Climate change poses an existential challenge to the planet. But the effects of climate change have fallen disproportionately on communities of color and working families. And the reality is that climate change has been accelerated by a coalition of corporations, donors, and policymakers who have adopted a willful blindness toward these dangers to our communities and our planet.
On Friday, February 15, Lew Daly, Senior Policy Analyst at Demos, testified in support of New York State’s Climate and Community Protection Act. Following is Daly’s statement on the bill:
New York State’s Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA) is a bold and necessary climate action policy for the people of New York. It will establish the strongest mandate for economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the country, requiring a 50 percent reduction by 2030 and set a timeline for achieving a 100 percent renewable energy economy by 2050.
Job security, with good wages and durable industries. A good education. A home to call your own. Affordable health care when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you’re not rich.
The Senate Finance Committee wrote an open letter last month to the rest of the Senate calling for tax code reform suggestions. The due date for proposals was this past week. Among other parts of the code, the charitable tax deduction faces potential overhaul.
Our personal information is compiled, traded, analyzed and sold off as never before. Not only do business and government track us online, but retailers trace our cell phones through stores, and vast, little-known databases can keep us from getting jobs, qualifying for loans, and opening bank accounts.
It's time for the real estate industry -- one of the true 900-pound gorillas in U.S. politics -- to join the battle to reduce student debt burdens. Why? Because the bread-and-butter of that industry, young people who buy new homes, is increasingly threatened by soaring college loans which leaves these potential customers too maxed out to join the "ownership society."
Seventy years ago, when leaders like James Conant were pushing for a meritocratic education system, they argued that narrow and entrenched privilege was the enemy of prosperity. Why? Because it gave the best opportunities to unexceptional rich WASPs while leaving America's best human capital off the table. Empowering such a small slice of the population also limited the growth of a strong middle and upper middle class.
Business is booming. Employers are hiring. Job growth is soaring. Profits are near record levels. All true, at least in the retail and restaurant industries. New jobs numbers released Friday show that 47,000 jobs were added in retail in July, and 38,000 jobs were added in food and drinking places. These jobs account for over half of the 162,000 jobs added in July.
The fast food worker strikes have become an occasion to repeat age-old arguments that raising pay for low-skilled jobs will result in fewer such jobs. In effect, the advice to fast-food workers—many of whom work full-time but still live in poverty—is to endure low wages because lousy pay is better than no pay.
Friday’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the labor market has built up little steam over the course of the year, with July job gains that put us on course to reach full employment in 2020. For young adults, waiting another 7 years just to get on track means forbearing dreams of income and asset building over a lifetime and instead settling for opportunities that make it possible to just get by.
Critics of the fast-food worker strikes don't just make the mistake of relying on industry-backed research to argue that higher wages are unaffordable (see Jillian Kay Melchior's slanted and shallow piece in NRO) and ignore the real-live examples of U.S. states that have raised their minimun wage with no adverse effects (like Washington).
In the absence of federal leadership, states are taking the lead in the fight against climate change. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley recently released an ambitious climate change plan that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020, generate $1.6 billion in economic benefits, and support more than 37,000 jobs. The plan has over 150 initiatives that touch on nearly every aspect of the economy from transportation to agriculture to zero waste.
Does America believe in second chances? In some cases, yes. Corporations get second chances all the time. For instance, nearly every major pharmaceutical company has been repeatedly fined by the Justice Department for either fraud or illegal marketing, and yet—because no individual executices are ever held accountable—most go on to break the law again. Ditto for many top financial firms.
When politics is dominated by the wealthy, the interests of the wealthy are advanced while the interests of lower income and working families are ignored.
Beth Simone Noveck and Carl Malamud are pushing the IRS to publicly disclose more data on tax-exempt groups, make it more accessible in electronic form, and to do so more promptly. Count me among the effort’s biggest cheerleaders. If this push succeeds, we'll have a better handle on a key sector in U.S. society—although we'll still be in the dark about crucial details of how nonprofits are funded.
On Monday, Ezra Klein argued that “conventional wisdom on Washington is that corporations win every fight and everyone else — particularly the poor — get shafted" is, wait for it, "wrong, or at least incomplete."
We hear a lot that college "isn't for everybody," but this phrase is typically applied to working class kids—with the suggestion that we should expand opportunities to get vocational training that leads to solid blue-collar jobs.
Of course, though, there are young people across the class spectrum who may not want to spend four years sitting in classes and doing piles of homework. And as I wrote yesterday, the financial downsides of college are higher now than ever.
