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News Release Archive - Economy and Business

First Sign of Normalcy: Ramp up Evictions

July 28, 2021
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MALIKA CONNER, malika@righttocounselnyc.org, @RTCNYC
Director of organizing for Right to Counsel NYC Coalition, Conner said today: “The CDC eviction moratorium set to expire July 31 doesn’t go far enough to protect tenants: It stops landlords from evicting only some tenants and doesn’t prevent landlords from suing. It also prioritizes landlords’ profits over tenants’ needs by requiring tenants to pay what little money they have towards rent.

“The current eviction protections in New York State, enacted through the COVID-19 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act (CEEFPA), protects most tenants from eviction, but only if they submit a hardship declaration form. These state protections are set to expire on August 31 and must absolutely be extended to prevent a health and homelessness crisis.

“Neither of these so-called moratoriums stop landlords from suing tenants wholesale, which is a serious cause of anxiety and stress for tenants and puts hundreds of thousands of families in immediate risk of eviction when they expire.

“Right now, despite these protections, there are more than 236,000 households across New York State with eviction cases in Housing Court. During the pandemic alone, landlords sued more than 65,000 tenants for eviction. That’s a nearly 40 percent increase in eviction cases since March 2020 and tens of thousands of families at risk of losing their homes.

“We cannot let these protections expire while New Yorkers are still reeling from the pandemic. Many tenants are without work, are struggling to pay for necessities like food and healthcare, and continue to endure poor living conditions in apartments neglected by landlords throughout, and even before, the pandemic. A recent study by UCLA also found that the number of coronavirus cases and deaths ‘increased dramatically’ in states where eviction moratoriums had been lifted.

“Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature must act now to stop mass evictions. The CEEFPA must be strengthened and extended beyond August 31st so all tenants are protected. Along with its many horrors, the COVID-19 pandemic taught us some important lessons. One of those lessons is that we can never again accept the routine inhumanity of the housing court eviction machine. Allowing the eviction protections to expire is simply not an option and will quickly reel us back to overcrowded, superspreader housing courts and families facing homelessness.”

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Public Banking Gaining Traction in California

July 15, 2021
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MICHAEL BRENNAN, mryanbrennan@gmail.com, @mrbrnn
Brennan is a research fellow for The Democracy Collaborative and just published the report “Constructing the Democratic Public Bank: A Governance Proposal for the Los Angeles Public Bank.” They also published a Public Banks policy kit for the Democracy Policy Network. Last year, Brennan had an op-ed in the Washington Post on the need for public banks in response to the pandemic.

Brennan explains: “In 2019, California passed AB-857, allowing the state to charter ten local public banks. The grassroots group Public Bank Los Angeles has been organizing since 2017 to advance public banking, and legislation to create a business plan for the public bank in Los Angeles is currently pending before the City Council. In June, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance mandating a task force create the business and governance plans for a public bank, and the California State Assembly passed AB-1177, which would create a free retailing banking public option. Ten cities and counties in central California have recently passed resolutions to begin the process of creating a joint regional public bank.

“The emerging California public banks have the potential to address a host of economic, social, and ecological crises, and public banking efforts across the country are looking to California’s cities and regions to lead the way. State and local governments need public financial infrastructure to recapture the public’s money being extracted by private banks and bond investors. The economic recovery from COVID-19 must be equitable. The ongoing housing crisis demands better tools to keep tenants and the public in control of housing and real estate development. To address the climate crisis, the financial sector must embed social values beyond profit. Economic development needs a paradigm shift toward community wealth building, especially as part of strategies for reparations for Black and Indigenous peoples.

“But with public banks moving now to a question of ‘how,’ rather than ‘if,’ movements have to begin critically considering the governance design of these banks. Because banking, finance, and policymaking are intentionally obscure and technocratic terrains, ensuring the new public banks are designed to address these crises requires ongoing popular education and engagement.”

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Is Big Pharma’s Dominance Through Bayh-Dole Act Finally Getting Scrutiny from Biden?

July 13, 2021
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STAT News in “Biden’s executive order would pause a Trump rule forbidding march-in rights to lower drug costs” reports: “In a little-noticed move, the Biden administration has hit the pause button on a rule that would prevent the federal government from using a controversial legal provision for combating the high prices of products developed with taxpayer dollars.”

(Last week, STAT News reported: “Major pharmaceutical companies and trade groups helped fund the campaigns of more than 2,400 state legislators nationwide in the 2020 election.” STAT News focuses on health issues and is produced by Boston Globe Media.)

JAMES LOVE, james.love@keionline.org, @jamie_love
    Love is director Knowledge Ecology International, a not-for-profit non-governmental organization that “searches for better outcomes, including new solutions, to the management of knowledge resources.” KEI is focused on “social justice, particularly for the most vulnerable populations, including low-income persons and marginalized groups.”

    He said today: “The Bayh-Dole Act, passed in 1980, created a uniform policy for the management of patents on federally funded R&D. Among the provisions are some that can be used to increase competition and address abuses, such as excessive pricing. In the early 1990s, Congress pressed the federal government to curb high prices on federally funded drugs for HIV, cancer and rare diseases. In 1995, President Clinton announced he would no longer enforce reasonable pricing conditions in contracts. Since then, the NIH has rejected a number of petitions to use its rights to ‘march-in’ on patent rights, and grant licenses to generic manufacturers, when prices are excessive.

    “Universities and drug companies have lobbied aggressively and successfully for more than 20 years to prevent this from happening. There is a petition outstanding today by three prostate cancer patients for the government to grant a march-in request on Xtandi, a drug that costs $150k+ per year in the United States, and far less everywhere else. On Jan 5, 2021, NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] proposed a regulation to eliminate pricing as a grounds for a march-in request. The executive order put a hold on that provision, and now the Biden administration will have to rule on the Xtandi petition, which is before DoD. The precedent will be important for many other products.”

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“The Terrible Origins of July 4th”

July 2, 2021
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MARGARET KIMBERLEY, margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com, @freedomrideblog
Kimberley is author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents which was published last year.

She just wrote the piece “The Terrible Origins of July 4th,” which notes that among the grievances toward the British monarch outlined in the Declaration of Independence were: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

Kimberley explains the context: “The men who every school child is taught to think of as ‘patriots’ had two concerns which pushed them to declare independence. First, in 1763 the British emerged victorious after the end of a conflict against France. It was known in Europe as the Seven Years War and in America as the French and Indian War. The American moniker existed precisely because the French allied themselves with indigenous nations against the British. British victory brought them French held territory west of the Appalachians in the region now comprising midwestern states, but they knew they could not easily end indigenous wars if settlers along the eastern seaboard were allowed to go further west.

“Because of continued resistance from leaders such as Pontiac of the Ottawa nation, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763, which forbade settlement west of the Appalachian mountains. One of the speculators poised to become a wealthier man if settlements were permitted to move westward was George Washington.

“He was not alone in his wish to conquer the entire continent and to get rich doing it. Property claims had already been made in these regions, and neither he nor the rest of his cohort were going to let British treaties with indigenous people stand in their way. They largely ignored the edict and went wherever they wanted to go.

“Their second concern was whether the British were committed to continuing the previously unfettered right to slave holding. In 1769 an enslaved man named James Somerset was purchased in Virginia and brought to England. He eventually escaped but was recaptured and was in the process of being sold to Jamaica. But Somerset had friends who went to court on his behalf. In 1772 a judge ruled that enslaved people could not be forcibly removed from England.

“The ruling didn’t end slavery in British territories and in fact it lasted in those regions for 50 more years. But even this narrow decision was too much for white Americans who feared that the crown might undermine or even end their right to slaveholding.”

Kimberley blogs at Freedom Rider and is editor and senior columnist at Black Agenda Report.

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The Case for a National Infrastructure Bank

July 1, 2021
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ALPHECCA MUTTARDY, via Angela Vullo, avullo@nibcoalition.com
Muttardy is with the Coalition for the National Infrastructure Bank and recently released a statement: “In the final weeks of June, 2021, the Biden administration has negotiated with a bipartisan group of Senators on the terms of a package to provide $973 billion for infrastructure projects over five years ($579 billion in new spending, plus $394 in re-authorization of existing spending). Finalizing the Bi-Partisan Plan (BPP) will still depend on reaching agreement on how to pay for it, as well as on the terms of a second, companion package — The American Family Plan — moving through Congress under reconciliation rules.

“Even if approved, the BPP will not be enough to cover the full infrastructure financing gap identified by the American Society of Civil Engineers. ASCE estimates that $2.6 trillion is needed over 10 years, far greater than the $579 billion of new money over five years suggested under the BPP.” The group states that currently, “nothing is allocated under the BPP to cover high speed rail, schools, dams and levees, public parks, affordable housing, or new water delivery projects for drought stricken areas in the U.S. And the amount assigned to water infrastructure is a fraction of what is needed, according to ASCE.

“A fully funded, public, National Infrastructure Bank (NIB), as set out in HR 3339, would finance up to $5 trillion to cover all of the infrastructure projects listed above, in every single jurisdiction in the country. Passage of the Bill would guarantee complete funding over a ten-year period, without the need to re-negotiate again in five years or beyond. Moreover, the NIB would pay its own way, offer low-cost loans, mobilize for economic growth and development, all without adding to federal taxes or deficits.”

Muttardy is a macroeconomist and was with the International Monetary Fund for 25 years, now retired. She has also been involved with Our Revolution, as chair of economic policy for the group in northern Virginia.

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Can We Really Build Infrastructure When Wall Street Games the System?

June 25, 2021
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Can We Really Build Infrastructure When Wall Street Games the System?

WILLIAM LAZONICK, william.lazonick@gmail.com
Lazonick is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network and has written several papers for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

He is co-author of Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the U.S. Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored (Oxford University Press, 2020).

He argues that Wall Street machinations like stock buybacks are effectively “distributions to shareholders that manifest the legalized looting of the U.S. business corporations, rendering employment unstable and incomes inequitable.”

He adds that without regulations on stock buybacks the Biden infrastructure plan will simply send large sums of money to companies that will go right out the door into stock buybacks, just as happened with the Trump taxcuts. To ‘build back better’ the companies need to invest the money in their products and workers, not send it to Wall Street.

He said today: “The Biden administration’s plans to ‘build back better’ must address the transformation in corporate resource allocation that has underpinned the increase in income equality in the United States since the 1980s. The key characteristic of the rise in income inequality has been the concentration of income among the richest households, driven in large part by distributions of corporate cash to shareholders. Over the decade 2010-2019, companies included in the S&P 500 Index spent a total of $5.3 trillion on buybacks, equal to 54 percent of net income, and another $3.8 trillion on dividends, equal to 39 percent of net income.”

See also from the Institute for New Economic Thinking: “Stock Buybacks Stand in the Way of Biden’s Infrastructure Plan” by Lynn Parramore.

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G7’s Minimal Corporate Tax Proposal; Case for a Financial Transaction Tax

June 11, 2021
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A group of economists and others have just released a letter to the G7 urging the adoption of a Financial Transaction Tax, see PDF.

The letter states: “We believe that a global FTT would eventually raise substantial revenue for many countries, including for the G7. But given the emergency situation in poor countries right now, our focus here is on them. Given the dominance of G7 financial markets, a G7-wide FTT could quickly start to provide at least $50 billion a year of emergency finance to fund vital public works and longer-term investments in developing countries, especially struggling young democracies.”

The signers include James S. Henry, global justice fellow at Yale and senior advisor, Tax Justice Network, who organized the letter; James K. Galbraith professor of economics at the  Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin; Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Project director at Inequality.org co-editor, Institute for Policy Studies; Pedro Biscay, former director, Central Bank of Argentina Buenos Aires; Ralph Nader, consumer advocate; William K. Black, associate professor of economics and law, University of Missouri-KC; Patrick Bond, professor of government, University of the Western Cape Cape Town, South Africa.

The signers write that while they “applaud the G7’s support for a minimum global corporate income tax (CIT) rate for multinational corporations,” the G7’s “current proposals would do little for poorer countries. Indeed, they would actually reinforce the unfair bias of international tax rules in favor of the richest countries, which host most of these corporations. If this were the only collective tax reform that the G7 undertakes right now, therefore, a huge opportunity will be missed — the chance to help developing countries recover from this historic tax injustice as well from as the pandemic, and to help finance public investments and advance the cause of international tax justice.”

The group suggests a very small tax: “a 0.1 percent transactions tax on all stock trades, paid for by investors located anywhere in the world who transact through G7 public exchanges.”

Still, substantial funds could be raised: “In 2020, for example, NewYork’s top two exchanges, the NYSE and the NASDQ, registered nearly $60 trillion in trades, nearly half the total volume of the world’s 85 stock exchanges.”

They add that to the “extent that the FTT does ‘pinch’ certain high-frequency traders, this may actually be a good thing. It enables G7 countries themselves to tackle ‘the finance curse,’ the bloated, unproductive and extractive part of high finance. It promotes longer-term investing and discourages casino-like stock speculation. …

“This nearly-perfect tax could channel $billions from a few hundred thousand wealthy folks at the top to tens of millions of people at the very bottom, whose very lives may depend on it. The FTT is so minimal and frictionless that it is not even noticed by most of those who pay it. It is hardly perceptible at all, especially compared with, say, New York City’s 8.875 percent retail sales tax or Europe’s double-digit VAT taxes. But in the right hands and if well spent, the positive impacts of all this tax revenue on the reduction of human suffering will be very perceptible. …

“FTTs also dramatically boost financial transparency and help to combat money laundering and corruption — as Kenya recently discovered when its new FTT surfaced a huge amount of ‘funny money’ washing through Nairobi’s stock exchange.”

Available for interviews:

JAMES HENRY, jsh11963@gmail.com, @submergingmkt
Henry is Global Justice Fellow at Yale University, senior advisor to the Tax Justice Network and managing director at the Sag Harbor Group.

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How Worker Co-Ops Weathered COVID-19 by Prioritizing People Over Profits

June 7, 2021
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JAISAL NOOR, jaisal@therealnews.com, @JaisalNoor
Noor, a senior reporter at Real News Network, just released a 26-minute documentary that explores how worker-owners at eight cooperative run businesses weathered the pandemic, “Worker cooperatives prove your job doesn’t have to be hell.” Noor recently appeared on Means TV and Hill TV’s “Rising” to discuss his findings.

“Pandemic profiteers increased their wealth by over $1.6 trillion dollars during the pandemic, while frontline workers risked their lives for low pay and dangerous working conditions,” Noor said. “Retail online giant Amazon even unveiled a ‘therapy box‘ for workers experiencing stress from high workloads and unreasonable expectations. Meanwhile, the small but growing sector of worker-run cooperatives is demonstrating another way is possible: workplaces that operate democratically and share profits. Because the workers are the owners, they aren’t going to sacrifice themselves for profit,” Noor said. As the Biden administration talks of wanting to “Build Back Better,” Noor explores the lessons learned from eight cooperative businesses in four states.

Noor added: “Worker cooperatives distribute decision-making power, profits and risk. Data indicates that during the pandemic, worker cooperatives were less likely to lay off staff and often pivoted their business models so they could continue to operate while protecting their workers and the public. The country’s largest co-op, Cooperative Home Care Associates, partnered with textile cooperatives to provide their workers with PPE while other home care agencies frequently failed to do so. Baltimore’s majority Black-owned Taharka Brothers Ice Cream lost 70 percent of their revenue during the lockdown, but quickly recovered by shifting to a home-delivery model. And a growing number of businesses that closed during the pandemic are reopening as worker-cooperatives, which have proved to be a more sustainable model.”

The documentary, which Noor produced with support from Solutions Journalism Network, also explores the limitations of employing the cooperative model in the U.S.’s corporate capitalist system. “While cities like Baltimore offered Amazon billions in incentives in exchange for building a headquarters, it has invested a fraction of that in local worker co-ops. Banks also typically don’t lend to co-ops, so a network of revolving loan funds across the country has been created to fund worker co-ops, and provide workers with technical assistance to help create sustainable business models. None of the 60 worker co-ops that work with Seed Commons’ revolving loan fund closed permanently during the pandemic.”

The documentary is licensed through Creative Commons and can be republished and excerpted with attribution to The Real News Network; additional segments are available here.

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Biden $750 Billion Pentagon Budget Called “Excessive”

June 3, 2021
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The Biden administration, in a “Friday news dump,” released its Pentagon budget late last week.

WILLIAM HARTUNG, whartung@internationalpolicy.org
Hartung is director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy.

Following the release of the budget, he said: “At over $750 billion, the Biden administration’s proposal for spending on the Pentagon and related work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy is both excessive and misguided. At a time when the greatest challenges to human lives and livelihoods stem from threats like pandemics and climate change, sustaining Pentagon spending at over three quarters of a trillion dollars a year is both bad budgeting and bad security policy.”

Hartung’s recent pieces include “Memorial Day Can’t Obscure Biden’s Excessive Pentagon Budget” for The National Interest and “Two Weapons That Shouldn’t Be In The Pentagon’s New Budget” for Forbes.

He added: “Continued spending on unnecessary weapons systems like a new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile ($2.6 billion) and the troubled F-35 combat aircraft ($12 billion) represent budgetary and policy malpractice, diverting billions of dollars from other urgent national priorities. …

“The identification of China as a ‘pacing challenge is not an adequate justification for current, exorbitant levels of spending. The challenge posed by China is primarily political and economic, not military. And the United States already spends nearly three times on its military what China does, and has 13 times as many nuclear warheads in its stockpile.”

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Is a Network of Donors Neutralizing Peace Activism?

June 2, 2021
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DAVE LINDORFF, dlindorff@gmail.com
Lindorff is an investigative journalist who just wrote the piece “Peace-washing: Is a network of major donors neutralizing activism in the peace movement?” for Salon.

He writes: “Consider the liberal response to the Biden transition team floating Michèle Flournoy’s name as a potential secretary of defense. Instead of outrage at the idea of someone who had spent the previous four years helping arms contractors win business with the Trump Pentagon and who is an advocate for tough, even aggressive stances towards Russia, China and Iran, we saw an open letter of support signed by 29 key people active in the peace and arms-control arena. Signatories included Joe Cirincione, former president for 12 years of the Ploughshares Fund, along with Tom Collina, Michelle Dover and Emma Belcher of that same well-endowed grant-offering organization. They were joined by the likes of Tom Countryman and Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association, Rachel Bronson of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Ilan Goldenberg of the Center for New American Security, Joan Rohlfing of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and others. …

“Interestingly though, while serious opposition coalesced among anti-militarism, anti-revolving-door people and groups in the Flournoy case, her WestExec Advisors co-founder Antony Blinken, nominated as secretary of state, sailed through his nomination and hearing process. This despite Blinken’s record as an enthusiastic interventionist while serving in the Obama administration as deputy national security advisor and later as deputy secretary of state, and despite his profiting off his connections as a WestExec adviser to arms makers after leaving office.”

MATTHEW HOH, matthew_hoh@riseup.net
Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Until his resignation five years ago, he was a board member of Council for a Livable World, one of the larger national security/arms control organizations in the Peace and Security Funders Group (PSFG). Hoh tells Lindorff that while he has no inside information about the funding policies of the funding consortium or its members, “The assumption that the big peace and national security funding groups are taming the peace movement is a correct one.”

He explains: “When you have a bunch of organizations in a group like that, and some of them are really mainstream vanilla like Open Society, you’re going to see the whole organization and its member groups moderate their positions and their funding policies to the lowest denominator. These big groups, especially the ones that also act as holding pens for people in the foreign policy area who have to leave government employment when a Republican administration comes in, and use them as references when looking for government jobs under a new Democratic administration like this one, don’t want to be funding groups that mount protests in House or Senate committee hearings or try to arrest [former Nixon Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger for war crimes.”

Hoh says he recalls comments being made while he was at CLW about organizations receiving grants needing to “ease up” on their rhetoric or protest actions, but doesn’t recall that kind of conversation moving beyond CLW to the collective PSFG membership. But he also says, “I think the issue of putting pressure on activist groups has deepened over the last 10 years.” He adds, “The best evidence that there is pressure on activists to tone down is the way you’re finding so few leaders of groups that get funding from PSFG member organizations willing to speak for this article on the record.”

Research for Lindorff’s article was funded by a grant from the ExposeFacts program of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

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