Priti Patel Refuses To Resign After Bullying Inquiry
Home Secretary Priti Patel – protected by Prime Minister Boris Johnson – refuses to resign after bullying inquiry
Greenpeace Releases Far-Reaching ‘Just Recovery Agenda’ to Tackle Interlocking Crises of Inequality, Racial Injustice, Covid-19, and Climate Chaos
We must “shift from an economy that is extractive and exploitative to one that regenerates and repairs,” the new report says.byAndrea Germanos, staff writer
Republished from Common Dreams
“Over the past four years, we have cared for one another,” said Greenpeace USA campaigns director James Mumm. “Now, we must come together to ensure that Joe Biden and the new Congress care for us, and to see that everyone—no matter their race or where they come from—has what they need to thrive.” (Photo: Michael Nagle/Greenpeace)
The “just, green, and peaceful future we deserve is possible and together we can build the power to manifest it.”
This moment “calls us to be visionary in our pursuit to people—not corporations or wealthy elites—at the heart of governance and public life.”
—James Mumm, Greenpeace USA
So declares Greenpeace USA’s new “Just Recovery Agenda.” Released Tuesday and packed with more than 100 sweeping policy recommendations for President-elect Joe Biden and members of the next U.S. Congress to embrace, the visionary document plots out a path for erecting new systems that no longer put corporate greed above the public and planet’s well-being.
“Going back to normal is not an option,” the report bluntly states, because what “we knew as ‘normal’ was a crisis.” The coronavirus crisis has thrown that truism into relief, says Greenpeace, but the worsening climate and ecological crises and deep inequality have long made the case for a bold transformation of the dominant economic system.
With post-pandemic policies now being charting out—and a new presidential administration just months away—Greenpeace says it’s crystal clear now is the time for pivotal change.
“The policy choices we make in this disruptive moment will shape the path forward for millions of people—the Covid-19 crisis and clarion call for racial justice in 2020 must mark a turning point for federal policy-making,” the report urges.
Greenpeace USA campaigns director James Mumm put the new report in the context of former Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump.
“We the people have chosen Joe Biden, who will arrive in the White House with a forceful mandate to lead our recovery from Covid-19, address the climate crisis, advance racial justice, and build an economy that puts people first,” Mumm said in a statement.
“Over the past four years, we have cared for one another,” he continued. “Now, we must come together to ensure that Joe Biden and the new Congress care for us, and to see that everyone—no matter their race or where they come from—has what they need to thrive.”
The report expands on what that means by pointing to “dignified work, healthcare, education, housing, clean air and water, healthy food, and more.” In this new work, says Greenpeace, the world must “shift from an economy that is extractive and exploitative to one that regenerates and repairs.”
Centering all the prescriptions—which range from boosting voting rights to expanding renewable energy—are values of equity, community justice, freedom, compassion, and creativity.
Actions demanded of federal lawmakers include establishing a federal minimum wage of $15 per hour; strengthening the National Environmental Policy Act; enacting and enforcing new antitrust standards to curb corporate power; “passing bold and just recovery legislation in line with the THRIVE Agenda to lay the groundwork for a Green New Deal and world beyond fossil fuels”; enacting the pro-democracy the For The People Act of 2019; banning permits for new or expansions of existing factory farms; “enacting The BREATHE Act to police brutality and racial injustice by investing in Black communities and re-imagining community safety”; and enacting a ban on deep sea mining.
“As we look to recover from the interlocking crises we face as a nation,” said Mumm, “it’s time to use the tools and power of the federal government to solve problems rather than exacerbate them.”
“This moment calls us to be bold and advance solutions at the scale science and justice demand,” he continued. “It calls us to be holistic and navigate out of multiple crises at once. And it calls us to be visionary in our pursuit to people—not corporations or wealthy elites—at the heart of governance and public life.”
Make no mistake—the “us” Mumm refers to really means all of us.
“Telling our story will not be the job of a single, appointed messenger, be it a politician, celebrity, CEO, or activist,” says the report. “That responsibility lies with everyone who believes in the vision of a better world.”
“Together we will build a movement broad, inclusive, and powerful enough to deliver the future our communities need and deserve,” it states. “Together we will rewrite the rules of society.”
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News That Matters
Boris Johnson government chumocracy and covid cronyism
‘Chumocracy’: how Covid revealed the new shape of the Tory establishment
Appointments made and contracts awarded during the pandemic have uncovered a web of connections
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The anti-establishment claims of a government led by Johnson and Dominic Cummings were always audacious, and in the appointments and contracts awarded during the pandemic, the shape of a Tory establishment has come into focus. Critics are calling it a “chumocracy”.
Companies benefiting from government contracts awarded during the pandemic have links, among others, to the Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove and Cummings, the prime minister’s chief adviser. Cummings shock departure from Downing Street following the resignation of his close ally Lee Cain, who was head of communications, now signal a realignment of power in No 10, but the web of connections drawing complaints of “cronyism” extend beyond any single Tory faction.
Bingham’s appointment shares similarities with that of Dido Harding, to head the NHS test and trace operation in May. She was made chair of NHS Improvement in 2017 after an open recruitment process, her CV gleams with executive experience, and also opens a window to a small world of Conservative connectedness. Married to the Tory MP John Penrose, she was given a peerage in 2014 by David Cameron, a friend, and sits in the House of Lords as a Conservative.
Neither Bingham nor Harding are being paid for their roles, but critics complain that two central pillars of the pandemic response, vaccines and testing, are being led by two well-connected executives appointed without an evident formal process.
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Government outsourcing of COVID-19 response is “national scandal” says select committee member
Labour’s Dawn Butler says pandemic being used as a “cover” to avoid accountability, comments come in wake of latest openDemocracy COVID contracting revelation.
The government has been accused of presiding over “a national scandal” by awarding multi-million COVID contracts to companies with minimal oversight and accountability.
Labour MP Dawn Butler told openDemocracy that many of the firms that had received lucrative government contracts had failed to deliver.
“There is public money being given to companies that are not delivering a good service. I think the pandemic is being used as a cover,” said the member of the House of Commons science and technology select committee.
Butler’s comments, made in a live webinar, came after openDemocracy revealed a PR firm close to Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove that has received more than £1million worth of government contracts without any competition had been hired to clean up the A-level exams result fiasco.
Government contracts are usually awarded after a tender process which allows multiple providers to compete to provide the best value.
But since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the government has used an exemption in procurement legislation to avoid having to open up public contracts to tender.
Government departments have handed huge sums of money out to private firms under the emergency rules since the beginning of the pandemic.
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Role for former Conservative chairman and corporate lobbyist Andrew Feldman prompts fresh concerns about privileged access given to Tory ‘friends and donors’
The British government has been accused of “blatant cronyism” after an openDemocracy investigation found that former Tory chairman, Andrew Feldman, was quietly given a job advising a health minister despite potential conflicts of interest with clients of the lobbying firm that he runs.
Lord Feldman, who has been mooted as a contender for Boris Johnson’s next chief of staff, worked as an unpaid adviser to health minister Lord Bethell between March 24 and May 15 this year.
At the time the government was assembling an informal “task force” with private and public sector organisations to scale up coronavirus testing as a precursor to its test and trace programme.
The Tory peer is also managing director of PR consultancy Tulchan. Yet his advisory role, which was supported by a “small civil service private office”, according to officials, was never formally announced by the government.
The Department of Health and Social Care said that the Feldman’s appointment had been “fully documented” – but were unable to point to any examples of where his role had been made public before being contacted by openDemocracy.
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Revealed: ‘Failing’ Serco won another £57m COVID contract without competition
As Serco’s share price soars, government accused of “shovelling huge sums of public money to a handful of outsourcing companies without competition, rigour or accountability”.
Outsourcing giant Serco was given a £57 million contract to run COVID testing centres across the UK without any competition, openDemocracy can reveal.
The Department of Health and Social Care handed Serco and other private firms previously secret multi-million pound contracts to provide “management services” at sites across the country.
The news comes as the FTSE-listed firm announced this morning that the government has renewed an earlier contact-tracing contract – worth a reported £410 million – despite a swelling chorus of criticism of the scheme’s failings.
Sage, the government’s scientific advisory team, has warned that “engagement” problems and “delays” means the track and trace system is only having a “marginal impact” on reducing the spread of the virus.
Serco’s unscheduled trading statement Friday sent its shares soaring. The company predicted that profits could hit £165m, thanks largely to a slew of lucrative government contracts.
Under the terms of the newly unearthed contract, the government paid both Serco and outsourcers G4S an initial fee of £57 million to run COVID testing sites at locations across the UK. Another outsourcing firm, Mitie, was given £32 million to provide similar services. All these contracts were awarded without a competitive tender process.
The contracts were only published last week – despite rules stipulating that contracts must be made public within thirty days.
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Stroud councillor Steve Dechan ran a small, loss-making firm distributing medical devices. Documents show it signed a £156m deal to import PPE from China
A small, loss-making firm run by a Conservative councillor in Stroud was given a £156m contract to import PPE from China without any competition, openDemocracy has learned.
Steve Dechan’s company, P14 Medical, signed the huge contract to supply medical gowns in May, even though the firm suffered significant financial losses in 2019, and its previous track record in PPE procurement is unclear. Transparency campaigners say the deal “reeks of cronyism”.
Dechan, who stood down from Stroud town council in late August, had previously made headlines when it emerged that P14 Medical had landed a contract worth almost £120m to supply face shields to the Department of Health and Social Care.
The £156m gowns deal was signed in late May, but details were only published at the end of September. Government contracts are supposed to be made public within 30 days.
Questions have also been raised about large contracts awarded to other small firms with limited experience of supplying PPE, including many with links to the Conservative party.
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The Cabinet Office has awarded an £840,000 contract for researching public opinion about government policies to a company owned by two long-term associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings, without putting the work out for tender.
Public First, a small policy and research company in London’s Tufton Street, is run by James Frayne – whose work alongside Cummings dates back to a Eurosceptic campaign 20 years ago – and Rachel Wolf, a former advisor to Gove who co-wrote the Conservative Party’s 2019 election manifesto.
The government justified the absence of a competitive tendering process, which would have enabled other companies to bid, under emergency regulations that allow services to be urgently commissioned in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
However the Cabinet Office’s public record states that portions of the work, which involved conducting focus groups, related to Brexit rather than COVID-19, a joint investigation by openDemocracy and the Guardian has established.
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There’s more at openDemocracy. Donate
‘Hypocrites and greenwash’: Greta Thunberg blasts leaders over climate crisis
Leaders are happy to set targets for decades ahead, but flinch when immediate action is needed, she says
Greta Thunberg has blasted politicians as hypocrites and international climate summits as empty words and greenwash. Until humanity admits it has failed to tackle the climate crisis and begins treating it as an emergency like the coronavirus pandemic, society will be unable to stop global heating, she said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Thunberg said leaders were happy to set targets for decades into the future, but flinched when immediate action to cut emissions was needed. She said there was not a politician on the planet promising the climate action required: “If only,” said the teenager, who will turn 18 in January.
But she is inspired by the millions of students who have taken up the school strike she began by herself in Sweden 116 weeks ago. Since then she has addressed the UN and become the world’s most prominent climate campaigner. She also has hope: “We can treat a crisis like a crisis, as we have seen because of the coronavirus. Treating the climate crisis like a crisis – that could change everything overnight.”
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“So the first thing we need to do is understand we are in an emergency [and] admit the fact that we have failed – humanity collectively has failed – because you can’t solve a crisis that you don’t understand,” Thunberg said.
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Top 5 Ways Trump Failed you too Epically ever to be Reelected
Top 5 Ways Trump Failed you too Epically ever to be Reelected
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) –
1. Environment. This is the biggest single issue. Trump is a real-life world-destroying Thanos from the Avengers, and is trying his best to commit planeticide. His policies will kill the earth. The human race has a window of about 20 years to avoid the worst impacts of the climate emergency. We should have swung into action years ago to vastly reduce our use of coal, gasoline and natural gas. Trump has presided over an increase in our annual carbon dioxide emissions rather than, as he should have, greatly reducing them. If Americans give him another four years to wreak this kind of destruction, it will be game over for normal human life on the planet. We will see gargantuan disruptions, with turbocharged hurricanes, massive wildfires, raging sea level rise, coastal flooding, and mass extinctions. These disasters can be light or heavy. Trump is doing his best to ensure they are heavy.
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2. Trump’s second biggest failure was in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. For the most part, he adopted an ostrich policy of burying his head in the ground and pretending that it wasn’t there, or would abruptly disappear “like a miracle,” or that its consequences were not grave.
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3. Trump’s failure on the coronavirus is also a failure on the economy. China dealt with the pandemic in a scientific way, and is now past the crisis. It will grow 1.2 percent this year, whereas US GDP will be in negative territory. Trump blames governors’ shutdown orders for harming businesses.
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4. Health Care. Trump has tried to kneecap Obamacare, which had allowed an extra 22 million Americans to afford health care insurance. Trump has undermined the program at every turn. He is presently in court attempting get rid of the Affordable Care Act entirely. He has also consistently challenged the requirement that insurers insure people with pre-existing conditions. Trump brazenly lies about his opposition to health care for people and his attempt to get rid of the provision about pre-existing conditions. But you have to look at what he does, not what he says. What he has done is to sue to get rid of them and to get rid of the ACA. He lies and says he has a better plan in mind, but the Republicans have had a decade to produce an alternative and they never have given us a bill to examine.
5. Under Trump, the US trade deficit has climbed 14% from where it was in Obama’s last year. It skyrocketed with China, but then Trump used tariffs (paid for by Americans) to wrestle it back down to just about where it was in 2016. It then just grew with other countries.
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