15 July 21
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14 July 21
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren. (photo: Greg Nash)
ens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on Wednesday called for the Senate Finance Committee to investigate tax-avoidance strategies used by wealthy Americans, following reporting from ProPublica finding that a number of prominent U.S. billionaires have paid little to no federal income taxes in certain years.
"The Finance Committee has an obligation to investigate these matters, hold hearings, and develop legislative policies that address the methods and strategies used by ultra-millionaires and billionaires to avoid paying taxes, and its impact on the nation’s finances and ability to pay for investments in infrastructure, health care, the economy, and the environment," the senators, who are both members of the Finance Committee, wrote in a letter to Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
ProPublica last month started publishing a series of articles, based on confidential tax data it obtained from an anonymous source, that detail how billionaires have paid little in federal income taxes in recent years, particularly when compared to their wealth gains.
"A key finding of the ProPublica investigation is that the vast majority of the tax avoidance is legal: the nation’s wealthiest individuals and families are able to take advantage of loopholes and use complex investment and income strategies to avoid taxable income – all while they reap billions from their investments and live lives of privilege that are beyond the imagination of most families," Warren and Whitehouse wrote.
Warren and Whitehouse called for part of a Finance Committee investigation to focus on the role that financial institutions play in wealthy Americans' tax avoidance, saying that "access to enormous lines of credit is a key component of these financial strategies."
The senators said that the committee should look at how lending activities can help individuals avoid claiming taxable income, and that if the panel considers it appropriate, it should hold a public hearing with top executives from financial institutions.
"The use and potential abuse of tax avoidance schemes by the wealthiest Americans is not occurring in a vacuum – it involves the nation’s largest financial institutions and wealth management firms that help develop these tactics and provide the financial infrastructure that allows them to be effective," Warren and Whitehouse said.
"Because the majority of tax avoidance loans and other tax avoidance tactics are not disclosed to the IRS, an effective investigation of these tactics must involve the institutions that aid and abet them."
Signs alert people to a voting site in Manhattan as voters head to the polls on June 22, 2021, in New York City. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty)
Oppressive governments are increasingly relying on technology from Cellebrite, an Israeli surveillance firm, to search journalists' phones, privacy watchdogs warn. (photo: Jack Guez/Getty)
Oppressive governments are increasingly relying on technology from Cellebrite, an Israeli surveillance firm, to search journalists’ phones, privacy watchdogs warn.
ournalist Tsaone Basimanebotlhe was not charged with a crime—but that didn’t stop Botswana police from searching through her phone with technology from the Israeli surveillance firm Cellebrite, hoping to identify her newspaper’s sources.
It was 2019 and Basimanebotlhe, who works for the Botswana-based Mmegi newspaper, was in a tight spot. Soon enough, police collected thousands of her messages, as well as details from her emails, browser history, and call records using Cellebrite’s Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) and Physical Analyzer, according to an affidavit from the police forensics laboratory.
But Basimanebotlhe didn’t have the information the police were looking for—because they were targeting the wrong journalist, according to a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists published Wednesday, which details the reporter’s case. The police were interested in uncovering the source behind an apparent leak that revealed the identities of several undercover security agents, which Mmegi had recently covered, according to the report. They ultimately botched the investigation, as Basimanebotlhe had no part in writing the story.
While it remains unclear what the police did with her data after scouring it using Cellebrite technology, the entire incident is emblematic of a larger problem for human-rights activists and journalists concerned about freedom of the press, says Jonathan Rozen, a senior Africa researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalists, as the mere existence of technology like Cellebrite’s can have a chilling effect on journalism, Rozen says.
“All the time when journalists are arrested their phones or computers are seized and so the presence of technology that claims to be able to bypass encryption and extract information from journalists’ devices…that’s alarming and has a chilling effect on freedom of the press,” Rozen told The Daily Beast.
Sources are already drying up in Botswana over fears the government will uncover leaks, or harass or intimidate whistleblowers, says David Baaitse, a reporter for Botswana’s Weekend Post newspaper. Baaitse says government officials have also seized and analyzed his devices in recent months.
“Sources, they no longer trust us,” Baaitse said in a statement. “They no longer want to deal directly with us.”
The news comes as digital rights organizations are working to put a stop to Cellebrite’s efforts to get listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange given the company’s track record selling products to regimes willing to violate human rights. Access Now and other rights organizations earlier this week urged investors and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a letter to abandon the initial public offering effort “until Cellebrite demonstrates that it has taken sufficient measures to comply with human rights.”
And while Basimanebotlhe’s case took place two years ago, the abuses are ongoing—numerous other journalists have said they have been targeted with Cellebrite’s snooping technology in the last several years. Security forces also used Cellebrite to search a phone belonging to Oratile Dikologang, an editor at Botswana People’s Daily News, and security services reportedly used Cellebrite technology against two detained Reuters reporters in Myanmar several years ago. Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong claim security forces used Cellebrite to search their devices just last year.
Natalia Krapiva, tech-legal counsel at Access Now, told The Daily Beast the time has come for Cellebrite and other digital surveillance companies to be held accountable for selling their products to repressive and corrupt regimes.
“Whatever human-rights assessment mechanisms Cellebrite claims to have in place—they are not working,” Krapiva said.
Cellebrite has, in the past, announced it has stopped selling its products in certain countries over human rights issues—the company does claim, after all that its “sales decisions are also guided by strict internal parameters, which consider a potential customer’s human rights record and anti-corruption policies,” according to SEC filings. Cellebrite recently halted its sales in Myanmar following reports of security services using Cellebrite technology against two detained Reuters reporters.
“In the extremely rare case when our technology is used in a manner that does not meet international law or does not comply with Cellebrite’s values, we take swift and appropriate action, including terminating agreements,” the firm said in a statement at the time.
Cellebrite also claims it doesn’t do business in Bangladesh, Belarus, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Russia, and Venezuela over concerns about data security and human rights, according to SEC filings.
Even this is not enough, though, Krapiva says.
“In the past, the company had to end contracts with human-rights violating regimes, like Russia, Belarus, and China. However, Cellebrite did not do it on their own initiative, but only after sustained pressure and lawsuits from the civil society,” Krapiva told The Daily Beast.
The firm claims in fine print in SEC filings that “all users are required to confirm, before activation, that they will only use the system for lawful uses,” but acknowledges “Cellebrite cannot verify that this undertaking is accurate.”
And still, the company has nothing substantive to say about the incident with Basimanebotlhe. Cellebrite said in a statement shared with the Committee to Protect Journalists that it would not “speak to any specifics” about customers. It added that Cellebrite “requires that agencies and governments that use our technology uphold the standards of international human rights law…Our compliance solutions enable an audit trail and can discern who, when and how data was accessed, which leads to accountability in the agencies and organizations that use our tools.”
Cellebrite did not return a request for comment on whether an audit had been done on Basimanebotlhe’s case and if any changes have been made as a result of the audit. The government of Botswana did not return a request for comment.
As for accountability in these types of incidents, Krapiva says Cellebrite is “probably hoping they will be ignored and forgotten.”
In June, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced plans for the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. (photo: Samuel Corum/Getty)
ALSO SEE: More Unmarked Graves Found
at Another Canadian School for First Nations Children
The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative aims to shed light on the grim history of residential Indian boarding schools in the U.S.
ACKSTORY
The residential boarding schools of the early 19th and mid-20th century left a brutal legacy: Native children were taken from homes, abused, forced to assimilate and used as leverage against tribes who resisted U.S. expansion(“The U.S. stole generations of Indigenous children to open the West,” 10/14/19). Their descendants have long demanded transparency about why so many died at government and church-run schools like the Carlisle Boarding School, and why their remains were not returned to their tribes.
FOLLOWUP
In June, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) announced plans for the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a first-of-its-kind “comprehensive review” of the U.S. government’s history of separating Native children from their families and forcing them into boarding schools. It will investigate Interior’s records, identify known and likely burial sites, and present a final report in April 2022. The discovery of 215 unmarked graves at a former school in Canada prompted the department to examine the United States’ own genocidal past.
Soldiers guard an autobahn at the Bara taxi rank shops in Soweto, Johannesburg. (photo: Ali Greeff/AP)
More than 70 people killed and 1,000 arrested over five days as authorities fail to stop spiralling violence and looting.
iolence and looting has raged in South Africa for the sixth day running, stoking fears of food and fuel shortages as disruption to farming, manufacturing and oil refining began to bite amid the country’s worst unrest in decades.
More than 70 people have died as grievances over the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma have widened into an outpouring of anger over the inequality that remains 27 years after the end of apartheid.
Poverty has been exacerbated by severe social and economic restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.
More than 1,200 people have been arrested in the lawlessness that has raged in poor areas of two provinces, where a community radio station was ransacked and forced off the air on Tuesday and some COVID-19 vaccination centres were closed, disrupting urgently needed inoculations.
Many of the deaths in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces occurred in chaotic stampedes as thousands of people stole food, electric appliances, liquor and clothing from stores, police said.
The deployment of 2,500 soldiers to support the overwhelmed South African police has so far failed to stop the rampant looting.
Sunrise movement demonstration. (photo: Facebook)
From Bernie Sanders and AOC to the Sunrise Movement, progressives are working to establish an updated version of a New Deal program to meet the challenges of economic and climate upheaval. Its time has come.
he Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal embraced by President Joe Biden appears to be a dud. Instead of taxing the rich to modernize America’s roads, water systems and other infrastructure, it promotes various forms of privatization. A summary released in late June about how new construction will be financed includes so-called “public-private partnerships,” which are essentially high-interest loans to state and local governments that deliver massive returns for Wall Street banks, private equity investors and multinational financial firms. Also listed is a fringe policy idea called “asset recycling,” which would incentivize states and cities to outright sell off public assets. Back in 2009, Chicago leased out its parking meters to investors as far away as Abu Dhabi for at least $1 billion under value, which has forced residents to pick up the tab ever since. Asset recycling is that type of scheme on steroids.
If Biden is committed to tackling both climate change and inequality — which he says he is—then encouraging privatization is counterproductive. Privatizing infrastructure makes adapting to a warming climate harder—because it gives decision making power to corporations and investors. It raises fees and rates for residents—because those corporations and investors need to make a profit. And it creates a race to the bottom on worker wages—because contracted out workers are less likely to be members of a union.
But all is not lost. Biden has a chance to deliver for working people and a healthy climate if he listens to progressives when it comes to a promising proposal that could potentially create millions of good-paying, green public jobs: The Civilian Climate Corps (CCC).
The CCC would be a government jobs program that puts people to work directly combatting the climate crisis. First envisioned by the youth-led Sunrise Movement, the program would aim to “conserve and restore public lands and waters, bolster community resilience, increase reforestation, increase carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector, protect biodiversity, improve access to recreation, and address the changing climate.”
Its impact could be considerable, especially if the final product echoes a proposal released in April by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D‑Mass.). Their proposed CCC would create 1.5 million jobs that would pay at least $15 per hour, provide full healthcare coverage, and offer support beyond the workplace, like housing and educational grants.
The good news is that, even though Biden’s bipartisan deal doesn’t include money for the CCC, the president actually already established the program in a January executive order, and his original American Jobs Plan called for $10 billion in funding for it. The bad news is that the proposed funding was only a fraction of what’s needed. Biden’s proposal would only create up to 20,000 jobs a year—nowhere near the overall need.
That’s why progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) and Ocasio-Cortez, alongside groups like Sunrise and the National Wildlife Federation, are pushing for a much bigger and broader infrastructure investment than the bipartisan deal, to include substantial funding for the CCC.
One avenue will be to pressure Biden to keep his word when it comes to public jobs. In late June, the president signed an executive order directing the the federal government to encourage diversity and inclusion among its workforce. If a CCC becomes a reality, it must avoid the mistakes made by its predecessor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, which was established in 1933.
The first corps accomplished plenty. Over nine years, it employed some 3 million young men to fight forest fires, build more than 100,000 miles of roads and trails, construct 318,000 dams, connect telephone lines across mountain passes, plant 3 billion trees, and much more. But it suffered the same affliction as many New Deal-era programs by mostly shutting out Black Americans.
While the bill authorizing the program stipulated that “no discrimination shall be made on account of race, color, or creed,” Black workers were separated into different camps and often given more difficult, less prestigious work. They also experienced resistance when climbing the ranks within the Civilian Conservation Corps’ administrative hierarchy. Women weren’t allowed to join at all, instead offered opportunities with Eleanor Roosevelt’s “She-She-She” camps, which were widely scorned and only benefited some 8,500 people.
That’s why a new CCC must aim to target communities most harmed by the intersecting Covid-19, climate and unemployment crises. As In These Times’ editors wrote back in April, “The new Civilian Climate Corps must center Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous communities, which have been disproportionately affected by environmental injustice (and Covid-19).”
Public employment has long offered stable jobs to people of color, particularly after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Black Americans gained 28 percent of new federal government jobs in the 1960s, while only making up 10 percent of the U.S. population. By the 1980s and 1990s, Black public employees were twice as likely as their private sector counterparts to receive promotions into white collar managerial positions and technical jobs. For both men and women, the median wage earned by Black employees is significantly higher in the public sector than in other industries.
For now, with the Senate still debating the paltry bipartisan infrastructure deal, it appears that funding for the CCC will have to find its way into a future budget reconciliation package, which wouldn’t require Republican votes to pass. “I want to enlist a new generation of climate conservation and resilience workers like FDR did with the American work plan for preserving our landscape with the Civilian Conservation Corps,” Biden said in a July 7 speech in Illinois. He made clear that the CCC, as well as other policies like two free years of community college, aren’t going to be in the bipartisan deal. “In Washington, they call it a reconciliation bill,” he said of the plan for enacting other major parts of his agenda.
Sanders is currently crafting language for such a bill, and plans to include increased funding for the CCC (reportedly $50 billion on top of Biden’s original proposal). Making such an investment a reality will likely require climate organizers and advocates to keep the pressure on lawmakers in Washington so they don’t renege on their promises on the environment.
People need jobs. We need to modernize our infrastructure to combat climate change. The federal government is the only institution with enough coordination and resources to kill those two birds with one stone. A well-funded CCC is the clear path forward.
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