The US added 372,000 jobs in June, bringing the three-month average to 375,000, Economic Polilcy institute President Heidi Shierholz noted (7/8) in a series of tweets. “This is down from the blistering average pace of 561,000 per month for the 12 months ending in February of this year. Job growth remains very strong, but is clearly moderating.
“Wage growth is also clearly decelerating, which is enormously consequential for fed policy. Quarterly wage growth ticked down in June and has dropped substantially in recent months. It is now near its pre-COVID range.
“Make no mistake, we want positive real wage growth for workers. But—and this is hugely important—this decelerating wage growth means the Fed doesn’t need more interest rate increases to contain inflation.
“Put another way: nominal wage growth moderating even in the face of continued inflation is more evidence that the Fed can keep labor markets tight right now without feeding inflation.
“One big concern in the jobs numbers: There is still a giant gap in state and local goveernment jobs—they are down 656,000 since Feb ’20, with close to half of that, 306,000, in education. It’s crucial that state and local goverments use their [American Rescue Plan Act] funds to raise pay and refill those jobs.
“The private sector has now gained back all of the jobs it lost in the recession. State and local governments have gained back just 55.8%. Folks, we have to push state and local governments to use their ARPA funds to raise pay and hire workers.
“Though note, we aren’t at ‘mission accomplished’ in the private sector either. Depending on how you measure the counterfactual, the total gap in the labor market right now is around 3 million jobs, with around 2 million of that in the private sector.
“The overall numbers mask big disparities for different groups. Due to the impact of structural racism on the labor market, people of color have much higher unemp rates. For example, the unemp rate is currently 5.8% for Black workers and 3.3% for White workers.
“But all groups are seeing far faster recoveries than they did following the Great Recession. From the start of the Great Recession, it took 11.5 years for Black unemployment to get down to 5.8%, but this time around it took 2 years and 4 months.
“And that’s because, unlike with the Great Recession, Congress did what was needed to spur a robust recovery this time around (namely, CARES and ARPA). We would have millions fewer jobs today if Congress had not enacted the COVID relief and recovery measures it did.
“And no, those relief and recovery packages are not to blame for inflation.
“Understanding what is behind the painfully high CPI inflation is key to understanding where it is headed and when. This table should help with this. The Russian invasion and spike in oil and other commodity prices is the #1 reason, followed by the pandemic and the housing shortage.”
RISING MINIMUM WAGES IN 20 STATES AND LOCALITIES HELP PROTECT WORKERS AND FAMILIES AGAINST HIGHER PRICES. On July 1, three states, 16 cities and counties, and the District of Columbia raised their minimum wages. At a time when families are coping with rising prices, these increases will help many low-wage workers and their families make ends meet, Sebastian Martinez Hickey and David Cooper noted at the Economic Policy Institute (7/11).
Connecticut, Nevada, Oregon and the District of Columbia raised their minimum wages, with increases ranging from 50 cents per hour in Oregon’s nonurban counties to $1 in Connecticut. The new wage floors in Connecticut ($14), Nevada ($10.50), and Oregon ($13.50) were set in legislation passed in the last few years, while the District of Columbia’s minimum wage ($16.10) went up due to automatic annual inflation adjustment built into the District’s minimum wage law. (Eighteen states and the District of Columbia, as well as dozens of cities and counties, have automatic annual inflation adjustment built into their minimum wage laws.)
Added to the 21 states that raised their minimums at the start of the year, a total of 24 states and the District of Columbia have raised their minimum wages in 2022. Florida and Hawaii also have minimum wage increases scheduled to occur in October. Hawaii’s increase will be the first of four increases, recently enacted by state lawmakers, that will ultimately bring the state’s minimum wage to $18 by 2028.
BIDEN SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER TO PROTECT ABORTION RIGHTS. President Joe Biden signed an executive order (7/8) aimed at bolstering access to abortion for people living in GOP-led states that have rushed to ban the procedure.
The order came two weeks after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the constitutional right to abortion and set off a flurry of “trigger bans” on abortion in states across the US.
Biden’s executive action contains several major pillars, including “safeguarding access to reproductive healthcare services”—such as medication abortion and emergency contraception—and “protecting patient privacy and access to accurate information.”
Under the new order, Biden will instruct the Department of Health and Human Services to “take additional action to protect and expand access to abortion care, including access to medication that the FDA approved as safe and effective over twenty years ago.”
The order, as summarized by the White House, also expresses the Biden administration’s commitment to shielding the right of pregnant people to “travel safely to another state to seek the care they need” as Republican lawmakers look to bar residents from crossing state lines to obtain an abortion.
Biden’s unilateral action comes as members of his own party and advocacy organizations—which are relentlessly fighting abortion bans in court and mobilizing in the streets—are vocally criticizing the administration for failing to respond with sufficient urgency to the right-wing Supreme Court majority’s attack on fundamental freedoms, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (7/8).
MICHIGAN GROUPS SUBMIT SIGNATURES TO PUT ABORTION RIGHTS ON THE BALLOT. Reproductive rights advocates formally submitted more than 753,000 signatures in support of a citizen ballot initiative that, if approved in November, would enshrine abortion rights in the Michigan state constitution, Jake Johnson reported at CommonDreams (7/11).
While they still must be officially verified, the 753,759 signatures turned in by the Reproductive Freedom for All campaign far exceeds the 425,000 signatures required to place a measure on the ballot in Michigan. The proposal drew more signatures than any other ballot initiative in Michigan’s history, and support came from every county in the state.
According to organizers of the initiative, the constitutional amendment would “affirm that every person has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which involves the right to make and carry out decisions without political interference about all matters relating to pregnancy, including birth control, abortion, prenatal care, and childbirth.”
“Specifically,” the campaign’s website notes, “this measure will ensure that all Michiganders have the right to safe and respectful care during birthing, everyone has the right to use temporary or permanent birth control, everyone has the right to continue or end a pregnancy pre-viability, and no one can be punished for having a miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion.”
The effort to put abortion rights on the ballot comes as Michigan’s GOP-controlled Legislature is attempting to activate a 1931 law prohibiting abortions in the state.
For the time being, abortion is legal in Michigan with some restrictions. In May, ahead of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the 1931 ban.
“The vast majority of Michiganders know that abortion is healthcare: Michigan is on the right side of history as we lead the way with Reproductive Freedom for All and intend to ask Michigan voters on Nov. 8 to protect abortion and reproductive rights in Michigan,” said Loren Khogali, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan.
MIDTERM GENERIC BALLOT SHOWS GAINS FOR DEMS AS INDIES MOVE FROM REPUBLICANS. As the seismic Supreme Court ruling stripping Americans of abortion rights ripples through the country, multiple polls are now seeing movement toward Democrats in the congressional generic ballot contest, Kerry Eleveld noted for DailyKos (7/1).
Those polls include a several-point shift picked up in the Civiqs’ generic ballot tracking poll since the Court decision, as well as the following pre-/post-decision surveys:
NPR/Marist poll: D+5 —> D+7
MorningConsult: Tie —> D+3
Yahoo/YouGov: D+4 —> D+7
Internal data from Civiqs tracking is picking up the same trend, with a net shift of 4 points toward Democrats from before the ruling gutting Roe v. Wade to after it was released.
Overall, Civiqs now shows Democrats with a 5-point edge in the generic ballot, 47% Democrat to 42% Republican. The data is not publicly accessible, but you can see the screen shot via the online column.
Notably, Democrats and Republicans are basically stable in the crosstabs, with 93% on both sides favoring candidates from their respective parties. Nearly all the uptick for Democrats comes from independents moving away from Republicans. Before the ruling, independents favored Republicans over Democrats, 42% to 34%; now, independents favor Republicans by just 1 point, 38% to 37%.
What’s perhaps most heartening for Democrats is the fact that the generic ballot appears to have reverted to roughly where it was in the spring of 2021, 47% D to 42% R, when the national political environment was wildly different. At the time, President Biden’s approvals were still above water by double digits, vaccines were still being rolled out, the omicron variant hadn’t taken hold yet, and US troops hadn’t pulled out of Afghanistan yet. It was basically the salad days of Biden’s presidency.
Needless to say, things are very different now, with pessimism sweeping the nation. Civiqs tracking now shows 81% of registered voters believe the country is heading in the “wrong direction.” But at least for the moment, voters appear to be reaching a somewhat similar conclusion about their preferred party as they had in the early days of the Biden administration—even if for very different reasons.
US VOTERS WANT CONGRESS TO EXPAND—NOT CUT OR PRIVATIZE—SOCIAL SECURITY. Voters in the US overwhelmingly support Democratic proposals to expand Social Security for all recipients to cover higher costs of living and oppose Republican proposals to end the federal program—established during the New Deal era to improve economic security for retirees, people with disabilities, and widows and widowers—before the end of the decade.
That’s according to a survey conducted from June 17-21 and published by Data for Progress, which found that a whopping 83% of likely voters support expanding Social Security benefits to keep up with rising costs, including 86% of Democrats, 84% of Republicans, and 79% of independents, Kenny Stancil reported at CommonDreams (7/11).
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of likely voters are very concerned about Congress cutting monthly cash transfers for the program’s 66 million current beneficiaries, and more than half (53%) are very concerned about lawmakers privatizing Social Security.
Privatization of the program remains unpopular across the political spectrum, with 68% of likely voters—including 75% of Democrats, 70% of Republicans, and 59% of independents—opposed to Wall Street-backed schemes that would facilitate the movement of Social Security benefits from a guaranteed government fund into the volatile stock market.
The findings of the poll should be of interest to President Biden, who is hemorrhaging support among Democratic voters and has come under fire in recent weeks for nominating Andrew Biggs—an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow with a history of backing Social Security privatization—to serve as a Republican on the independent and bipartisan Social Security Advisory Board.
Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, has highlighted Biggs’ role in the George W. Bush administration’s failed attempt to privatize the program in 2005.
While Biden pledged on the campaign trail to support an expansion of Social Security, he has previously backed cutting the program’s benefits. Biden was vice president when former President Barack Obama proposed a “grand bargain” with congressional Republicans that would have included cuts to Social Security.
In June, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) led the introduction of the Social Security Expansion Act, which would lift the cap on income that is subject to the Social Security payroll tax and boost the program’s annual benefits by $2,400.
According to Data for Progress, 76% of likely voters—including 83% of Democrats, 73% of Republicans, and 73% of independents—support imposing, for the first time, payroll taxes on individuals with annual incomes above $400,000 per year to fund an expansion of Social Security benefits. Currently, only the first $147,000 in income is subject to the Social Security payroll tax.
Meanwhile, a little-noticed budget document published in June by the Republican Study Committee (RSC)—a group to which nearly 75% of House Republicans belong—reiterates right-wing myths that the program is headed toward insolvency and calls for raising the retirement age by three months per year through 2040. As a result, people born after 1978 would not be eligible to receive full Social Security benefits until the age of 70.
The RSC’s bid to postpone Social Security eligibility, outlined in their so-called Blueprint to Save America, is not even the most extreme GOP proposal on offer, considering what Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), has put forward.
Scott’s widely panned 12-point “Plan to Rescue America” proposes hiking taxes on the poorest 40% of US households and sunsetting “all federal legislation” after five years—a move that would eliminate Social Security, Medicare, civil rights laws, and other measures unless Congress actively votes to reauthorize them.
Just 7% of likely voters support ending Social Security in five years, according to Data for Progress, which may help explain why Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to endorse Scott’s policy agenda in March.
Nevertheless, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), ranking member of the powerful Senate Budget Committee, said in June during a debate with committee chair Sanders that “entitlement reform is a must,” indicating that the GOP is once again laying the groundwork to gut Social Security, Medicare, and more if it regains control of Congress in November’s pivotal midterm elections.
Likely voters, when informed that congressional Democrats are proposing to expand Social Security benefits while their Republican counterparts are proposing to swiftly terminate the program, told pollsters that they would be most likely to support a Democratic candidate over a Republican one by a margin of 55 to 31.
This suggests that campaigning on Social Security expansion could help Democrats maintain or even bolster their slim majorities in the House and Senate.
CALIFORNIA WILL MAKE ITS OWN INSULIN, CREATING COMPETITION IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY. The state of California is entering the pharmaceutical industry. Specifically, it will start manufacturing insulin to ensure an affordable supply of the essential drug for the state’s patients living with diabetes, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced (7/7).
Newsom said $100 million from the 2022-23 state budget would be allocated to “contract and make our own insulin at a cheaper price, close to at cost, and to make it available to all.” Half of that funding would go toward the development of a “low-cost” insulin and the remaining $50 million would go toward building a facility to manufacture insulin that would “provide new, high-paying jobs and a stronger supply chain for the drug.”
“Nothing epitomizes market failures more than the cost of insulin,” Newsom said. “Many Americans experience out-of-pocket costs anywhere from $300 to $500 per month for this lifesaving drug. California is now taking matters into our own hands.”
This comes as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is vowing to put a bipartisan bill cooked up by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) on the floor “very soon” after the Senate returns to work following the July 4 break. “There should be nothing remotely partisan about making sure Americans don’t go broke trying to manage their diabetes,” Schumer said. “At least one in four insulin users report rationing their use because they can’t afford it, putting their health and lives at risk in the process.”
But of course there’s something partisan there, Joan McCarter noted (7/8) at DailyKos. Republicans don’t want to give Democrats a win. Since Collins was involved in this, you wouldn’t be wrong to smell a rat. Last winter, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) introduced a straightforward bill to cap insulin prices, requiring insurers to cap insulin costs to their customers at $35 a month. Warnock has made that legislation a big part of his reelection campaign, since he’s up this cycle. Republicans didn’t want to give him a political win, so enter Susan Collins and the usual “bipartisan” diverting ruse.
Entirely predictably, five of the Republicans most likely to help Collins get the 10 she needed to break a filibuster (were she really trying to get this passed) are raising objections over the bill, and demanding hearings. Republican Sens. Pat Toomey (PA), John Barrasso (WY), Steve Daines (MT), Rob Portman (OH), and Ben Sasse (NE), who all sit on the Senate Finance Committee, are opposing a vote before having hearings.
The Senate bill has flaws, McCarter wrote. “It sets up a complicated insurance process that would ultimately result in higher premium costs for people on private insurance as well as for Medicare, and would discourage future price competition among manufacturers.
“The California answer is ultimately a better one: public manufacture and distribution of the life-saving drug. If a consortium of states—toss in Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, for example—could be created, then real competition that could drive costs down would exist.”
NEW CALLS TO BAN GLYPHOSATE AFTER TOXIC HERBICIDE FOUND IN 80% OF US URINE SAMPLES. Environmental and public health advocates renewed calls to ban glyphosate after a recently published report revealed the cancer-linked herbicide—which is the active ingredient in Bayer’s popular Roundup weedkiller—was found in the urine of more than 80% of study participants, Brett Wilkins reported at CommonDreams <>(7/11.
Of 2,310 urine samples taken from children and adults for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1,885 contained detectable amounts of glyphosate.
“Ban glyphosate,” tweeted the Massachusetts-based Berkshire Environmental Action Team in response to the study. “This chemical should not be in our bodies.”
David Nickarz, an activist and former Green Party of Manitoba president, tweeted: “Roundup is polluting our bodies and giving us cancer. Why haven’t we banned this stuff yet?”
According to The Guardian:
Both the amount and prevalence of glyphosate found in human urine has been rising steadily since the 1990s when Monsanto Co. introduced genetically engineered crops designed to be sprayed directly with Roundup, according to research published in 2017 by University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers ...
Residues of glyphosate have been documented in an array of popular foods made with crops sprayed with glyphosate, including baby food. The primary route of exposure for children is through the diet.
Last month, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to review its assessment that glyphosate likely poses “no unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment.
According to the EPA, there is “no evidence that glyphosate causes cancer in humans,” a conclusion shared by the European Food Safety Authority—which nevertheless warns that the herbicide causes “serious eye damage” and is “toxic to aquatic life.”
However, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said in 2015 that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans,” while researchers at the University of Washington published a 2019 study showing that using the herbicide increased the risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma by 41%.
In 2018 and 2019, three San Francisco-area juries ordered Monsanto—which was acquired by Bayer AG in 2018—to pay more than $2.3 billion dollars in combined damages for failing to adequately warn consumers about glyphosate’s cancer risks, although all three judgments were later reduced on appeal.
In 2020, Bayer agreed to pay over $10 billion to settle claims that Roundup exposure caused plaintiffs’ cancers. Bayer said the settlement affected 75% of Roundup-related litigation, which involved approximately 125,000 claims.
Bayer announced last July that it would end U.S. sales of its market-leading Roundup home and garden glyphosate-based herbicide by 2023.
N.C. REPUBLICANS WANT STATE TO DESTROY FREE EV CHARGING STATIONS. A group of North Carolina Republican legislators propose to place restrictions on businesses that provide electric vehicle charging stations. HB 1049, sponsored by Republican Reps. Keith Kidwell, Mark Brody, George Cleveland, Donnie Loftis and Ben Moss, requires businesses to disclose the percentage of what they’re charging customers that is “the result of the business providing electric vehicle (EV) charging stations at no charge,” April Siese reported at DailyKos (7/9). The Energy Department estimates that it costs just $6 for an EV with a 200-mile range and a 54kWh battery that is fully depleted to be completely recharged.
The bill also requires publicly-funded EV charging stations on state-leased or state-owned property to come with free gas and diesel pumps. The same goes for county and city property. And if anyone in those groups with EV charging stations on their property can’t adhere to those terms, the bill requires the Department of Transit to develop a system to disperse $50,000 for the sole purpose of using that money to dismantle EV charging stations.
“Taxpayers should not be footing the bill for ‘free’ electric vehicle charging stations on state and local government property unless the same locations offer gasoline or diesel fuel at no charge,” Moss said. “We need to do more to increase American energy production.”
Siese noted that charging stations receive power from local grids, which aren’t exactly the cleanest in this country. According to the Energy Information Administration, 61% of electricity generation in the US came from fossil fuels last year. “So if dirty energy is the concern, then rest assured that we’re doing just fine in that department. Plus, it’s not like one state throwing a tantrum over charging stations is going to magically change oil and gas output. CNN’s assessment of rising gas prices includes an industry unwilling to increase production due to fears of environmental rules actually working and demand for oil and gas plummeting.
“The bill was filed [in June] and passed its first reading shortly after, so it’s certainly got a ways to go before any North Carolinians should start worrying. This should hopefully give the lawmakers who sponsored the bill enough time to get a clue and drop the legislation altogether.”
From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2022
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