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Bill McKibben | A Post-Ginsburg Court Could Be One More Climate Obstacle
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "Among its many other tragic consequences, the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg may dramatically complicate the process of finding a legislative solution for the climate crisis."
It now seems possible that a Democratic White House and Congress could convene in January, with a commitment to finally—after three decades of ducking—taking federal action on global warming. Indeed, after this record season of flame and gale, new polling shows that three out of four Americans blame climate change for natural disasters, and one in five are open to the idea that they may need to move in order to escape danger. But, if public pressure for action is mounting, structural obstacles may be mounting, too.
The filibuster is one such block. As long as the oil-and-gas industry remains dominant in the Republican Party, it’s hard to imagine finding sixty votes for serious climate action. But Democratic leaders seem more and more committed to ending that procedural tradition, especially if the G.O.P. insists on forcing through the confirmation of a new Supreme Court Justice before next year. A lopsidedly conservative Supreme Court may be harder to overcome. Since 2007, the federal ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act has rested on a one-vote margin in Massachusetts v. E.P.A. The Court repeatedly messed with the original New Deal, frustrating FDR no end; even the most modest version of the Green New Deal would face an immediate Court challenge and, quite possibly, bleak prospects in a post-Ginsburg judiciary. It’s one issue of several that might motivate the Democrats, if they win in November, to restructure the Court; some have suggested adding new Justices. But it’s also a bracing reminder that we need strategies for rapid and sweeping change that don’t rely entirely on congressional action.
In particular, activist pressure on big oil companies may be producing a sea change in the world view of at least some of those companies. BP has promised to reduce oil and gas production by forty per cent this decade, and, last week, its C.E.O. said that 2019 may have marked peak oil demand—a scandalous break with the industry gospel of ever-rising demand. The Telegraph called the remarks a “cluster bomb” thrown into the energy debate; the Financial Times said that they might mean the “slow death of big oil.” A new academic analysis dismisses much of the industry rhetoric as greenwashing, but, at least in Europe, corporations may have little choice: new E.U. legislation would dramatically scale up the continent’s commitment to carbon reductions. And campaigners are growing savvier. As more and more big banks announce that they want their lending practices to align with the Paris climate accord, a consortium of sixty environmental groups last week laid out an analysis showing just what that would have to mean in practice: in essence, no more loans for anything that expands the size of the fossil-fuel empire.
And, if congressional action continues to be blocked, activists will look elsewhere for change. This month, for instance, Connecticut, Delaware, and the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, all announced plans to sue big oil companies for climate damages. It’s useful to remember that it was state attorneys general who brought Big Tobacco to heel. And, of course, some jurisdictions may be large enough to force action on their own. Governor Gavin Newsom, of California, gave a perfect example on Wednesday, announcing plans to ban sales of gas cars by 2035 in a state that has the fifth-largest economy in the world. That’s the biggest boost the electric vehicle market has received yet.
Ginsburg’s death––not to mention Tropical Storm Beta, spinning in the Atlantic––is a reminder that normal action through established channels has done pitifully little to address our greatest crisis. Any chance we still have will require distinctly abnormal action.
PASSING THE MIC
A Brooklyn native, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist and the founder of Ocean Collectiv, a strategy-consulting firm for conservation solutions grounded in social justice, and Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities. Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, an Atlantan and one-time Rhodes Scholar, is the author of, among other things, the Times best-seller “Drawdown.” Together, they’ve edited a fascinating new anthology, “All We Can Save,” featuring perspectives on the climate crisis from fifty-eight women across the United States.
You shaped this grand collection of essays: Are there a couple of uniting threads?
The subtitle is actually a good description of some of the threads: “Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis.” The book was supposed to be around twenty essays but ended up as forty-one essays and seventeen poems, plus quotations and original illustrations, because there’s just so much to this topic and so much good work being done. As co-editors, we were extremely deliberate in our curation, making sure the essays were forward-looking, neither wallowing nor Pollyanna, making sure as many perspectives and insights were included as possible.
Over the nine months from the day we began putting the book together to the publication date, the world has changed so much—from the hunkering down of the pandemic to the uprising for Black Lives Matter. So when we sat down to give the manuscript one last read before sending it off to the printer, we were nervous that the book would not meet this moment. But we should not have feared, because the contributors to the book—activists, scientists, wonks, farmers, journalists, and artists; women spanning generations, geographies, races, and areas of expertise—are people who have long been thinking deeply and intersectionally. Throughout the collection, a commitment to linking arms as we each play our part in this great transformation shines through. And, as we write in the book’s final paragraph, “If there is one theme that runs through the collection, it is ferocious love—for one another, for Earth, for all beings, for justice, for a life-giving future.”
Some of the greatest figures in the climate story—from Eunice Foote to Christiana Figueres—have been women. The books posits a “characteristically feminine and faithfully feminist” voice on climate. What does that sound like?
The first thing is that it doesn’t sound like one voice—it sounds like voices, like a mighty chorus. That’s really how we think about what these pages contain. This isn’t a book about heroes (even though it opens with one of ours: Eunice Newton Foote, the scientist who discovered that carbon dioxide would lead to planetary warming). We hope “All We Can Save” is a reflection of the diverse community showing up in and for this moment. We don’t think feminine and feminist climate leadership is limited to any gender, but women are certainly bringing it in droves. It’s deeply collaborative, focussing on making change rather than being in charge. It insists on centering justice as necessary and right and effective. It integrates the powers of heart and head. It focusses on building community because we can’t build a better world without it. So there are no untethered techno-utopian whimsies in “All We Can Save.” But there is an abundance of courage, connection, healing, nurturing, creativity—a lot of things historically sidelined to the detriment of the climate movement. But they’ve always been here, and they’re upwelling now with what we’ve come to call the feminist climate renaissance. And to carry forward the work of unfurling this renaissance, we have co-founded the All We Can Save Project, a nonprofit to support women climate leaders.
2020 has been a grim year on the climate front. Are there things surprising you as climate experts?
We have certainly been aware of the scientific projections: how dire they are and how much is at risk. But, despite that, both of us have been knocked sideways a bit to see all these changes happening so fast and colliding. The news that Greenland’s ice melt has passed a tipping point and will be gone for sure—it’s just a matter of how long. The massive fires across the West. The rapidly intensifying and slow-moving hurricanes in the Gulf. The heat waves. The droughts. All at once, wreaking havoc on so many lives, both human and wild. Even though we’ve had our eyes wide open and stay pretty current on the science, we had hoped for a little more time before all these extreme weather events and climate shifts kicked in. But here we are. And we are also here in this moment of crisis for our democracy, approaching a perilously close election, where the stakes for our climate couldn’t be higher. All this only strengthens the imperative to heed the wisdom of these women climate leaders and to follow their wisdom toward all we can save.
At the heart of the challenge of climate work is staying awake to what’s happening and cultivating a vision of possibility. In a year like this, when so much is being lost, when the bad news is so damn bad, that’s especially hard to do—and all the more necessary. One of the things we feel really convinced about is that you can’t cultivate radical imagination alone. You have to do it together. So we’re kicking off All We Can Save Circles the week of October 5th to support the kind of community-building and more generous dialogue we know we need to stay in the work and do it well. Join us?
CLIMATE SCHOOL
In East Africa, extreme flooding continues to displace hundreds of thousands of people, amid the coronavirus pandemic and a historic locust outbreak. “We fear the worst is yet to come, with the peak of flooding season normally in November and December,” the United Nations humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told the U.N. Security Council last week.
For years, activists have argued that new pipelines are unsound, since they commit regions to decades of dependence on fossil fuels, and those campaigners have managed to block many projects. Now the Houston Chronicle says that financial institutions are growing more flinty-eyed, too, cutting off funding for some long-planned installations. It reports that “the cancellations reflect a newfound wariness among banks to back the projects in view of an uncertain future for fossil fuels.”
It is worth noting again, that even in 2020, the President of the United States continues to claim that science is wrong about climate change; indeed, he insists that our Earth will soon cool.
During the High Holy Days, Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, who helped found the new Jewish climate group Dayenu, offers reflections on the theological dimensions of our crisis. “Most years, the shofar blasts awaken us. This year, we are already painfully awake.” (Full disclosure: I’m on the group’s advisory board.)
SCOREBOARD
Check this out: last month, young Harvard alumni committed to fossil-fuel divestment dominated the college’s annual election for members on its board of overseers. They were nominated not by the alumni association’s nominating committee but by petition, and they won three of the five seats open this year on the thirty-member board. Did Harvard seize on this show of alumni sentiment to join Oxford, Brown, and Cornell in committing to sell its coal, gas, and oil stocks? It did not. Instead, as the Harvard Crimson reported, the administration announced new rules to make sure that such petition candidates would always be a small minority of the board.
A new trend among particularly climate-conscious corporations is not just reducing emissions but figuring out ways to become “historically carbon neutral.” The Danish window manufacturer Velux, for instance, has been in business since 1941, and it now plans to plant enough trees to soak up all the carbon it has ever emitted.
WARMING UP
With impeccable timing, Jesse Paris Smith and her collaborators at the Pathway to Paris project released a joyful new version of Patti Smith’s classic song “People Have the Power” on Friday. Look for cameos!
A candidate for citizenship during a naturalization ceremony in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Feb. 22, 2017. (photo: Kena Betancur/Getty)
A Judge Has Temporarily Blocked Trump From Raising Fees for Asylum-Seekers and Citizens
Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed
Aleaziz writes: "A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plans to increase fees for immigrants seeking to become US citizens and others applying for asylum."
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Joe Biden. (photo: Getty)
'Inshallah': The Arabic 'Fuggedaboudit' Biden Dropped to Blast Trump on Tax Returns
Teo Armus, The Washington Post
Armus writes: "Midway through Tuesday night's chaotic presidential debate, as President Trump vowed to release his still-private tax returns, Joe Biden shot back at his opponent with a particularly sarcastic jab."
“Millions of dollars, and you’ll get to see it,” Trump said of the amount he claims to have paid.
“When?” the Democratic presidential nominee interjected. “Inshallah?”
Suddenly, many Arab American viewers (and plenty of others) were collectively doing a double-take on the Internet. Did Biden — yes, the 77-year-old, gaffe-prone, Roman Catholic native of Scranton, Pa. — really just use “inshallah,” arguably the most ubiquitous phrase in Arabic?
Hours later, his campaign confirmed to NPR that it was true: Biden had in fact used the phrase — which literally and seriously means “God willing” in Arabic and Farsi — but can also take on a sharp, sardonic tenor that has led the writer Wajahat Ali to call it the “Arabic version of ‘fuggedaboudit.’ ”
Trump incessantly interrupts and insults Biden as they spar in acrimonious first debate
Following the debate, some celebrated Biden’s word choice as a savvy way to attack his rival. Others called it a fabricated act of pandering. But nearly everyone seemed to be in agreement over one thing: their surprise.
“Am I hearing things?” asked Aymann Ismail, a staff writer at Slate.
“Did Biden just hit him with a ‘inshallah,’ " wrote the Queens rapper Bas. “That’s all I needed to hear!!"
The former vice president has had a stutter and is known for sometimes tripping over his words, so many viewers at first were left in a state of confusion about what exactly Biden had said. Was it “under the law”? “In July”? “Enchilada”?
Among those who were not initially sure was Fadi Helani, a linguistics professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey who has researched the use of “inshallah" in conversation. The phrase simply seemed too sophisticated for Biden, who does not speak the language, to use in a presidential debate, Helani told The Washington Post.
When used in formal Arabic, including in media interviews or news conferences by politicians in the Arab world, he said, inshallah serves as an expression of hope for a desired outcome. Yet in informal conversation, inshallah can also be used sarcastically to mean that the hope or statement is too good to be true.
“If somebody says talks about passing a test, and you say, ‘inshallah,’ that means you’re hoping they pass,” Helani said. “But if somebody says that, and you know they’re a lazy student, ‘inshallah’ means you don’t believe them at all.”
When it came to Trump’s tax returns, Biden’s “inshallah” — uttered with a slight smirk — fell firmly into the latter camp, Helani said.
“He was casting doubt, in a sarcastic way, on Donald Trump saying he would release his tax returns,” he added. “What Trump is saying is too good to be true.”
On social media late Tuesday, some decried Biden’s use of the phrase as an example of pandering to Muslim or Arab voters, or an indication of just how little representation they receive on the prime-time political stage.
“Whoever’s writing that op-ed about feeling seen because Biden said ‘inshallah,’” wrote Asad Dandia, a graduate student at Columbia University, “I urge you to spare your community the embarrassment please.”
But others could not hide their appreciation, calling it the “best moment” of an otherwise chaotic night and even, somewhat cheekily, a “historic moment in America.”
For some commentators, Biden’s use of the sarcastic, colloquial form marked a kind of cultural fluency that stands in stark contrast to his rival.
“The fact that Biden just casually tosses off an unplanned ‘inshallah’ reflects who he talks to and what he’s picked up from them,” wrote Yair Rosenberg, a senior writer at Tablet magazine. “Trump never does anything like this, because he doesn’t learn from people who are different than him.”
Biden’s invocation of the phrase is hardly original among English speakers. Actress Lindsay Lohan has tried it on Twitter, and Prince Charles said he sometimes utters it while praying.
In 2016, Foreign Policy noted that “inshallah” had become “common currency” among several circles in Washington, namely younger State Department employees, journalists returned from the Middle East, and soldiers who had deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even Biden himself has used it at least once in public before, at a February campaign event in Hampton Beach, N.H. (His campaign did not immediately respond to a Post inquiry on how he learned the word.)
This time, however, he used it steps away from Trump — who once called to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, falsely claimed that “Islam hates us,” and whose presidency has increased feelings of worry among Muslim and Arab Americans.
After all, the last time the phrase made national headlines, it was in the midst of Trump’s 2016 campaign, when an Iraqi American college student said he was kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight in Los Angeles for speaking over the phone in Arabic — in a conversation that ended with “inshallah.”
To anyone trying to extrapolate further on Biden’s remarks, Ali offered a swift response.
“No,” he wrote on Twitter, “saying inshallah doesn’t make you Muslim.”
Life After Hate co-founder Christian Picciolini. (photo: Christian Picciolini/Britton Picciolin)
Former Neo-Nazi Says Trump's Call for Proud Boys to "Stand By" Will Encourage More Violence
ALSO SEE: Neo-Fascist Proud Boys Exult Over Trump
Telling Them to "Stand By," Not Stand Down
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Christian Picciolini, a former neo-Nazi who now leads the Free Radicals Project, a group focused on helping people disengage from violent extremism, says Trump's words were a clear encouragement for 'continued violence' from far-right groups."
MY GOODMAN: President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden met in Cleveland Tuesday for the first of three scheduled presidential debates. It was a night filled with chaos and insults as Trump repeatedly mocked and interrupted Biden, who responded by calling Trump a “clown” and “the worst president the nation has ever had.” Trump refused to condemn white supremacists after being questioned by debate moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News.
CHRIS WALLACE: Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.
CHRIS WALLACE: — and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure, I’m willing to do that.
CHRIS WALLACE: Are you prepared to specifically —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But —
JOE BIDEN: Well, do it.
CHRIS WALLACE: Well, go ahead, sir.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I would say — I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing.
CHRIS WALLACE: So, what are you — what are you —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If you look —
CHRIS WALLACE: What are you saying —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.
CHRIS WALLACE: Well, then do it, sir.
JOE BIDEN: Say it. Do it. Say it.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Do you want to call them — what do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me a name.
CHRIS WALLACE: White supremacists and right-wing —
JOE BIDEN: White supremacists.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Go ahead. Who would you like me to condemn?
JOE BIDEN: Proud Boys.
CHRIS WALLACE: White supremacists and right-wing militia.
JOE BIDEN: The Proud Boys.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you what. Somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem.
JOE BIDEN: His own —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This is a left-wing —
JOE BIDEN: His own FBI director said the threat comes from white supremacists.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This is a left-wing problem.
CHRIS WALLACE: Go ahead. Go ahead, sir.
JOE BIDEN: Antifa is an idea, not an organization
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.
JOE BIDEN: Not militia.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Oh, really?
JOE BIDEN: That’s what his FBI —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: OK.
JOE BIDEN: — his FBI director said.
CHRIS WALLACE: Gentlemen, I’m going to —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, then, you know what? He’s wrong.
CHRIS WALLACE: No, no. We’re done.
AMY GOODMAN: Soon after President Trump said these words, the Proud Boys posted a new version of their logo including Trump’s quote, “Stand back and stand by.” The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the Proud Boys as a hate group whose leaders regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. After the debate, Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs wrote, quote, “President Trump told the proud boys to stand by because someone needs to deal with ANTIFA…well sir! we’re ready!!” he said. One recent study from July found right-wing extremists have killed 329 people in the United States in the past 25 years.
We begin today’s show with two guests: Christian Picciolini, a former neo-Nazi who leads the Free Radicals Project, a global extremism prevention and disengagement network, his most recent book, Breaking Hate: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism; we’re also joined by Marc Lamont Hill, professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University.
We’re going to start with Christian Picciolini. “Stand back and stand by.” Can you talk about President Trump’s message to the Proud Boys and what exactly it means, you as a former white supremacist skinhead?
CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: Well, Amy, it’s very crystal clear to me what President Trump was calling for last night, and it’s, I think, crystal clear to the Proud Boys what he was asking for. And that was for continued pressure, continued violence against what he is calling the threat of the left.
And in reality, there is no threat from the left, because if we look historically, you know, just over the last 25 years, and the number that you’ve quoted, far-right extremists — everything from neo-Nazis to white supremacists to white nationalists — are responsible for nearly 100% of the violence, 100% of the death and 100% of the fear and rhetoric and propaganda that is inducing this type of violence.
So, he was completely wrong. But it was a clear-cut call to a violent white supremacist group that they must stay vigilant. If I were a Proud Boy, which essentially is version 2.0 of a neo-Nazi skinhead, I would see that as a call to arms, specifically against anti-fascist groups and protesters like antifa and Black Lives Matter.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Marc Lamont Hill, I’m wondering your reaction to the president’s comments, especially in the light of the almost — not only chaotic, but a preview of what kind of authoritarianism there will be in future debates, in political debates between candidates, that the president set here. Do you think that the progressive movement in America is underestimating how quickly we are careening toward fascism and authoritarianism in this country?
MARC LAMONT HILL: Well, after the last three years, three-and-a-half years, we shouldn’t be underestimating it. The evidence is there, whether it’s public policy, whether it’s the president’s statements, whether it’s his commitment to making these “both sides” arguments when it comes to white supremacy, when it comes to the debates. Even corporate media, in the last 24 hours, has framed this debate as both sides were uncivil, both sides were disrespectful, when in fact it’s one side doing this type of — this violence and the other side sort of responding to it however they do.
And so, when it comes to the president’s refusal to denounce white supremacy, we should not be surprised. There have been other white supremacist presidents who have attempted to cloak — and politicians, more broadly, who have attempted to cloak their white supremacy. Trump had an alley-oop. He had the opportunity to say, “I denounce white supremacy,” and then continued to do the white supremacist project that he’s been doing. But instead, he wouldn’t do it.
When he says, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” these were prepared remarks. This wasn’t Trump on the cuff. This is was actually one of the things that he was prepared to say. He went into the debate understanding that that kind of rhetoric and that kind of wink does an extraordinary amount of political work for his base. Trump is not trying to widen his base. He’s trying to create the chaos that you just mentioned. He wants chaos in the streets, he wants violence in the streets, he wants chaos at the polls, because he wants Americans to feel a sense of unsafety. It’s its own kind of diplomatic terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: Christian Picciolini, what should we understand about the white supremacist movement? We can’t underestimate what happened last night. It wasn’t so much Joe Biden. It was Chris Wallace of Fox News who said, “Will you condemn white supremacists?” President Trump refused. What does this mean? And what does it mean to you, too, as a former white supremacist skinhead? What this means, not only the Proud Boys and who they are, but to the white supremacist movement in this country?
CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: You know, having been somebody who was there many, many years ago and knows how they’re taking this, they’re seeing this as a vote of confidence. They’re seeing it as a call of action, very clear-cut call to action. You know, they’re feeling as though their guy is in the White House and that they can’t do any wrong, that they’ve become emboldened and empowered to take to the streets, to carry weapons, to intimidate people, to really ramp up their rhetoric and their violence. And last night was not a wink and a nod; it was a clear bullhorn, a very clear bullhorn, to white supremacists that they have space to act.
And, you know, I think what was even more disturbing, or equally disturbing, was the fact that he called for vigilantism at the polls, that he asked for poll watchers to keep an eye on people who were voting. And that, to me, again, was also a call for white supremacist and militia members and “boogaloo” boys and anybody else who falls under this white supremacist umbrella to really start to act out what they’ve been talking about and to be violent against the left and to intimidate them to not show up and vote, which is exactly what we need to do, is we need to show up and vote, unless this is the kind of America and this is the kind of president you want.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Christian, you mentioned the issue of calling people to be, in essence, vigilantes at the polls. I recall, clearly, back in 1993 in a mayoral election in New York City, when Rudy Giuliani was attempting to unseat David Dinkins, who was then the first African American mayor in the city, and there were literally hundreds of off-duty police officers and off-duty correction officers who Giuliani mobilized to go into the Black and Latino neighborhoods of New York to intimidate the voters. And I remember, the night of the election, asking the campaign manager of David Dinkins, Bill Lynch — I said, “Bill, why aren’t you protesting this? We’re getting all these reports.” And it was a very close election, but Lynch and the Democratic machinery at that time basically accepted the result, even though they knew that there was massive intimidation occurring. I’m wondering, do you — as we move closer to the election, I see this potential being, in essence, publicly encouraged by the president to have this on a nationwide scale.
CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s exactly what the president was calling for. And I would urge people not to be intimidated by that, to vote, to vote by mail, to vote early if they can, because we don’t know what type of trouble we’re going to be seeing on Election Day. But despite that, we still need to vote, unless this is the kind of America we want to live in for the next four years and potentially see our democracy completely destroyed. So, again, we can’t be intimidated. This is not what, you know, American — this is not part of our American DNA, is to be intimidated by terrorists, to be intimidated by white supremacists. We are progressive. We move past this. And in order to do that, we have to come together, and we can’t be intimidated by these people.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Christian Picciolini, we want to thank you for being with us, of the Free Radicals Project.
I should just add this, this news: Fred Perry has announced — it’s a British brand — that it will stop selling one of its iconic polo shirts, the black-and-yellow polo shirt, to Canada and North America, after it was adopted as the unofficial uniform of Proud Boys.
Christian Picciolini, thanks for being with us. And, Marc Lamont Hill, we’d like to ask you to stay with us, of Temple University, as we continue to talk about issues of race, the climate crisis and voting. Stay with us.
A man protests outside the supreme court in Washington during a case about releasing Donald Trump’s tax returns this summer. (photo: Jim Lo Scalzo)
'It's Not Fair': Workers Outraged That Donald Trump Pays Less Tax Than Them
Michael Sainato, Guardian UK
Sainato writes: "Malcum Salyers, an electrician and volunteer firefighter in Jonesville, Ohio, works on average 55 to 60 hours a week. In just over two weeks he pays more tax than the president of the United States."
President paid almost no federal income tax in 15 years in contrast to hefty contributions from those striving to make ends meet
This week the New York Times reported that Donald Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, and paid no income tax in 10 of the past 15 years. The investigation comes after Trump refused to disclose his tax returns for years, breaking a several-decades-long precedent of presidential candidates releasing their tax returns.
“I paid millions in taxes,” Trump said on Tuesday night during his debate with Joe Biden. He declined to give a specific figure before adding: “I don’t want to pay taxes.”
“It’s disheartening to see what I pay in taxes in comparison to what Trump paid,” said Salyers, who on average pays about $350 a week in federal income taxes, about $18,000 a year, and only receives an annual tax rebate of about $1,000, while currently paying to put his daughter through college. “The tax rates are 100% unbalanced.”
As Trump has paid virtually no federal income taxes in the past 15 years, US workers who pay much more in taxes, are struggling to make ends meet and dealing with the pandemic in essential jobs.
David Yolmeh has worked as a meat cutter in a grocery store deli outside Orlando, Florida, for 10 years. Over the past three years, he has paid between $2,200 and $4,700 in annual federal income tax.
“It’s crazy thinking about how long I’ve been wearing a mask to work every day now,” said Yolmeh. “We are on a strict cleaning schedule to keep all touched surfaces sanitized for customer and employee safety. We have the markers. We have the barriers for our cashiers. What we didn’t get was any sort of hazard pay or temporary pay increases. Sales increased dramatically in the first month of lockdown and we received none of those profits back.”
In Port Huron, Michigan, Henry Dunham, 41, has worked as a chef for 20 years and paid about $17,000 in federal income taxes over the past 20 years. He was laid off from his job at a hotel restaurant when the pandemic hit and is still waiting to receive unemployment benefits.
“I can’t receive unemployment because reaching the office here in Michigan is impossible. I have months of unpaid claims now, and all the information I can get on the website are non-monetary issues, even though they show over $10,000 in due payments,” said Dunham, who had never had to file for unemployment before the pandemic. “I’m frustrated Trump pays less in taxes than I do. I’m close to the poverty line. But I pay taxes out of my paychecks with no possible way to defraud the IRS. Yet here is a supposed billionaire, who has paid less than I, in the past 20 years cumulatively.”
One New York-based landscaper said the news didn’t surprise him. The Guatemalan worker, who did not want to be identified, said he pays about $8,000 a year in state and federal taxes, taken out at source.
“He doesn’t pay taxes? That’s good for him. But it is not fair. It’s not good. But that’s how it is. The big shark eats the little shark. If we don’t pay taxes, they want to kick us out.”
Amnesty International offices in Bangalore, India, last year. In recent months, the group has published reports on the Delhi police’s role in fomenting anti-Muslim violence and on the use of torture in Kashmir. (photo: Aijaz Rahi)
Amnesty International Shutters Offices in India, Citing Government Attacks
Sameer Yasir and Hari Kumar, The New York Times
Excerpt: "The human rights organization Amnesty International said on Tuesday that it had ceased its operations in India and laid off its entire staff in response to a series of government reprisals including the freezing of its bank accounts."
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Solar power. (photo: iStock
Four Environmental Fights on the 2020 Ballot
Tara Lohan, The Revelator
Lohan writes: "Voters will have to make decisions about wildlife, renewable energy, oil companies and future elections."
Across the country voters will weigh in on ballot measures to decide issues like wolf reintroduction, taxes on oil companies and renewable energy standards.
aybe we can blame COVID-19 for making it hard to hit the streets and gather signatures to get initiatives on state ballots. But this year there are markedly fewer environmental issues up for vote than in 2018.
While the number of initiatives may be down, there’s no less at stake. Voters will still have to make decisions about wildlife, renewable energy, oil companies and future elections.
Here’s the rundown of what’s happening where.
Return of an Apex Predator
Wolves are on the ballot in Colorado. Proposition 114 would require the state’s Parks and Wildlife Commission to create a plan by 2023 for the reintroduction and management of gray wolves (Canis lupus) in areas west of the continental divide.
Gray wolves once roamed across the western United States but were mostly eradicated by the 1930s. Slowly efforts are being made to bring them back. The reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1996 has been hailed as a rewilding success.
“The argument is that by putting back in wolves — an apex predator that has evolved alongside their prey species — we’re putting things back into ecological balance,” University of Colorado Boulder ecology professor Joanna Lambert told The Revelator in a February interview about the science behind wolf reintroductions.
The Colorado initiative is backed by the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project.
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Colorado Farm Bureau are two of the top donors to the opposition groups.
The measure does include compensation for losses of livestock caused by gray wolves.
“What we’re all hoping for is a landscape where we can coexist with the species that were originally here, but also acknowledging that humans need to make a living and that the costs of this initiative will be felt by some folks more than others,” Lambert said.
Confusion Over Clean Energy
In Nevada voters will take a second swing at a constitutional amendment to require that electric utilities source 50% of their electricity from renewables by 2030. Voters passed the same measure, Question 6, in 2018, but state law requires that constitutional amendments be passed in two consecutive even-numbered election years.
More clean energy for the state may seem good. But there’s concern that enshrining 50% renewables by 2030 in the state’s constitution isn’t that ambitious and it will make it harder to continue the push for 100% renewables in the future. To do that would be another constitutional amendment that would again take four years and two consecutive ballot wins to move the needle.
Also, the state is already on its way to the same renewable goal.
A legislative effort to achieve 50% renewables by 2030 — but with a slightly different timeline for the increments to get there — was signed into law in April 2019 by Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak. Renewable advocates hope the state will do even better than that benchmark, but passing Question 6 would make it harder.
Paying a Fair Share
If California’s Proposition 15 passes, commercial and industrial properties will need to start paying taxes based on their current market value, instead of paying based on the purchase price from decades prior (which stems from Proposition 13 passed back in 1978). The initiative would exempt agricultural land, small businesses, renters and homeowners.
Reassessing the worth of large commercial properties could bring in between $7.5 billion and $12 billion a year that would go toward supporting local governments, school districts and community colleges.
Most of the opposition has come from big business and anti-taxation groups.
The California Teachers Association Issues PAC is the biggest supporter of the effort, but a number of environmental groups have also endorsed the measure, which would likely see oil companies and other big industrial polluters having to kick in more money.
“The oil industry has used Prop. 13 loopholes to evade tens of millions of dollars in property taxes,” wrote Victoria Lome, California legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Companies like Chevron, Exxon, Phillips 66, Shell and Tosco are paying taxes based on assessments taken prior to 2000. Prop. 15 would end this hidden subsidy to dirty energy.”
Oil companies could stand to lose in Alaska, too. Voters there will weigh in on Ballot Measure 1, which would increase taxes on big oil producers (those that have produced more than 400 million barrels overall or 40,000 barrels a day in the past year) operating in three established oil fields in the North Slope.
Taking the Wind Out of the Sails of the Electoral College
Colorado’s Proposition 113 isn’t about environmental issues directly but could cause big shifts in how presidential elections are run and what states and issues are considered important.
The initiative would add Colorado to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. That effort is aimed at ensuring the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote wins the election. It doesn’t eliminate the Electoral College, but it saps its power.
The compact needs states representing at least 270 Electoral College votes to go into effect. It’s currently at 196.
If Colorado’s proposition is passed, and if the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact eventually gets enough votes to go into effect, then Colorado’s nine electoral votes would go to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote, not to the one who gets the most votes in Colorado.
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