A View From The Left-WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WHY ISN’T THERE MONEY FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING?

HOUSING AND THE COLOR OF LAW

What’s most important at the moment, he argues, is arousing in Americans “an understanding of how we created a system of unconstitutional, state-sponsored segregation.” Without a “sense of outrage about that, neither remedies nor reparations will be on the public agenda,” he predicts.  Not long ago, Rothstein and his colleagues at EPI had high hopes for what a Hillary Clinton administration was going to accomplish in the area of housing. Those expectations crashed and burned on November 8, 2016. And, now one year into the Trump era, even existing federal tax incentives and subsidies for low- and moderate-income housing, built by private developers, have been sharply curtailed.  The result, proclaims the New York Times on its front page Jan. 19 is that “affordable rents may take a hit…” Republican-crafted tax code changes “will reduce the growth of subsidized affordable housing by 235,000 units over the next decade, compounding an existing shortage.” Amid this looming “undersupply” of affordable housing, developers are building, instead, for buyers of condos in “the pricey glass and steel buildings that have sprouted in downtowns across the country.”     More

Democrats Can’t Win By Courting Conservative White Voters

Under pressure to win in 2018 and 2020, Democrats may be tempted to court conservative white voters while soft-pedaling political demands from communities of color. That strategy, championed by Rahm Emanuel when he chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2005 to 2007, proved disastrous. Emanuel’s Blue Dog Democrats proceeded to aid Republicans in watering down the stimulus package and blocking a public option in the Affordable Care Act.  Fortunately, Jones’ Alabama victory provides a guide as to how Democrats can win, even in so-called red states, by tapping into a latent progressive voting pool of people of color (including rural Blacks), enlightened whites and youth.    More

THE CORPORATE TAX CUT BONANZA

There have been numerous news stories in the past few weeks about corporations doing the right thing with their big tax cuts. These stories tell us how they are giving higher pay to workers and have ambitious plans for new investment. The Trump administration has been crowing over these announcements as proving the success of their tax cut. There is much less here than meets the eye…  Before anyone starts celebrating, we should be clear what bringing back this cash means. Previously, this $252 billion had been credited to Apple's foreign subsidiaries. These subsidiaries had immediate legal claim to the money, which could in fact be anywhere in the world, including the United States.  What Apple did in repatriating this money was transfer the ownership claim from its subsidiaries to the parent company. It is entirely possible that this meant simply shifting money in an account at Citigroup owned by Apple's Irish subsidiary to an account at Citigroup owned by the parent company. This means essentially nothing to the US economy.  There is the one-time tax payment of $38 billion, but this is a savings of $43 billion against     More

'Billionaire Boom':

While World's Richest 1% Took 82% of All New Wealth in 2017, Bottom Half Got Zero

In 2017, a new billionaire was created every two days and while 82 percent of all wealth created went to the top 1 percent of the world's richest while zero percent—absolutely nothing—went to the poorest half of the global population.   "The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors." —Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam International  That troubling information is included in Oxfam's latest report on global inequality—titled Reward Work, Not Wealth (pdf)—released Monday. In addition to the above, the report details how skyrocketing wealth growth among the already rich coupled with stagnant wages and persistent poverty among the lowest economic rungs of society means that just 42 individuals now hold as much wealth as the 3.7 billion poorest people on the planet.    More

WAR AT HOME:  Bombs in Our Backyard

The United States has built the most powerful military in the world. That strength has come at a largely unknown cost. The testing and disposal of the nation's weapons here in the U.S. have poisoned drinking water supplies, rendered millions of acres of land unsafe or unusable, and jeopardized the health of often unwitting Americans…  Faced with these liabilities, the Pentagon has routinely sought to minimize its responsibility for fixing its environmental problems. It burns hazardous waste and explosives because it's the cheapest way to dispose of them, even though the burning process has been outlawed for most American industries since the 1980s. It employs contractors to dispose of hazardous waste and clean up toxic sites, then claims it is not responsible when some of those contractors commit fraud, improperly handle toxic material, or cut corners on cleanups. It has in some cases explicitly refused to cooperate with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and let dangerous sites linger unaddressed.    More