Stephan: All those suffering the mental illness of Trumpism, don't seem capable of understanding that Trump, with utter contempt for their wellbeing, is trying to screw them right and left. Here is yet another example of what he is doing as he walks off history's stage.
Six days after President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notified food safety groups that it was proposing a regulatory change to speed up chicken factory processing lines, a change that would allow companies to sell more birds. An earlier USDA effort had broken down on concerns that it could lead to more worker injuries and make it harder to stop germs like salmonella.
Ordinarily, a change like this would take about two years to go through the cumbersome legal process of making new federal regulations. But the timing has alarmed food and worker safety advocates, who suspect the Trump administration wants to rush through this rule in its waning days.
Even as Trump and his allies officially refuse to concede the Nov. 3 election, the White House and federal agencies are hurrying to finish dozens of regulatory changes before Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20. The rules range from long-simmering administration priorities to last-minute scrambles and affect everything from creature comforts like showerheads and clothes washers to life-or-death issues like federal […]
Stephan: The American tax system is grotesquely skewed to favor the rich in every way. Middle class and poor people are much more likely to be audited. The tax code is written in such a way that there are numerous loopholes and off-ramps that allow the rich to go untaxed. As this report lays out, the system is so out of whack that it saves hundreds of billions of dollars for the rich. Hopefully, we are going to see change in this bias during the Biden administration -- providing all you people in Georgia make sure two democrats go to the Senate as a result of the run-off.
Elon Musk and companion
A first-of-its-kind international report released Friday shows how wealthy countries are the primary drivers of tax revenue loss each year—contributing to $427 billion in losses to public funding annually and affecting the ability of countries all over the world, including developing nations, to provide services to the public.
The Tax Justice Network’s inaugural State of Tax Justice report is the first study to thoroughly measure how much money each country loses each year to corporate tax abuse and private tax evasion, using data that was self-reported by corporations to tax authorities.
The report notes that in light of the global coronavirus pandemic, the loss of revenue to tax abuse and evasion has major implications for public health efforts. One nurse’s annual salary is lost every second to tax havens—the equivalent of 34 million nurses’ salaries each year.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1329665779177041920&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alternet.org%2F2020%2F11%2Fbillionaire-tax%2F&partner=rebelmouse&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
“A global tax system that loses over $427 billion a year is not a broken system, it’s a system programmed to fail,” said Alex Cobham, chief executive of the Tax Justice Network.
“Under pressure from corporate giants and tax haven […]
Stephan: Perhaps because we have just spent the last four years trapped in the Trumpian nightmare of a president who is a climate change denier, many Americans don't seem to realize what is coming. But coming it is. The video at the head of the article is not the most professional production, but the information it contains is worth your time, and I urge you to watch it.
Watch this video. The narration is annoying, but the information is critical, just look at Florida.
Over the past year, the advent of a professional economy powered by people working from home has quickened the conversation about where to live, particularly among millennials. “Is now the right time to buy property in Minnesota?” “Is Buffalo the new place to be?”
How important is proximity to fresh water? Should you risk moving somewhere that has fire seasons? How far north do you have to go to find liveable summers?
Americans have defied the norms of climate migration seen elsewhere in the world, flocking to cities like Phoenix, Houston and Miami that face some of the greatest risks from soaring temperatures and rising sea levels.
Those patterns seem likely to change.
New data from the Rhodium Group, analyzed by ProPublica, shows that climate damage will wreak havoc on the southern third of the country, erasing more than 8% of its economic output and likely turning migration from a choice to an imperative.
The data shows that the warming climate will alter everything from how we grow food to where people can plausibly live. Ultimately, millions of people will be […]
Stephan: This would be a horrifying article about any nation, but that America, the richest country in the world, is in such a decayed state that more than half of its households are worried about having enough to eat is preposterous. And yet that is the reality.
Volunteers help load food as vehicles arrive to pick up food supplies and essential items during a Feeding South Florida drive-through food distribution at Miramar Regional Park on November 19, 2020, in Miramar, Florida. Johnny Louis / Getty
More than half of households in the United States are not “very confident” that they can afford to put food on the table as the holidays approach, according to federal Census data. Meanwhile, what remains of federal pandemic relief programs is set to expire before the end of year.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far refused to take up a $2.2 trillion economic relief package passed by Democrats months ago, even after Democrats attempted to compromise with Republicans and lowered the price tag by $1.2 trillion. If Congress fails to act, an estimated 12 million workers will lose federal emergency unemployment benefits when they expire on December 26 — on top of the 4.6 million who will have exhausted their benefits before then, according to the Century Foundation.
The COVID-19 pandemic has entered a terrifying phase in recent weeks, forcing some state […]
Stephan: The meat industry is a disgusting business. It was made clear during the pandemic that these corporations care nothing for their workers, and even less for the animals and fowl upon which the industry is founded. Finally, it has gotten so bad that the courts have noted the vileness.
Pigs in a pen at a farm in Ayden, North Carolina. Credit: Callaghan O’Hare/Bloomberg/Getty
A US judge has issued a blistering condemnation of industrial farming practices. The judgment comes as one US meat giant finally settles after a six-year legal battle with plaintiffs who sued the company over the stench, flies, buzzards and truck traffic coming from its industrial swine farms in North Carolina.
J Harvie Wilkinson III, one of the judges in a case that pitted locals against the Smithfield subsidiary formerly known as Murphy-Brown, decried the “outrageous conditions” at Kinlaw Farms, the operation at the center of the lawsuit – “conditions that there is no reason to suppose were unique to that facility”.
“How did it come to this?” wrote Wilkinson, who was nominated to the fourth US circuit court of appeals by then president Ronald Reagan and has served since 1984. “What was missing from Kinlaw Farms – and from Murphy-Brown – was the recognition that treating animals better will benefit humans. What was neglected is that animal welfare and human welfare, far from advancing at cross-purposes, are actually […]
