BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION CAN DO A LOT WITH EXECUTIVE ACTIONS

The Biden-Harris Administration can make needed policy changes through executive actions or legislation. These two approaches are complementary and should both be used. Getting progressive legislation passed by Congress will be difficult but possible with narrow control of both the Senate and the House. However, there are literally hundreds of important executive actions that the Biden-Harris Administration could take on day one (or shortly thereafter) that are well within its existing authority.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) issued 99 executive orders in his first 100 days and 3,721 over the course of his presidency. Some of them were monumental, such as the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration, which addressed a major infrastructure issue, and the Civil Works Administration, which created millions of jobs to address the unemployment of the Great Depression. These times call for the Biden-Harris Administration to be bold and to aggressively use executive orders to address the serious problems facing our country. Similar to FDR’s situation, Biden and Harris are facing a country in need of relief from a serious recession and high unemployment coupled with a need for major infrastructure investments. They also, of course, have to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and its effects.

The American Prospect magazine and the Biden-Sanders unity taskforce (which was created at the end of the Democratic primaries last summer) have identified 277 executive actions that the Biden-Harris Administration could take immediately. All of them are policies that have broad support within the Democratic Party. Many of them simply more fully implement or better enforce current laws. They would take important steps toward addressing important problems. [1] [2]

In summary, the Biden-Harris Administration could, without having to wait for Congress:

Revamp many aspects of our immigration system (see specific examples below),
Address climate change along with energy and environmental issues (see specific examples below),
Improve our education system and reduce the burden of student debt (see specific examples below),
Make our tax system and economy fairer (specific examples will be in my next post),
Make important reforms in the criminal justice system (specific examples will be in my next post),
Expand access to health care and lower drug prices (specific examples will be in my next post), and
Strengthen the safety net by expanding unemployment benefits as well as housing and food assistance (specific examples will be in my next post).

Specific executive actions could include:

Change immigration policies
- Enact a 100-day ban on deportations while reviewing current immigration and border practices
- Rescind the “Zero Tolerance” immigration policy, which is effectively a family separation policy
- Rescind policies limiting admissions of refugees and asylees
- End the freeze on issuing new green cards, which allow non-citizens to permanently live and work in the U.S.
- Rescind the declaration of an emergency for the purpose of funding a Mexico border wall
Address climate change, energy, and environmental issues
- Rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement
- Re-protect federal land including reinstituting bans on mining and drilling
- Reinstate the Clean Power rule limiting carbon emissions from power plants
- Re-institute and then strengthen auto and truck emissions standards
- Reinstate the Cabinet-level Interagency Council on Environmental Justice
- Tighten regulations on the release of methane, sulfur dioxide, ozone, mercury, and coal ash
- Make all 3 million government vehicles at all levels of government zero-emission vehicles
- Buy clean energy and require federal contractors to do so as well
- Make home energy efficiency programs accessible for low-income households
- Establish a task force for planning the transition to clean energy including supports for displaced workers
Improve our education system
- Reduce student debt through various loan forgiveness programs and suspend debt payments during the pandemic
- Reinstate the program to eliminate racial disparities in school discipline
- End federal contracts with student loan servicers who have a history of misleading clients
- Encourage states to develop and adopt a “multiple measures” approach to assessment
- Appoint a federal task force to study charter schools’ impact on public education and make recommendations to strengthen public schools
- Aggressively enforce the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
- Facilitate pathways for early childhood educators to obtain higher education degrees
- Require for-profit colleges to demonstrate their return on investment before allowing their students to be eligible for federal student loans

Once President Biden and Vice President Harris have been inaugurated, I urge you to contact them and encourage them to act boldly using executive orders to improve racial and social justice as well as the economic well-being of every working American.

My next post will present examples of executive actions the Biden-Harris Administration could take on economic, criminal justice, health and health care, and other issues.

[1] Moran, M., 7/28/20, “The 277 policies for which Biden need not ask permission,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/277-policies-biden-need-not-ask-permission/)

[2] Dayen, D., Fall 2019, “The day one agenda” and related articles, The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda)

WHY OUR MAINSTREAM MEDIA HAVE FAILED IN THEIR COVERAGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

For decades now, our mainstream media have failed in their coverage of climate change. Earlier this year, Bill Moyers and the Schumann Media Center, which supports independent journalism, announced the creation of the Covering Climate Now project, a partnership of The Nation magazine and the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR). They hope to increase the coverage of climate issues and help journalism live up to its responsibility to connect the dots and tell important stories so that the public can understand them and act on the information presented. As Bill Moyers, the iconic journalist, said in his amazing speech (30 minutes) kicking off the project (there’s a 2.5 minute excerpt on the CJR website if you scroll most of the way down), “Reporting the truth is always the basis of any moral authority we can claim as journalists.” [1]

The first president to mention global warming was President Johnson in a speech to Congress in 1963. However, attention to it in public policy got lost due to a host of other hot issues (no pun intended). The fossil fuel industry, however, was paying attention and undertook a disinformation campaign that continues to this day.

In October 1970, the Mobil Oil Company began paying The New York Times to publish regular Op-Eds, also called advertorials, written by Mobil’s press office. Mobil viewed them as part of a major political campaign to prevent action against fossil fuels due to global warming. By 1983, Mobil’s press office felt they had succeeded in shifting the Times’ editorial positions to those Mobil had been espousing. [2]

Today, it is increasingly common for the mainstream media to present non-advertising “news” content that has been prepared by or for large corporations. For example, The New York Times and The Washington Post have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from fossil fuel companies and organizations, such as ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute, to create the industry’s advertorials, which they then publish. [3]

The mainstream TV media haven’t done any better: combined coverage of climate change by the three major networks and Fox was just 142 minutes in 2018, down 45% from 2017. That’s an average of only 41 seconds per week per outlet! Not only have the major TV networks basically ignored this story, but they have failed to counter the false and deliberately deceptive propaganda promoted by the fossil fuel industry. [4] For example, extreme-weather events are linked to climate change, but the mainstream media almost never mention the climate change connection. Local weather forecasters are doing more to report the links between weather and climate change than the national networks.

The fight over climate change featuring environmentalists and scientists versus the powerful fossil fuel industry and its political supporters sounds like a David vs. Goliath story to which the mainstream media would love to give lots of coverage. But that has not been the case to say the least. [5] For example, in our general election presidential debates, the moderators who are from the mainstream media have not asked a single question about climate change in 2016, 2012, 2008, or ever.

The mainstream media, both TV and print, have been brainwashed by the fossil fuel industry’s propaganda to view climate change as a political story rather than a science story. The fossil fuel industry has successfully spread confusion and doubt about the science using the same public relations strategies and even some of the same “scientists” as Big Tobacco did in its campaign to spread doubt about the dangers of smoking. For example, Frederick Seitz, a physicist by training, received $45 million from Big Tobacco to obscure the risks of smoking and then, with funding from the fossil fuel industry, became the prominent US denier of human-caused climate change. [6]

The fossil fuel industry has bought enough politicians’ support through campaign spending and lobbying to make climate change appear to be a political issue rather than a scientific one. [7] The Republican Party in particular has bought into using climate change as a campaign issue (or perhaps it has been bought by the fossil fuel industry). Therefore, the mainstream media cover climate change as an issue of politics and not science.

As a result, the media typically give equal coverage to the scientific consensus that human activity is a major contributor to global warming and the fossil fuel industry’s propaganda that global warming is exclusively due to natural fluctuations in global temperatures and therefore not related to fossil fuel use.

Responsibility for the failure to accurately report and act on climate change goes beyond the mainstream corporate media and the fossil fuel companies. In many ways it includes much of corporate America, for example through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber is supported by most of the large corporations in the U.S. and has aggressively opposed action on climate change with multiple tactics: massive lobbying, substantial campaign spending, and extensive involvement in lawsuits and other legal actions. The Chamber spends roughly three times as much on lobbying as the next most active group. It has spent almost $150 million on congressional campaigns since 2010, when the Citizens United Supreme Court decision unleashed corporate campaign spending. In most congressional election cycles, the Chamber is the biggest “dark money” spender, meaning that it shields the identity of the donors for its spending. This provides corporations with a protective veil; they can oppose climate change action through contributions to the Chamber and no one will know. The Chamber is also active in court cases. In a three-year period during Obama’s presidency, it was involved in over 500 court cases. Although not all these court cases and all this spending is in opposition to climate change action, environmental issues were the third most frequent subject of its court cases and energy and environmental issues are a major part of its lobbying activities. The Chamber’s position on energy and environmental issues inevitably is in support of fossil fuels. [8] It would be hard to overstate the political clout of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the laundry list of major corporations that provide its funding.

In summary, the mainstream media have failed in their coverage of climate change in terms of both quantity and quality (i.e., accuracy) because of:

Their conflict of interest due to revenue from the fossil fuel industry for advertising and the preparation of advertorial Op-Ed pieces,
Brainwashing by fossil fuel industry propaganda, and
Being part and parcel of corporate America.

[1] Moyers, B., 7/15/19, “What if reporters covered the climate crisis like Murrow covered World War II?” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/climate-change-media-murrow-boys/)

[2] Westervelt, A., May 6, 2019, “Why are The New York Times and The Washington Post creating ads for Big Oil?” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/big-oil-pr-fossil-fuel-lobby-herb-schmertz/)

[3] Westervelt, A., May 6, 2019, see above

[4] Moyers, B., 7/15/19, see above

[5] Hertsgaard, M., & Pope, K., 4/22/19, “The media are complacent while the world burns,” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/climate-change-media-aoc-gnd-propaganda/)

[6] Hertsgaard, M., & Pope, K., 4/22/19, see above

[7] Hertsgaard, M., & Pope, K., 4/22/19, see above

[8] Schumer, C.E., & Whitehouse, S., 11/21/19, “Climate change and dark money,” The Boston Globe

INVESTING IN INFRASTRUCTURE AND A GREEN ECONOMY: THE PROPOSALS

My previous post outlined the need for investing in our infrastructure while simultaneously taking advantage of opportunities to make our economy more environmentally friendly and fairer for workers. Here are overviews of some of the infrastructure investment proposals that various groups have developed to address these issues.

The Democrats have proposed “A Better Deal to Rebuild America” which calls for a $1 trillion federal investment in infrastructure that would create more than 16 million jobs. It would invest in green infrastructure and ensure opportunities for small businesses. It would incorporate strong environmental protections and labor standards. It proposes investing in roads, bridges, rail, and public transit; high-speed internet; schools; airports, ports, and waterways; and water and energy systems.

The infrastructure proposals from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, [1] the Campaign for America’s Future, [2] and Demos [3] have much in common and share similar underlying visions. The Campaign for America’s Future’s proposal is put forth as a “pledge to fight for good jobs, sustainable prosperity, and economic justice.” It incorporates investment in traditional and green infrastructure along with ensuring that workers can form unions to bargain collectively for better wages and benefits. It supports a living wage, affordable health care and child care, and paid family leave, sick and vacation time for workers. It advocates for full employment with particular attention to helping individuals and communities harmed by discrimination, de-industrialization, and privatization.

Demos proposes an economic agenda that addresses issues of race and class, while motivating working people to “engage in the civic life of their communities and our nation.” Its 25 policies mirror the goals of the Campaign for America’s Future’s pledge. They also call for investment in affordable housing and for guaranteed employment for everyone who wants to work, with the federal government as the employer of last resort (as was done during the Great Depression).

In an article in The American Prospect, Jon Rynn recommends considering health care, education, and financial infrastructure as part of the infrastructure investment paradigm. This reflects the inclusion of human capital and public goods, not just physical capital, as important components of overall infrastructure. Universal health insurance, such as Medicare for All, would expand health care infrastructure and support the productivity of human capital. Affordable public college and early care and education (aka child care) are both pieces of educational infrastructure and are investments in the current and future workforce’s human capital. Finally, regulating the financial industry and creating public banks would be ways of strengthening and democratizing financial infrastructure. [4]

A recent addition to the infrastructure proposals being promoted in Congress is the Green New Deal. It isn’t as detailed as the proposals mentioned above; it’s more of a vision statement. It envisions a substantial investment in infrastructure and the green economy. It would transform our economy by decarbonizing it to address climate change, while also making it fairer. [5]

After the October release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that presented ominous data and predictions about global warming, a series of events occurred that have pushed the Green New Deal into the spotlight. After the November election, Representative (and soon-to-be House Speaker) Pelosi announced that she planned to revive the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to pursue bipartisan action. However, climate change activists viewed the Committee and a bipartisan approach as likely to continue to be fruitless.

So, the youth-led Sunrise Movement organized a sit-in in Rep. Pelosi’s office, calling for a committee charged with developing a plan to meet the goals deemed essential by the IPCC report. Sunrise approached Representative-elect Ocasio-Cortez, who had campaigned in support of a Green New Deal, and asked her to help publicize the sit-in. She not only agreed to do so and to reach out to other new representatives, but agreed to attend the sit-in. Roughly 200 activists occupied Pelosi’s office on November 13 with significant media attention.

Sunrise, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, and others in or coming into Congress developed a proposal for a Select Committee on a Green New Deal. By December 10, forty members of Congress had endorsed the proposed committee and an even larger occupation of Pelosi’s office occurred.

While the specifics of a Green New Deal are to be determined, its four core elements are:

Decarbonizing the economy
Large-scale public infrastructure investment
Federally-guaranteed employment for everyone who wants to work
A just transition to a green economy with remediation for those most negatively affected by historical discrimination, climate change, and the shift to a green economy

For any infrastructure investment program, the first question usually is, can we afford it? Many people would argue that we can’t afford not to make these investments and that the cost of climate change will be much larger than these costs if we don’t take aggressive steps to green our economy.

To put the suggested costs of roughly $500 billion per year for a significant infrastructure program in perspective, the Works Progress Administration’s budget in the 1930s was roughly 2.2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP, the size of the overall economy). This would be about $450 billion per year today with U.S. GDP at $20.66 trillion. The tax cuts passed in 2017 cost roughly $200 billion per year. Congress and President G.W. Bush approved, on short notice, a $700 billion bailout of the financial sector after the 2008 crash and, in addition, by March 2009, the Federal Reserve had committed $7.8 trillion, more than 50% of GDP at the time, to rescuing the financial system. So, the answer to whether we can afford the proposed infrastructure investments is YES; we can afford it if we have the public and political will to make the commitment to repairing and modernizing our infrastructure while greening our economy and making it work fairly for the benefit of all.

If Democrats are willing to commit to a Green New Deal (GND), which means standing up for a fair economy and taking aggressive steps to address climate change, they could reap the benefits of the current grassroots energy behind these issues. Some Democrats will resist endorsing a GND, fearing the loss of campaign donations and support from wealthy individuals and corporations. However, not supporting a GND would risk squandering a tremendous opportunity, both politically and to do what’s good for our people, our democracy, our country, and our planet.

I encourage you to communicate with your U.S. Senators and Representative about infrastructure investment and the Green New Deal. Nothing is more likely to persuade them to support a GND than hearing from constituents who care about climate change, well-maintained infrastructure, and an economy that works for everyone. I welcome your comments and feedback on steps you feel are needed to make our economy fairer and more responsive to regular Americans, as well as to tackle global warming and climate change.

[1] Blair, H., 7/24/18, “‘The People’s Budget’: Analysis of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget for fiscal year 2019,” Economic Policy Institute (https://www.epi.org/publication/the-peoples-budget-analysis-of-the-congressional-progressive-caucus-budget-for-fiscal-year-2019/)

[2] Campaign for America’s Future, 2018, “The Pledge” (http://campaignforamericasfuture.org/pledge/)

[3] Demos, 1/31/18, “Everyone’s economy: 25 policies to lift up working people” (https://www.demos.org/publication/everyones-economy)

[4] Rynn, J., 6/28/18, “What else we could do with $1.9 trillion,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/article/what-else-could-we-do-19-trillion)

[5] Roberts, D., 12/26/18, “The Green New Deal explained,” Vox (https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/12/21/18144138/green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez)

INVESTING IN INFRASTRUCTURE AND A GREEN ECONOMY

In previous posts, I’ve noted that with Democrats taking over control of the U.S. House in January, there’s a wide range of issues they might tackle. Even if many of the bills they propose, and hopefully pass, don’t become law (because they aren’t passed by the Senate or are vetoed by President Trump), they will frame the debate going forward and into the 2020 elections. Raising substantive issues will shift the political discussion to meaningful policies to address important problems rather than tweets and meaningless bluster.

Readers’ feedback on the list of topics in a previous post identified infrastructure investment and environmental policy issues as the two top priorities. Coincidentally, these two issues have become linked. They were described in my post as follows:

Infrastructure: repair roads and bridges; repair and improve mass transit including railways and airports; provide quality school buildings for all children; repair and enhance water, sewer, and energy systems; provide universal, high speed, affordable Internet access; restore and enhance public parks; provide good jobs with good wages and benefits through work on infrastructure projects.
The environment: move forward with the Green New Deal, which supports the development of renewable energy and green jobs while aggressively addressing climate change.

The American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure gave the U.S. a grade of D+ and estimated that an investment of $3.6 trillion was needed by 2020. No significant improvement has occurred since the report card was issued. (A new report card, which is done every four years, will be out on March 9, 2019.) ASCE describes infrastructure as the backbone of our economy and notes that there’s a significant backlog of maintenance and a pressing need for modernization. The overall grade is a summary of grades in 16 areas from schools to water and waste systems to transportation and energy systems.

Large portions of our deteriorating infrastructure were built in the 1930s under the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA built electricity generation and distribution systems, constructed dams and water distribution systems, restored ecosystems, built national parks, and rescued the Midwest from the Dust Bowl. During World War II, the government built factories that produced military equipment and supplies, which after the war produced consumer goods. After WWII, the government subsidized housing construction and invested in human capital through the GI bill, which subsidized education for veterans. In the 1950s, public money built the Interstate Highway System and our aviation system. [1]

By the late 1960s, public infrastructure investment began to slow and by the 1980s, with privatization, deregulation, cutting taxes, and shrinking government at the top of the political agenda, the decline in infrastructure investment accelerated. The public seems to have quickly forgotten that it was public investments that built the infrastructure everyone takes for granted in their everyday lives.

Today, recognition is growing that our failure to invest in maintaining and modernizing infrastructure is hurting our global competitiveness and inconveniencing our everyday lives. A growing number of voices are noting that infrastructure investment is needed and would be a much better use of public funds than spending $5 billion on a wall to prevent immigration from Mexico or $1.9 trillion over 10 years on tax cuts (largely for wealthy individuals and corporations) as was done in December 2017.

Investing in green industries, particularly clean and renewable energy, thereby addressing climate change, is one component of infrastructure investment. This is also an opportunity to revitalize the U.S. economy and to foster our ability to compete in the growing international market for green technology.

Infrastructure investment can also be a means to address under-employment and inequality. Although overall unemployment figures are low, many people who lost good, blue collar, union jobs to global trade are still earning less and are less secure economically than they used to be. Many recent college graduates are struggling to find good jobs and unemployment is still high for people without college degrees, especially those who are not white. Ensuring that the many jobs created by infrastructure investment are full-time jobs with good wages and benefits would be an important step toward reducing economic inequality and insecurity.

Although President Trump has expressed support for infrastructure investment, his approach would privatize public infrastructure, unfairly enrich private developers, and fail to build much of the infrastructure that’s need. (See my earlier post, Trump’s Infrastructure Plan: A Boondoggle, for more details.) Furthermore, it would not promote the greening of our economy or reducing inequality.

My next post will review some infrastructure investment proposals, including the Green New Deal, which has been getting a lot of attention lately.

[1] Rynn, J., 6/28/18, “What else we could do with $1.9 trillion,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/article/what-else-could-we-do-19-trillion)

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP: CORPORATE POWER GRAB Part 2

With the full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty now available, groups espousing environmental and workers’ interests state that the actual text is even worse than what they had expected. Environmental groups note that climate change is not even mentioned in the treaty. Workers’ groups note that the TPP will continue the experience under past treaties of US jobs moving overseas to lower wage countries and, therefore, reducing jobs and wages here in the US. This pattern will continue to undermine the middle class. Furthermore, on issues ranging from access to affordable medicines to the open Internet to food safety and labeling (e.g., country of origin and presence of genetically modified organisms [GMOs]), the TPP furthers corporate interests while undermining the interests of the public. [1]

Labor and environmental groups also note that there is no dispute resolution process focused on workers’ rights or environmental protection that parallels the Investor-State Dispute Resolution (ISDS) tribunals for multi-national corporations. If a state or country tries, for example, to ban or limit fracking or stop a coal mine, the fossil fuel corporation can sue the state or national government in the ISDS tribunal to overturn the action or get compensation. There is no similar mechanism for protecting workers or the environment.

The TPP also provides unjustified expansions of intellectual property protections in ways that benefit corporations. It extends and expands patents on drugs so that it will be longer before cheaper, generic versions of drugs are on the market and so that it will be harder for health care insurers to negotiate lower drug prices with the pharmaceutical corporations.

It requires Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to protect copyrights on corporate products such as movies and music. The TPP threatens ISPs with substantial penalties if they fail to shut down or remove protected content from a website that shares copyrighted material. Therefore, ISPs are likely to act in favor corporate copyright holders as soon as a copyright violation is alleged. [2]

The fact that the TPP enshrines corporate power is not a surprise. Corporate executives have been involved in the negotiating process from the beginning while everyone else was locked out. Furthermore, the process of drafting the TPP and now of approving it has been the target of substantial lobbying by multi-national corporations. Over the eight years of negotiations, 487 clients paid lobbyists to meet with or contact lawmakers and administration officials to discuss the TPP. Clients who reported lobbying on the TPP accounted for nearly thirty percent of all reported lobbying expenditures. The TPP has been mentioned 4,875 times in lobbying reports since 2008, when the US began negotiations. Corporations and other groups, such as the US Chamber of Commerce, paid lobbyists $2.6 billion during this period, although that figure includes lobbying expenditures on other issues listed along with the TPP on lobbying reports. The lobbying increased each year as the negotiations continued. Just two organizations mentioned the TPP in their 2008 lobbying reports but that number exploded to 1,317 in 2014. [3]

In a future post, I’ll discuss TPP’s failure to address currency manipulation and its ineffectiveness as a geopolitical response to the growing power of China.

[1] Fulton, D., 11/5/15, “’Worse than we thought’: TPP a total corporate power grab nightmare,” Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/11/05/worse-we-thought-tpp-total-corporate-power-grab-nightmare)

[2] Popular Resistance Newsletter, 11/8/15, “The secretly negotiated TPP will impact your life in many ways; together we can stop it,” (https://www.popularresistance.org/newsletter-10-shocking-realities-of-the-tpp-join-the-revolt/)

[3] Tucker, W., 10/6/15, “Millions spent by 487 organizations to influence TPP outcome,” Center for Responsive Politics (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/10/millions-spent-by-487-organizations-to-influence-tpp-outcome/?utm_source=CRP+Mail+List&utm_campaign=3570922ae8-Newsletter_9_24_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9df8578d78-3570922ae8-210762457)

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP: CORPORATE POWER GRAB

The full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – a trade treaty and much more – was recently released. It was negotiated over 8 years in secret from the public and even Congress, although corporate executives were routinely involved. The treaty includes 12 countries: the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Although the countries in the TPP represent over 40% of the global economy, the impact on trade per se – trade volume, tariffs, and quotas – will be small because the US already has a trade treaties with most of these countries, including all of the larger ones. [1]

Now that the full text has been released, at least 60 days have to pass before Congress can act on it. The Obama administration asked for and Congress agreed to consider this treaty under Fast Track rules. These rules require Congress to vote yes or no on the treaty with no amendments and in a limited time window. However, in the negotiations over approval of Fast Track rules, due to strong push back against them and against the treaty itself, the Obama administration agreed to release the full text of the treaty to Congress and the public for at least 60 days before a Congressional vote.

President Obama says that the TPP includes the strongest provisions of any trade treaty for protecting workers and the environment. [2] However, this is not saying much as past trade treaties have done almost nothing to protect workers and the environment. In addition, the TPP provisions for enforcing the labor and environmental provisions are quite weak. [3]

On the other hand, there are strong protections and enforcement mechanisms for corporate and investor interests. The “set of regulations governing investor rights, intellectual property, and … key service sectors, including financial services, telecommunications, e-commerce, and pharmaceuticals … enshrine the power of corporate capital above all … including labor and even governments.” [4]

Corporations and investors are allowed to sue governments if they feel their ability to make future profits is harmed by a country’s laws, rules, or regulations. They can take these claims to private Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) tribunals that make final, binding decisions and that bypass a country’s own courts and legal system. There is significant experience based on similar provisions in previous treaties that the ISDS process can undermine countries’ environmental and public health laws, as well as require governments to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to multi-national corporations. [5]

Senator Elizabeth Warren has criticized the TPP for giving multinational corporations too much power, in particular by allowing them to settle disputes through the ISDS tribunals and by expanding the ability of the large Wall St. financial corporations to challenge country’s financial rules and regulations. She has also stated that the TPP doesn’t go far enough in enforcing labor, public health, and environmental standards. [6]

Some conservatives are joining Senator Warren and others in expressing concern about the ISDS tribunals because they undermine US sovereignty by giving foreign corporations the right to challenge US laws and regulations. In addition to laws on safety, public health, and environmental standards, any US government law or regulation giving preference to the use of US companies in fulfilling government contracts would be subject to challenge by a foreign corporation under the TPP.

I’ll share more concerns about the TPP in subsequent posts.

My previous posts on the TPP and related matters include:

STOP “TRADE” TREATIES THAT FAVOR BIG MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS, 3/9/15, https://lippittpolicyandpolitics.org/2015/03/09/stop-trade-treaties-that-favor-big-multinational-corporations/

HISTORY AND LEAKS MAKE CASE AGAINST “TRADE” TREATIES, 1/20/14, https://lippittpolicyandpolitics.org/2014/01/20/history-and-leaks-make-case-against-trade-treaties/

STOP FAST TRACK FOR CORPORATE POWER GRAB, 1/13/14, https://lippittpolicyandpolitics.org/2014/01/13/stop-fast-track-for-corporate-power-grab/

TRADE TREATIES NEED OPEN DEBATE, NOT FAST TRACK, 1/8/14, https://lippittpolicyandpolitics.org/2014/01/08/trade-treaties-need-open-debate-not-fast-track/

“TRADE” AGREEMENTS & CORPORATE POWER, 9/13/13, https://lippittpolicyandpolitics.org/2013/09/13/trade-agreements-corporate-power/

“TRADE” AGREEMENT SUPERSIZES CORPORATE POWER, 9/10/13, https://lippittpolicyandpolitics.org/2013/09/10/trade-agreement-supersizes-corporate-power/

CORPORATE RIGHTS IN TRADE TREATIES, 7/22/12, https://lippittpolicyandpolitics.org/2012/07/22/corporate-rights-in-trade-treaties/

TRADE AGREEMENTS PAST AND PRESENT, 7/17/12, https://lippittpolicyandpolitics.org/2012/07/17/trade-agreements-past-and-present/

[1] For more details and background on the TPP and related issues see previous posts that are listed at the end of this post.

[2] Nakamura, D., 11/6 /15, “Release of text of Pacific trade pact does not quiet critics,” The Boston Globe from The Washington Post

[3] Sachs, J.D., 11/10/15, “TPP is too flawed for a simple ‘yes’ vote,” The Boston Globe

[4] Sachs, J.D., 11/1015, see above

[5] Sachs, J.D., 11/1015, see above

[6] Jan, T., 11/6/15, “Warren steps up criticism of the deal,” The Boston Globe

A CARBON TAX IS A WIN-WIN

Air pollution has real costs for all of us, from negative health effects (such as asthma), to climate change, to more severe weather and the damage it creates. We all suffer these effects and pay their costs while the polluters pay nothing. They are allowed to dump their pollution into our air for free. The carbon released into the atmosphere (mainly as carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels) costs us between $40 and $100 per ton and over 5 billion tons of it are poured into our air each year. This adds up to hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

We should put a tax on carbon pollution to help pay for its costs and also to create an incentive to reduce it. The revenue a carbon tax would produce could be used to foster renewable energy sources, to address climate change, to improve and expand mass transportation, or to fund other worthwhile activities.

Instead of investing in the fossil fuel industry – oil, coal, and gas – we should be divesting. Many of us are investing in the fossil fuel industry without evening knowing it. The government should stop using our tax money to provide incentives to fossil fuel companies. We all should ask pension funds, mutual funds, and university endowments we are connected with to divest their holdings in the fossil fuel industry and instead invest in renewable energy or other investments that don’t cause harm.

A carbon tax would put market forces in place that create a win-win: polluters would be paying for at least part of the cost of their pollution and would have an incentive to reduce pollution, while at the same time governments would have revenue to address the damage caused by pollution and to invest in renewable energy.

The air belongs to all of us. And we need clean air to live healthy lives and have a healthy planet. Polluters are fouling our air for free; they should pay the price through a carbon tax.

Implementing a carbon tax is the ninth of Ten Ideas to Save the Economy: The Big Picture presented by Robert Reich and MoveOn.org. (You can watch the 3 minute video at: https://www.facebook.com/moveon/videos/vb.7292655492/10152803963545493/?type=1&theater.)