26 March 21
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26 March 21
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Andy Borowitz | Tucker Carlson Accuses Biden of Faking Mental Sharpness for More Than an Hour
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
Borowitz writes: "Calling it a 'scandal bigger than Watergate,' the Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused President Biden of 'thoroughly faking mental sharpness' for more than an hour during his press conference on Thursday."
The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
alling it a “scandal bigger than Watergate,” the Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused President Biden of “thoroughly faking mental sharpness” for more than an hour during his press conference on Thursday.
“Doing everything he could to give the appearance of mental acuity, he answered questions in detail, stayed on point, and uttered suspiciously complete sentences,” Carlson alleged. “I’ve seen some shameless stunts in my time, but this one takes the cake.”
Carlson said that Biden’s “desperate charade” extended to “accomplishing concrete things to make himself seem competent.”
“When he said that he would double the number of vaccinations in his first hundred days, my jaw dropped,” he said. “President Trump would never have tried to pull something like that.”
Actor and activist Danny Glover. (photo: The Bail Project)
Danny Glover on Amazon Union Drive, the Power of Organized Labor and Centuries of Resistance in Haiti
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "If workers successfully unionize, it could be a watershed moment for the U.S. labor movement, setting off a wave of union drives at Amazon facilities across the country."
s workers in Bessemer, Alabama, continue to vote on whether to establish the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the United States, we speak with actor and activist Danny Glover, who recently joined organizers on the ground to push for a yes vote. “This election is a statement,” says Glover, one of the most high-profile supporters of the closely watched union drive. Nearly 6,000 workers, most of them Black, have until March 29 to return their ballots. If workers successfully unionize, it could be a watershed moment for the U.S. labor movement, setting off a wave of union drives at Amazon facilities across the country. “Once unions are there, once workers have representation on all levels, once they have a seat at the bargaining table, it’s another kind of expression and a new relationship,” says Glover.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.
Senator Bernie Sanders is heading to Bessemer, Alabama, today to show support for Amazon workers who are in the final days of voting on whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and become the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the United States. It’s one of the most closely watched union elections in decades. Voting ends Monday, March 29th. Ballots have been sent to nearly 6,000 workers, most of whom are Black.
Amazon, which has 1.3 million employees, has fought unionization for years. Meanwhile, the company’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, has become one of the world’s two richest men. His personal wealth has increased by $65 billion during the pandemic alone.
Senator Sanders joins other lawmakers who have traveled to Bessemer to support the unionization drive. New York Congressmember Jamaal Bowman visited last month and called on Amazon executives to come out and talk to their critics.
REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN: And you came out here, as well. So, come out here, meet us, say hello, explain your situation, and we can take it from there. Treat your workers with dignity and respect. And if they want to organize and unionize, let them do that, because this is America. This is a democracy. It’s rooted in labor. Labor built this country. You would not have a company if labor was not working, doing the work for you. So, come out here and show yourself and be a real person, and let’s have a real, direct conversation.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the most high-profile supporters of the Amazon unionization drive is the world-renowned actor, director, activist, longtime labor supporter, Danny Glover. He’s heading back to Bessemer, Alabama, today.
Danny, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Can you talk about why you’re taking this long journey, as you are shooting in Canada, but you’re going south?
DANNY GLOVER: Well, first of all, I was just thinking about Georgia. This is where we need Nina Simone. Her Mississippi song was galvanizing [inaudible], and words for Georgia would be galvanizing, as well. My family, my mother, my roots are in Georgia. My great-grandmother, Mae Hunley, was freed by the emancipation in the Civil War, so I have a long history with Georgia.
And I commend all those who struggle. I mean this new generation of activists, of political politicians, that are there right now and fighting, and also citizens, as well, because this is going to take the work of citizens and citizens to act at this particular moment.
We talk about labor. I’ve been a strong supporter of labor my entire life. I grew up in the system of organized labor and organizing citizens with the postal employees, which my parents were proud members of the union there, the national council — the national postal employee union. So, I know about that. That has been the circumference of my life.
And this election, we can talk about importance all we want, but this election is a statement right here. Remember, you know, this election at Amazon is a statement. We are in a crisis, you know? We’re dealing with a narrative that will not allow us to move beyond and go somewhere else and to be something else and to transform this country.
So, we’re living in this particular moment at this time, and certainly unions are going to play an extraordinary role. We know the role that unions have played throughout the 20th century, particularly the mid-20th century and through the end of World War II. But we understand that the role that labor has to play is essential.
We have a pandemic, the reality of the pandemic. The pandemic is going to change the whole nature in how — nature in which we deal with each other, we relate to each other. All the things that we take for granted as common in our behavior is changing. So the face of employment is going to change, as well. So, there are things that we — there are so many unknowns, but what’s steadfast is that once unions are there, once workers have representation on all levels, once they have a seat at the bargaining table, there’s another kind of expression and a new relationship. That relationship is going to be essential across the new ways in which we deal with commerce, the new ways in which we deal with business. That relationship is going to be essential.
So, here we are right now at this particular moment. And it’s going to be tough. We know that. It’s always been tough. But at the same time, I think the political will is there in ways that I think are necessary and still will translate into other struggles, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Danny, you’ve been to Bessemer before, and you went down, and you talked to the workers. What did they tell you about the conditions in the factory? And also, in light of what we just said at the beginning of this segment, that Jeff Bezos, one of the two wealthiest men in the world, made $65 billion during the pandemic alone — that’s like $7.4 million every hour for the past year. Put those two together.
DANNY GLOVER: Well, what’s clear — juxtapose that. The richest man — one of the richest men, one of the richest persons in the world, juxtapose that relationship in which the workers exist in. I mean, as an artist, I’m listening to the stories. We’re often moved by stories. Eduardo Galeano talked about stories and how we’re defined by our stories.
The stories of the workers there that I met in Bessemer at that plant were horrific, you know, from the surveillance, the constant surveillance, the inability to meet whatever the demands are, the different ways of management that are desocializing, the whole process of working and desocializing them as human beings, all those, at every level, from using the bathroom. It was unbelievable for me, you know.
And I hate to draw different other conclusions about comparisons, but if this is an example of the kind of way we deal with human beings here in the 21st century, given the extraordinary information that we have, during supposedly the extraordinary evolution that we’ve had as human beings, then we’re in trouble. And if we talk about this right here, with one of the largest employers in the world, who deals with unions in other places, would not deal with unions in here, then we’re talking about something different. We’re talking about something dangerous, you know.
And I think this is something that has to happen. It’s something — it’s the work that has to happen. It’s not only in Bessemer, but everywhere around the country. All of us should be in outrage at what is happening in the workplace, that we know now exists in the workplace, and the attempts, ugly attempts, to decredit unions itself, to union bust, to pay enormous amount of money to bring specific companies in, in order to dissuade people and intimidate people from voting yes on this for union.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about one other issue, before we turn to a third one, that is deeply close to your heart, that you’ve been very active on, this unprecedented reparations law that has been passed in Evanston, Illinois. But I know how close to your heart Haiti is. I traveled with you. We were in South Africa and went on the plane with President Aristide when he returned to Haiti.
Well, President Biden has now deported more Haitians over the past two months than President Trump did in the previous year, even though the Biden administration admits Haitians may face harm after being deported. And you know Haiti is in the midst of a political and economic crisis. At least 1,300 Haitians, including hundreds of children and infants, have been deported since February 1st, the last deportation just on Wednesday alone. Your thoughts on — what the media tends not to do is talk about the conditions, over the years, that have led people from the Northern Triangle, from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and Haiti to come to the United States.
DANNY GLOVER: Oh boy. I mean, Haiti. I mean, most people, at some point, thought I was of Haitian descent. And I express, as Frederick Douglass did, I’m a Haitian at heart. And it’s a difficult situation. I remember Jonathan Demme and I writing letters when President Bill Clinton was in office, and just expressing our condemnation of what was happening, people who were fleeing Haiti at the political — the political murder and acts and violence that was happening at that particular point in time. And what did we do? We put them on Guantánamo Bay.
But the whole question with Haiti — and let me — I don’t want to be long-winded about it, because the whole question would be — Haiti begins at the beginning. The beginning was 1804. So, if you see — look at Haitian history, Haitian history from that particular point, whose hand was always there to impede any kind of progress for the Haitian people, whether it was impose artificial embargo over 60 years for Haiti, after his victory in 1864 — 1804, until after the emancipation, when the embargo, that so-called embargo, was lifted? From every point, from the point of time of coups d’états, from the earthquake, from the coup d’état of a freely elected president in 1989, Bertrand Aristide, from that on, for the continuous messing in Haitian politics, it is exactly that, from the denial of any kind of political expression within people.
And the Haitians are Haitians because they are, because they resist. They continue to resist. They continue to resist. This resistance comes in so many different forms. So, we applaud them for their resistance, but we don’t talk about the extraordinary pressure that is placed and undermining of Haitian democracy that has been enforced for over 200 years.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Danny, we’re going to have to leave it there for now. And, of course, from 1804, the founding of this republic in an uprising of enslaved people, the U.S. Congress wouldn’t recognize the republic for decades, because they were afraid it would inspire enslaved people in the United States to rise up. But we’re going to leave it there, because we want to keep you on, go to break and then talk about this historic moment in Evanston, Illinois. We’re talking to the actor and activist Danny Glover, who’s on his way to Bessemer, Alabama. Stay with us.
On Jan. 6, rioters coming from a pro-Trump rally broke into the U.S. Capitol, resulting in deaths, injuries, arrests and vandalism. (photo: Jon Cherry/Getty)
The Right Created Boot Camps for Destroying Democracy and Voting Rights
Emma Rindlisbacher, Jacobin
Rindlisbacher writes: "Records show how right-wing groups have used a network of conferences to teach Republican lawmakers how to gerrymander their states and suppress voting rights. Georgia is just the beginning in the war on democracy."
outh Dakota boasts stringent voter ID laws, and a recent review of its legislative districts shows a “persistent Republican advantage” thanks to gerrymandering. The uneven playing field has helped South Dakota garner national headlines for its right-wing legislation, such as laws attacking the separation of church and state.
The state’s Republican lawmakers didn’t come up with these policies by themselves. National organizations have been actively coaching its lawmakers on how to best take advantage of redistricting and deflect claims that voting restrictions are discriminatory, according to documents obtained through a public records request.
One of the groups, WallBuilders, made a name for itself promoting legislation on issues such as displaying religious symbols on state property. But at WallBuilders’ 2018 ProFamily Legislative Network conference in Dallas, Texas, attendees were also taught about the legal validity of restrictive voting laws, according to documents we obtained describing the event.
The other group, ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council, taught a South Dakota legislator how to best gerrymander state districts at its 2019 conference in Austin. According to documents describing the event, one of the attendees found that the conference “provided a lot of good and useful information on redistricting and ways to reduce the risk of lawsuits.”
Usually, the subject matter of such invitation-only conferences is shielded from public view. But both events were highlighted in a monthly “Legislator Update” newsletter produced by the South Dakota Legislative Research Council, a group of nonpartisan staffers who work in South Dakota’s state house. The publication is intended for South Dakota lawmakers, according to a description on the front page of each issue. We obtained copies of the newsletter using a public records request.
Such materials demonstrate how right-wing groups are working hand in hand with Republican lawmakers to strip voting rights and proper representation from the public, in order to safeguard these politicians’ elected positions and facilitate these organizations’ extremist goals.
WallBuilders’ Attack on Voting Rights
WallBuilders is an evangelical group that got its start publishing history books that claimed, falsely, that the founding fathers opposed the separation of church and state. The group was created in 1988 by David Barton, an author listed as one of Time’s most influential evangelicals. Barton has been described as a proponent of Christian nationalism, a political ideology that seeks to enshrine a fundamentalist version of Christianity in state and federal law.
In 1998, Barton expanded WallBuilders to launch the ProFamily Legislative Network, an advocacy group that holds a yearly conference for “conservative pro-family” state legislators. The group’s website lists “conservative fiscal policies,” “abortion,” and “public morality” as some of the issues it covers.
But the Legislator Update newsletters suggest the WallBuilders’ advocacy extends to counseling lawmakers on restricting voting rights.
According to one of the reports, South Dakota Republican state representative Sue Peterson attended the WallBuilders’ 2018 ProFamily Legislative Network conference in Dallas. And, as Peterson noted in the newsletter, her takeaway from the conference was that “the media gives the impression that laws passed to ensure safe and fair elections are discriminatory, but most all [sic] have held up to court challenges.”
WallBuilders did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Legal experts dispute the claim that courts are permissive about policies that restrict the right to vote. “That’s a big overstatement,” said Michael Li, senior council at the Brennan Center for Justice.
“Any number of laws, from Texas’s voter ID law to North Carolina’s aggressive omnibus elections law, have been struck down by courts and modified as a result,” Li said. “The Texas voter ID law is a great example. It was one of the most restrictive in the nation, but it became much fairer as a result of litigation. States sometimes win cases or win on appeal. But these cases show they don’t have carte blanche to do whatever they want.”
But for those who follow right-wing groups like WallBuilders, their increased focus on voting rights is cause for concern. “Conservative evangelicals have a vision for America,” said Rob Boston, a senior adviser at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Increasingly, they are advocating voter suppression as a way to keep Republicans in power, even if most Americans don’t support them.”
ALEC and Gerrymandering
The Legislator Update newsletters show that at least two South Dakota lawmakers attended ALEC conferences in 2018 and 2019, where part of the focus was on limiting lawsuits in the wake of implementing controversial redistricting plans.
In 2019, Republican Jim Stalzer, then a state senator and currently a state representative, attended ALEC’s conference in Austin, Texas. According to the Legislative Update newsletter, “Senator Stalzer also mentioned the meeting provided a lot of good and useful information on redistricting and ways to reduce the risk of lawsuits.”
“The primary things that it covered were the types of things one should do, i.e., following county lines, city boundaries, and natural political boundaries,” Stalzer told us when asked about the ALEC conference. “South Dakota was one of the few states that didn’t get sued last time because we did try to use natural boundaries.”
ALEC could not be reached for comment.
According to an AP analysis, South Dakota’s legislative districts have been gerrymandered to provide an ongoing benefit to Republican candidates.” (Gerrymandering occurs when the boundaries of legislative districts are drawn to give one party an advantage in elections.)
With the South Dakota legislature set to redraw its districts this year, there is concern that the process may unfairly advantage Republican politicians once again.
“As a legislator who served in a gerrymandered district, I think it’s important to make sure politics and partisanship are not involved in the redistricting process,” said Dan Ahlers, a former Democratic member of South Dakota’s state house and a onetime nominee for Congress. “It has also been used to silence minorities in South Dakota. If you look at the northeast side of Rapid City, there’s a predominantly Native American neighborhood that was chopped up into three districts. That wasn’t done by accident.”
South Dakota’s legislative districts are drawn by a partisan commission. Six of the seven members of the Senate’s 2021 redistricting committee are Republican, as are seven of the eight members of the House’s 2021 redistricting committee.
South Dakota Republican state senator Jim Bolin, a member of the redistricting committee, told us that the South Dakota constitution required legislators to set the district boundaries themselves.
“It’s like any committee in the legislature — it’s based on partisan balance,” said Bolin. “There are only three Democrats in the South Dakota Senate.”
“Here’s the thing about South Dakota,” said Bolin. “Some states are becoming more liberal; South Dakota is becoming more conservative. There are people moving here because they want to be in a red state.”
But many people believe the state’s redistricting efforts shouldn’t be left up to partisan committees.
“The constitution [of South Dakota] currently allows legislators to draw their own districts,” said Amy Scott-Stoltz, the coalition director of Drawn Together SD, an anti-gerrymandering group. “We believe this is a conflict of interest. Politicians should not choose their voters; voters should choose their elected officials.”
The South Dakota legislature began the redistricting process earlier this month, ahead of a December deadline. Drawn Together SD is working on a ballot initiative that would be on the ballot in 2022, which would require the districts to be redrawn by a nonpartisan commission, Scott-Stoltz told us. But the organization faces a steep uphill battle against national groups like ALEC.
At ALEC’s 2019 conference, those who attended were told to treat redistricting as a “political adult blood sport,” according to a recording of the conference obtained by Slate. Legislators were advised to destroy evidence and to include provisions to allow their legislatures to defend their redistricting plans in court, should their states’ attorneys general decline to take the case.
Keeping Their Bedfellows in Power
The importance of voting restrictions to right-wing groups has only grown in recent years. Shortly after the 2020 presidential election, WallBuilders’ founder, Barton, was one of many right-wing leaders who promoted the lie that the election had yet to be decided. For its part, ALEC teamed up with other right-wing groups to ramp up its efforts to push voting restrictions in the wake of Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Organizations like ALEC and WallBuilders work to pass laws by providing legal templates and other material to state legislators who often work part time or who don’t have their own staff.
“ALEC is a clearinghouse of legislative ideas and bills that are distributed to legislators in multiple states,” said David Daley, a senior fellow for FairVote. “When you see the same type of legislation burbling up across multiple states, ALEC is often the brains behind it.”
The ALEC conferences South Dakota state lawmakers attended, for example, weren’t just focused on redistricting. At ALEC’s 2018 annual meeting in New Orleans, legislators discussed issues ranging from “electronic recycling [and] school safety” to culture war issues such as the “freedom to associate in [an] age of intimidation,” according to one of the Legislator Update newsletters. And at the 2019 conference in Austin, legislators discussed topics like “the current state of drug abuse, national popular vote, [and] local government lawsuits against the states,” according to the newsletter.
WallBuilders is another group that helps lawmakers pass bills to further their conservative agenda.
As noted in one of the South Dakota newsletters, Republican state senator Phil Jensen also attended the organization’s 2018 ProFamily Legislative Network conference in Dallas, describing the event as the “most relevant and informative legislative conference he has attended.” Part of the appeal for Jenson: two “new ideas” for legislation to introduce in South Dakota — a law to mandate prominently posting the slogan “In God We Trust” on state buildings, and a resolution declaring an annual Christian week.
After attending the conference, Jensen sponsored legislation to put the slogan “In God We Trust” in state buildings such as schools in South Dakota. Although the legislation was criticized as violating the first amendment, it passed in 2019.
By promoting policies that restrict the right to vote, groups like ALEC and WallBuilders can shield legislators from the political consequences of passing such extreme policies.
“When conservatives try and discount the importance of these maps,” said Daley, “they’re saying something else behind closed doors. They are impressing upon conservative lawmakers that there is nothing they do that is more important than drawing maps and devising laws about the kind of access to the vote people have.”
People hold a banner at the Amazon facility on 5 March as members of a congressional delegation arrive to show their support for workers who will vote on whether to unionize, in Bessemer, Alabama. (photo: Dustin Chambers/Reuters)
Bernie Sanders Leads Delegation to Alabama to Boost Amazon Union Drive
Daniel Strauss, Guardian UK
Strauss writes: "A steady stream of federal lawmakers have been trickling into Alabama to cheer on workers hoping to unionize at an Amazon Inc warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, cementing the union drive as the highest profile American labor fight in recent memory."
Democrats and even some Republicans are keen to posit their party as one that backs the working class in high-profile labor fight
steady stream of federal lawmakers have been trickling into Alabama to cheer on workers hoping to unionize at an Amazon Inc warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, cementing the union drive as the highest profile American labor fight in recent memory.
The labor push has seen a stream of Democrats but even won the support of some Republicans who are keen to posit their party as one that backs the working class – and whose top leaders are also hostile to Amazon owner Jeff Bezos.
On Friday, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of the most influential progressive lawmakers in American politics, is scheduled to appear alongside a small set of other liberal figures at a public event to meet Amazon workers looking to unionize.
Sanders’ visit follows congresspeople Andy Levin of Michigan, Jamaal Bowman of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri, Nikema Williams of Georgia, joining congresswoman Terri Sewell of Alabama in traveling to the warehouse in support of the unionizing efforts.
Joe Biden has also suggested support for unionization, albeit rather opaquely.
Meanwhile, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a high-profile Republican, recently penned an op-ed saying he is standing with “with those at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse today”.
On Wednesday evening, a senior Amazon executive, Dave Clark, weighed in on Sanders’ upcoming visit. That sparked a Twitter back and forth between Clark and Sanders’ spokesman, Mike Casca.
1/3 I welcome @SenSanders to Birmingham and appreciate his push for a progressive workplace. I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace https://t.co/Fq8D6vyuh9
— Dave Clark (@davehclark) March 24, 2021
It’s unusual for a union vote to attract this much attention from out-of-state lawmakers but that’s just what has happened among workers at the e-commerce behemoth in one of the most conservative states in the country. The outcome could trigger a chain reaction of similar efforts across the country.
Either way lawmakers and political activists argue that the push has reinvigorated a national discussion about the importance of unions and the tactics companies, including Amazon, use to try to convince employees not to unionize.
“Win or lose, this is a dramatic development in terms of organizing at Amazon,” said Larry Cohen, the chairman of the Sanders-aligned Our Revolution outside group. “It needs to be expanded to Whole Foods and across the country and that it should be multiple unions and they need to work as one. That’s the lesson in terms of how you organize in the 21st century.”
Among the 800,000, none of them are unionized. But the union vote in Alabama has spurred supporters in other parts of the country to encourage local Amazon employees to try and unionize as well. The push has also sparked a larger discussion about the conditions in which Amazon warehouse employees work.
And in Alabama, it’s helped galvanize Democrats. The state Democratic party has been supportive of unionizing as has the local chapter of Our Revolution.
The actual outcome of the vote this month remains a mystery. Interviews with those close to the deliberations, activists and lawmakers all reveal an expectation that the outcome will be by razor-thin margins.
Privately, even supporters of unionization worry that in such a conservative state, the vocal support of liberal Democrats, including unapologetically lefty ones from Brooklyn, could have an adverse affect on the vote. It is Alabama after all.
“The stakes are huge and I think this is one of the first serious attempts to try to unionize an Amazon warehouse,” said Paco Fabian, the director of campaigns for Our Revolution.
On its weekly national calls with local chapters from across the country, Our Revolution has hosted organizers helping in the unionization effort. They have also featured Amazon warehouse workers on the call.
The vote has helped spur a heated discussion in Washington over legislation that’s already passed through the House of Representatives aimed at adding protections for union workers, called the Protecting the Right to Organize Act or “Pro Act”.
“No matter how the union vote goes in Alabama, this effort has sparked a new push for unions across the country. When do you see my colleagues go down to Alabama of all places to join unionization efforts?” Congressman Mondaire Jones of New York, one of the co-sponsors of that legislation, said in an interview. “This intimidation being perpetrated by Amazon, one of the greatest offenders of monopoly power in our economy, is a particularly high-profile expression of the problem that exists so long as these tech companies are able to govern us rather than be governed by the United States Congress.”
Asked what it would mean if workers voted against unionizing, Jones suggested that outcome would be because of intimidation tactics.
“To the extent that workers at Amazon in Alabama are not voting to unionize, it is my belief that that is due to intimidation tactics by Amazon and their allies, including members of the Republican party in Alabama,” Jones added “It’s why we need he Pro Act, which would actually hold those employers accountable and set protocols for free and fair elections where votes are free and voter intimidation-free.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, a freshman Republican lawmaker, took to the Senate floor earlier in the week to argue against that legislation and in the process argue against the rush of national figures coming in to support unionization supporters.
“There’s been a lot of attention paid to this lately. We’ve had Hollywood actors, celebrities, members of Congress and even President Biden trying to help tip the scales toward unions’ favorable outcome,” Tuberville said. “Let me be clear, Alabamians don’t need Hollywood elites telling them what to do. We should all trust they’ll make the decision they think is right for them and their families and that’s what right to work is all about, the right to choose. This is still a free country after all.”
Luxury yacht. (photo: iStock)
The Richest 1 Percent Dodge Taxes on More Than One-Fifth of Their Income, Study Shows
Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post
Ingraham writes: "The richest Americans are hiding more than 20 percent of their earnings from the Internal Revenue Service, according to a comprehensive new estimate of tax evasion, with the top 1 percent of earners accounting for more than a third of all unpaid federal taxes."
Those at the very top of the income spectrum deny the U.S. government roughly $175 billion a year in revenue, researchers estimate.
he richest Americans are hiding more than 20 percent of their earnings from the Internal Revenue Service, according to a comprehensive new estimate of tax evasion, with the top 1 percent of earners accounting for more than a third of all unpaid federal taxes.
That’s costing the federal government roughly $175 billion a year in revenue, according to the findings by a team of economists from academia and the IRS.
The data come as Senate Democrats consider raising taxes on the ultrawealthy to reduce inequality and fund their legislative priorities. President Biden, in a sharp reversal from his predecessor, has signaled that he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy, corporations and estates.
The researchers say that years of IRS funding cuts, combined with the increased sophistication of tax evasion tactics available to the rich, have made shirking tax obligations easier than ever. And they say that these estimates probably understate the true extent of tax evasion at the top of the income spectrum.
To catch tax cheats and measure evasion, the IRS randomly audits returns. But such reviews turn up very little evidence of evasion among the extremely wealthy, in part because the rich use sophisticated accounting techniques that are difficult to trace, like offshore tax shelters, pass-through businesses and complex conservation easements.
The IRS attempts to correct for this through a number of statistical methods. But the new study finds that even the IRS’s standard corrections underestimate the true extent of tax evasion among the rich.
The researchers were able to demonstrate this after the IRS and Justice Department initiated a crackdown on tax evasion in 2008. That effort led to the creation of the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program, which allowed taxpayers to disclose previously hidden offshore assets and pay a penalty in exchange for immunity from prosecution. According to the IRS, tens of thousands of taxpayers took advantage of the program before it shut down in 2018.
Hundreds of those taxpayers, as it turns out, had also been randomly audited before the creation of the program. The researchers matched those audits with the subsequent disclosures, and found that IRS auditors missed the offshore assets roughly 93 percent of the time.
These riches sheltered overseas, moreover, were concentrated almost exclusively among the very top earners.
The study also uncovered evidence of widespread underreporting of income among proprietors of pass-through businesses, whose revenue are taxed on their owners’ returns. “Up to 35% of the income earned at the top is not comprehensively examined in the context of random audits,” the authors found.
Factoring in underreporting from overseas tax shelters and pass-through businesses alone, the authors produced an estimate of the true distribution of tax evasion in the United States. Taxpayers in the bottom half of the income spectrum evade taxes on around 7 percent of their income. Among the top fifth of taxpayers, however, avoidance rises to around 10 percent.
But evasion peaks among the richest 5 percent, who have an income of at least $200,000 and who, as a cohort, capture more than one-third of total national earnings. Taxpayers in this group hide more than 20 percent of their income from tax collectors.
In total, nearly $1 out of every $12 earned in the United States is sheltered from federal income taxes because of the sophisticated evasion techniques of people earning more than $200,000 a year.
“The IRS needs a lot more resources from Congress,” said Daniel Reck, a lead author of the study, via email. He said the agency should “invest in more comprehensive examination strategies, involving audits of individuals, pass-through businesses, and other private entities (charities, trusts, etc.). It needs to hire and train large numbers of experts to conduct those more comprehensive examinations.”
“They can absolutely do all of this, but budget cuts have severely curtailed their ability to do it,” he added.
Since 2010, total funding for the IRS fell by about 20 percent, according to recent congressional testimony by IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig. The number of enforcement staff employed by the agency fell 30 percent over the same period.
Those staffing cuts have, in turn, driven a sharp drop in audit rates, especially for wealthy taxpayers. In the mid-2010s, close to 30 percent of the returns of the richest 0.01 percent of taxpayers — those earning at least $10 million a year — were typically audited. By 2019, that number had fallen to well under 10 percent.Steven Rosenthal, a tax policy expert at the Urban Institute who was not involved with the research, cautioned that tax return data from the pre-offshore crackdown era may be limited in terms of what it can tell us about evasion today.
“Since the 2000s, the IRS effectively shut down offshore accounts by aggressive enforcement, reporting, etc.,” he said via email. “And I do not see why we would expect taxpayers who used offshore accounts in the 2000s to migrate to other unlawful activity.”
But, Reck countered, “it would be a big mistake to claim that offshore evasion is virtually nonexistent in 2021.” To prove his case, he points to whistleblower reports claiming large banks continued to help wealthy clients stash money offshore after the crackdown, a 2018 Treasury Department report criticizing the IRS for not pursuing offshore evasion aggressively enough, and the 2020 federal indictment of billionaire software executive Robert Brockman on tax evasion charges involving offshore holdings.
“People might have a harder time simply stashing wealth in Switzerland now, but they can still create complex networks of offshore and US entities and adopt ludicrously aggressive tax positions, like Brockman did,” Reck said.
Rosenthal also noted that the distinction between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion gets extremely muddy at the top of the income spectrum, where billionaires like Donald Trump employ teams of lawyers and accountants to push the limits of what the tax code allows — in Trump’s case, allowing him to pay just $750 in 2017 on millions of dollars in income.
“Lowering your tax bill from many complicated structures is not clearly unlawful,” he said. “The IRS might win or lose in court,” or they might simply opt for a settlement somewhere in the middle.
“Hiring more agents would help,” he added. But, “the solution to this avoidance at the top end is write better tax rules.”
Former Brazilian president Lula Inacio Lula da Silva. (photo: Rodrigo Capote/Bloomberg)
Lula: Brazil's COVID Deaths 'Biggest Genocide in Our History'
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Brazil's former President Lula da Silva called his country's epidemiological situation 'the greatest genocide in our history' and blamed President Jair Bolsonaro for what happens."
"If he had any greatness, he would have already apologized to the relatives of over 300,000 people killed by COVID-19," the Workers' Party leader pointed out.
uring an interview with the German outlet Der Spiegel, Brazil’s former President Lula da Silva called his country’s epidemiological situation "the greatest genocide in our history" and blamed President Jair Bolsonaro for what happens.
"On Tuesday 3,158 people died in Brazil as a result of COVID-19. It is the greatest genocide in our history," Lula said, adding that Bolsonaro did not take the seriousness of the pandemic seriously and lied to citizens.
"If he had any greatness, he would have already apologized to the relatives of over 300,000 people killed by COVID-19. He is responsible for what happened", Lula recalled and stressed that Brazil should no longer be governed by Bolsonaro.
This week, Brazil surpassed 3,000 COVID-19 related deaths per day as a result of a collapse of its health system, which is clearly expressed in the shortage of medicines, oxygen, and beds in intensive care units.
Faced with the pressure of circumstances, the far-right President is now seeking to coordinate actions with subnational governments. A few weeks ago, however, Bolsonaro had filed a lawsuit before judges to prevent the "tyrannical" subnational authorities from maintaining epidemiological measures in their territories.
Lula will be able to participate in the 2022 presidential elections after the Supreme Court annulled the convictions against him, which were part of a lawfare that the Brazilian far-right organized to leave the Workers' Party leader out of the 2018 elections so as to facilitate the triumph of Captain Bolsonaro.
In this regard, the German outlet recalled that the Supreme Court issued on Tuesday a pronouncement highlighting that former judge Sergio Moro did not act with "impartiality" in one of the trials against Lula da Silva.
"There was a pact between justice and some media to remove President Dilma Rousseff from office and prevent my candidacy for the 2018 elections," Lula said and recalled that he remained in prison for 18 months due to false accusations.
Digital Globe satellite image of Limetree refinery, St. Croix. (photo: Maxar)
The Biden EPA Withdraws a Key Permit for an Oil Refinery on St. Croix, Citing 'Environmental Justice' Concerns
Kristoffer Tigue, Inside Climate News
Tigue writes: "The permit had been granted during the final days of the Trump administration, which rushed the Virgin Islands oil facility through the regulatory process."
he Biden administration handed environmental justice advocates a major victory on Thursday when it announced it was withdrawing a key pollution permit for an oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands that locals say has long fouled their air and water and endangered their health.
Citing “environmental justice concerns” and the new administration’s priority to consider “the needs of overburdened communities,” the Environmental Protection Agency announced in a press release that it was withdrawing the federal air pollution permit for the Limetree Bay oil refinery, located on the territory’s southern island of St. Croix. The move, however, won’t require Limetree to cease refining operations.
The company had operated the refinery as an oil storage facility for years, but last month reopened the refining portion utilizing that permit, which was issued by the Trump EPA in December 2020.
“Withdrawing this permit will allow EPA to reassess what measures are required at the Limetree facility to safeguard the health of local communities in the Virgin Islands, while providing regulatory certainty to the company,” Walter Mugdan, EPA’s acting regional administrator, said in the release.
The decision could lead to stricter pollution controls at the facility and marks the Biden administration’s most significant step so far to follow through on its pledges to elevate environmental justice to the top of its regulatory agenda.
Nearly 75 percent of the people living in the communities just north of the refinery are Black, about a third identify as Hispanic or Latino and over a quarter fall below the national poverty line, according to a recent EPA analysis.
“We are grateful to the Biden/Harris administration and the EPA for this significant first step in commitments to environmental justice and meaningful action on climate change,” Jennifer Valiulis, executive director of the St. Croix Environmental Association, said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “Our island community and environment have suffered for decades due to lax monitoring of emissions, poor enforcement, and inadequate protections.”
In February, the St. Croix Environmental Association, along with other environmental groups, filed an appeal of Limetree’s air pollution permit with the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, arguing that it allowed excessively high emissions that would disproportionately harm the nearby communities.
The permit withdrawal comes just days after Inside Climate News reported that the St. Croix refinery had been the site of one of the largest oil spills in American history and that its previous owners had dodged a multi-million dollar settlement for violating the Clean Air Act.
The article showed how the refinery’s new owners had received special help in reopening the refinery from the Trump administration, which ignored decades of EPA precedence to rush the plant through the federal permitting process and ensure its financial viability.
After shutting down for nearly a decade, the refinery restarted operations last month under the new ownership of Limetree Bay Ventures, a company backed by the private equity firms EIG and ArcLight Capital. Local officials, and many in the community, touted the restart as a critical lifeline for the territory’s struggling economy.
But residents living closest to the plant have long complained that it has fouled their air, poisoned their drinking water and resulted in increased cases of cancer, asthma and a host of other ailments commonly associated with higher exposure to air pollution.
In 2016, St. Croix had the highest number of reported cancer cases among the three islands, according to the territory’s cancer registry, though that data is limited and does not establish a causal link between those cases and any pollution source on the island. The EPA said in its release that Limetree will also be subject to a multi-million-dollar consent decree the agency had negotiated with the refinery’s previous owner, Hovensa. The company walked away from the decree when it shut down the plant’s operations in 2012 and declared bankruptcy a few years later.
On Hovensa’s watch, the refinery leaked more than 43 million gallons of oil into St. Croix’s sole aquifer between 1982 and 2011. The EPA also found the refinery in serious violation of the Clean Air Act in 2011, ordering Hovensa in the consent decree to spend $700 million on new pollution control equipment to reduce the plant’s emissions, and to fund nearly $5 million in projects that would improve the environment of St. Croix.
Between 2017 and 2019, the Trump administration implemented several changes to how it interpreted Clean Air Act rules that ultimately allowed Limetree to get a far more lenient air pollution permit than it normally would have been granted. Many of those changes will result in higher pollution in environmental justice communities like St. Croix, said John Walke, an environmental attorney and director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s clean air, climate and clean energy program.
“This is an important first step to addressing several regulatory abuses by the Trump EPA,” Walke said of today’s announcement. “It’s not the end at all, and there’s much more work that truly needs to be done to protect St. Croix residents.”
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