September 13, 2023

The Poverty Yo-Yo

New Census Bureau statistics show that abandoning the successful anti-poverty interventions of the pandemic has put the nation right back where it started.

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-09-13-poverty-yo-yo/

If the guys from Men in Black wiped your memory clean with a neuralyzer and erased the years 2020 and 2021 (which wouldn’t be such a bad idea), you would have greeted yesterday’s release of the Census Bureau’s 2022 Income, Poverty and Health Insurance reports with mostly a shrug. The Supplemental Poverty Measure (which includes taxes and transfer payments and other factors, providing a more credible picture of a person’s financial picture) shows that poverty rose modestly from 2019 to 2022, from 11.8 percent to 12.4 percent. For children under 18, poverty actually fell slightly, from 12.6 percent to 12.4 percent. There is a problem among seniors, where poverty is rising, from 12.8 percent in 2019 to 14.1 percent in 2022.

Reading these figures, you get the sense of a country that still has nagging problems with poverty, despite near record-low unemployment and national wealth. And you can see the higher cost of living as contributing to this struggle. But if you have any memory of 2020 and 2021, the story becomes quite a bit more tragic. In 2020, the onset of the COVID pandemic led the United States to scramble to construct a working social safety net on the fly, to account for the fact that millions of people would be either out of work or confined to their homes. Congress provided three rounds of cash payments, and boosted weekly unemployment insurance to a level well above poverty, not to mention many workers’ incomes. In 2021, the American Rescue Plan enhanced the Child Tax Credit, increasing its value, making it a monthly advance payment, and removing the work requirement so the very poor were included for the first time.

This all combined with boosted food aid, expansion of the Medicaid rolls, rental assistance, a bigger Earned Income Tax Credit, and other supports. The results are clear in the poverty statistics. It turns out you can cure a lack of money by simply delivering wads of cash. In 2020, the Supplemental Poverty Measure for all people dropped from 11.8 percent to 9.2 percent. In 2021, it fell even further, to 7.8 percent. Only in 2022, after the checks stopped coming and unemployment retreated to its miserly level and the enhanced Child Tax Credit and other measures expired, did poverty shoot back up again. For children, the sequence goes: 12.6 percent in 2019, 9.7 percent in 2020, an incredible 5.2 percent in 2021, and all the way back to 12.4 percent in 2022.

That translates into 5.1 million kids moving back into poverty, with all the trauma and long-term damage associated with that, because Congress couldn’t be bothered to continue a program that was working to eradicate it from American life. Specifically, because congressional Republicans and Joe Manchin, who refused to extend the enhanced Child Tax Credit on the grounds that parents used the money to buy drugs, couldn’t be bothered. “A spike in child poverty like this didn’t need to happen. Congress had the chance to extend these programs that would keep our children fed and boost working families out of poverty. But it didn’t. It’s shameful,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said in a statement.

https://twitter.com/byHeatherLong/status/1701607561513091376
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snapshot of the tweet

September 13, 2023

Congress Needs to Show Samuel Alito and the Supreme Court Who's Boss

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s ethics complaint against Justice Samuel Alito is an opportunity to check the ever-growing political power of nine unelected jurists.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/congress-needs-to-show-samuel-alito-and-the-supreme-court-whos-boss

https://archive.ph/JIc6k



Justice Samuel Alito is making plain his view that the U.S. Supreme Court is not just the highest court in the land but the highest branch of government. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Alito asserted that Congress lacks the authority to impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court, saying, “No provision in the Constitution gives the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”

Ironically, the very circumstances of Alito’s interview demonstrate the high court’s rudderless system of self-guided ethics navigation. The interview was conducted by attorney David Rivkin, Jr., and Wall Street Journal editor James Taranto. Rivkin represents conservative billionaire donor Leonard Leo, who is the subject of congressional inquiries into his involvement with Supreme Court justices. Rivkin also represents a party with a current case pending before SCOTUS.

Following the interview, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) filed an ethics complaint against Alito for violating numerous judicial ethics canons, including the prohibition against commenting on a matter that may come before the court. Whitehouse’s complaint explained that proposed legislation for a Supreme Court ethics code is likely to become a matter that comes before the high court and, therefore, Alito should not have been expressing his views on the matter. It is this very principle that Supreme Court justices nominees have consistently invoked when pressed in confirmation hearings on such issues as whether Roe v. Wade should be overturned and whether SCOTUS should be subject to a code of ethics.

The complaint also pointed out the fact that attorney Rivkin represents Leo in fighting efforts by the Senate Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights to seek information about Leo’s involvement with trips and other perks provided to SCOTUS—such as the luxury fishing trip that Alito went on with Leo that was funded by another billionaire right-wing donor. Rivkin also represents another client with a case pending before SCOTUS and calls for Alito to recuse himself from that case were rejected by Alito in a recent decision.

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September 13, 2023

Beware the Wrong Auto Deal

Today on TAP: An agreement with generous raises that allowed for a low-wage, non-union EV sector would be far worse than a strike.

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-09-13-beware-wrong-auto-deal/



The White House is expressing great confidence, for public consumption, that the UAW strike threatened against the Big Three automakers for midnight tomorrow will not occur. “I’m not worried about a strike,” the president said as he arrived in Philadelphia for a Labor Day speech. “I don’t think it’s going to happen.” His press aides and top officials have been telling reporters the same thing. But the president is whistling past the graveyard. Whether a strike occurs depends heavily on what the White House does behind the scenes in the next 24 hours. And there are ways that even an averted strike could backfire on both Biden and the UAW.

Against a background of record industry profits, the auto union is making two different sets of demands. First, they want a large raise, of over 40 percent over the life of the four-year contract. (This is the same percentage raise that the Big Three’s chief executives have received over the previous four years.) They also want a commitment that the electric-vehicle sector, the future of the industry, must be union and covered by the Big Three’s existing master agreements—including battery suppliers and joint ventures between the Big Three and other battery companies.

The automakers initially proposed raises in the range of 9 to 14 percent, plus a one-time bonus. As of Monday, the two sides were somewhat closer on wages, but had made no progress on the EV transition. “The federal government is pouring billions into the electric vehicle transition, with no strings attached and no commitment to workers,” the UAW’s new militant president Shawn Fain wrote to his members on May 2. “The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom.” Fain is threatening to withhold the union’s endorsement of Biden’s re-election unless the administration uses its leverage to back a just transition to electric vehicles for workers.

According to my sources, the industry strategy is to make the bargaining entirely about wages and working conditions, offer the autoworkers a very generous raise of more than 30 percent, but concede nothing when it comes to the EV sector, and hope that the union takes the deal. That would be a disaster. It would represent the union being bought off for present workers at the expense of an increasingly non-union auto future. Too much of the decline of organized labor over the past several decades has followed exactly this pattern. The industry hope is to put Fain in a bind, since such a deal might look very good to the rank and file. It would take gumption and leadership for Fain to reject the deal and tell the industry to come back with a bargain that included EVs.

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September 13, 2023

The Stealth Attack on the Power to Tax

The Supreme Court could overturn a well-established form of federal taxation.

https://prospect.org/justice/2023-09-12-stealth-attack-power-to-tax/



The Supreme Court has accepted a sleeper case for review that could cost the Treasury seven trillion dollars over a decade if the justices agree with the most extreme constitutional claims about limiting the government’s power to tax. This is the latest front in the war to kill the modern administrative state by “starving the beast” for revenue. The case, Moore v. U.S., challenges one of the few provisions in Trump’s massive 2017 tax cuts for the rich that actually collected revenue to offset some of the losses. The offset provision, known as the Mandatory Repatriation Tax, ended the unlimited deferral of foreign earnings from U.S. taxation when investors or corporations kept profits offshore.

At the time, tax avoidance schemes had accumulated about $2 trillion outside the U.S. With the closing of this loophole. the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated that this new provision would increase federal revenues by $338 billion in the ten fiscal years from 2018 to 2027. Here’s the rub. The tax applies whether or not the earnings are actually distributed to the investor. But the question of whether unrealized gains can be taxed has been a gray area of tax law. The premise that they should not be taxed is the basis for the capital gains loophole, which allows tax to be deferred indefinitely as long as the stock is not cashed in. In the case that the Court accepted for review, Charles and Kathleen Moore had made a modest investment in a friend’s company in India. The retained earnings were left in India. Nonetheless, the IRS taxed them $14,729 as the tax on their share of the profits.



The Moores sued. Their suit cited a 1920 Supreme Court case, Eisner v. Macomber, in which the Court held that a gain in asset value qualifies as income only if it is “received or drawn” by the investor. Their suit was rejected by both the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as being without merit because of long-standing tax collection practices that have been accepted by the courts. But in June, the Supreme Court took the case for review, in an unsigned opinion. According to the Tax Foundation, if the Court strikes down the foreign repatriation provision, that would cost the government about $346 billion over the next decade. And there are other gray areas. For instance, many partnerships leave income earned by the partnership in the firm, but current practice deems it taxable income.

Also, if the Court were to hold that the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, which was just passed in a new form in the Inflation Reduction Act, is an unconstitutional tax on unrealized income, that would reduce government revenues by another estimated $247.8 billion over a decade. The Court might also strike down other taxes that apply to foreign earnings, such as the regime known as Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI), with a revenue loss of another $352 billion. And in the most extreme case, the Court could disallow all taxes on unrealized pass-through income and corporate retained earnings. The cost of that: $5.7 trillion over ten years, or almost $600 billion a year.

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September 13, 2023

3 ways Christian nationalism redefined American politics after 9/11

From Islamophobia to shifts in voting behavior, masculinity, and the Patriot Act, let’s explore the complex interplay of faith and politics that has shaped America's path in the 22 years since the New York terrorist attacks.

https://www.reckon.news/news/2023/09/3-ways-christian-nationalism-redefined-american-politics-after-911.html



Since getting online today, you’ve probably seen posts remembering the events of Sept. 11, 2001. There’s not enough space in this article to contain everything that’s been said about what happened that day. Conspiracies and controversy aside, there’s another layer of 9/11 that deserves its own spotlight: Christian nationalism, a once fringe political view that merges ultra-conservative Christian beliefs with conservative politics that has been embraced by more than half of Republicans, according to Brookings Institution since that tragic day 22 years ago.

Christian nationalists are a diverse group with varying degrees of influence in American politics. They often advocate for policies that align with their interpretation of conservative Christianity, including on issues such as abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, religious freedom, and education. While they are a minority, they can have a big impact on elections by mobilizing their base of supporters. They often form a significant part of the conservative or Republican voting bloc, which can influence the party’s platform and candidate selection. For instance, one group closely associated with Christian nationalism that’s been effective at mobilizing supporters is Moms for Liberty, a group of conservative, mostly white moms that are taking on their local school boards to limit sex education and human rights education in K-12 classrooms. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State called them a “Christian Nationalist Front Group” earlier this year.

Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich to the Florida Ethics Commission, which has power to interpret the state’s political ethics laws and implement the state’s financial disclosure laws. More than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation, either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21%) or sympathizing with those views (33%, according to data from the Public Religion Research Institute, which has been tracking Christian Nationalism’s prevalence in American culture. A Pew Research Center survey also found that 78% White Evangelicals believe they have been “losing” on political issues important to them and more than half of Republicans support Christian Nationalism. This group has been linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the capitol and a number of loud but influential politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

What is Christian nationalism?

Christian nationalism is a political ideology that combines American identity with a conservative form of Christianity. It emphasizes a particular version of Christianity that aligns with ultra-conservative values and views “people like us,” who are primarily white, conservative Christians and natural-born citizens, as the chosen ones who should control the political process. This ideology often seeks to privilege and ascribe moral worth to this specific group over others, promoting policies and actions that limit the participation of certain Americans in civic life, including voting. Christian nationalism is seen as a threat to a pluralistic and democratic society because it promotes anti-democratic goals and values, often using religious narratives and symbols to advance its agenda.

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September 13, 2023

Sinister GOP Propaganda Threatens Our Schools

Republicans are attempting to indoctrinate school children, and it's going to backfire.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/sinister-gop-propaganda-threatens



Judging by their actions, Republicans appear to genuinely despise their children and grandchildren. It’s not entirely clear why they despise their offspring, but it is indisputable that they do. From taking away free school lunches, a pathology that hurts white Republican children more than anyone else, Republicans have been engaged in a decades-long war in defunding public schools, with entirely disastrous results. More recently, Republicans are waging war on school curriculums. First it was censoring history, and now they are pushing hardcore right-wing propaganda in a bid to indoctrinate a generation of American children. This is not going to end well for them.

History from the victor’s perspective

Republicans believe that public education has long neglected the perspective of conservative men (no, seriously) and they are hard at work remedying this injustice. A prime example of this would be Florida incorporating PragerU videos into its K-12 curriculum this year. If you’re not familiar with PragerU, it is the very definition of indoctrination. Don’t take my dirty liberal word for it. Here is Dennis Prager quoted by Vanity Fair:



I’m old enough to remember when Republicans clutched their pearls over the idea of children being indoctrinated. Now, they are bragging about indoctrinating children. So how ugly are these new lesson plans? Extremely:



This is how you teach a generation of children, including Black children, that the Confederate South was the noble victim of the evil North’s “War of Aggression.” Florida is not the only state doing this. Oklahoma and New Hampshire are considering it and there will be other Republican-controlled hellholes that almost certainly follow suit. Republicans are very aware of how effective this is because Southern Boomers are living proof of it. Or did you think whites in the South are genetically disposed towards violent racism? Of course not. This was the air they breathed for decades. It started at home but it was reinforced every day at school.

Children are our future? ........

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September 12, 2023

Mid-century Zero House in London imbued with "Kubrick feel"

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/09/05/zero-house-mid-century-renovation-london/











Timber ceilings and a fireplace clad in mahogany tiles feature in this London house, which its owners have renovated to honour the dwelling's mid-century roots and nod to the colour palette of Stanley Kubrick films. Located in north London's Stanmore, Zero House belongs to recording artists Ben Garrett and Rae Morris, whose former home in Primrose Hill is the Dezeen Award-winning Canyon House designed by Studio Hagen Hall.









Unlike their previous dwelling, Garrett and Morris updated Zero House themselves but adopted the same mid-century palette when creating its interiors. "The house was built between 1959 and 1961 by a Hungarian architect," said Garrett, who explained that the original design was informed by Californian Case Study Houses such as Charles and Ray Eames's 1949 home and design studio.









"It's a great example of a number of imaginative mid-century domestic houses dotted around metro-land," he told Dezeen. "Our main aim was to freshen it up relatively in keeping with the time but not to feel like we were living in a total time capsule." The pair maintained the matchbox timber ceilings that run throughout the two-storey home, which were stained with a dark reddish tone alongside stained wooden doors.









Slim mahogany tiles clad the floor-to-ceiling fireplace in the living room, which features the same micro-cement flooring found at Canyon House and opens out onto a lush garden. Garrett and Morris also maintained the home's many exposed brick walls and inserted geometric timber shelving that displays eclectic ornaments including amorphous vases and a colourful set of nesting dolls.

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September 11, 2023

Biden, On 9/11, Says Americans Must Not Succumb to the Poisonous Politics of Difference and Division

The president called on Americans to defend democracy in remarks at an Alaskan military base

https://themessenger.com/politics/9-11-anniversary-president-joe-biden-calls-for-unity



President Joe Biden, speaking at a military base in Alaska, marked the 22nd anniversary of September 11 with a call for unity – and a reminder to remain vigilant in the fight to preserve democracy. “It shouldn’t take a national tragedy to remind us of the power of national unity, but that’s how we truly honor those we lost on 9/11 – by remembering what we can do together,” he said. Biden said the “central lesson” of 9/11 is that there’s nothing the U.S. can’t accomplish when Americans defend democracy. Terrorists failed “but we must remain vigilant,” he said, because of a “rising tide of hatred and extremism and political violence.”

“It's more important than ever that we come together around the principle of American democracy, regardless of our political backgrounds,” he said. “We must not succumb to the poisonous politics of difference and division. Me must never allow ourselves to be pulled apart by petty manufactured grievances. We must continue to stand united.” Biden added, “Always remember, American democracy depends not on some of us, but on all of us.”

Biden delivered his remarks in Anchorage before more than 1,000 U.S. service members, first responders and their families. His speech came during his return trip to Washington from the G20 Summit in India and his meetings with leaders in Vietnam. “These trips are a central part of how we're going to ensure the United States is flanked by the broadest array of allies and partners who will stand with us and deter any threat to our security, to build a world that is safer for all of our children – something that today of all days, we're reminded of, is not a given,” he said.

Biden noted how, earlier in the day, he visited a memorial honoring the late Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who was a prisoner of war for more than five years during the Vietnam War. He recalled how he and his longtime friend – “like two brothers” – would “argue like hell” when they served together in the Senate and then go to lunch together. He said McCain, as he was dying, kissed him, told him he loved him and asked him to say his eulogy. He admired McCain, he said, because he put duty to his country first, above his party, politics and his own person.

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September 11, 2023

We May Not Negotiate Prices for Ten Drugs After All

Rules that exempt drugs from Medicare negotiation if there’s ‘meaningful’ generic competition could whittle down the effect of the program.

https://prospect.org/health/2023-09-11-we-may-not-negotiate-prices-for-ten-drugs-after-all/



The day that the Biden administration revealed the first ten drugs under its Medicare price negotiation process, the companies that own and market those drugs saw their stock prices go up. “Today is a nonevent,” said one industry analyst. Part of this is because the actual negotiated prices won’t take effect until 2026, too far in the future for Mr. Market to blink an eye. But there’s another factor that has been highlighted: Some of the drugs are going to face generic competition before we ever get to 2026. If that competition is legitimate, those drugs will no longer be eligible for price negotiation. And under the rules of the law, the administration can’t select another drug to get the number back up to ten.

All that means that the ten drugs being negotiated could be whittled down to eight, or six, or even fewer. To the average senior, it doesn’t matter if their prescription prices go down because of a new generic on the market or because of a government negotiation. And if the program makes it harder for drug companies to avoid competition, that’s certainly positive. But there’s an opportunity cost here. If drugs were already scheduled for competition and they’re put in the negotiation bucket, the result could be fewer drugs with their prices forced downward.

The real problem is that those deciding what drugs to negotiate on are hemmed in by the terms of the law. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) cannot select a drug for negotiation until seven years after its launch for small-molecule drugs, and up to 11 years after launch for so-called “biologics.” In the future, this will incentivize higher launch prices, so drug companies can make back their investment early before the government can react. For now, the three-year lag between the negotiation announcement and the prices taking effect makes it difficult to choose the most outrageously priced drugs while making sure that they won’t face generic competition before negotiations are complete.



One tactic the drug companies might use is to invite “competition” in name only, for a generic alternative that isn’t heavily marketed or priced aggressively, in order to ward off negotiation. This is where regulation from CMS will really matter. “CMS is being very clear in articulating that they will be critical about ensuring that bona fide marketing is actually taking place,” said Steve Knievel, an advocate with Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. CMS won’t “consider it sufficient [just] for a product to have a generic or a biosimilar that has received approval from FDA.”

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September 10, 2023

BEST in the World: Toyota FJ & G40-S Land Cruisers From Colombia - Capturing Car Culture

Larry Chen travels to Bogotá, Colombia, to visit the world famous Toyota Land Cruiser shop, The FJ Company. They use a modern GRJ 70 series Land Cruisers and merge it with a vintage FJ Land Cruiser to make a supercharged modern Land Cruiser with the vintage look we all know and love. Follow along as Larry Chen walks you through the process of how a 2023 FJ Land Cruiser is made.