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Facebook had its own “redlining” program built into the company’s software, according to charges filed against the social media giant by the federal government on Thursday.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which brought the charges, alleges the social media giant “unlawfully discriminates based on race, color, national origin, religion, familial status, sex, and disability by restricting who can view housing-related ads on Facebook’s platforms and across the internet.”
HUD secretary Ben Carson said in a statement that Facebook’s advertisement parameters which allowed advertisers to tailor who saw their ads were as effective an act of “redlining”—the practice of keeping people of color out of predominately white neighborhoods—as drawing lines on a physical map was in the past.
“Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” said Carson. “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”
Facebook, in a statement to The New York Times, said it was surprised by the charges.
“We’re surprised by HUD’s decision, as we’ve been working with them to address their concerns,” the company said.
The department’s decision came after years of reporting from ProPublica on Facebook’s use of the advertising tactic and after a year of litigation against the practice by civil rights groups.
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In reporting on Thursday’s decision, ProPublica reporter Ariana Tobin pointed out that HUD’s decision might be based in something other than concern for people victimized by Facebook’s practices.
Given that political environment and a healthy distrust of the priorities of the Trump administration, rights groups were cautious in their praise for the decision to go after Facebook for the company’s behavior.
“HUD’s action today is commendable, if not overdue,” said Free Press’s Gaurav Larioa.
“HUD’s action today is commendable, if not overdue,” said Gaurav Laroia, policy counsel for the advocacy group Free Press, in a statement.
“Companies shouldn’t get rich by denying people their civil rights,” added Laroia. “The case against Facebook is an invitation to fundamentally reassess the business model that facilitates and encourages these practices across way too many online platforms.”
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The ACLU is putting $30 million into the 2020 election cycle to promote a vision of civil liberties that will require candidates running for president to support four broad planks in order to receive the organization’s support.
The civil liberties group is pushing candidates on a campaign called “Rights for All,” which focuses on reproductive freedom, voting rights, criminal justice reform, and immigrant justice, it announced Sunday evening in an event livestreamed on YouTube.
The organization said in a statement announcing the initiative that the quartet of polices was the “minimum” commitment the group was asking candidates to commit to.
“We don’t want the default positions that are in the party platform,” Ronald Newman, the ACLU’s interim national political director, told HuffPost. “We’re trying to advance civil liberties here.”
The group is backing that initiative up with cash.
“Between now and November 2020, the ACLU will spend $28-30 million engaging candidates and voters in our Rights for All effort,” the organization said in a statement.
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But, as HuffPost reported, not all of the policy proposals from the organization are guaranteed to meet with approval from Democrats running for the party’s nomination to take on incumbent President Donald Trump.
In particular, a call to “cut incarceration by 50 percent in federal prisons, and everywhere in the country” seems destined to meet with resistance from the party. And thus far it’s been difficult to find Democrats willing to commit to restoring voting rights to all felons, even those behind bars.
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It’s also unlikely that the group will get any response from the president, though the organization did say in its statement that it would like to hear from Trump: “Keeping with our nonpartisan principles, we’ll question presidential candidates on both—and neither—side of the aisle, including, if given the opportunity, President Trump.”
Either way, the ACLU has its mandate and appears prepared to fight for it.
“We’re going all in to make sure civil rights and civil liberties are front and center in this election,” the organization said on social media.
It’s a commitment that—with $30 million behind it—appears sure to make waves in the next election.
Watch the campaign kickoff:
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Eating even “moderate” amounts of red and processed meat increases the risk of colon cancer, according to a new study of nearly half a million adults in the United Kingdom.
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“Our results strongly suggest that people who eat red and processed meat four or more times a week have a higher risk of developing bowel cancer than those who eat red and processed meat less than twice a week.”
—Tim Key, coauthor
For over five years, experts at the University of Oxford, University of Auckland, and the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO) analyzed the diets and cancer rates of people who voluntarily participate in the U.K. Biobank research project.
The findings, published Wednesday in the International Journal of Epidemiology, align with previous research and subsequent warnings from public health experts about the risks of colon cancer, also known as bowel or colorectal cancer.
“Our results strongly suggest that people who eat red and processed meat four or more times a week have a higher risk of developing bowel cancer than those who eat red and processed meat less than twice a week,” said coauthor Tim Key, deputy director of Oxford’s cancer epidemiology unit.
“Most previous research looked at people in the 1990s or earlier, and diets have changed significantly since then,” Key added, “so our study gives a more up-to-date insight that is relevant to meat consumption today.”
The new study showed that people who ate about 76 grams of red and processed meat daily—in line with the U.K. government’s dietary guidelines—had a 20 percent higher chance of developing colon cancer than those who ate only 21 grams per day. Researchers also found that the cancer risk rose by 19 percent for every 25 grams of processed meat—a slice of ham or a rasher of bacon—that people ate daily, and by 18 percent for each 50 grams of red meat—equivalent to a thick slice of roast beef or a lamb cutlet.
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The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified processed meat—which is salted, cured, fermented, smoked, or otherwise treated to “enhance flavor or improve preservation”—as carcinogenic to humans in 2015. The U.N. agency also named red meat—including including, beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse, and goat—as a probable carcinogen.
With the new report, “we are not claiming that therefore the [U.K.] government recommendation is wrong and should be changed,” given that other nutritional aspects would need to be considered, Key told the Guardian. “The main message for the public is that it reinforces the government advice that we shouldn’t eat large amounts of red and processed meat.”
For those looking to cut back on their meat consumption to reduce their cancer risk, lead author Kathryn Bradbury, a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland, said, “you can try having meat free lunches, or days, and swapping red meat for chicken, fish, or legumes.”
Bradbury’s suggestion echoes a January report by the EAT-Lancet Commission that offered a pathway for feeding the world’s growing population with the “planetary health diet,” which involves cutting red meat consumption by half while doubling the intake of nuts, fruits, and vegetables.
The commission also called for a “global agricultural revolution” to overhaul the world’s unhealthy and unsustainable food system, which significantly contributes to not only mass malnutrition but also the human-made climate crisis. The EAT-Lancet report followed a series of other studies that have shown that severely scaling back red meat production and consumption is environmentally necessary.
As commission coauthor Tim Lang said when that report was released, “The food we eat and how we produce it determines the health of people and the planet, and we are currently getting this seriously wrong.”
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The ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s was among those on Saturday who sought to draw attention to inequities which have become increasingly apparent since more states began loosening cannabis restrictions—a shift which critics say has mainly benefited white and upper-class Americans.
The Vermont-based company, which has been outspoken about progressive causes since it opened in 1978, circulated a petition late Friday, calling on Congress to extend the benefits of the growing destigmatization of marijuana to communities of color, who are disproportionately convicted of and incarcerated for drug-related crimes.
“Now that pot is legal in 33 states and counting,” the company wrote of April 20, a popular date in cannabis culture, “fans of cannabis can celebrate 4/20 openly and in style in more places than ever before. And even if you’re not in a state that legalized pot, there’s a still a pretty good chance that the cops won’t hassle you as you spend 4/20 doing your thing.”
“If you’re a white person,” the petition added.
Legal dispensaries that sell cannabis for recreational and health purposes are driving what is expected to be a $20 billion industry by 2020, the company wrote. But even in states where marijuana has been legalized, arrests for possession of the substance still disproportionately target black Americans.
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“Let’s be clear: even with increased legalization, hundreds of thousands of people are still being arrested for pot,” wrote Ben & Jerry’s. “And most of those people are Black. Black New York City residents, for example, are eight times more likely to be arrested for pot than whites.”
Meanwhile, according to a Buzzfeed report from 2018, “based on more than 150 interviews with dispensary owners, industry insiders, and salespeople who interact with a lot of pot shops, it appears that fewer than three dozen of the 3,200 to 3,600 storefront marijuana dispensaries in the United States are owned by black people — about one percent.”
Ben & Jerry’s asked supporters to call on Congress to expunge prior convictions for marijuana and begin pardoning people who were convicted only of cannabis possession, in order to help “make sure that legalization benefits all of us.”
By Saturday afternoon, more than 21,000 people had signed the petition.
The topic of social equity in relation to cannabis was a topic of discussion for many in the press and on social media on Saturday, with the Washington Post reporting on efforts in Oakland, California to give at least half of its cannabis retail licenses to social equity candidates—including people with past marijuana convictions—and in Sacramento to give preferential treatment for licenses to neighborhoods affected by the War on Drugs.
“We have opted into the cannabis industry and now we have to make sure it works for all of our people,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg told the Post.
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As Democrats on the House Oversight Committee attempt to investigate soaring drug prices in the U.S., Republicans are warning the CEOs of some of America’s largest pharmaceutical companies against cooperating with the probe.
“Once again, they’re siding with Big Pharma at the expense of the American people.”
—Robert Reich
Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), leaders of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, sent letters (pdf) to a dozen drug company CEOs “warning that information they provide to the committee could be leaked to the public by Democratic chair Elijah Cummings in an effort to tank their stock prices,” Buzzfeed reported Monday.
Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, launched his investigation in January with a request for “information and communications on price increases, investments in research and development, and corporate strategies to preserve market share and pricing power” from pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, and others.
In their letters to the same pharmaceutical companies, Jordan and Meadows suggested that Cummings is attempting to obtain information that “would likely harm the competitiveness of your company if disclosed publicly.”
“While we cannot speculate about Chairman Cummings’s motives, we believe the committee should not pursue an investigation to ‘impact… stock prices with regard to drugs’—especially when there is bipartisan interest in real oversight of rising prescription drug prices,” the Republicans wrote in their letters, dated April 5.
As Buzzfeed notes, Jordan and Meadows’ claims rest on an out-of-context quote from Cummings:
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In a statement to Buzzfeed, Cummings said Jordan—the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee—”is on the absolute wrong side here.”
“He would rather protect drug company ‘stock prices’ than the interests of the American people,” Cummings added.
Economist and University of California, Berkeley professor Robert Reich expressed agreement with Cummings, tweeting of the two Republicans, “Once again, they’re siding with Big Pharma at the expense of the American people.”
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Edward Snowden joined the chorus of advocacy groups, reporters, and critics as the NSA whistleblower described the arrest of WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange Thursday morning as a “dark moment for press freedom” that could have grave implications for journalism across the globe.
“Mr. Assange deserves the solidarity of the community of investigative journalists. The world is now watching.”
—Centre for Investigative Journalism
“Images of Ecuador’s ambassador inviting the U.K.’s secret police into the embassy to drag a publisher of—like it or not—award-winning journalism out of the building are going to end up in the history books,” Snowden tweeted.
Assange’s arrest comes amid concerns that British authorities could be planning to extradite him to the United States.
The U.K. police confirmed that Assange was arrested in part due to “an extradition warrant on behalf of the United States authorities.”
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Shortly after Assange’s arrest, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed charges against the WikiLeaks founder, accusing him of a “computer hacking conspiracy.”
“If you’re cheering Assange’s arrest based on a U.S. extradition request, your allies in your celebration are the most extremist elements of the Trump administration, whose primary and explicit goal is to criminalize reporting on classified docs and punish [WikiLeaks] for exposing war crimes,” tweeted The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald.
“All of us in the press should read the charges made against Assange very carefully,” wrote Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi, “as this case has enormous potential ramifications for journalists everywhere.”
Greenwald’s colleague at The Intercept, investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, called the arrest “an extremely dangerous crossing of the rubicon” when it comes to press freedoms. “All journalists,” he said, “should stand in fierce opposition.”
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As Common Dreams reported last November, the Trump Justice Department accidentally revealed in an unrelated court filing that it has secretly charged Assange.
“Wikileaks material from Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere has become a unique, invaluable resource for investigative journalists and scholars around the world,” the U.K.-based Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) said in a statement Thursday.
“Whatever your view of its philosophy of radical transparency, Wikileaks is a publisher,” CIJ added. “Any charges now brought in connection with that material, or any attempt to extradite Mr. Assange to the United States for prosecution under the deeply flawed cudgel of the Espionage Act 1917, is an attack on all of us. Mr. Assange deserves the solidarity of the community of investigative journalists. The world is now watching.”
Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, warned in a statement that “prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for WikiLeaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations.”
“Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public’s interest,” Wizner added.
Journalists were quick to point out that major establishment newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post frequently publish classified information. Prosecuting Assange for doing the same, critics argued, would set an extraordinarily dangerous precedent.
In an editorial just two days ago, the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper made clear that while Assange may have some charges to answer for there is simply no defensible reason for the British government to extradite him to the U.S. to face a sealed indictment over his work as a journalist and publisher:
Assange is reportedly set to appear in court as early as Thursday afternoon, according to WikiLeaks.
As he was being carried to a police van by British authorities Thursday morning, Assange shouted, “Resist this attempt by the Trump administration.”
This article has been updated to include information about the U.S. Justice Department’s indictment against Julian Assange.
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A new six-month analysis of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts details how workers received little benefit from the plan, despite the savings many of their powerful corporate employers received.
The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) interviewed independent tax analysts and officials who were involved in the Republican Party’s effort to sell the so-called American Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to the public—and within their own party ranks. Progressive critics have consistently called the law nothing nothing more than a “tax scam.”
The GOP’s insistence on a tax law which included the largest corporate tax cut in U.S. history—from 35 to 21 percent—resulted in companies saving about $150 billion in the first year after the passage in December 2017.
Trump and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan had spent months telling Americans they stood to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars in taxes, with Trump telling one crowd that the average family would see a pay raise of about $4,000, a benefit that would “trickle down” from employers’ corporate tax cuts.
In fact, CPI reporters Peter Cary and Allan Holmes wrote in The Guardian, companies instead distributed their savings amongst the few Americans who hold stock in their corporations:
Far from the $4,000 raises Trump alluded to, CPI found, the average paycheck went up about $6, or $233 per year.
The report also detailed how Republicans pushed through a proposal which would force the government to borrow trillions of dollars, despite the GOP’s frequent claims of opposition to adding to the federal deficit:
CPI drew three main conclusions from their extensive research into the effects of the tax cuts: that the law “was first and foremost a gift to multinationals;” that Republicans’ claims that they aimed to “reform” the tax code without adding to the deficit were “meaningless;” and that it left the tax system vulnerable to abuse by corporations committed to tax avoidance.
The law “contained egregious mistakes, created massive new loopholes, and opened the door to new forms of tax avoidance,” write Cary and Holmes.
The group’s findings were released a day after a Monmouth poll showed that the long-term effects of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax plan have not been lost on the working families who were largely left out of its benefits.
Just 12 percent of people polled by Monmouth said they had “benefited a great deal from recent growth in the U.S. economy,” and 18 percent said Trump’s economic policies had helped the middle class. The poll was taken as the president points to low unemployment numbers, a growing GDP, and a strong stock market as irrefutable evidence that the economy is working for all Americans.
“Maybe Americans are better off than they were a few years ago on average,” wrote Vice‘s Alex Norcia of the poll, “but maybe they’re also more aware of inequality, or have a sense of being cheated.”
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Just two weeks after the nine-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster—the largest ocean oil spill in U.S. history—the Trump administration on Thursday moved to dismantle offshore drilling regulations aimed at preventing another catastrophic leak.
“These rollbacks are a hand out to oil company CEOs at the cost of endangering the lives of their workers and heightening the risk for another environmental catastrophe.”
—Chris Eaton, Earthjustice
The White House’s revised Well Control Rule—which could save the fossil fuel industry close to a billion dollars over the next decade—was unveiled by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist who advocacy groups have described as a “walking, talking conflict of interest.”
Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana, called the Trump administration’s move “a major step backward in offshore drilling safety.”
“Gutting the few offshore drilling safeguards established in wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster is reckless and wrong,” Hoskins said in a statement. “More drilling and less safety is a recipe for disaster. We should be implementing new safety reforms, not rolling back the few safety measures currently in place.”
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The rule will go into effect 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register, which could happen as early as Friday.
According to the New York Times, one of the major components of the Trump administration’s plan “is a significant reduction in the requirement for oil companies to test fail-safe devices called blowout preventers, which are intended to be a last line of defense against disasters like Deepwater Horizon.”
The White House’s revisions also included slight tweaks to the language of existing regulations that environmentalists warned could have massive effects.
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As the Washington Post reported: “Safety-bureau regulators removed a key word from language describing the level of down-hole pressure the agency requires operators to maintain in a given well to avoid an accident. The word it removed is ‘safe.'”
Chris Eaton, oceans attorney with Earthjustice, said his organization “will use every tool we have to prevent these rollbacks.”
“The Trump administration is rolling back mechanisms and technology designed to protect rig workers and prevent another disaster offshore,” Eaton said in a statement. “These rollbacks are a hand out to oil company CEOs at the cost of endangering the lives of their workers and heightening the risk for another environmental catastrophe off America’s coastlines.”
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When it comes to saving the planet and humanity from climate crisis, there is no time for “middle ground.”
That was the gist of a slew of reactions Friday after Reuters reported that the climate change policy currently being drafted by Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign is “a middle ground approach” that backs some fossil fuel options and curtails a more ambitious path to address the crisis.
Reuters said the approach “could put him in a better position than his rivals to take on Trump if it accommodates blue-collar voters”—a suggestion that one writer characterized as a “BS rationalizing narrative.”
“This fossil fuel-friendly agenda would amount to a death sentence for a livable climate.”
—Mitch Jones, Food & Water ActionThe exclusive reporting cities two key sources: Heather Zichal, Biden’s informal advisor on climate change policy, and an unnamed former energy department official advising the campaign.
Zichal was previously a climate and energy staffer in the Obama White House, and then went on to serve a stint on the board of directors for Cheniere, a liquefied natural gas company.
In addition to recommitting to the Paris climate accord and maintaining car efficiency and emissions regulations, reports Reuters, Biden’s proposal “will likely also be supportive of nuclear energy and fossil fuel options like natural gas and carbon capture technology.”
Such a platform, as the reporting noted, would put him squarely at odds with other Democratic presidential hopefuls like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Jay Inslee who’ve called for far more ambitious climate proposals and have backed the Green New Deal.
Zichal, however, suggested the Biden campaign wasn’t moving toward such an amibitous policy. “Right now,” she said, “we need a little bit more reality around this dialogue.”
Reuters speculated that Biden’s approach would “likely face heavy resistance from green activists,” and that was confirmed Friday by a chorus of opposition from groups who argued the plan is the opposite of the kind urgent and bold action needed to avert planetary catastrophe.
“This fossil fuel-friendly agenda would amount to a death sentence for a livable climate,” Mitch Jones, climate and energy program director with Food & Water Action, told Common Dreams.
“While establishment Democrats like Biden seek a middle ground,” said Jones, “our burning planet is seeking a leader that will move us off fossil fuels and towards a just and fair transition to truly clean energy, which would create hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.”
“Grassroots activism has propelled climate change to the top of the agenda for Democratic voters. Biden’s climate stance is not only uninspiring—it will doom us to climate chaos,” he added.
“If Biden were serious about creating good jobs for working people. Instead, he’s taking a page from the oil and gas lobby’s playbook.”
—Varshini Prakash, Sunrise Movement
The Sunrise Movement, a driving force behind the Green New Deal legislation, had a similar reaction.
“A ‘middle ground’ policy that’s supportive of more fossil fuel development is a death sentence for our generation and the millions of people on the frontlines of the climate crisis,” said Sunrise co-founder Varshini Prakash.
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“If Biden were serious about creating good jobs for working people,” said Prakash, he’d support the Green New Deal. “Instead, he’s taking a page from the oil and gas lobby’s playbook.”
“Biden’s betting that a retreat to mediocrity and tepid policy making will garner him the Democratic nomination, but climate change is a top issue in this election and voters expect candidates to put forward solutions in line with the crisis. All this approach will do is lose young voters and throw communities of color and working people into chaos and violence, leaving my generation to deal with a broken economy and global society,” she added.
With a surge of negative reactions online, many observers rejected the plan as well:
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The Trump administration is letting corporate crime run rampant.
“This country’s government is rigged in favor of the rich and powerful, and the Trump administration has turned this power gap into a chasm.”
That’s the message delivered by a new report (pdf) out Tuesday from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
The report, “Rigged Justice 2.0,” explains how President Donald Trump’s government is allowing corporations to do whatever they want.
“Our justice system’s soft touch with huge corporations and billionaires is not a new phenomenon,” reads the report. “But under President Trump, it is far worse than it has ever been.”
The report is the second in a series. The first edition, “Rigged Justice,” was released by Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate, in January 2016. The report detailed the weakness of the Obama administration on corporate crime—but, as Warren’s office pointed out in a statement announcing “Rigged Justice 2.0,” those were the good old days.
“This new analysis reveals a catastrophic decline in corporate accountability under President Trump,” said Warren’s office, “illustrating the impact of corporate malfeasance on the American public through a dozen case studies in which the government failed to hold companies and white collar criminals accountable for ripping off the American people, hurting workers, or damaging the environment.”
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Among the highlights of the new report are a 20-year low in corporate crime enforcement and an abdication of governmental responsibility for workers, consumers, and the environment. The lack of action to hold corporations accountable, the report argues, is because of an unprecedented takeover of the federal government by corporations.
Among the key findings:
- A rapid decline in the number of white collar crime enforcement actions pursued by the federal government, bringing enforcement activity to a 20-year low — down 33.5 percent from 2013, and down 41 percent from 1998;
- A decline in monetary penalties and enforcement actions across nearly every federal government agency, including drops in penalty amounts of more than 80% during the administration’s first 20 months at the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Federal Communications Commission;
- A failure to punish banks and financial firms that break the law, including a more than 50% decline in the number of cases brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Securities and Exchange Commission, and DOJ; and
- Massive declines in the number of federal government employees responsible for enforcing federal laws that protect the security of our financial markets, the safety of our workplaces, and the quality of our air and water.
“The Trump administration has treated their billionaire buddies and corporate campaign contributors like the old friends they are,” reads the report, “handing them the keys to government regulatory decisions, and neutering the federal government’s enforcement tools to address and prevent corporate crime.”
In its 16 pages, the new report exhaustively details a litany of corporate crimes across all sectors and notes the Trump administration’s inaction on nearly every issue, including a defunding and defanging of the regulatory state apparatuses put in place to protect the American people.
“This country’s government is rigged in favor of the rich and powerful,” the report says, “and the Trump administration has turned this power gap into a chasm.”
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