Jan. 22, 2024 ❧ DeSantis bows out, a power company controls the news, and "Cease Fire" on the ballot
Plus British laser weapons, Lenin vs. Hitler, and a mysterious island of cats
Let’s take a spin in the Newsmobile.
STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
PROGRESSIVE LAWMAKERS INTRODUCE BILL TO TAX EXCESSIVE CEO PAY
A group of lawmakers led by Senator Bernie Sanders (R-VT) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) is introducing a new corporate tax on companies that give giant salaries to their CEOs while giving peanuts to average employees. According to Jake Johnson in Common Dreams:
The Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act would incrementally hike a company's tax rate based on the size of its CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio. For companies that pay their chief executives more than 50 times as much as their median workers but less than 100 times more, the corporate tax rate would go up by 0.5 percentage points. If a company's ratio is more than 500 to 1, its tax rate would go up by 5 percentage points.
The United States has a greater disparity between rich and poor than any other nation in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a divide that has grown dramatically over the last 40 years. This past year, the Federal Reserve reported that the share of the wealth owned by America’s top 1 percent of earners was greater than the combined wealth of America’s “middle class” —the middle 60 percent of earners. America’s poorest quintile, meanwhile, has for close to a decade had “negative wealth” — that is, they have more debt to their names than assets. The accelerating divide between rich and poor shifted into hyperdrive during the pandemic. Billionaires are $1.6 trillion richer now than they were in 2020.
There are numerous culprits in this. But an obvious one is that wages have been largely static for the last half century while CEO pay has ballooned—according to the Economic Policy Institute: “In 2022, CEOs were paid 344 times as much as a typical worker in contrast to 1965 when they were paid 21 times as much as a typical worker.” According to the AFL-CIO’s executive pay tracker, some companies, like Apple and McDonalds pay their CEOs more than a thousand times as much as the median employee, while Universal, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Mattel, among several others pay their CEOs more than 2,000 times as much as the median employee. Simultaneously, loopholes in the tax code and tax cuts for the richest Americans have meant that those who are already the wealthiest get away with paying a smaller percentage of their incomes in taxes than those with almost nothing. A recent Oxfam report brought this into stark relief with a few startling statistics:
According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent
According to leaked tax returns highlighted in a ProPublica investigation, the 25 richest Americans paid $13.6 billion in taxes from 2014-2018—a “true” tax rate of just 3.4 percent on $401 billion of income.
The sponsors of the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act are hoping that the legislation will combat the problems of wages and tax avoidance at once. They estimate that it could bring in an extra $150 billion in government revenues over ten years. At the same time, they hope it will incentivize companies to reduce their CEO-worker pay ratios by increasing wages.
A statement from Sanders’ office reads:
“The American people understand that today we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society where the very rich are doing phenomenally well, while working families continue to struggle to put a roof over their heads, feed their families, and pay for the basic necessities of life…"At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the American people are demanding that large, profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes and treat their employees with the dignity and respect they deserve. That is what this legislation will begin to do.”
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FIGHTING BACK
“CEASE FIRE” RUNS FOR PRESIDENT
In the last few weeks, a lot of media attention has been paid to the New Hampshire Republican primary, in which Nikki Haley is preparing to face off against Donald Trump. It’s the Democratic primary, though, that’s getting really interesting. You see, Joe Biden isn’t actually on the ballot—and there’s an insurgent campaign to write in “cease fire” instead.
This long, strange story begins last February, when the DNC decided to make South Carolina the first state on its primary calendar. Ostensibly, this was a move to “put Black voters at the front of the process”—but according to Representative Jim Clyburn, it was also Biden’s way of “avoiding embarrassment” by picking a state that heavily favored him in 2020. There’s just one problem: New Hampshire state law requires that its primary be the “first in the nation,” regardless of what other states or the political parties themselves do. So they’ve opted to hold a “rogue primary” today, January 23rd—and Biden isn’t technically running.
Several alternative candidates have jumped in to fill the void. The two most serious contenders are Marianne Williamson and Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who’s received an influx of Silicon Valley money in the last few days. There are also joke candidates like Vermin Supreme and Brooklyn rapper Paperboy Prince, and complete enigmas like Donald Picard (presumably an ancestor of Jean-Luc.) The most interesting candidate, though, isn’t a person at all. It’s “cease fire.”
The “cease fire” campaign started back in December, when Andru Volinsky—a former lawyer for Bernie Sanders—wrote a letter to the Concord Monitor:
I intend to write in the words “cease fire” on my presidential primary ballot. This is not an endorsement of the violence that occurred on October 7th, nor an effort to undermine the president. It is a matter of using the agency that the primary affords me to vote my conscience. I would like President Biden to do well in the general election. My concern is with Israel’s annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza and this administration’s support of that misguided and monstrous effort. The U.S. is not doing all it can to end the killing of innocent civilians and the complete destruction of hospitals and other infrastructure. The level of destruction makes me wonder if this is about chasing terrorists or making Gaza unlivable… It is time to drastically change course, immediately commence a humanitarian cease fire and let Netanyahu face the music for his failed leadership. I hope a few fellow dreamers will share this letter with their friends and join me by writing “cease fire” on their ballots.
Since then, the effort has gained a surprising amount of traction, with supporters reportedly buying 1,500 yard signs to plant throughout the Granite State. In most cases, write-in campaigns are a long shot—but this time, Biden’s supporters are running one themselves, and Joe is a lot less popular than the abstract concept of nonviolence. In The Nation, John Nichols writes that New Hampshire voters have an opportunity to “send Biden a powerful message about Gaza.” Wouldn’t it be remarkable if “cease fire” beat the sitting President of the United States?
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ Good riddance to Florida Man: Ron DeSantis has dropped out. The Governor ran one of the nastiest, most vitriolic right-wing campaigns for President in living memory, centered mostly around his hatred of “wokeness” and trans rights. It got him precisely squat. Zero. The Big Goose Egg. It turns out American voters, facing soaring grocery costs and the threat of war in the Middle East, aren’t particularly compelled by a man in his forties who’s obsessed with controlling which restroom high schoolers can use. The DeSantis campaign was one big blunder, from its launch on a buggy, audio-only Twitter space to that awkward moment when a DeSantis staffer started retweeting neo-Nazi memes about him—but really, the core problem was Ron himself, and his bizarre personal mannerisms. He’s now decided to pack up his 8 delegates and go home. In The Nation, Jeet Heer sums him up:
Last Sunday, DeSantis commented on Trump’s bullying by telling an Iowa crowd, “You can be the most worthless Republican in America. But if you kiss the ring, he’ll say you’re wonderful.” The governor then added, “You can be the strongest, most dynamic, successful Republican and conservative in America ― but if you don’t kiss that ring, then he’ll try to trash you.” Exactly one week after these damning words, DeSantis endorsed Trump. In a rare gesture of magnanimity, Trump announced that the nickname Ron DeSanctimonious has been “officially retired.” Since DeSantis was already groveling, there was no need to rub it in.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ The Massachusetts Senate has passed a bill to ban declawing cats. In contentious political times, this was a rare thing: a piece of legislation that passed unanimously. Designated as S.2552, the new bill would impose penalties of $1,000 for a first offense, $1,500 for a second offense, and $2,500 for anything beyond that—together with “disciplinary action” against any veterinarian who performs declawings. This is a much-needed reform, because the practice commonly known as “declawing” is really a horrific form of animal abuse. It’s not just the cat’s claws that are surgically removed, but the entire first bone of their toes, something that can leave them with weakened muscles, difficulty walking, and long-term chronic pain. PETA describes it as a “violent, invasive, painful, and unnecessary mutilation,” and it’s already banned in many countries, including Germany, Australia, Greece, Ireland, and Finland, together with two U.S. states: New York and Maryland. If S.2552 passes, Massachusetts will become the third—but for the sake of our feline friends, let’s make it all 50!
❧ The Environmental Protection Agency has dropped discrimination investigations out of apparent fear that it could lead a change in court precedents surrounding civil rights law and environmental justice. The EPA had previously been looking into several cases around the country in which communities of color were disproportionately harmed by pollution as possible violations of the Civil Rights Act. In one case in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” — an 85-mile-area that is one of America’s most polluted—the EPA opened an investigation into its the state’s permit practices, which had been allowing contaminating facilities to be built in areas mostly populated by people of color. However, after Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry brought a lawsuit against the EPA for attempting to use civil rights law in this way, the EPA dropped its investigation. Soon after, it dropped other civil rights investigations into Flint, Michigan’s water system and a Union Pacific wood processing facility in Houston that produced contamination. The Intercept reports that attorneys have said:
They are concerned about the possibility of similarly disappointing outcomes in Detroit, St. Louis, eastern North Carolina, and elsewhere. Experts say that the EPA appears to be shying away from certain Civil Rights Act investigations in states that are hostile to environmental justice, due to fears that Landry’s suit or similar efforts could make their way to the conservative Supreme Court. If that happened, the court appears ready to rule against the EPA — a verdict that could not only undermine the agency’s authority, but also significantly limit the ability of all federal agencies to enforce civil rights law.
According to an August 2023 analysis by Capital B, of more than 100 brought to the agency, the Biden EPA had only resolved one single civil rights complaint since he took office in 2021. Of the dismissed cases, Capital B writer Adam Mahoney wrote:
The Environmental Protection Agency’s recent dismissals of three cases that would fix some of the problems in “Cancer Alley” underscores a difficult complaint process that works against Black communities’ best interests…In some instances, investigations have lasted decades as residents have suffered through health issues and industrial polluters have made millions.Two months after the head of the EPA declared in April that he would “never stop fighting” for residents in “Cancer Alley,” the agency dismissed two civil rights complaints from people in the majority-Black St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana, where residents have the country’s highest cancer risk from air pollution. These neighborhoods are left breathing dirty air, drinking contaminated water, and living amongst toxic soil without anyone in government or industry taking accountability.
⚜ LONG READ: An investigation by Miranda Green for The Guardian’s ‘Floodlight’ discovered how the Alabama Power company runs a news service and bought up a local Black newspaper. The company has suppressed stories about high electric bills and utility-related pollution:
In the more than a decade since Alabama regulators allowed a landfill to take in tons of waste from coal-burning power plants around the US, neighbors in the majority-Black community of Uniontown frequently complain of thick air so pungent it makes their eyes burn…Residents of the former plantation town complain of high rates of kidney failure and neuropathy – two symptoms of exposure to coal ash, whose toxic byproduct contains mercury and arsenic. The controversy has been covered for years in local and national news outlets, including a civil rights case Eaton’s group filed – and lost – to close the landfill.
Just last year, coal ash in the state drew national attention when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tentatively denied a state clean-up proposal that it found to be too weak for waste coming in part from its largest electricity provider – Alabama Power.
But neither the news from Uniontown, nor the EPA rejection, ever appeared in the Birmingham Times – a historic African American newspaper – or on the online-only Alabama News Center, an investigation by Floodlight found. A search for “coal ash” in the Birmingham Times yields just one reprinted story from HuffPost, and it’s a reference to coal ash in another state.
Both news outlets have financial ties to the main subject of those stories, Alabama Power.
For decades, Alabama Power has sowed influence across the state, according to interviews with more than two dozen former and current reporters, civil rights activists, utility employees and environmentalists.
What’s happening in Alabama is an example of how special interests have taken advantage of the diminishing reach and influence of shrinking mainstream newsrooms in the US. In their place have sprung up fake “pink slime” news sites operated by political interests; a utility that secretly created news outlets to attack its critics; and a Florida publisher who accepts payments for positive coverage.
This investigation into power companies infiltrating local media follows Floodlight’s revelation earlier this month about how utilities wield influence among civil rights groups.
In the last decade, nearly a dozen local reporters and editors were hired to staff the two Alabama news outlets. A Floodlight review of the content since the utility founded the Alabama News Center in 2015 shows it publishes overwhelmingly positive stories about the power company.
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ The British military has built a laser weapon. On the 19th, the U.K. Ministry of Defence announced that it had conducted a successful test of the DragonFire system, a “directed energy weapon” that uses powerful lasers to destroy its targets. The BBC describes the weapon as a “low-cost alternative to missiles,” and suggests that its most likely use will be to bring down unmanned “kamikaze” drones like the ones currently being used by the Houthis in the Red Sea. The term “low-cost,” though, is misleading. True, the DragonFire system reportedly uses “less than £10” in electricity every time it fires, making it significantly cheaper than the surface-to-air missiles that are currently used against hostile drones. But the cost to develop it was at least £100 million, the result of a “joint investment by the Ministry of Defence and industry.” That’s a huge expense for an experimental laser gun, and it comes at a time when the U.K. is suffering a severe cost-of-living crisis, with a record number of people relying on food banks to survive. The NHS, too, is chronically underfunded and understaffed. But instead of addressing the basic needs of British citizens, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative party has decided to blow the public’s money on fancy military hardware. Apparently there’s no money to feed or heal people, but unlimited money for arms manufacturers—a clear sign of a government that stopped caring about human life a long time ago.
❧ Greenland is losing around 30 million metric tons of ice per hour. That’s 20 percent more than anyone previously realized, and the news is causing a stir among scientists. In a new study published by the journal Nature, a team of researchers used AI to evaluate 236,328 different observations of glacier positions, including both satellite photos and radar measurements. They found “ubiquitous acceleration” in the rate that chunks of glacier fall off and become icebergs, a process known as “calving”—to the extent that Greenland has actually lost 43 billion additional metric tons of ice every year, on top of the 221 billion that we already knew about. That’s a lot of ice, and although scientists think its direct impact on sea levels will be minimal, it may be enough to disrupt the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), one of the most important networks of warm and cold ocean currents. A 2018 study showed that these currents are the weakest they’ve been in the last 1,600 years, and last July, scientists estimated that the Gulf Stream current could collapse entirely any time between 2025 and 2095. (And, keep in mind, that was before they knew about all the extra ice melting.) Nobody’s exactly sure what would happen if the AMOC currents slowed to a halt—but unless we take serious action to stop the burning of fossil fuels, and fast, we may find out.
WHY DO EXTREME COLD EVENTS HAPPEN IN A WARMING CLIMATE?
Depending on where you are in the world, the last week or so may have been unusually cold. Here in New Orleans, temperatures have dipped into the high 20s on the Fahrenheit scale, something that almost never happens. (Our editorial team has been forced to break into the Strategic Sock, Scarf, and Sweater Stockpile, or SSSSS.) Elsewhere, multiple feet of snow have piled up in places like Buffalo, New York, and really huge icicles have been forming around the Great Lakes region. Amidst all this, you might hear people say things like, “If global warming is such a problem, why can I see my own breath?” Fortunately, climate science has an answer! When the Earth gets warmer, it tends to destabilize the polar vortex—a huge circular current of air around the North Pole—making it get, to use the scientific term, all wobbly. Areas that are usually cold get a blast of warm air, but the opposite is also true: air from the arctic flows down to places like Texas that are typically hot. So, don’t worry, climate change hasn’t gone anywhere!
❧ A new law proposed in the Russian Duma would allow the government to seize the property of those who criticize the war in Ukraine. According to The Guardian, the bill confiscates the assets and property of those convicted of “discrediting the Russian army” and calling for foreign sanctions against Russia, among other crimes. It also allows journalists who write “fake information” about the war (read: any information that may paint the Russian war effort in a bad light) to have their compensation, cars, and homes seized. The bill has majority support in the Kremlin and is likely to pass into law. And its supporters are have not minced words about its goals. In one chilling quote, the chair of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, said it was
“necessary to punish scoundrels, including cultural figures, who support Nazis, pour dirt on our country, soldiers and officers involved in the [war]. “Anyone who tries to destroy Russia, betrays it, must be punished as they deserve and compensate the damage caused to the country at the expense of their property.”
Russia has cracked down with full force against its sizeable anti-war movement. According to a July 2023 Amnesty International report, more than 20,000 individuals had already been subject to “heavy reprisals” including fines and prison sentences for speaking out against the war. Many Russians have fled into exile: one estimate found that during 2022, more than 1 million people fled Russia with many saying they felt personal guilt or responsiblity for the war.
⚜ LONG READ: Israel's war cabinet wants an endless war to help their political fortunes. In Ha’aretz, Yossi Melman writes:
"The war has become the objective," former Shin Bet security agency director Ami Ayalon told me in a recent Haaretz interview. The statement attracted wide attention in Israel and around the world among about half a million readers and followers on social media. And now that we have passed the 100-day milestone since Hamas' surprise October 7 attack, the statement resonates all the more strongly. Many of the country's decision-makers appear enamored of a situation in which the war continues with no end in sight and consider it an unavoidable necessity. At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that the war will continue for many more months. That's no surprise.
Since the initial weeks of the war, many Israelis have sensed that war's declared aims have been largely unrealistic and that Netanyahu's hidden objectives are personal and political – evading testifying at his criminal corruption trial, preventing a resumption of the protests against his government and disrupting any attempt to hold early elections…
But Netanyahu isn't alone in his efforts to prolong the war. He has partners among the political and military leadership. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz, IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, Shin Bet security agency director Ronen Bar and other senior Shin Bet officers and IDF generals share the wish to prolong the war, each for his own reasons.
Gallant comes right behind Netanyahu in bearing responsibility for the political and security failure of October 7. Even if he deserves credit for warning last March that the government's proposed judicial coup was damaging national security, he's a full partner to the cabinet's policies, procedures and decisions. After issuing his warning and being fired – and restored to office following a spontaneous protest – Gallant has continued to loyally serve Netanyahu's malicious government…
…Strategically, Israel is losing the war. It has not managed, as Netanyahu and Gallant had promised, to bring about the collapse of Hamas and is now facing in a war of attrition. Statements made both before and during the war that Israel can fight simultaneously on multiple fronts are being proven to be vain boasting. Israel is perceived as a weak country, with 150,000 of its citizens internally displaced refugees.
Talk of unity and the slogan "together we will win" are hollow lip service. Israel remains a divided and fractured country run by a reckless government that hasn't changed and doesn't intend to change direction and is unwilling to learn any real lessons. Evidence of that can be seen in the allocation of funding based on government coalition agreements and patronage appointments as well as a budget that doesn't hold future promise.
BAD TAKE OF THE WEEK
“Why isn’t Lenin as reviled as Hitler?”
This question was posed by a Mr. James Bartholomew of The Spectator, who goes on to call Lenin—not Hitler—“the most disastrous leader of the 20th century.” Mr. Bartholomew’s work for the Spectator appears to consist almost entirely of histrionic Left-bashing (plus the occasional complaint about his golf course being too woke), but he’s not the first pundit to equate these two figures. Back in July 2023, a Seattle Times columnist named David Volodzko was fired after he claimed that Hitler was “less evil than Lenin because Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful.”
It’s unclear why this particular brand of stupidity is in vogue. Still, for the Bartholomews and Volodzkos of the world, we’ll try to explain the obvious. Hitler is uniquely reviled because he committed the Holocaust, murdering more than 6 million European Jews and millions of others in a premeditated act of genocide. It’s true, there are legitimate reasons to dislike Lenin, who established a secret police force and killed many of his political opponents—and socialists and anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman have been among the first to make those criticisms. But at the end of the day, Lenin did not commit the Holocaust. So if you say that Hitler was ultimately less “disastrous,” you are practicing Holocaust revisionism. This is a bad thing to do. You do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to Hitler. We hope this clears things up.
CAT FACT OF THE WEEK
Deep in the rugged waters of the southern Indian Ocean, one of the world’s most remote archipelagos is full of feral cats.
The Kerguelen Islands, nicknamed the “Desolation Islands,” sit more than 2,000 miles away from any other civilization and is only visited by ship four times each year. The dreary, windswept French possession has no permanent inhabitants, though it is peopled year-round by around 50 to 100 scientists at a small research base.
It is also home to the world’s most remote community of cats, who descend from those brought to the island aboard French ships between 1952 and 1956. According to a report by one French senator, Christian Gaudin in 2010, “At the beginning of the 1950s, two or three cats were introduced onto the base, there are now between 6 and 7,000.”
This explosion in population has been aided by the fact that the island has no known predators but has plenty of sea birds to snack on. Because the cats have been introduced so recently to the ecosystem, the seabirds there have not even evolved to recognize them as threats. Unfortunately, while the felines have thrived, their presence has led at least ten species of petrels on the island to become extinct. While the cats of Kerguelen are a nightmare for the bird population there, the humans there are so endeared to them that they have put cats on the island’s novelty currency (though there are nearly a hundred cats on the island for every human, so we can’t be sure that the addition of cats to the money was entirely voluntary).
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Fact-checking by Justin Ward. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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