of access to resources in society, the evidence supporting a rise in the minimum wages is compelling, especially with regard to the long term costs of failing to do so. The recent pandemic has highlighted the deficiencies of the safety net in the US, including such things as lack of affordable healthcare; high prescription costs; the ability to help care for sick, young, and old; the cost of basic internet access; costs of higher education; and more. The essential question reverts to an old one regarding what kind of society we want to be.
Learn More
https://www.epi.org/publication/why-america-needs-a-15-minimum-wage/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/01/28/biden-minimum-wage-stimulus/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-21/don-t-fear-the-15-minimum-wage
Both Sides of the Aisle Want to Preserve the Filibuster
Brief # 16 Elections and Politics
Both Sides of the Aisle Want to Preserve the Filibuster
Zack Huffman
February 15, 2021
The Democrats now have slight control of the 50-50 Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaker vote. Much like the former time the Democrats held the Senate, there is some discussion about whether or not to remove the filibuster, which allows the minority party to block votes on bills they are fighting.
The fact that the Democrats failed to move the John Lewis Civil Rights Act past a filibuster in 2020 has further compelled some legislators to favor an end to the filibuster before the GOP can block future Senate bills.
The longest filibuster to date is still the one Sen. Strom Thurmond preformed in his failed attempt to block passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The late Dixiecrat spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes before the law was finally passed 72-18. Thurmond would later switch parties from Democrat to Republican in protest over the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
More recently, Senator Ted Cruz came a few hours short of breaking Thurmond’s record when he attempted to force the then-Democrat-led Senate to defund The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) in the legislature’s latest budget bill in 2013 ahead of a possible government shutdown. Cruz’s speech, which infamously included a reading of Green Eggs and Ham, was not technically a filibuster, since he was not blocking a vote, and then-Senate majority leader Harry Reid agreed to allow Cruz to speak.
The term “filibuster” can accurately refer to a variety of different legislative tactics, beyond the common conception of a filibuster that features hours upon hours of speeches from a Senator to run the clock out on voting for a pending bill.
“The Senate has no specific rules for filibustering. Instead, possibilities for filibustering exist because Senate rules lack provisions that would place specific limits on Senators’ rights and opportunities in the legislative process,” said a Congressional report on Filibustering and Cloture in the Senate, which was last updated April 7, 2017.
Senate rules require a motion for cloture in order to end debate and bring a bill to the floor for a vote. Cloture requires 60 votes – a figure that was lowered from 67 votes in 1975 by the Democratic majority. This means that all bills, not just those that are filibustered, require a cloture vote in order to be voted on.
The Democrats also modified the cloture rule in 2013 with the so-called Nuclear Option, which allows a simple majority to end debate and vote on appointed executive employees and judges. All other Senate bills require a majority vote of those in attendance to pass.
The Senate’s website lists the number of motions for cloture going back to the 1917-1918 legislative session, when there were just two. The need for cloture remained rare and never surpassed the single digits per two-year session until 1971-1972 when there were 24. In the years that followed cloture motions slowly increased until 2007-2008 when they jumped to 139 from the previous session’s 68. They continued to increase from there.
For the most part, filibusters now exist as an unspoken assumption. Throughout the 2019-2020 legislative session, 328 cloture motions to halt a filibuster were filed.
The Brennan Center for Justice argued, in an October 2020 article, in favor of eliminating the filibuster because of its history in being used to block civil rights improvements. The article noted that the filibuster has primarily served to block reform.
“Under current Senate rules, however, a minority can stymie efforts to fix our broken system,” wrote Brennan Center Senior Fellow Caroline Fredrickson. “Not slow those reforms, not deliberate, not debate, but simply block them. For that reason, democracy advocates and their elected champions must demand that the filibuster be eliminated.”
The Brennan Center also argued that the increase in filibustering correlates with an increased reliance on Executive Orders, but it is not clear that there actually has been a large increase in Executive Orders.
On the other hand, a recent article from the Federalist Society argued in favor of preserving the filibuster, suggesting that Republicans (who were still in control of the Senate at the time) would regret not having the filibuster if they failed to maintain majority control of the Senate.
It is also worth noting that Democrats were able to block a large part of Trump’s legislative agenda while breaking previous records for filibustering over the last four years.
As Congressional scholar Molly Reynolds argued in a New York Times editorial on April 5, 2018, the filibuster may just be one piece in a larger series of problems that have plagued the effectiveness of the U.S. Senate.
Learn More
The Guardian: ‘Jim Crow relic’: Senate filibuster stands in way of Democratic voting rights push.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/09/senate-filibuster-voting-rights-democrats
Politico: Cruz ends marathon speech
https://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/harry-reid-filibuster-government-shutdown-097263
Congressional report on Filibustering and Cloture in the Senate
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL30360
The U.S. Senate’s online record of cloture motions by session
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/cloture/clotureCounts.htm
The Brennan Center for Justice: The Case against the filubuster
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/case-against-filibuster
The Federal Registry of Executive Orders by president.
https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/executive-orders
The American Presidency Project: Executive Orders
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/executive-orders
The Federalist Society: Why Both Parties Should Preserve the Senate’s Legislative Filibuster
New York Times: Trump’s Problem Isn’t the Filibuster. It’s the Republicans
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/opinion/trump-senate-filibuster-republicans.html
Vox: 7 myths about the filibuster
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/27/18089312/myths-about-the-filibuster
Artificial Intelligence —Will It Really Take Away Our Jobs?
Brief # 37 Technology Policy
Artificial Intelligence —Will It Really Take Away Our Jobs?
By Linda F. Hersey
February 15, 2021
Artificial intelligence is poised to take over many job functions beyond bolting doors on vehicles at auto plants or filling orders at Amazon warehouses. Jobs that many people assume require a human touch are at risk. They include roles in telemarketing, bookkeeping, employee compensation, office administrative duties, delivery services, proofreading and market research analysis.
Within five to 10 years, driverless cars and trucks are expected to transform road transport services, including long-haul trucking and popular door-to-door food delivery.
Should humans performing more complex business functions be looking over their shoulder? Perhaps. Emerging roles of artificial intelligence across industries are diverse and sweeping in scope, including entertainment/media, financial services, health care and energy.
- Computers are much quicker and less prone to error in detailed jobs that require acumen in math or grammar.
- A new generation of computers are adaptive, meaning they learn and change – much like humans — to meet the challenges and opportunities of their environment.
- While machines have steadily replaced unskilled labor jobs for decades, artificial intelligence increasingly can perform many functions of high-paying professionals, such as lawyers, medical doctors and accountants.
Many analysts claim that jobs lost from automation will be replaced by new careers in the knowledge economy, much in the same way that manufacturing jobs replaced farming. Future job growth may include technology, architecture, engineering and skilled trades, such as carpentry
A study titled “The Future of Work: Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained,” conducted by McKinsey, identified alternative energy as another source of new employment at a time of job displacement from automation. The company estimated that jobs in the renewable energy sector, including wind and solar technology, could number up to 10 million in the U.S. and another 10 million globally by 2030. . The nations with the strongest economies will be the ones that best transition to a knowledge economy that retrains
Automation expert Kai-Fu Lee told “60 Minutes” that he believes 40 percent of the world’s jobs will be replaced by robots in the next 15 years. He asserts that the economies of the U.S., China other advanced nations are in transition because of the disruptions from artificial intelligence, and it is essential for leadership to manage the impact.
Lee is a former Apple, Microsoft and Google executive based in China who developed an automated speech recognition system, as his doctoral project at Carnegie Mellon. In his book, “AI Super-Powers, China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order,” Lee outlines how automation and artificial intelligence will impact economic policy and global politics. Innovation and getting new AI products to market increasingly will drive GDP, gross domestic product.
Engagement Resources
- Globe Newswire is one of the world’s largest newswire distribution networks, specializing in the delivery of corporate press releases in technology and other industries.
- Janes provides news and information on U.S. national security and the military, including artificial intelligence.
- Nextgov has a mission to lead the national discussion on innovation and technology’s role in serving citizens and the U.S. government.
GameStop, Reddit and Free Trading Apps A Threat to Economic Recovery?
Brief #36 – Technology
GameStop, Reddit and Free Trading Apps A Threat to Economic Recovery?
By Charles A. Rubin
February 16, 2021
Policy Summary
The drama surrounding the wild trading and social media fueled speculation in the shares of stocks GameStop, AMC Entertainment, Bed Bath & and Beyond, Blackberry and other underperforming companies has thrust Wall Street near the top of a crowded list of issues that President Joe Biden’s regulatory team needs to tackle early in its term.
The wild fluctuations in these stocks which played out in the waning days of January revealed a new dynamic of Reddit subgroups, trading apps with no business model for profit and sophisticated social media personalities. There is excitement that the individual investor will be able to reap the benefits that had been only available to savvy and secretive Wall Street types. There is equal concern that we are creating bubbles that will seriously damage our economy when it can least sustain any more shocks.
As the Biden administration begins its work, free or low cost stock trading applications such as RobinHood, M1 Finance, ETrade and Acorns have made it simple for casual investors to gain easy access to markets as well as offering them financing and trading advice. They are proving a formidable counterweight to institutional investors and hedge funds but may perhaps introduce an element of instability to already volatile markets that were under stress due to pandemic related economic uncertainty.
Analysis
It all started with Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum where participants egged each other on to create a buying frenzy for several stocks that would not have attracted any attention otherwise. At the same time, several Wall Street Hedge funds were shorting those same stocks, meaning they were wagering that those same stocks would go down in value. Fortunes were made and lost in days to both institutional hedge funds and newly minted day traders. In one measure of the insanity of it all, GameStop’s stock soared 1,640% in 10 days
In many ways, this market blip was similar to the conditions that led to the Wall Street collapse of 2008 where financial instruments based on mortgages which were fundamentally worthless began to unravel. The instabilities in the January 2021 market were caused by two factors; irrational investors who were overvaluing stocks in companies that had not substantially changed their business outlooks and stock trading apps that were selectively halting trading in these stocks. The target company stock prices abruptly turned down when the trading app Robinhood and other brokerage firms announced a slew of restrictions on the trading of a handful of stocks that had been spiking.
This behavior by online trading platforms hardly represents a free market. It is clear that regulators need to monitor how these applications operate. Last year, Robinhood agreed to pay $65 to settle SEC charges of providing misleading or incomplete information on its dealings with the firms that actually handled their trades. It is a complicated business model and more scrutiny and transparency is warranted.
While many applaud the wide availability of free trading platforms and traders enjoy the gamification of the investing, markets are dependent on rational trading. A stock should only be worth its true value in the marketplace based on what it is producing or its potential to produce. The Biden administration would be wise to take a close look at the regulations governing the stock markets for both Wall Street and the lay investor.
Engagement Resources
- The Office of the Investor Advocate at the Security and Exchange Commission works to ensure that the needs of investors are considered as decisions are made at the SEC.
- The American Institute of Economic Research Founded in 1933 (AIER) is one of the oldest and most respected nonpartisan economic research and advocacy organizations in the country.
- FinTechPolicy.org serves as a hub for collating and analyzing global regulatory developments in financial technology. They are supported by a range of academic, nonprofit and market leaders and seek to provide an interactive forum for understanding fintech and the emerging rules and regulations devised to address them.
Who gets a second chance?
Original Post Here
In theory, second chances are a good thing. I mean, we all need them. Many of the ancient religions counsel mercy, and second chances are the natural consequence of that. Situations are not identities. Your worst deed is merely a situation. You should have the chance to become more than that deed, to transcend it.
But as the Trump era fades and a new wave of second-chance-seeking gets under way, I have been wondering: Who gets second chances and who doesn’t, what must you do to get one, and how is that connected to all the people who don’t even get first chances in America?
After President Trump’s acquittal in the Senate, what we’ve known all along was confirmed once again, and flagrantly: that certain people, especially if they are rich and powerful and white and male, enjoy total impunity in American public life. There will be no consequences for Donald Trump. Maybe some prosecutor somewhere will find a spine, but I wouldn’t bet my coffee on it.
So now, with a kind of constitutional sanction, Trump will get his thousandth second chance. Just as he got after every business failure, just as he got every time he crossed some supposed red line in office. And is this surprising? Is this second chance to resume a role in public life all that different from the impunity of every police officer who has shot an unarmed Black person? Is it different from the impunity of every Republican who laid the ground for Trumpism, then bailed at the last minute, only to reinvent themselves as a democracy-is-fragile guru? Is it different from the impunity of the speculators who caused the 2008 financial crisis? Is it different from the impunity of those who brought us Guantanamo and torture and Iraq and Katrina and climate change and voter suppression and suffocating plutocracy and more?
Not only are these powerful figures who maim or defraud or starve or oppress other people immune from accountability in America today. They come back better than ever. The 21st-century second chance is a flashy, well-publicized, flex of a reentry in which one expects more than a chance to be back in polite society. One expects to lead, to become an expert in the problem one caused, in the vanguard of the search for solutions to the problem that one is, the fire chief of the department investigating the arson one has set.
See, for example, how many highly culpable figures of the George W. Bush presidency have now become well-published writers on the topic of saving democracy — saving it from the totally predictable consequences of everything they once worked toward. Or how the Lincoln Project guys, before the organization imploded, became media darlings, despite having somehow had no problem with the pre-Trump Republican Party of “welfare queen” slander, the Southern strategy, trickle down, WMDs, Sarah Palin, and more. Or how the Wall Street speculators who brought you the 2008 crisis around the world now run “impact” and “social” funds, promising to solve through their investing genius the problem of poverty to which they helped contribute. Or how Jeff Bezos is now donating money to fund free preschool for children from low-income families, which is another way of saying the families Bezos and his friends underpay and thwart from unionizing.
If you play your cards right, you don’t even need to atone for one of these second chances. You can go straight from the arson to the firefighting, straight from causing the problem to leading the search for solutions to it. You can do this by starting a foundation, or writing some attention-getting magazine cover, or, as Kellyanne Conway did the other day, dancing on “American Idol” to begin the reputation-laundering process that will surely get her a cable explanatory job soon.
This oversimplifies it somewhat, but I imagine a certain older arc of atonement that went something like: Sin>Accountability>Redemption. What we often see now is a very different arc, more like Sin>Sin-related expertise>Leadership of sin prevention. It will not be long before some of the most craven collaborators of Donald Trump are teaching seminars and leading panels on how to guard against future autocracy.
So one of the problems with this kind of second chance that so dominates our public life is that it isn’t really a second chance, because people don’t atone, don’t seek mercy, don’t show they’ve changed. They just clean their stink, which is different. And they go right to the helm of supposed solution-seeking, cutting in line everyone who was right all along, in fact battling them all along.
But another, more fundamental problem with these costless second chances for those at the top is they entrench a reality in which second, and often first, chances are withheld from most people. There is a zero-sum relationship between these second chances at the top and the chances people enjoy below the stratosphere. Because if bankers who wreck the housing market get costless second chances, bankers keep doing what they did, and people down below don’t get second chances to own a home after losing one to foreclosure. If people who lie the nation into war get costless second chances, there will be more lying into wars, and more young men and women who, meeting an IED on some dusty road, get no second chance. If people who enable fascism get costless second chances on cable and reality TV, it reduces the price of enabling fascism, and that makes it that much more likely that a refugee from violence won’t get a new start here. If the tax avoiders and union busters get costless second chances through reputation-laundering philanthropy, their workers will see their chances of ever experiencing a day of economic security withering and dying.
Their second chances, high up there, are the reason you perhaps often feel you don’t have a first one. Not everything in life is simple. This is. Either they keep getting second chances they don’t deserve — or you start getting first chances you do.
Democrats Take Control of Committees Increasing Chances the Senate Will Get Things Done
Policy Summary: On January 3, 2021 Vice President Michael Pence administered the oath of office to six new senators who had been elected in the November 2020 elections. Additionally, those senators who had won re – election in November were also sworn in. Two days later, elections were held in Georgia for both of Georgia’s Senate seats and a Democrat won each race. Their victories ensured that seats in the U.S. Senate would be equally split between Republicans and Democrats 50 – 50. Kamala Harris’ election as Vice – President gave the Democrats the ability to cast the tie – breaking vote if any vote in the chamber resulted in a tie.
With the Senate chamber equally divided, the chamber adopted new rules. The “Organizing Resolution,” as it is popularly called, is a power sharing agreement that details how the chamber would operate with an equally divided Senate. The most significant portion of the agreement deals with the make up of the senate committees and how business would be conducted in the committees and the various subcommittees that make up the whole committee. The resolution states that membership of the committees and subcommittees would have an equal number of Senators from each party. And, since control of the chamber rests with the Democrats and the recently elected Democratic Vice President, the chairman or chairwoman of each committee, or “the one who holds the gavel,” will be a Democrat. Since the Republicans had been in control of the Senate the last six years, Republicans had more members on committees and they had been the chairman or chairwoman of every committee in the Senate during that time period. LEARN MORE
Policy Analysis: The Organizing Resolution, which passed by unanimous consent on February 3, 2021, is significant because of the rules it lays out regarding committees for the Senate for this session.
There is a common misconception that bills that are introduced in the Senate or the House get a full vote by the Congressional chamber but that is not the case. (There are rare exceptions like the reconciliation process to pass budget bills). After being introduced in the Senate, bills get assigned to the Senate committee that has jurisdiction over the subject matter of the bill. That committee and its members review the bill, make amendments and sometimes hold hearings to gather more information. If the committee votes to “report” the bill then the bill is sent to the full Senate chamber for a vote by the entire chamber. But if the bill is “not reported” then the bill “dies in committee” and there is no further action on the bill. This happens frequently especially when committee members vote on party lines. When Republicans were the majority in the Senate, committees were comprised of twenty-one members – eleven Republicans and ten Democrats. If Republicans did not approve of a bill, they often voted against it in committee, which effectively killed the bill’s chances.
With the even split in the Senate, the chances of Democrats advancing their legislative priorities have now increased. With Democrats now taking control of committee chairmanships they can control what is on the agenda for the committees. Republicans had often refused to schedule committee hearings for bills and other business that was not in line with their legislative priorities. Even before the passage of the Organizing Resolution, Republicans still took an obstructionist stance as when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) refused to schedule a hearing for Merrick Garland, Biden’s nominee for Attorney General. But now that committee chairmanships have been transferred to Democrats, government business can no longer be held up with this tactic.
With membership in committees equally divided and the prospect of bills dying in committee not likely to happen during this Senate session, the question arises as to what will happen if there are tie votes in subcommittees and later in full committees. Instead of party line votes that could kill a bill, tie votes will now be sent to the full committee for a vote there. And if there is another tie, the status of a bill will be sent to the full chamber where a vote will be taken whether to place it on the calendar for a full vote. This is key because now the full Senate can vote on bills. There are often hundreds of bills every session that never make it out of committee for consideration. Senators who are not a member of a relevant committee often never even hear about a bill much less get a chance to vote on it. But that will not be the case anymore. As long as the Senate is equally split, committees can no longer hold up a bill. Unless outright defeated in a committee vote, bills that pass or end up tied will finally make it to the Senate floor where the entire chamber can review the merits of the bill. And with Democrats in charge of committees by virtue of their appointment to committee chair posts, they will control what bills will get a hearing and a vote. This will result in the Democratic Party and the Biden Administration having a better chance of advancing their legislative priorities in this Congressional session. LEARN MORE, LEARN MORE
Engagement Resources:
United States Senate Committees – webpage of Senate committees.
GovTrack.us – full text of the Senate’s 2021 Organizing Resolution.
This brief was compiled by Rod Maggay. If you have comments or want to add the name of your organization to this brief, please contact Rod@USResistnews.org.