For the nation's poor, things are not getting better. They are getting worse. (Photo: Pixabay/CC0)
Illinois Governor Rauner recently cut "Meals on Wheels" for seniors and at-risk youth services. Chicago residents were hit with a nearly 13% property tax increase. Some Chicago public schools could face 2017 cutbacks of an incredible 20 percent.
But six of Illinois' largest corporations together paid ALMOST ZERO state income taxes this year. Full payment of their taxes would have exceeded the $1.1 billion Chicago Public School deficit.
It's much the same around the nation, as 25 of the largest U.S. corporations, with over $150 billion in U.S. profits last year, paid less than 20% in federal taxes, and barely 1% in the state taxes that are vitally important for K-12 education.
Sticking It To Low-Income Mothers
Because of the missing corporate tax revenue, House Republicans have tried to break even by proposing cuts to programs that are essential to mothers and children, such as Centers for Disease Control health programs, family planning, contraception, and--unbelievably, again!--food stamps. It is estimated that almost two-thirds of the proposed cuts would largely impact low- and moderate-income families.
At the state level, the suffering residents of Louisiana are facing some of the steepest regressive tax increases, along with cuts to vital programs that investigate child abuse and provide pediatric day care. The maternal death rate rose dramatically in Texas after women's health programs were cut. In Kansas, where a Republican state senator has called Governor Brownback's lowering of taxes on the rich a "train wreck," 2017 cuts are targeting universities, Medicaid recipients, and the Children's Initiatives Fund.
Sending Mental Health Patients to Prison
A 2014 government report found that nearly one in five adult Americans experienced mental illness the year before. Yet in the four years before that report, states cut $5 billion in mental health services and eliminated nearly 10 percent of the nation's psychiatric hospital beds. Over half of U.S. counties don't have a single psychiatrist or social worker.
So jail becomes the only option. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, there are 10 times more mentally ill Americans in prisons and jails than in state psychiatric hospitals.
Letting Workers Heal Themselves
In the last 15 years, two-thirds of the states have cut worker's compensation programs or made it harder to qualify.
With Aetna, UnitedHealth, and Humana backing out of insurance coverage for sick and injured Americans, low-income families are more and more on their own.
Making Education Wait While Corporate Taxes Are Cut
Throughout the nation public K-12 education continues to be cut, even six years after the end of the recession.
Our state leaders are instead handing the money over to corporations. The governors of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Florida have together given away billions in tax breaks while cutting billions in education funding. In the beleaguered state of Illinois, Governor Rauner has combined corporate tax cuts with greatly reduced funding for education and health care. Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool called Rauner's education plan a "reverse Robin Hood system" in which wealthier school districts get increases, poorer districts get cuts.
Getting Worse?
It may not improve much next year, if House Republicans have their way. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warns us about "the most severe budget cuts in modern history in assistance for Americans of limited means. These programs would be cut a stunning $3.5 trillion over ten years, eliminating, by 2026, roughly 40 percent of federal resources for low-income assistance."
Nothing short of war on the poor.
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Illinois Governor Rauner recently cut "Meals on Wheels" for seniors and at-risk youth services. Chicago residents were hit with a nearly 13% property tax increase. Some Chicago public schools could face 2017 cutbacks of an incredible 20 percent.
But six of Illinois' largest corporations together paid ALMOST ZERO state income taxes this year. Full payment of their taxes would have exceeded the $1.1 billion Chicago Public School deficit.
It's much the same around the nation, as 25 of the largest U.S. corporations, with over $150 billion in U.S. profits last year, paid less than 20% in federal taxes, and barely 1% in the state taxes that are vitally important for K-12 education.
Sticking It To Low-Income Mothers
Because of the missing corporate tax revenue, House Republicans have tried to break even by proposing cuts to programs that are essential to mothers and children, such as Centers for Disease Control health programs, family planning, contraception, and--unbelievably, again!--food stamps. It is estimated that almost two-thirds of the proposed cuts would largely impact low- and moderate-income families.
At the state level, the suffering residents of Louisiana are facing some of the steepest regressive tax increases, along with cuts to vital programs that investigate child abuse and provide pediatric day care. The maternal death rate rose dramatically in Texas after women's health programs were cut. In Kansas, where a Republican state senator has called Governor Brownback's lowering of taxes on the rich a "train wreck," 2017 cuts are targeting universities, Medicaid recipients, and the Children's Initiatives Fund.
Sending Mental Health Patients to Prison
A 2014 government report found that nearly one in five adult Americans experienced mental illness the year before. Yet in the four years before that report, states cut $5 billion in mental health services and eliminated nearly 10 percent of the nation's psychiatric hospital beds. Over half of U.S. counties don't have a single psychiatrist or social worker.
So jail becomes the only option. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, there are 10 times more mentally ill Americans in prisons and jails than in state psychiatric hospitals.
Letting Workers Heal Themselves
In the last 15 years, two-thirds of the states have cut worker's compensation programs or made it harder to qualify.
With Aetna, UnitedHealth, and Humana backing out of insurance coverage for sick and injured Americans, low-income families are more and more on their own.
Making Education Wait While Corporate Taxes Are Cut
Throughout the nation public K-12 education continues to be cut, even six years after the end of the recession.
Our state leaders are instead handing the money over to corporations. The governors of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Florida have together given away billions in tax breaks while cutting billions in education funding. In the beleaguered state of Illinois, Governor Rauner has combined corporate tax cuts with greatly reduced funding for education and health care. Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool called Rauner's education plan a "reverse Robin Hood system" in which wealthier school districts get increases, poorer districts get cuts.
Getting Worse?
It may not improve much next year, if House Republicans have their way. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warns us about "the most severe budget cuts in modern history in assistance for Americans of limited means. These programs would be cut a stunning $3.5 trillion over ten years, eliminating, by 2026, roughly 40 percent of federal resources for low-income assistance."
Nothing short of war on the poor.
Illinois Governor Rauner recently cut "Meals on Wheels" for seniors and at-risk youth services. Chicago residents were hit with a nearly 13% property tax increase. Some Chicago public schools could face 2017 cutbacks of an incredible 20 percent.
But six of Illinois' largest corporations together paid ALMOST ZERO state income taxes this year. Full payment of their taxes would have exceeded the $1.1 billion Chicago Public School deficit.
It's much the same around the nation, as 25 of the largest U.S. corporations, with over $150 billion in U.S. profits last year, paid less than 20% in federal taxes, and barely 1% in the state taxes that are vitally important for K-12 education.
Sticking It To Low-Income Mothers
Because of the missing corporate tax revenue, House Republicans have tried to break even by proposing cuts to programs that are essential to mothers and children, such as Centers for Disease Control health programs, family planning, contraception, and--unbelievably, again!--food stamps. It is estimated that almost two-thirds of the proposed cuts would largely impact low- and moderate-income families.
At the state level, the suffering residents of Louisiana are facing some of the steepest regressive tax increases, along with cuts to vital programs that investigate child abuse and provide pediatric day care. The maternal death rate rose dramatically in Texas after women's health programs were cut. In Kansas, where a Republican state senator has called Governor Brownback's lowering of taxes on the rich a "train wreck," 2017 cuts are targeting universities, Medicaid recipients, and the Children's Initiatives Fund.
Sending Mental Health Patients to Prison
A 2014 government report found that nearly one in five adult Americans experienced mental illness the year before. Yet in the four years before that report, states cut $5 billion in mental health services and eliminated nearly 10 percent of the nation's psychiatric hospital beds. Over half of U.S. counties don't have a single psychiatrist or social worker.
So jail becomes the only option. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, there are 10 times more mentally ill Americans in prisons and jails than in state psychiatric hospitals.
Letting Workers Heal Themselves
In the last 15 years, two-thirds of the states have cut worker's compensation programs or made it harder to qualify.
With Aetna, UnitedHealth, and Humana backing out of insurance coverage for sick and injured Americans, low-income families are more and more on their own.
Making Education Wait While Corporate Taxes Are Cut
Throughout the nation public K-12 education continues to be cut, even six years after the end of the recession.
Our state leaders are instead handing the money over to corporations. The governors of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Florida have together given away billions in tax breaks while cutting billions in education funding. In the beleaguered state of Illinois, Governor Rauner has combined corporate tax cuts with greatly reduced funding for education and health care. Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool called Rauner's education plan a "reverse Robin Hood system" in which wealthier school districts get increases, poorer districts get cuts.
Getting Worse?
It may not improve much next year, if House Republicans have their way. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warns us about "the most severe budget cuts in modern history in assistance for Americans of limited means. These programs would be cut a stunning $3.5 trillion over ten years, eliminating, by 2026, roughly 40 percent of federal resources for low-income assistance."
Nothing short of war on the poor.
LATEST NEWS
'We Need Urgent Global Action': Study Warns Humanity on Path to Trigger 16 Climate Tipping Points
Climate scholars use the term "tipping point" to describe a critical threshold which, when crossed, "leads to significant and long-term changes of the system," the paper notes. Debate over it "has intensified over the past two decades," prompting several studies of specific risks.
"Climate tipping points could have devastating consequences for humanity," said co-author Tim Lenton in a statement. "It is clear that we are currently on a dangerous trajectory—with tipping points likely to be triggered unless we change course rapidly."
"We need urgent global action—including the triggering of 'positive tipping points' in our societies and economies—to reach a safe and sustainable future," added the Exeter professor and Global Systems Institute director.
Lenton's team calculated the probabilities of triggering 16 tipping points. They looked at the risks of serious damage to key glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice, and permafrost; the dieback of forests such as the Amazon; the die-off of low-latitute coral reefs; and the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which is part of a crucial "global conveyor belt" of ocean currents.
To assess the risk of current policies triggering climate tipping points, the researchers focused on a scenario in which median warming of 2.8°C takes place by the end of the century.
On that pathway, the study says, "our most conservative estimate of triggering probabilities averaged over all tipping points is 62%... and nine tipping points have a more than 50% probability of getting triggered."
Under scenarios with lower temperature rise, "the risk of triggering climate tipping points is reduced significantly," the study continues. "However, it also remains less constrained since the behaviour of climate tipping points in the case of a temperature overshoot is still highly uncertain."
The paper concludes that "rapid action is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, since climate tipping points are already close, and it will be decided within the coming decades if they will be crossed or not."
Lead author Jakob Deutloff shared that takeaway a bit more optimistically, saying that "the good news from our study is that the power to prevent climate tipping points is still in our hands."
"By moving towards a more sustainable future with lower emissions, the risk of triggering these tipping points is significantly reduced," he added. "And it appears that breaching tipping points within the Amazon and the permafrost region should not necessarily trigger others."
The paper was published during Covering Climate Now's joint week of media coverage drawing attention to the 89% of people worldwide who want their governments to do more to address the global crisis; ahead of a Global Systems Institute conference on tipping points this summer; and just over six months away from the next United Nations climate summit, COP30, in Brazil.
While some governments are trying to prevent the worst-case scenario by taking action to cut emissions, U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear since returning to office in January that he aims to deliver on his pro-fossil fuel campaign pledge to "drill, baby, drill."
On the heels of the
hottest year in human history, Trump is working to gut key agencies, ditched the Paris climate agreement, and has taken executive action to boost planet-wrecking coal, gas, and oil, including declaring a national energy emergency.
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