Tag Archives: Income Inequality

House Dems Revive Bill to Make Poverty-Eradicating Child Tax Credit Permanent

Leave a reply

“In 2021 alone, the expanded Child Tax Credit reached more than 61 million children and lifted nearly 4 million of them out of poverty.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-7-2023 by Common Dreams

Graphic: White House

As congressional Republicans intensify their assault on vital social programs, a trio of House Democrats on Wednesday reintroduced legislation that would make permanent the expanded monthly Child Tax Credit—a policy credited with lifting millions of U.S. children out of poverty.

The American Family Act—reintroduced by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and backed by 204 House Democrats—would ensure the permanency of the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) as established in the American Rescue Plan, the sweeping $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package signed into law by President Joe Biden in March 2021. The expanded CTC expired at the end of 2021 amid the Omicron surge of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Continue reading →
Share Button

Millions of US Women at Risk After ‘Regressive’ Attack on Abortion Rights by Supreme Court: UN Experts

Leave a reply

Abortion bans in 14 U.S. states since the 2022 Dobbs decision “have made abortion services largely inaccessible and denied women and girls their fundamental human rights to comprehensive healthcare including sexual and reproductive health.”

By Jon Queally. Published 6-4-2023 by Common Dreams

Abortion Rights Rally in response to Supreme Court Roe vs Wade Reversal Decision at Washington Square Park in NYC on Friday evening, 24 June 2022. Photo: Elvert Barnes/flickr/CC

High-level experts with the United Nations have issued a joint statement condemning the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that reversed decades of legal precedent protecting abortion rights for women.

“The regressive position taken by the US Supreme Court in June 2022, by essentially dismantling 50 years of precedent protecting the right to abortion in the country, puts millions of women and girls at serious risk,” said the 13 experts, all appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, on Friday.

Continue reading →
Share Button

‘Enormous Policy Failure’: States Throw Hundreds of Thousands—Including Many Children—Off Medicaid

Leave a reply

“We knew this was coming,” wrote one policy expert. “But we still treat these burdens like they’re unavoidable natural disasters.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 5-27-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: Ted Eytan/CC

With a green light from the federal government, states across the U.S. have thrown hundreds of thousands of low-income people off Medicaid in recent weeks—and many have lost coverage because they failed to navigate bureaucratic mazes, not because they were no longer eligible.

More than a dozen states, including Florida and other Republican-led states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, have begun removing people from Medicaid as part of the “unwinding” of a pandemic-era federal policy that temporarily barred governments from kicking people off the program.

Continue reading →
Share Button

Critics Slam Amazon’s Billion-Dollar ‘Corporate Welfare’ for Oregon Data Centers

Leave a reply

“No other retailer in U.S. history has come anywhere close to such enrichment at public expense,” asserted one opponent of the nine-figure subsidy.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 5-19-2023 by Common Dreams

One of Amazon’s data centers in eastern Oregon is seen here from the air in an company photo. (Photo: Amazon.com)

Opponents of a contentious $1 billion subsidy for online retail behemoth Amazon’s data centers in Oregon on Friday decried what one critic called “corporate welfare” for a company that raked in more than a half a trillion dollars in revenue last year.

Amazon already has four data centers in Morrow County, Oregon and plans on building six more Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud-computing facilities there. Earlier this month, Port of Morrow commissioners approved tax breaks for Amazon with an estimated value of $1 billion.

Continue reading →
Share Button

Amid Soaring Poverty and Hunger, Amnesty Demands ‘Universal Social Protection’ Worldwide

Leave a reply

“We cannot continue to look away as inequality soars, and those struggling are left to suffer,” said Amnesty International’s secretary-general.

By Jake Johnson. Published 5-10-2023 by Common Dreams

An urban slum in Hanoi, Viet Nam. Photo: United Nations/flickr/CC

With global poverty and hunger rising amid the intertwining crises of war, public health emergencies, and climate change, Amnesty International on Wednesday issued an urgent call for governments worldwide to implement universal social protections to ensure that healthcare, childcare, pensions, disability payments, and other benefits are available to all who need them.

Noting that many popular uprisings and mass protests across the globe in recent years have been fueled by economic and social concerns, Amnesty lamented that governments have turned to “repression and unnecessary and excessive use of force” against struggling demonstrators instead of addressing their core concerns, such as high food prices and paltry wages.

Continue reading →
Share Button

‘Incredibly Alarming’: Peaceful Protests Not Fit For a King

Leave a reply

‘We’re now living in a dystopian nightmare’

By Common Dreams. Published 5-6-2023

Protesters from climate protest group ‘Just Stop Oil’ are arrested by police officers close to where Britain’s King Charles III and Britain’s Camilla, Queen Consort were crowned at Westminster Abbey in central London on May 6, 2023. Photo: Just Stop Oil/Twitter

Thousands of King Charles III’s subjects protested against the monarchy Saturday in London — and heavy-handed police detained many of them for “suspicion of breaching the peace.”

Earlier this week, the Metropolitan Police tweeted that they would have an “extremely low tolerance” of those seeking to “undermine” King Charles III’s coronation day.

Continue reading →
Share Button

Rights Groups Alarmed as ‘Unconstitutional’ Attack on Academic Freedom Heads to DeSantis’ Desk

Leave a reply

“Prohibiting ideas in the name of freedom is not freedom at all,” said one critic of a bill that would outlaw teaching systemic racism in college courses. “It is censorship.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 5-4-2023 by Common Dreams

Governor Ron DeSantis speaking with attendees at a “Unite & Win Rally” at Arizona Financial Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona.in 2022 Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC

Civil liberties defenders on Wednesday decried yet another bill passed by Florida’s GOP-controlled Legislature attacking academic freedom, while calling on Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to take the unlikely step of vetoing the measure.

S.B. 266 would require Florida’s Board of Education and its state university system’s board of governors to establish faculty committees tasked with reviewing and, if deemed necessary, rejecting or adjusting all general education courses.

Continue reading →
Share Button

A resources grab is likely in post-conflict Sudan. But democracy isn’t

Leave a reply

Competition for stakes in resource-rich Sudan will likely resume when fighting ends, with hopes for democracy forgotten

By Paul Rogers Published 4-28-2023 by openDemocracy

Yida refugee camp in South Sudanese territory, 20 km far from the border with Sudan.

For the past two weeks, international news in much of the European media has been dominated by efforts to extract nationals from the violence in Sudan. Coverage is likely to fade as the evacuation slows down and the media moves on to other conflicts. There may, in fact, be a far greater movement of Sudanese refugees desperate to get out of the country, but this will attract minimal international attention.

The focus on the evacuation has sidelined the much longer-term issues facing Sudan, and foreign states and sub-state actors will be watching developments with a keen interest, especially if the disorder persists until one of the two generals vying for control finally succeeds.

Continue reading →
Share Button

John Roberts’ Wife Made Millions From Elite Law Firms, Major Companies: Whistleblower Docs

Leave a reply

“It almost makes you wonder whether the Supreme Court of the United States is suffering a massive, systemic ethics crisis,” said one critic.

By Julia Conley. Published 4-28-2023 by Common Dreams

Swearing in of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Photo: George W. Bush White House Archives

A whistleblower from the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa says Jane Sullivan Roberts, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, earned $10.3 million in commissions over seven years from her job as a headhunter at the company, where she placed attorneys with law firms—including at least one that argued a case before the Supreme Court after the placement was made.

Sullivan Roberts earned the money between 2007 and 2014, having taken a job with the company two years after her husband was confirmed to the Supreme Court, according to a report out Friday from Business Insider.

Continue reading →
Share Button

​US Spends More on Military Operations in Somalia Than Nation’s Annual Revenue

Leave a reply

“What the United States government is doing in Somalia is not peacekeeping, but warfighting,” says author of new report.

By Julia Conley Published 4-27-2023 by Common Dreams

U.S. Forces in Somalia. Photo: Expert Infantry/flickr/CC

The United States’ counterterrorism efforts in Somalia, which were ramped up after the emergence of the armed group al-Shabab in 2006, are worsening the East African country’s instability, according to a new analysis released Thursday as progressives in Congress voted for a withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the nation.

As the Costs of War project at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University said in the new report, the U.S. has spent at least $2.5 billion on counterterrorism operations in Somalia since 2007, including funding for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the Somali National Army. This figure does not include the undisclosed amount of money the government has poured into intelligence and military operations there.

Continue reading →
Share Button