Dispatches

TRUMP EYES SOCIAL SECURITY CUTS BY SLASHING PAYROLL TAX. Amid reports that former US President Donald Trump’s economic advisers are urging him to cut the federal payroll tax, a key revenue source for Social Security and Medicare, advocates urged voters to remember that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has long threatened to do just that, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams.org (4/18).

“Don’t be fooled,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, which lobbies to strengthen the social safety net for retired Americans. “At the end of his term in office, Trump delayed Social Security’s dedicated revenue paid from workers and their employers. He was quite explicit that, if reelected, he would convert that delay into a permanent cut.”

Altman was referring to an executive order Trump signed in August 2020, allowing companies to delay payroll tax payments—an option most companies declined to take as the Treasury Department made clear they would have to pay all of the deferred taxes the following year and that employees would see smaller paychecks as a result of the program.

Trump promised to make the payroll tax cut permanent, and, as Reuters reported April 17, the former president is discussing the proposal with economic advisers including Fox News host and former National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and right-wing commentator Stephen Moore.

The former president is weighing cuts to Social Security’s revenue stream even as Republicans complain that the popular program is unaffordable and push to raise the retirement age to delay Americans’ use of the funds.

The GOP has long claimed Social Security is headed toward insolvency and pushed to privatize the program or cut benefits, but last year’s Social Security trustees report found that the program’s trust fund currently has a $2.85 trillion surplus and could pay 80% of benefits for the next 75 years even if Congress takes no action to expand it—as long as it continues to be funded through taxes.

“Social Security can only pay benefits if it has sufficient dedicated revenue to pay its costs. That is why it doesn’t contribute even a penny to the deficit,” said Altman. “If Trump succeeds in slashing that dedicated revenue so that it is no longer sufficient to fully cover the cost, it will result in an automatic benefit reduction. This would happen without any Republicans having to vote for the cuts, or Trump having to sign them into law.”

“He is dusting off the old Republican playbook and bringing back the strategy known informally as ‘Starve the Beast,’” said Altman of Trump. “In this case, Social Security is the beast.”

Along with cutting payroll taxes, which are paid by workers and employees and amount to 7.65% of each employee’s gross pay in order to fund senior citizens’ post-retirement income, Trump has proposed extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the vast majority of which benefited the wealthiest Americans, according to the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy.

Altman noted the contrast between Trump’s tax proposals and those of President Joe Biden, who has proposed strengthening Social Security and extending its solvency by requiring people with wealth over $100 million to pay at least 25% in income taxes, raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, and quadrupling the stock buyback tax to disincentive companies lavishing their shareholders with their profits instead of investing in their workforce.

“The choice this election is clear: Trump and the Republicans will cut Social Security and give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires,” said Altman. “The Democrats will expand Social Security, paid for by requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share.”

TENNESSEE VW WORKERS VOTE TO JOIN UAW iN LANDSLIDE. Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., became the first Southern autoworkers not employed by one of the Big Three car manufacturers to win a union when they voted to join the United Auto Workers by a “landslide” majority, Olivia Rosane noted at CommonDreams.org (4/20).

This is the first major victory for the UAW after it launched the biggest organizing drive in modern US history on the heels of its “stand up strike” that secured historic contracts with the Big Three in fall 2023.

“Many of the talking heads and the pundits have said to me repeatedly before we announced this campaign, ‘You can’t win in the South,’” UAW president Shawn Fain told the victorious workers in a video shared by UAW. “They said Southern workers aren’t ready for it. They said non-union autoworkers didn’t have it in them. But you all said, ‘Watch this!’ And you all moved a mountain.”

According to the UAW’s results, the vote tally stands at 2,628—or 73%—yes to 985—or 27%—no. Voting at the 4,300-worker plant ran three days, April 17-19.

The Chattanooga workers announced their current union drive in December 2023. The victory follows two failed unionization attempts at the plant, in 2014 and 2019.

“We saw the big contract that UAW workers won at the Big Three and that got everybody talking,” Zachary Costello, a trainer in VW’s proficiency room, said in a statement. “You see the pay, the benefits, the rights UAW members have on the job, and you see how that would change your life. That’s why we voted overwhelmingly for the union. Once people see the difference a union makes, there’s no way to stop them.”

The union’s win comes despite the opposition of Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.

“Today, I joined fellow governors in opposing the UAW’s unionization campaign,” Lee said on social media April l6, before voting started. “We want to keep good-paying jobs and continue to grow the American auto manufacturing sector. A successful unionization drive will stop this growth in its tracks, to the detriment of American workers.”

Republican governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas signed onto Lee’s anti-union statement.

However, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) celebrated the win.

“Watching history tonight in Chattanooga, as Volkswagen workers voted in a landslide to join the UAW,” he wrote on social media April 19. “Despite pressure from Gov. Lee, this is the first auto plant in the South to unionize since the 1940s. This incredible victory for labor will transform Tennessee and the South!”

The next union test is at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Ala., where more than 5,000 workers filed a petition with the NLRB to call an election, which is scheduled May 13-17.

For the Chattanooga workers, meanwhile, their next big fight will be to secure their first union-negotiated contract.

“The real fight begins now,” Fain told cheering workers. “The real fight is getting your fair share. The real fight is the fight to get more time with your families. The real fight is the fight for our union contract.”

“And I can guarantee you one thing,” Fain continued, “this international unionist leadership, this membership all over this nation has your back in this fight.”

GREEN GROUPS CALL RFK JR. ‘DANGEROUS CONSPIRACY THEORIST AND SCIENCE DENIER.’ A dozen national green groups on April 19 published an open letter exposing what they say are the dangers of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s quixotic Independent U.S. presidential bid by highlighting his embrace of conspiracy theories and his use of language often spoken by climate deniers, Brett Wilkins noted at CommonDreams (I4/19).

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not an environmentalist. He is a dangerous conspiracy theorist and science denier whose agenda would be a disaster for our communities and the planet,” the letter argues. “He may have once been an environmental attorney, but now RFK Jr. is peddling the term ‘climate change orthodoxy’ and making empty promises to clean up our environment with superficial proposals.”

“The truth is, by rejecting science, what he offers is no different than Donald Trump,” the signers asserted, referring to the former Republican president and presumptive 2024 GOP nominee.

The letter continues:

“In the fact-free world that both he and Trump live in, objective reality simply does not exist. Their policy platforms are instead driven by what will benefit Big Oil and the greedy corporations that fund them. We know, however, that environmental progress depends on following scientific fact and putting people over politics.

“With so much at stake, we stand united in denouncing RFK Jr.’s false environmentalist claims. We can’t, in good conscience, let him continue co-opting the credibility and successes of our movement for his own personal benefit.

“RFK Jr. is a bleak reminder that our democracy is incredibly vulnerable,” the letter adds. “Any support for this Kennedy-in-name-only will inevitably result in a second Trump term and the complete erosion of vital environmental and social gains made to date.”

The letter is signed by the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, Friends of the Earth Action, LCV Victory Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, Climate Emergency Advocates, Climate Power, Earthjustice Action, Food & Water Action, NextGen America, Sierra Club Independent Action, Sunrise Movement, and 350 Action.

The Biden campaign also released a new ad featuring a handful of the most prominent descendants of Camelot sharing their endorsement of President Joe Biden over their RFK Jr., Kerry Eleveld noted at Daily Kos (4/19).

The ad opens with a succession of Kennedys introducing themselves, including Joe Kennedy III, a former Congressman and nephew of RFK Jr.; RFK Jr.’s sisters Kerry Kennedy, Rory Kennedy, and Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend; and RFK Jr.’s brother Chris Kennedy,

BIDEN RENT-INCREASE CAP SHOWS TENANT UNION WIN. For the past several years, tenant unions from disparate locations, like Kansas City, Missouri; Bozeman, Montana; and Louisville, Kentucky, have been canvassing door-to-door, lobbying at the White House and Congress, and convening loud, passionate demonstrations in their home communities and at the national headquarters of corporate landlords. They have earned admiring profiles in the New York Times and Time magazine and have been featured on National Public Radio. What they have not done is win a tangible federal victory for renters, Fran Quigley, director of the Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University McKinney School of Law, noted at CommonDreams.org (4/17).

That may be changing, as the Biden administration In March announced it would impose a cap on rent increases on Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) housing. The 10% annual increase limit is far higher than the 3% cap that tenant unions have been pushing for, and the limitation to the LIHTC program leaves out a great deal of other federally financed and subsidized housing. But the new rule could apply to over a million households. And perhaps more importantly, it shows for the first time that the tenant union movement can make its power felt on the national stage.

“It’s a huge win, and it wouldn’t have happened if not for tenant unions beating the drum for the past several years demanding that every dollar of federal financing and subsidies be conditioned on tenant protections,” says Tara Raghuveer of the National Tenant Union Federation. “The federal government is finally recognizing its responsibility to protect tenants from price-gouging.”

Landlords were disturbed by the Biden administration explicitly dismissing their increasingly discredited argument that rent limits decrease the supply of affordable housing.

“We’ve seen no evidence that this limitation—even those much lower than 10%—have limited the supply of new affordable housing nationally,” said Department of Housing and Urban Development spokesman Zachary Nosanchuk.

The new rent cap also heralds a shift in tenant organizing in the US. Although tenant unions have traditionally built their power through local struggles, laws passed by state legislatures in places like Missouri and Kentucky put ceilings on local housing reforms. At the same time, federal financing plays an enormous role in the housing industry. In 2022, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA, which manages both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, purchased $142 billion in mortgages issued by banks to multifamily landlords, thus assuming the risk of nonpayment. So tenant unions argue that this federal government largesse should come with conditions, specifically limits on rent hikes, obligations to keep the housing clean and safe, and promises not to evict tenants or not renew leases except for good cause. These types of tenant protections on federally backed housing could apply to over 12 million rental units, nearly one in three renting households in the country.

EMERGENCY ROOMS REFUSED TO TREAT PREGNANT PATIENTS AFTER ‘DOBBS.’ Complaints of pregnant patients turned away from emergency departments “spiked” after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, reported by The Associated Press, sparked fresh condemnation of efforts to restrict abortion rights, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (4/19).

Since the right-wing US Supreme Court ended nearly half a century of nationwide abortion rights with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022, over 20 states have enacted new restrictions on reproductive healthcare, creating a culture of confusion and fear at many medical facilities.

Early last year, the Associated Press filed a public records request for 2022 complaints filed under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal law that requires hospitals and emergency departments that accept Medicare to provide screenings to patients who request them and prohibits refusing to treat individuals with an emergency medical condition.

“One year after submitting the request, the federal government agreed to release only some complaints and investigative documents filed across just 19 states,” the AP’s Amanda Seitz reported. “The names of patients, doctors, and medical staff were redacted from the documents.”

“One woman miscarried in the lobby restroom of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to admit her,” the journalist detailed. “Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.”

According to Seitz:

Emergency rooms are subject to hefty fines when they turn away patients, fail to stabilize them, or transfer them to another hospital for treatment. Violations can also put hospitals’ Medicare funding at risk.

But it’s unclear what fines might be imposed on more than a dozen hospitals that the Biden administration says failed to properly treat pregnant patients in 2022.

It can take years for fines to be levied in these cases. The Health and Human Services agency, which enforces the law, declined to share if the hospitals have been referred to the agency’s Office of Inspector General for penalties.

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers US legal battles, noted that this “devastating and timely story” from Seitz comes “just days before the Supreme Court considers whether emergency rooms can legally force patients to the brink of death before terminating a failing pregnancy.”

The high court was set to hear arguments in that case April 24. The Biden administration is challenging Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion, which “would make it a criminal offense for doctors to comply with EMTALA’s requirement to provide stabilizing treatment, even where a doctor determines that abortion is the medical treatment necessary to prevent a patient from suffering severe health risks or even death,” as the US Department of Justice’s lawsuit explains.

The Justice Department is seeking a judgment that Idaho’s law is invalid under the supremacy clause of the US Constitution and “is preempted by federal law to the extent that it conflicts with EMTALA.”

GREEN GROUPS CHEER $7 BILLION IN ‘SOLAR FOR ALL’ GRANTS. President Joe Biden on Earth Day announced that his administration is distributing $7 billion in Solar for All grants “to develop long-lasting solar programs that enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to deploy and benefit from distributed residential solar, lowering energy costs for families, creating good-quality jobs in communities that have been left behind, advancing environmental justice, and tackling climate change.”

The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the awards—which are going to 60 applicants, including states, territories, tribal governments, municipalities, and nonprofits—will fund solar projects that positively impact over 900,000 households nationwide while reducing 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. The grant competition was made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed in August 2022, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams.org (4/22).

“The United States can and must lead the world in transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuels,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who joined Biden in Triangle, Va., April 22 to announce the solar grants—$62.45 million in funding will go to his state—and the Vermont Climate Corps.

“The Solar for All program—that I successfully championed—will not only combat the existential threat of climate change by making solar energy available to working class families, it will also substantially lower the electric bills of Americans and create thousands of good-paying jobs,” noted Sanders. “This is a win for the environment, a win for consumers, and a win for the economy.”

The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations and Indigenized Energy will get over $135 million to work on solar projects in tribal communities across five states.

Cody Two Bears, executive director of Indigenized Energy, said that the award “will serve as a catalyst for tribes and energy justice communities like ours who are leading the way in building our own clean energy systems within our lands.”

“This is a once-in-a-generation award that will begin to transform how tribes achieve energy sovereignty,” Two Bears added. “The shift from extractive energy to regenerative energy systems will be the legacy we leave for our future generations.”

Margie Alt, director of Climate Action Campaign (CAC), a coalition of a dozen national groups, highlighted both the emissions cuts and that in low-income communities across the United States, “families will see savings—approximately $400 per household.”

“The president also announced the launch of the ClimateCorps.gov—a new website featuring 2,000 new job listings in climate and conservation,” she pointed out. After years of pressure from campaigners, Biden in September announced the American Climate Corps, which was inspired by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps.

BILL EXPANDING WARRANTLESS SPYING BECOMES LAW. The US Senate voted Saturday, April 20, to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for two years, including a “poison pill” amendment added by the US House that critics and privacy advocates dubbed the “Make Everyone a Spy” provision.

The reauthorization, officially called the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, passed the Senate 60-34 despite the more than 20,000 constituents who called opposing the measure, which the Brennan Center for Justice said would enable “the largest expansion of surveillance on US soil since the Patriot Act.” President Joe Biden signed the bill later in the day.

“It’s over (for now),” Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program, said on social media. “A majority of senators caved to the fearmongering and bush league tactics of the administration and surveillance hawks in Congress, and they sold out Americans’ civil liberties.”

Section 702 is the provision that allows US intelligence agencies to spy on non-US citizens abroad without a warrant. Currently, they are able to do so by acquiring communications data from electronic communications service providers like Google, Verizon and AT&T. The existing provision has already been widely abused and criticized, as the communications of US citizens are often caught up in the searches.

However, an amendment added by Reps. Mike Turner (R-OH) and Jim Himes (D-CT) redefined electronic communications service providers to include any “service provider who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications.”

Former and current US officials told the Washington Post that the new language was intended to apply to data cloud storage centers, but civil liberties advocates like Goitein warn it could be used to compel any business—such as a grocery store, gym, or laundry service—to allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to scoop up data from its phones or computers.

“The provision effectively grants the NSA access to the communications equipment of almost any US business, plus huge numbers of organizations and individuals,” Goitein wrote on social media. “It’s a gift to any president who may wish to spy on political enemies, journalists, ideological opponents, etc.”

“It is nothing short of mind-boggling that 58 senators voted to keep this Orwellian power in the bill,” Goitein wrote.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced a deal April 19 to vote on a series of amendments to the bill clearing the way toward its passage, according to The Hill. However, all five amendments that would have added greater privacy protections were voted down.

These included an amendment from Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) to require a warrant and another from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to remove the House language expanding the entities who could be forced to spy, according to Roll Call. The amendments were rejected 42-50 and 34-58 respectively.

From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2024

Populist.com