January 10, 2022

Regulation: The Low-and-Slow Approach to Food Safety Reform Keeps Going Up in Smoke

December 23, 2021

( Full disclosure, this story is NOT an easy read. Be aware before you read more at the link: This story discusses a child’s fatal case of food poisoning. )


The U.S. has one agency that regulates cheese pizza and another that oversees pepperoni pizza. Efforts to fix the food safety system have stalled again and again.

For Nancy Donley, the fight for safer food started one agonizing summer night in 1993. She and her family had hamburgers for dinner, and soon after, her 6-year-old son Alex complained of a stomachache. Within hours, he had curled himself into a ball and was begging his mother for comfort.

Excerpt: And over the last two decades, legislators have introduced 10 bills that proposed creating a single agency. But none of them stood a chance.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-low-and-slow-approach-to-food-safety-reform-keeps-going-up-in-smoke?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

January 8, 2022

Uber CEO Admits Company Can Afford Labor Protections for Drivers

Dara Khosrowshahi told investors that Uber “can make any model work” in response to new EU regulations — a departure from the gig employer’s public stance.

Lee Fang


January 7, 2022

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi reassured investors concerned about new European Union regulations in December, telling a group of bankers that his company can continue to thrive even under rules that would force it to hire drivers as employees.

“We can make any model work,” Khosrowshahi said when asked about potential EU legislation that would require Uber to designate drivers as employees or provide additional rights such as vacation time and a pension.

Speaking by video at a December 14 “fireside chat” hosted by the Swiss bank UBS, Khosrowshahi told investors that recent decisions in Spain and the United Kingdom have not drastically harmed the company. In the past year, both countries have enacted rules compelling gig companies to provide more worker protections to drivers.

“Spain business is up close to 40 percent on a year-on-year basis, and Spain EBITDA margins are very close to our overall long-term margins as well,” noted Khosrowshahi, referencing the company’s cash flow before taxes and interest.

https://theintercept.com/2022/01/07/uber-drivers-labor-protections-dara-khosrowshahi-european-union/

January 8, 2022

Democrats propose California universal healthcare, funded by new income, business taxes

By John Myers Sacramento Bureau Chief
Jan. 6, 2022 12:32 PM PT
SACRAMENTO —

California would enact a sweeping, first-in-the-nation universal healthcare plan under a proposal unveiled Thursday by a group of state Democratic lawmakers, providing health services to every resident and financed by a broad array of new taxes on individuals and businesses.

Though some of the policy details of the ambitious plan were laid out last year, the way to fund it had not been determined. The proposal, now laid out in separate pieces of legislation, faces significant hurdles in the coming months — first at the state Capitol, with opposition from groups representing doctors and insurance companies, and then possibly at the ballot box, as voters would have to approve the taxes in an amendment to the California Constitution.

“There are countless studies that tell us a single-payer healthcare system is the fiscally sound thing to do, the smarter healthcare policy to follow, and a moral imperative if we care about human life,” Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), the proposal’s author, said Thursday.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-06/democrats-propose-california-universal-healthcare-funded-by-new-income-and-business-taxes


Yep.

January 8, 2022

Charles M. Blow@CharlesMBlow: Read my column, "My Dinner With Sidney Poitier,"

https://twitter.com/CharlesMBlow/status/1479596844938403843






Yes, he came to dinner.

In the summer of 2014, I received word through a friend that I was being asked to a dinner in Los Angeles that would include Sidney Poitier.

I’m not easily star-struck. As you can imagine, in my line of work, you meet all types. Being easily impressed is an occupational liability. But Poitier wasn’t just a star, he was a legend, a lion, an almost mythical figure in Black culture and the culture at large. He was Black royalty.

He was more than just the first African American to win an Academy Award for best actor, for his performance in the 1963 film “Lilies of the Field”; he and his lifelong best friend, Harry Belafonte, were also the exemplars of the artist-as-activist model, both risking not only their careers but their lives, at the height of their celebrity, for the cause of civil rights.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/opinion/my-dinner-with-sidney-poitier.html?smid=tw-share

January 7, 2022

A Better World ( Dean Baker )

January 06, 2022
Dean Baker


Okay, I’m a bit slow for a New Year’s piece, but what the hell, we can always use a bit of optimism. Anyhow, I thought I would spout a few things about what the world might look like if we didn’t rig the market to give all the money to rich people. Not much new here for regular readers, I just thought I would spell it on paper, since it is a nice backdrop for many of our battles.

Before I go through my favorite unriggings, let me start by making a general point, which some people may miss. I focus much of my writing on ways that we rig the market to give money to the Bill Gates and Moderna billionaires of the world.

The idea of restructuring the market, so that these people do not get so rich, is not just a question of punishing the wealthy. When we give these people more money, in excess of what they contribute to the economy (we have to pay people something to develop mRNA vaccines, just not as much as we did), then we are generating more demand in the economy. This has the same effect on the economy as an increase in government spending.

Excerpt:

Free Market Drugs and Vaccines (There is probably no sector where the impact of government-granted patent and copyrights is more pernicious than in healthcare.)

https://cepr.net/a-better-world/

January 7, 2022

Grisham Says Trump "Gleefully" Watched as Loyalists Attacked Capitol a Year Ago

National Security Advisor John Bolton and White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham listen as President Donald Trump participates in a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House on July 9, 2019, in Washington, D.C.
Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images


By, Chris Walker,
Truthout

Published: January 6, 2022

Stephanie Grisham, a former aide to Donald Trump, said in an interview on Thursday morning that the former president had watched the January 6 Capitol attack with glee.

Grisham, who served as Trump’s press secretary and as chief of staff for former First Lady Melania Trump, abruptly resigned from the White House on the day of the Capitol attack. Since then, she has frequently criticized the former president and his allies.

This week, Grisham met with the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack. After a closed-door session with the commission, she said that she had “cooperated fully” with the inquiry, and that she plans to “continue to do so” if they have more questions.
https://truthout.org/articles/grisham-says-trump-gleefully-watched-as-loyalists-attacked-capitol-a-year-ago/


( Who is surprised? No one. )

January 5, 2022

Climate Protections 101 ( Presented by Project Drawdown )

Your climate solutions journey begins now. Filled with the latest need-to-know science and fascinating insights from global leaders in climate policy, research, investment, and beyond, this video series is a brain-shift toward a brighter climate reality.

Climate Solutions 101 is the world’s first major educational effort focused solely on solutions. Rather than rehashing well-known climate challenges, Project Drawdown centers game-changing climate action based on its own rigorous scientific research and analysis. This course, presented in video units and in-depth conversations, combines Project Drawdown’s trusted resources with the expertise of several inspiring voices from around the world. Climate solutions become attainable with increased access to free, science-based educational resources, elevated public discourse, and tangible examples of real-world action. Continue your climate solutions journey, today.

Watch Trailer at link.

Meet the experts:

Jonathan Foley, PhD
Ibrahim AlHusseini
Ryan Allard, PhD
Marcos Heil Costa, PhD
Lisa Graumlich, PhD
Jessica Hellmann, PhD
Tracey Holloway, PhD

more at link: https://drawdown.org/climate-solutions-101

January 4, 2022

American Insurrection ( FRONTLINE ) PBS Series

Airs tonight, 10pm EST......if you have missed any episodes, you can watch online.

Over the last three years, FRONTLINE has collaborated with ProPublica to investigate the rise of extremism in America. In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, FRONTLINE, ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program team up to examine how far-right extremist groups have evolved in the wake of the deadly 2017 Charlottesville rally — and the threat they pose today.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/american-insurrection/

January 3, 2022

How the Taxi Workers Won

The 45 days of fierce protest, shrewd organizing, and ferocious solidarity that ended the debt nightmare that had engulfed the taxi industry.


By Molly Crabapple


December 13, 2021


On September 19, a group of cab drivers organized by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance rolled up to the corner of Broadway and Murray Street in downtown Manhattan, parked next to City Hall, and declared they would not leave until the city fixed the crushing debt that had driven many of their fellow drivers to suicide. They held a press conference, hung an SOS banner from the nearby Beaux-Arts subway entrance, set up some folding chairs, and sat down to wait.

I stopped by the encampment at midnight to find eight drivers trading jokes on the lonely concrete of the Financial District. Augustine Tang invited me to join them. Thirty-seven years old, with the characteristic swagger of a native New Yorker, Tang had inherited his father’s taxi medallion—the badge that gives cabbies the right to operate—along with $530,000 of debt. He was one of the group’s most eloquent spokespeople and also one of the youngest. His companions were all older, men who had spent decades behind the wheel—like Mohammed Islam, from Bangladesh, who owed $536,000, and “Big John” Asmah, from Ghana, who owed $700,000. At an age when many people are contemplating retirement, these drivers instead faced a future of 14-hour workdays that would bring them no closer to freedom as well as harrowing financial burdens they would pass on to their kids.

But these drivers also knew a way out, which is why they had decided to camp outside the gates of City Hall.

In late September of 2020, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance had drawn up a plan to cap drivers’ loans and limit their monthly payments. The city ignored it, just as, for years, it had brushed off NYTWA’s protests against medallion debt. This sit-in was an escalation—an attempt to force New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s hand.


https://www.thenation.com/article/society/taxi-driver-strike/



Amazing resilence!

January 2, 2022

The Pauli Murray Fellowship: Investing in the Next Generation of Leaders

Part of the ACLU’s broader Systemic Equality Campaign, the Pauli Murray Fellowship is one avenue through which the ACLU is committing to addressing the legacy of systemic racism and inequality in America by investing in and cultivating leadership pathways for recent college graduates.


Launching in fall 2022, the program will sponsor a cohort of three fellows from Black and other historically underrepresented communities as full-time employees of the ACLU for 18-months.

The Pauli Murray Fellowship, founded in honor of activist, legal theorist, author, Episcopal priest, and former ACLU board member the Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray, is a program to identify Black and other historically underrepresented recent college graduates embarking on their first post-graduate endeavors and provide them with meaningful exposure, access, and training to equip them in expanding and deepening their leadership skills.

https://www.aclu.org/news/topic/the-pauli-murray-fellowship-investing-in-the-next-generation-of-leaders?initms_aff=nat&initms_chan=soc&utm_medium=soc&initms=220102_fellowship-application-form_tw&utm_source=tw&utm_campaign=&utm_content=220102_civilliberties_fellowship-application-form&ms_aff=nat&ms_chan=soc&ms=220102_fellowship-ap