News Release Archive - Economy and Business

King’s Dream and Economic Exploitation

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The 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a Dream” speech is Monday, Aug, 28.

E. ETHELBERT MILLER, emiller698@aol.com
Miller is a poet based in Washington, D.C. His books include If God Invented Baseball, When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask. He is quoted in the recent piece “How King’s words brought America closer to its best.”

He said today: “Many have a tendency to overlook King’s prepared remarks, preferring the soaring preaching of the second half of his remarks, when he delivered his eloquent lines — ‘I have a dream’ and ‘free at last’ — which is quoting a spiritual.

“The name of the march was The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. King and others were looking at the economic conditions. He himself spoke of how ‘America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”‘

“Many don’t realize that the March was timed to be 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. That’s why it was in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The message was that the Negro was not really free.

“The key organizers of the march were A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, a labor unionist and a socialist.

“Support from celebrities was important, most especially Sidney Poitier and the recently deceased Harry Belafonte.”

Shortly before his death King would tell Belafonte “I’ve come to believe we’re integrating into a burning house.”

Miller noted that Belafonte’s mentor was Paul Robeson, who was relentlessly attacked for his political activism.

In 1967, King said: “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people the giant triplets of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

In 1968, King would organize the Poor People’s Campaign, which strove to unify poor people of all backgrounds to seek justice. He was assassinated while helping sanitation workers organize in Memphis on April 4, 1968. The Poor People’s Campaign tried to continue his work in June of 1968.

Today, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has picked up this unfinished work.

Oppenheimer and the Profiteers of Armageddon

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WILLIAM HARTUNG, hartung@quincyinst.org

Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of “More Money, Less Security: Pentagon Spending and Strategy in the Biden Administration.”

He just wrote the piece “The Profiteers of Armageddon: Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Nuclear-Industrial Complex,” for TomDispach, which notes positive and negative elements of the recently released film “Oppenheimer”: “The staggering devastation caused by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is suggested only indirectly without any striking visual evidence of the devastating human consequences of the use of those two weapons. Also largely ignored are the critical voices who then argued that there was no need to drop a bomb, no less two of them, on a Japan most of whose cities had already been devastated by U.S. fire-bombing to end the war. General (and later President) Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote that when he was told by Secretary of War Henry Stimson of the plan to drop atomic bombs on populated areas in Japan, ‘I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.’

“The film also fails to address the health impacts of the research, testing, and production of such weaponry, which to this day is still causing disease and death, even without another nuclear weapon ever being used in war. …

“Another crucially important issue has received almost no attention. Neither the film nor the discussion sparked by it has explored one of the most important reasons for the continued existence of nuclear weapons — the profits it yields the participants in America’s massive nuclear-industrial complex.

“Once Oppenheimer and other concerned scientists and policymakers failed to convince the Truman administration to simply close Los Alamos and place nuclear weapons and the materials needed to develop them under international control — the only way, as they saw it, to head off a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union — the drive to expand the nuclear weapons complex was on. Research and production of nuclear warheads and nuclear-armed bombers, missiles, and submarines quickly became a big business, whose beneficiaries have worked doggedly to limit any efforts at the reduction or elimination of nuclear arms. …

“We need to abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us. Hopefully, Oppenheimer will help prepare the ground for progress in that all too essential undertaking, beginning with a frank discussion of what’s now at stake.”

“Biden Says There’s No Blockade. Tell That to Yemenis Who Need Medical Care.”

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ARWA MOKDAD, mokdadarwa@gmail.com, @arwa_mokdad

Just back from Yemen, Mokdad is in New York City. She is with the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation.

The group is cited in the recent article in The Nation: “Biden Says There’s No Blockade. Tell That to Yemenis Who Need Medical Care.”

The article states: “There are just three flights leaving Sana’a every week. But Yemen has an estimated 71,000 cancer patients who need out-of-country care. …In May, 39 members of Congress signed a letter calling on the Biden administration ‘to pressure the Saudis to lift the blockade unconditionally — not use it as a bargaining chip in negotiations.’

“With a presidential campaign ramping up, Biden has an incentive to emphasize relief and openness in Yemen; the U.S. role in the humanitarian crisis — including rolling out the red carpet for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last year, and ongoing weapons sales — goes against the president’s claims to embrace human rights as a foreign policy principle.”

Mokdad said today: “While the blockade has been eased, the amount of essential goods allowed in, such as oil and medicine, are still far below the needs within Yemen. The blockade must be fully and unconditionally lifted as it is a war crime that contributes to the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

“During my recent trip to Yemen, I met families who have been in Amman for months waiting to get one of the few tickets to Sanaa. And these are the lucky ones who are able to even afford the tickets. The limited supply has made it impossible for the vast majority of Yemenis to travel. Three flights a week to a country of thirty million is not acceptable.”

“Pandora Papers” Experts: U.S. Now a Billionaire Tax Haven

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“Pandora Papers” experts, Chuck Collins, author of The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions (Polity Books), and tax attorney Bob Lord, are available for comment on the Pandora Papers revelations.

Over the last three months, Collins has briefed members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), on the “wealth hiding” systems in the USA. Articles interviewing Collins are now appearing in the British Guardian, El Pais (Spain) Infobae in Argentina, El Pais (Brasil), Univision (Mexico), and dozens of others.

On Sunday, the ICIJ released “The Pandora Papers,” based on 11.9 million leaked files. It exposes billionaires involved in aggressive wealth hiding and tax avoidance. It reveals, for instance, that “South Dakota now rivals opaque jurisdictions in Europe and the Caribbean in financial secrecy,” notes Collins.

“It is time for U.S. lawmakers to shut down the hidden wealth system that allows for such aggressive tax avoidance and the sequestering of wealth,” said Collins, who just wrote the piece “Why billionaires love to park their wealth in places like South Dakota” for Salon and is co-editor of Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. He added: “The U.S. has become the weak link in stopping global crime and wealth hiding. States like South Dakota and Delaware have morphed their laws to attract billions, sometimes illicitly obtained, from around the world. We in the U.S. should be embarrassed that we’ve become a magnet for kleptocratic funds.”

Collins’ book, The Wealth Hoarders, points to the role of enablers, what scholars call “the wealth defense industry,” in facilitating the use of dynasty trusts, off-shore tax havens, and anonymous shell companies. These wealth defenders include accountants, tax attorneys, wealth managers, and family office staff, that aid the super-rich in putting vast amounts of wealth beyond the reach of tax authorities. Collins also puts forward a comprehensive plan for shutting down the hidden wealth system.

Bob Lord is a Phoenix tax attorney, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, and legal expert on trusts, estate tax law, and explaining the complicated tax dodges deployed by the superwealthy.

Collins and Lord are available to comment on the latest revelations from the ICIJ Pandora Papers. Email: Contact Olivia Alperstein Olivia@ips-dc.org or Chuck Collins: chuck@ips-dc.org

Additional background resources:

Interview with Chuck Collins by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists:

How the world’s richest defend their wealth with help from a dedicated industry.”

By Bob Lord: “Beyond Lucrative: Jeffrey Epstein’s Billionaire Tax Avoidance Business” and “Taxing 7 Billionaires Could Pay For Third of Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Spending Package.”

IPS Policy Brief: “Dynasty Trusts: How the Wealthy Shield Trillions from Taxation Onshore,” by Kalena Thomhave and Chuck Collins.

How Milton Friedman Aided Segregationists in Quest to Privatize Public Education

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NANCY MacLEAN, nancy.maclean@duke.edu

MacLean is William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.

Her new study for the Institute for New Economic Thinking is: “How Milton Friedman Aided and Abetted Segregationists in His Quest to Privatize Public Education.”

The essay reveals how the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman allied himself with southern white efforts to defy the 1954 Supreme Court decision barring racial segregation in U.S. public schools. The iconic American academic hoped that the segregationists would advance his crusade to end public schools in the U.S. with vouchers for private schools.

“Friedman and his allies saw in the backlash to the desegregation decree an opportunity they could leverage to advance their goal of privatizing government services and resources. Whatever their personal beliefs about race and racism, they helped Jim Crow survive in America by providing ostensibly race-neutral arguments for tax subsidies to the private schools sought by white supremacists. Indeed, to achieve court-proof vouchers, leading defenders of segregation learned from the libertarians that the best strategy was to abandon overtly racist rationales and embrace both an anti-government stance and a positive rubric of liberty, competition, and market choice.”

MacLean concludes by bringing the story up to the present. “The sad fact of the matter is that improving education was never the true reason for free-market fundamentalists’ embrace of vouchers. As Friedman signaled in his first 1955 manifesto and argued for over a half century, school ‘choice’ was a tactic. The strategy it served was to ultimately stick parents with the full cost of their children’s schooling and the labor of finding and arranging it.

“He was as frank in addressing a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) four months before his death in 2006. Said Friedman: ‘the ideal way [to give parents control of their children’s education] would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it.’
“That,” writes MacLean, “is what today’s billionaire libertarian backers of vouchers, with Charles G. Koch in the lead, are keeping from the unsuspecting parents on whom the cause relies for electoral success, now Black and Latino as well as white.”

Report: $21 Trillion Financial Cost of Militarization Since 9/11

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LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN, lkoshgarian@nationalpriorities.org@lindsaykosh
    Program director of the National Priorities Project, Koshgarian is co-author of the just released report: “State of Insecurity: The Cost of Militarization Since 9/11,” which states: “Over the 20 years since 9/11, the U.S. has spent $21 trillion on foreign and domestic militarization.

    “Of that total, $16 trillion went to the military — including at least $7.2 trillion for military contracts.

    “Another $3 trillion went to veterans’ programs, $949 billion went to Homeland Security, and $732 billion went to federal law enforcement. …

    “Spending on the DoD totaled $14 trillion over the last 20 years, including $1.9 trillion in funds appropriated specifically for wars through the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. Even though in recent years the fund was increasingly used for routine military expenses (or ‘base requirements’), this total falls short of estimating the true costs of the War on Terror. More than 70 percent of the Pentagon’s $14 trillion in spending over the last 20 years was for operations, purchasing and research and development. Operations and maintenance ($5.7 trillion) includes costs for operating, deploying, and maintaining weapons systems, including the military’s nearly 300 ships and more than 13,000 aircraft, and facilities, as well as training and other costs. Procurement ($2.8 trillion) includes the purchases and upgrades of major weapons systems such as ships and aircraft, as well as land vehicles, missiles, and ammunition.”

Global Billionaires See $5.5 Trillion Pandemic Wealth Surge

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A one-off 99 percent levy on billionaires’ wealth gains during the pandemic “could pay for everyone on Earth to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide a $20,000 cash grant to all unemployed workers,” according to new analysis released today by Oxfam, the Fight Inequality Alliance, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Patriotic Millionaires. The organizations are calling on governments to tax the ultra wealthy who profited from the pandemic crisis to help offset its costs.

CHUCK COLLINS, NJOKI NJEHU, MORRIS PEARL, via Olivia Alperstein, olivia@ips-dc.org
Pearl, a former managing director at Blackrock and chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, said: “The surge in global billionaire wealth as millions of people have lost their lives and livelihoods is a sickness that countries can no longer bear.”

Njehu, Pan Africa Coordinator of the Fight Inequality Alliance, said: “We need to tax the rich for us to stand any chance of reversing the inequality crisis we’re in.”

Collins is the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits Inequality.org.

He just wrote the piece “Global Billionaires See $5.5 Trillion Pandemic Wealth Surge,” which states: “The world’s billionaires have seen their wealth surge by over $5.5 trillion since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, a gain of over 68 percent. The world’s 2,690 global billionaires saw their combined wealth rise from $8 trillion on March 18, 2020 to $13.5 trillion as of July 31, 2021, drawing on data from Forbes. …

“The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed over 200 million people into poverty, according to estimates by World Bank researchers.

“United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged governments to ‘consider a solidarity or wealth tax on those who have profited during the pandemic, to reduce extreme inequalities.’ The IMF and the World Bank have also called for wealth taxes to help cover the costs of COVID-19.

“Argentina has collected 223 billion pesos (around $2.4 billion) from its one-off pandemic wealth tax.”

Will Wall Street Eat Away at Biden Infrastructure Spending?

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RICARDO VALADEZ, CARTER DOUGHERTY, carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org@RealBankReform
    Valadez is private equity campaign manager at Americans for Financial Reform and Dougherty is communications director for the organization.

    The group just put out a statement: “Wall Street private equity is sometimes called the ‘billionaire factory,’ but that doesn’t stop these already-rich folks from trying to get their hands on taxpayer money. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, private equity lined up to get money from CARES Act — and succeeded. Then, only strong public pressure kept it out of the Biden rescue legislation. More recently, only fighting by Democrats and progressives kept them out of the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

    “Now private equity is going to try to feed at the public trough again in the coming infrastructure legislation that Democrats want to pass via reconciliation. That will be yet another fight with Wall Street in the fall, even as progressive lawmakers prepare for a broad reform of private equity known as the Stop Wall Street Looting Act.

    “Private equity (they used to be called leveraged buyouts) is a nasty Wall Street invention whose influence has exploded in the last decade. They buy profitable companies, mostly with debt that the company has to pay back. They sell off valuable assets, lay off workers, create business disasters, and too often, bankruptcies. Payless Shoes and Toys ‘R’ Us both went belly up at the hands of private equity. Solarwinds, the firm behind the massive hack of U.S. government agencies, was also private equity’s work. Take a look at this two-minute video from AFR to learn more.”

Hollywood Actor Invokes Cultural Boycott of Israel, Risks Netflix Lawsuit, California Law Reprisal

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In 2019, the Hollywood Reporter wrote: “David Clennon, an Emmy-winning U.S. actor with more than four decades of work across film and TV, has revealed that he turned down an audition for a new Netflix series from the makers of hit Israeli show ‘Fauda’ because of his support for Palestinian rights.”

Now, Clennon has escalated the issue, providing spoilers to undermine the Netflix series, risking lawsuits.

He is working with Jewish Voice for Peace/Los Angeles in calling on viewers to boycott “Apartheid TV,” especially in its most recent incarnation, Netflix’s “Hit and Run,” a U.S./Israeli co-production.

“Hit and Run’s” Israeli partners were behind the series “Fauda,” a Netflix commercial success, which was based on the premise that Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land is necessary and justified. “Fauda” was, Clennon notes, “widely criticized for its racist portrayal of Palestinians, and for its message that Palestinian resistance to occupation is illegitimate.”

The call by Clennon and Jewish Voice for Peace marks the opening of a new front in the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel: Hollywood.

Clennon just wrote a piece revealing narrative plot points in the “Hit and Run” series, in order “to encourage viewers to focus on the racism and violence inherent in Israeli domination of Palestine.”

He hopes that the revelation of plot twists will “undermine the suspense which the creators of this U.S./Israeli series are trying to build, in order to keep viewers engaged.” Clennon’s new piece is entitled, “For Justice in Palestine, Boycott Netflix’s Apartheid TV: ‘Hit and Run.’

Clennon is aware that his revelations, also known as “spoilers,” could leave him “vulnerable to lawsuits by Netflix, as well as by the U.S. and Israeli producers of the series.”

He also states that any film or television company that might hire him in the future “could be punished under California’s anti-BDS law, AB2844.”

Working with Clennon is the Jewish Voice for Peace/LA Education and Visibility Committee which has organized online boycott-awareness programs, and, before the pandemic, multiple street demonstrations and vigils.

Available for a limited number of interviews:

DAVID CLENNON, djjc123@earthlink.net

  The actor David Clennon has also written about how various media images are manipulated. Earlier this year, he wrote the pieces “Hollywood’s New Blackface” and “How Hollywood Neuters the 60s: Sorkin’s ‘Trial of the Chicago 7’ Sentences American Radicalism to Oblivion.”

Has the Infrastructure Deal Become the #ExxonPlan?

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BASAV SEN, basav@ips-dc.org@BasavIPS
Sen is director of the Climate Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. He just wrote the piece “Biden should reject the infrastructure plan written by Exxon and invest in saving the climate instead” for MarketWatch, which states: “Recently, Exxon Mobil [XOM, -1.18%] lobbyists were caught on video bragging about stripping renewable energy from the infrastructure proposal and turning the package into a ‘highway bill’ — with $109 billion for the highway infrastructure that perpetuates the captive market for Exxon’s products.

    “The lobbyists revealed that they specifically targeted 11 senators for lobbying — including several Democrats who signed on to the bipartisan deal.

“They backed that lobbying with plenty of campaign cash — a total of $333,000 from Exxon and its hired guns over the last decade to just the six Democrats that Exxon targeted. So it was for a very good reason that the bipartisan deal has been ridiculed on social media as the #ExxonPlan.”