MORNING MESSAGE
Financial
columnist Megan McArdle recently wrote a column entitled “Healthcare Is a
Business, Not a Right.” ... “Almost everybody feels that there is something
fundamentally wrong about making money off someone else’s illness,” McArdle
laments. It’s a straw-man argument ... Rights and commerce can coexist in a
democratic society, as long as commerce doesn’t threaten rights. But when they
clash, commerce must give way. Since commerce has failed to provide affordable
and accessible health care, it must yield to rights.
NEXT PRESIDENT HAS POWER TO THWART TPP
“White
House says it sees a path to approval of Pacific trade deal” reports
Reuters: “The White House said on Monday it could still win congressional
approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact before President Barack
Obama leaves office, and warned that failing to do so would undermine U.S.
leadership in the region … ahead of Obama’s trip to Asia this week.”
Trump
or Clinton could bury TPP even if Congress passes it. Politico: “The next
president could refuse to verify that other countries have implemented their
early commitments under the pact. Or he or she could simply delay sending the
paperwork to inform other TPP members that the United States has completed its
own implementation … If Trump or Clinton refused to forward the required
paperwork, it would scuttle the pact not just for the United States, but for all
12 members.”
France
wants delay of TTIP trade talks. AP: “French President Francois Hollande
said Tuesday that talks on a landmark trade deal between the U.S. and European
Union are unbalanced and cannot be completed before President Barack Obama
leaves office … ‘The negotiations have bogged down, the positions have not been
respected, the imbalance is obvious.'”
TTIP
prospects dim. Bloomberg: “To anti-globalization activists both on the left
and on the right, the deal attempts to make multinational corporations
unaccountable to national governments. The EU is pushing for a greater role for
governments in regulating foreign investors’ activities … negotiations have
dragged on for so long, and so many doubts about it have been raised in Europe,
that neither the German government nor the French will want to make any serious
compromises before next year’s elections. Nor will the U.S. want to back down
during the next round of talks, expected at some point in the fall.”
Buzzfeed
continues its investigation into ISDS trade dispute mechanism, a key component
of TPP: ” Of all the ways in which ISDS is used, the most deeply hidden are
the threats, uttered in private meetings or ominous letters, that invoke those
courts. The threats are so powerful they often eliminate the need to actually
bring a lawsuit. Just the knowledge that it could happen is enough.”
APPLE MUST PAY UP
Apple
busted on tax avoidance. Reuters: “E.U. antitrust regulators ordered Appleon
Tuesday to pay up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in taxes plus interest to
the Irish government after ruling that a special scheme to route profits through
Ireland was illegal state aid. The massive sum, 40 times bigger than the
previous known demand by the European Commission to a company in such a case,
could be reduced … if other countries sought more tax themselves from the U.S.
tech giant.”
Tax
cheating poised to rise. W. Post’s Catherine Rampell: “Today, about 82 cents
of every dollar owed in U.S. taxes gets paid voluntarily, which is high. Here
are six reasons that number is going to fall … Congress has gutted Internal
Revenue Service enforcement … Budget cuts have also hurt IRS customer service …
The rise of the ‘gig economy’ …”
SCARCE FUNDS TO RELOCATE COMMUNITIES HIT BY CLIMATE CRISIS
Economists
joust over how much it will cost US to meet its greenhouse gas emission targets
by 2050. Bloomberg: “Geoffrey Heal, an economist at Columbia Business School
[says the] investment to make sufficient electricity to power America, with an
80 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, would cost anywhere from
$1.28 trillion to $5.28 trillion … Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford University
professor of civil and environmental engineering [says Heal] accounts only for
reductions from electricity generation, transmission, and storage … Jacobson’s
own central estimate [is] about $14.6 trillion…”
Communities
on frontline of climate crisis fight for limited federal funds. Bloomberg:
“The contest, called the National Disaster Resilience Competition, was the first
large-scale federal effort to highlight and support local solutions for coping
with climate change. It wound up demonstrating something decidedly less upbeat:
The federal government is still struggling to figure out which communities
should be moved, and when, and how to pay for it.”
UNION REPRESeNTATION SINKS
Private
section union membership hits new low, forces unions to focus on nonunion
workers. American Prospect: “A new Economic Policy Institute white paper
published Tuesday found that since 1979, the share of men who belong to unions
in the private-sector workforce has fallen from 34 percent to 10 percent … if
unions had the same presence in the private sector today that they did in 1979,
men—both union members and nonunion members alike—would be making $2,704 more
each year … Traditional unions are involved in efforts to help nonmembers secure
better benefits, even if those workers never end up joining the union.”
Unions
boosting African-American wages. The Atlantic: “In a paper published by the
Center for Economic and Policy Research, Cherrie Bucknor looks at the wages of
black workers, who are more likely to be unionized than white workers … Black
union workers earned $24.24 an hour, compared to $17.78 for their non-union
counterparts.”
AZ, FL VOTE TODAY
Rep.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz expected to survive FL primary today. NYT: “Sanders
supporters later bolstered [challenger Tim] Canova’s candidacy. But polls still
have her ahead in a district that extends from west of Fort Lauderdale to Miami
Beach, and she has had campaign help from Mrs. Clinton.”
Sen.
John McCain expected to win today’s AZ primary, but margin may matter.
Politico: “…the margin of victory will decide whether he barrels or limps
into the toughest general election fight of his 34-year political career,
against Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick … Even if he wins by 10 points it would
still be his closest primary since McCain ran for his House seat 34 years
ago.”
Progressive
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