Author: telegraph

President Trump Must Uphold America’s Commitment To The Iran Nuclear Deal

Posted on October 12, 2017

If the U.S. is truly committed to the security of the American people, and making the world a safer place through nuclear nonproliferation, we must demonstrate our commitment to peace and diplomacy to Iran and to the rest of the world. 

The history of the United States relationship with Iran is rooted in, and defined by, a decades-long policy of regime change, which began with the CIA-led overthrow of democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953 in order to keep U.S.-backed Mohammad Reza Shah in power. This ultimately sparked the 1979 Islamic Revolution which grew from strong opposition to years of U.S. interventionist policies in Iran and throughout the region. As Iran’s new anti-U.S. government took power, our threats of intervention grew and Iran started its nuclear program as a direct response to defend against the possibility of another U.S.-led intervention and regime change plot.

Despite this entrenched history of conflict, our countries reached a multilateral diplomatic agreement to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. That agreement is not based on trust, but on verification, and it would not have been possible without the support of our international partners and objective compliance experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

President Trump is threatening to break the commitments we have made to Iran and our allies by decertifying Iran’s adherence to the nuclear agreement, claiming they are not complying with the deal. Before taking such an action with serious and far-reaching consequences, the president must provide credible evidence to Congress from IAEA inspectors that Iran is willfully violating their end of the bargain. To date, neither the IAEA nor our own military and intelligence sources have been provided with any evidence to reach such a conclusion. In fact, they unanimously agree that Iran has stayed faithful to the agreement.

The Iran deal is far from perfect, and it falls far short of reconciling the enormous differences and innumerable grievances between the United States and Iran, but the Iran nuclear deal was about preventing Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon and preventing an all-out war with Iran – which is exactly what it has done. A common misconception is that upholding the deal will somehow prevent us from confronting Iran on other non-nuclear issues such as development of ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. This is not true. Despite its flaws, the Iran nuclear deal set a high water mark for diplomacy with a nation we otherwise do not have diplomatic ties with. We must continue to address these issues with Iran, outside of the construct of the nuclear deal. In our mission of nuclear non-proliferation, the agreement proves that diplomacy is our best option if we want to avoid yet another costly, destructive war.

The consequence of breaking our agreement and backing out of the deal, will likely cause Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program, and will spark a nuclear arms race across the region, beginning with countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, escalating the Shia-Sunni conflict to extremely dangerous levels.

In addition, our ability to successfully negotiate with countries like North Korea to ultimately denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, depends on our ability to abide by the agreement we promised to uphold with Iran. North Korea has already made it clear that the reason they are arming themselves with nuclear weapons is to deter the U.S. from toppling the North Korean regime. Walking away from the Iran nuclear agreement sends an unequivocal message to North Korea that there is no use pursuing any diplomatic negotiations with the U.S. because our country cannot be trusted to hold up its end of an agreement. This will greatly increase the chances of a nuclear war between North Korea and the United States, a conflict which could lead to the destruction of our beautiful state of Hawaii and its people, as well as the mainland United States. It will drastically increase nuclear proliferation around the world, catastrophic war, suffering, devastation, and loss of life worldwide.

Pulling out of this agreement now will achieve nothing for the U.S. and it is highly unlikely any other country would join us in imposing serious new sanctions against Iran. Hundreds of millions of dollars of Iranian assets have already been returned to their country. Rejecting this agreement will not get those funds that back or be able to reseal Iranian markets from foreign investment. Pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement now has no upside, and tremendous downside. In short, there’s everything to lose and very little, if anything, to gain.

If President Trump follows through on his threat of walking away from the Iran nuclear deal, without providing any evidence that Iran has not complied, then Congress must act to ensure that as long as Iran is complying with the terms of the agreement, the Iran nuclear deal must be upheld.

America’s Goals And Politics Of The Common Interest

Posted on October 12, 2017

According to Aristotle, politics should be about the common interest. Yet everywhere we look, narrow corporate interests have pushed aside what’s best for most Americans. By adopting America’s Goals for 2030, we can restore the politics of the common interest and push corporate lobbyists to where they belong, the sidelines of politics.

Think of it. Healthcare could be available and affordable for all, but healthcare monopolies jack up prices far above their true costs. Clean, safe, low-carbon energy could inexpensively replace dirty, dangerous, high-carbon energy, but the coal, oil, and gas lobbies use dishonest tactics to resist the transformation. Every worker in America could have the assurance of paid sick leave, family leave, and vacation time, but rich and powerful companies lobby against basic benefits for the common good.

How do we know that better outcomes are really within reach? Because many other countries have implemented high-quality and low-cost health care; are transitioning to renewable energy; and offer guaranteed job benefits for all workers. America is falling further and further behind. Within America, some U.S. states are moving forward while others lag behind.

America’s Goals for 2030 include seven Goals, each with three Targets, to be implemented state by state—no need to wait for Washington! The Goals and Targets are summarized in the accompanying Table. The Goals call for good jobs, affordable healthcare, quality education, equal opportunity, strengthened governance, sustainable infrastructure, and safe environment. They are to be achieved by 2030, though the states could reach many of them well before then.

The goals are not easy to achieve. They indeed recall what President John F. Kennedy said when the moonshot was just getting underway in 1962. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

So too, we are unwilling to postpone the goals of good jobs, quality education, and a safe environment. JFK’s generation went to the moon. Our generation can restore America’s dreams for shared prosperity, social justice, and harmony with nature.

A core purpose of the Goals is to measure, track, and hold politicians accountable for progress. Future Now and Future Now Action are new partner organizations to promote America’s Goals at the state level. SDG USA conducts research on the measurement and status of America’s Goals across the 50 states, and on the best state practices and policy options to achieve them.

Initial research on baseline conditions across the 50 states shows wide disparities between states, even within the same region. Readily available data also demonstrates that overall, the US is lagging behind other high-income countries. The United States has a lot of room to catch up; by using America’s Goals as a blueprint for success, the common interest can be reclaimed.

What can America’s Goals offer us? A new seriousness of American politics, beyond a White House described by Senator Bob Corker as an “adult day care center.” A breakthrough away from polarization, since the survey data show that Americans across the political spectrum support America’s Goals. And a triumph over corporate special interests, as politicians across the nation, and especially at the state level, hold themselves accountable to bold objectives with specific metrics over time.

America’s Goals have been launched, and state legislature candidates are starting to sign on to the goals and to win campaign backing for their commitments. Americans across the political spectrum can — and should! – take the pledge to support America’s Goals and re-take our politics from the corporate lobbies.

Why The Republican Tax Plan Is More Failed Trickle-Down Economics

Posted on October 10, 2017

Trump and conservatives in Congress are planning a big tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. To justify it they’re using the oldest song in their playbook, claiming tax cuts on the rich will trickle down to working families in the form of stronger economic growth. 

Baloney. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke. Just look at the evidence:

1. Clinton’s tax increase on the rich hardly stalled the economy. In 1993, Bill Clinton raised taxes on top earners from 31 percent to 39.6 percent. Conservatives predicted economic disaster. Instead, the economy created 23 million jobs and the economy grew for 8 straight years in what was then the longest expansion in history. The federal budget went into surplus.

2. George W. Bush’s big tax cuts for the rich didn’t grow the economy. In 2001and 2003, George W. Bush lowered the top tax rate to 35 percent while also cutting top rates on capital gains and dividends. Conservative supply-siders predicted an economic boom. Instead, the economy barely grew at all, and then in 2008 it collapsed. Meanwhile, the federal deficit ballooned.

3. Obama’s tax hike on the rich didn’t slow the economy. At the end of 2012, President Obama struck a deal to restore the 39.6 percent top tax rate and raise tax rates on capital gains and dividends. Once again, supply-side conservatives predicted doom. Instead, the economy grew steadily, and the expansion is still continuing.

4. The Reagan recovery of the early 1980s wasn’t driven by Reagan’s tax cut. Conservative supply-siders point to Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. But the so-called Reagan recovery of the early 1980s was driven by low interest rates and big increase in government spending.

5. Kansas cut taxes on the rich and is a basket case. California raised them and is thriving. In 2012, Kansas slashed taxes on top earners and business owners, while California raised taxes on top earners to the highest state rate in the nation. Since then, California has had among the strongest economic growth of any state, while Kansas has fallen behind most other states.

So don’t fall for supply-side, trickle-down nonsense. Lower taxes on the rich don’t generate growth and jobs. They only make the rich even richer, at a time of raging inequality, and they cause bigger budget deficits.

Trump’s Big Buyback Bamboozle

Posted on February 8, 2018

Trump’s promise that corporations will use his giant new tax cut to make new investments and raise workers’ wages is proving to be about as truthful as his promise to release his tax returns.

The results are coming in, and guess what? Almost all the extra money is going into stock buybacks. Since the tax cut became law, buy-backs have surged to $88.6 billion. That’s more than double the amount of buybacks in the same period last year, according to data provided by Birinyi Associates.

Compare this to the paltry $2.5 billion of employee bonuses corporations say they’ll dispense in response to the tax law, and you see the bonuses for what they are – a small fig leaf to disguise the big buybacks.

If anything, the current tumult in the stock market will fuel even more buybacks.

Stock buybacks are corporate purchases of their own shares of stock. Corporations do this to artificially prop up their share prices.

Buybacks are the corporate equivalent of steroids. They may make shareholders feel better than otherwise, but nothing really changes.

Money spent on buybacks isn’t reinvested in new equipment, research, or factories. Buybacks don’t add jobs or raise wages. They don’t increase productivity. They don’t grow the American economy.

Yet CEOs love buybacks because most CEO pay is now in shares of stock and stock options rather than cash. So when share prices go up, executives reap a bonanza.

At the same time, the value of CEO pay from previous years also rises, in what amounts to a retroactive (and off the books) pay increase – on top of their already humongous compensation packages.

Big investors also love buybacks because they increase the value of their stock portfolios. Now that the richest 10 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all shares of stock (up from 77 percent at the turn of the century), this means even more wealth at the top.

Buybacks used to be illegal. The Securities and Exchange considered them unlawful means of manipulating stock prices, in violation of the Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934.

In those days, the typical corporation put about half its profits into research and development, plant and equipment, worker retraining, additional jobs, and higher wages.

But under Ronald Reagan, who rhapsodized about the “magic of the market,” the SEC legalized buybacks.

After that, buybacks took off. Just in the past decade, 94 percent of corporate profits have been devoted to buybacks and dividends, according to researchers at the Academic-Industry Research Network.

Last year, big American corporations spent a record $780 billion buying back their shares of stock.

And that was before the new tax law.

Put another way, the new tax law is giving America’s wealthy not one but two big windfalls: They stand to gain the most from the tax cuts for individuals, and  they’re the big winners from the tax cuts for corporations.

This isn’t just unfair. It’s also bad for the economy as a whole. Corporations don’t invest because they get tax cuts. They invest because they expect that customers will buy more of their goods and services.

This brings us to the underlying problem. Companies haven’t been investing – and have been using their profits to buy back their stock instead – because they doubt their investments will pay off in additional sales.

That’s because most economic gains have been going to the wealthy, and the wealthy spend a far smaller percent of their income than the middle class and the poor. When most gains go to the top, there’s not enough demand to justify a lot of new investment.

Which also means that as long as public policies are tilted to the benefit of those at the top – as is Trump’s tax cut, along with Reagan’s legalization of stock buybacks – we’re not going to see much economic growth.

We’re just going to have more buybacks and more inequality.

Climate Crisis, Climate Hope Lecture

Posted on October 9, 2017

Climate Crisis/Climate Hope: On September 27, 2017, Bill McKibben came to Goodson Chapel to give the first biannual Luce Lecture. This program was sponsored by KIE’s Facing the Anthropocene project led by Norman Wirzba and Jedediah Purdy.

 

The Next Big Fight Of Social Security, Medicare, And Medicaid

Posted on February 6, 2018

Fresh off passing massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, Trump and congressional Republicans want to use the deficit they’ve created to justify huge cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

As House Speaker Paul Ryan says “We’re going to have to get… at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.”

Don’t let them get away with it.

Social Security and Medicare are critical safety-nets for working and middle-class families.

Before they existed, Americans faced grim prospects. In 1935, the year Social Security was enacted, roughly half of America’s seniors lived in poverty.  By the 1960s poverty among seniors had dropped significantly, but medical costs were still a major financial burden and only half of Americans aged 65 and over had health insurance. Medicare fixed that, guaranteeing health care for older Americans.

Today less than 10 percent of seniors live in poverty and almost all have access to health care. According to an analysis of census data, Social Security payments keep an estimated 22 million Americans from slipping into poverty.

Medicaid is also a vital lifeline for America’s elderly and the poor. Yet the Trump administration has already started whittling it away by encouraging states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients.

Republicans like to call these programs “entitlements,” as if they’re some kind of giveaway.  But Americans pay into Social Security and Medicare throughout their entire working lives. It’s Americans’ own money they’re getting back through these programs.

These vital safety nets should be strengthened, not weakened. How?

1. Lift the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax. Currently, top earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $120,000 of their yearly income. So the rich end up, in effect,  paying a lower Social Security tax rate than everyone else. Lifting the ceiling on what wealthy Americans contribute would help pay for the Baby Boomers retirements and leave Social Security in good shape for Millennials.

2. Allow Medicare to negotiate with drug companies for lower prescription drug prices. As the nation’s largest insurer, Medicare has tremendous bargaining power. Why should Americans pay far more for drugs than people in any other country?

3. Finally, reduce overall health costs and create a stronger workforce by making Medicare available to all. There’s no excuse for the richest nation in the world to have 28 million Americans still uninsured.

We need to not just secure, but revitalize Social Security and these other programs for our children, and for our children’s children.  Millennials just overtook Baby Boomers as our nation’s largest demographic.  For them — for all of us — we need to say loud and clear to all of our members of congress:  Hands off Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Expand and improve these programs: don’t cut them.

Why We Need Sanctuary States

Posted on October 7, 2017

California lawmakers have just passed “sanctuary state” legislation – the first state since Oregon, which 30 years ago passed a law preventing state agencies from targeting undocumented immigrants solely because of their illegal status.

Other states should follow California’s and Oregon’s lead.

 

 

Since January, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered immigration authorities to target “public safety” threats, federal arrests of undocumented immigrants have increased by over 37 percent. California is home to an estimated 2.3 million unauthorized immigrants.

California’s law limits the authority of state and local law enforcers to communicate with federal immigration authorities, and prevents officers from questioning or holding people depending on their immigration status or immigration violations. But it still allows federal immigration authorities to enter county jails to question immigrants, and allow police and sheriffs to share information on people who have been convicted of serious crimes.

This is a fair balance. Sanctuary protections like these make sense because:

1. Under them, undocumented immigrants are more likely to come forth with information about crime when doing so won’t put them at risk of deportation. This improves public safety and builds trusts with law enforcement.

2. By contrast, turning state and local police into immigration agents invites more crime because it diverts limited time and resources to rounding up undocumented immigrants.

3. Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens, so it makes even less sense for local and state police to spend their precious time and resources rounding them up.

4. A dragnet aimed at finding and deporting all of America’s 11 million unauthorized immigrants is cruel, costly, and contemptible. It turns this country into more of a police state, breaks up families, and hurts the economy.

We must resist Jeff Sessions and his dragnet. Help make your state a sanctuary.

The Macroeconomic Effects Of Student Debt Cancellation

Posted on February 6, 2018

More than 44 million Americans are caught in a student debt trap. Collectively, they owe nearly $1.4 trillion on outstanding student loan debt. Research shows that this level of debt hurts the US economy in a variety of ways, holding back everything from small business formation to new home buying, and even marriage and reproduction.

It is a problem that policymakers have attempted to mitigate with programs that offer refinancing or partial debt cancellation. But what if something far more ambitious were tried? What if the population were freed from making any future payments on the current stock of outstanding student loan debt? Could it be done, and if so, how? What would it mean for the US economy?

This report seeks to answer those very questions. The analysis proceeds in three sections: the first explores the current US context of increasing college costs and reliance on debt to finance higher education; the second section works through the balance sheet mechanics required to liberate Americans from student loan debt; and the final section simulates the economic effects of this debt cancellation using two models, Ray Fair’s US Macroeconomic Model (“the Fair model”) and Moody’s US Macroeconomic Model.

Several important implications emerge from this analysis. Student debt cancellation results in positive macroeconomic feedback effects as average households’ net worth and disposable income increase, driving new consumption and investment spending. In short, we find that debt cancellation lifts GDP, decreases the average unemployment rate, and results in little inflationary pressure (all over the 10-year horizon of our simulations), while interest rates increase only modestly. Though the federal budget deficit does increase, state-level budget positions improve as a result of the stronger economy. The use of two models with contrasting long-run theoretical foundations offers a plausible range for each of these effects and demonstrates the robustness of our results.

A one-time policy of student debt cancellation, in which the federal government cancels the loans it holds directly and takes over the financing of privately owned loans on behalf of borrowers, results in the following macroeconomic effects (all dollar values are in real, inflation-adjusted terms, using 2016 as the base year):

The policy of debt cancellation could boost real GDP by an average of $86 billion to $108 billion per year. Over the 10-year forecast, the policy generates between $861 billion and $1,083 billion in real GDP (2016 dollars).

Eliminating student debt reduces the average unemployment rate by 0.22 to 0.36 percentage points over the 10-year forecast.

Peak job creation in the first few years following the elimination of student loan debt adds roughly 1.2 million to 1.5 million new jobs per year.

The inflationary effects of cancelling the debt are macroeconomically insignificant. In the Fair model simulations, additional inflation peaks at about 0.3 percentage points and turns negative in later years. In the Moody’s model, the effect is even smaller, with the pickup in inflation peaking at a trivial 0.09 percentage points.

Nominal interest rates rise modestly. In the early years, the Federal Reserve raises target rates 0.3 to 0.5 percentage points; in later years, the increase falls to just 0.2 percentage points. The effect on nominal longer-term interest rates peaks at 0.25 to 0.5 percentage points and declines thereafter, settling at 0.21 to 0.35 percentage points.

The net budgetary effect for the federal government is modest, with a likely increase in the deficit-to-GDP ratio of 0.65 to 0.75 percentage points per year. Depending on the federal government’s budget position overall, the deficit ratio could rise more modestly, ranging between 0.59 and 0.61 percentage points. However, given that the costs of funding the Department of Education’s student loans have already been incurred (discussed in detail in Section 2), the more relevant estimates for the impacts on the government’s budget position relative to current levels are an annual increase in the deficit ratio of between 0.29 and 0.37 percentage points. (This is explained in further detail in Appendix B.)

State budget deficits as a percentage of GDP improve by about 0.11 percentage points during the entire simulation period.

Research suggests many other positive spillover effects that are not accounted for in these simulations, including increases in small business formation, degree attainment, and household formation, as well as improved access to credit and reduced household vulnerability to business cycle downturns. Thus, our results provide a conservative estimate of the macro effects of student debt liberation.

To read the full report click here.

The Disunited States Of American Gun Control

Posted on October 6, 2017

America today doesn’t just have red (conservative) states and blue (progressive) states, but de facto red countries and blue countries: regions with distinct cultures, heroes, politics, dialects, economies, and ideas of freedom. The recent massacre in Las Vegas suggests that it’s time to let them go their separate ways.

The Las Vegas massacre and its aftermath are pure Americana. A deranged person lugs nearly two dozen high-tech assault weapons to a 32nd-floor hotel room to spray death upon concertgoers in a mass murder and suicide. In response, the culture wars flare anew, with gun-control advocates in pitched battle against gun enthusiasts. Yet there is consensus on one deep truth: nothing much will change. After a week of televised, heart-wrenching funerals, American life will go on until the next massacre.

Mass violence is deeply rooted in American culture. America’s European settlers committed a two-century-long genocide against the native inhabitants, and established a slave economy so deeply entrenched that only a devastating civil war ended it. In almost all other countries, even Czarist Russia, slavery and serfdom were ended by decree or legislation, without a four-year bloodletting. When it was over, America established and enforced a century-long system of apartheid.

To this day, America’s homicide and imprisonment rates are several times higher than Europe’s. Several large mass shootings occur each year – in a country that is also waging several seemingly endless wars overseas. America is, in short, a country with a past history and current stark reality of racism, ethnic chauvinism, and resort to mass violence.

The Las Vegas shootings make clear once more the need to ban assault weapons. When America had such a ban, from September 1994-September 2004, it helped to limit mass shootings; yet Congress failed to renew the ban, owing to intense lobbying from gun enthusiasts. Nor is the ban about to be reinstated any time soon at the federal level. A prohibition against “bump stocks,” the device used by the Las Vegas killer to enable his semi-automatic rifles to fire like fully automatic weapons, appears possible; but there will be little more federal action than that.

When Australia banned assault weapons in 1996, mass shootings stopped abruptly. America’s gun lovers reject such evidence, and mass shootings like the one in Las Vegas serve only to reinforce their belief that firearms are their only true protection in a dangerous world. According to compelling recent survey data, the attachment to guns is especially intense among less-educated white Republican men residing mainly in rural and suburban areas in the South and Midwest – the same demographic that forms the core of support for President Donald Trump.

Despite the deep ideological divisions in the country, there is a glimmer of hope. Under the US Constitution, states have the authority to ban assault weapons and regulate firearms (though not to ban handguns and rifles outright, given the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms”). My own state, New York, already bans assault weapons, as do a handful of other states. Rather than fighting another ill-fated battle in Washington, it is more promising to encourage many more states to exercise their prerogatives.

States that do will have lower rates of mass shootings, more secure citizens, and more vibrant economies. Las Vegas will suffer not only from the trauma of the recent massacre, but also from a diversion of tourism and conferences, at least until Nevada cracks down on assault weapons and can guarantee visitors’ safety.

America today doesn’t just have red (conservative) states and blue (progressive) states, but de facto red countries and blue countries, that is, distinct regions with distinct cultures, heroes, politics, dialects, economies, and ideas of freedom. In New York City, freedom means not having to fear that the thousands of strangers sharing the city’s sidewalks and parks with you on any given day are carrying deadly weapons. In Texas or Las Vegas, freedom is the comfort of carrying your trusty firearms anywhere you like.

It’s time to let red states and blue states go their own way. We don’t need to fight another civil war to agree on an amicable and limited move to much looser linkages across the states. In this, the conservatives have it right: Let’s reduce the power of the federal government and turn more revenues and regulations back to the states, subject to the constitutional limits on the division of powers and fundamental rights. That way, each side of the culture wars can move closer to its preferred outcomes without impeding the other side from doing the same.

My own state would thrive in such a looser federation, using its increased margin of maneuver to tighten its own regulations and to scale up its social services with the savings in taxes now paid to the federal government. And the weaker federal government would mean fewer US “wars of choice” in the Middle East.

At some point, the US will end up with federal gun control legislation. When more Congressmen come to realize that their own lives are on the line – which, sadly, they are – we will finally see national action. Two members of Congress have already been shot this decade (Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 and Steve Scalise earlier this year). For now, however, members of Congress will remain caught in the political crossfire of mad gunmen and pro-gun lobbyists. This is terrifying, but sadly the case.

In Trump’s America, gun violence and instability are being stoked daily. A rapidly implemented, national-scale solution would be ideal. But until that happens, more US states should be encouraged to choose gun sanity for themselves.