February, 16 2018, 01:00pm EDT
![Patriotic Millionaires](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012612/origin.jpg)
Three Questions for Senator Romney
Today, the Patriotic Millionaires of Utah, along with the Patriotic Millionaires' national organization, issued the following statement in response to Mitt Romney's announcement that he would run for the US Senate in Utah:
Salt Lake City, UT
Today, the Patriotic Millionaires of Utah, along with the Patriotic Millionaires' national organization, issued the following statement in response to Mitt Romney's announcement that he would run for the US Senate in Utah:
"Mitt Romney is one of the only nationally-recognized Republicans willing to stand up to President Trump, something that causes heart palpitations in Utah's most zealous conservatives, but which gives the rest of us great comfort. Given the President's tenuous relationship with the truth and ethical standards, it is critical that Governor Romney, if elected, maintain the highest level of accuracy in his dialogue with Utahns about the critical issues facing the country. To that end, we ask Governor Romney to answer three simple questions prior to the November election.
1. Candidate Trump promised repeatedly on the campaign trail to close the carried interest loophole ('Those hedge fund guys are getting away with murder'), an egregious mischaracterization of income that allows fund managers to pay half the tax rate of working people by claiming capital gains rates on ordinary income. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 did not close this loophole, but rather made it worse. In fact, since the law's passage, fund managers have set up a slew of new shell corporations to avoid paying their fair share of taxes on carried interest. Note: As a private equity manager, Governor Romney took advantage of the carried interest loophole.
Governor Romney, will you tell the voters of Utah the truth - that President Trump failed to live up to his promise to close the carried interest loophole - and will you commit to closing this egregious loophole if elected to the US Senate?
2. Throughout his presidential campaign, candidate Trump promised to 'save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts,' but his recently released budget cuts all three programs by almost $1.5 trillion, roughly the same amount as the recent tax cuts which primarily benefited millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.
Governor Romney, will you tell the voters of Utah the truth - that President Trump is going back on his promise to 'save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts?' Do you believe it is morally right to cut these programs that benefit the poor, the elderly, and the disabled, in order to pay for tax cuts to America's wealthiest citizens?
3. On the campaign trail, President Trump said that he would support a federal minimum wage of $10 an hour. The stock market is booming and the economy has been steadily growing for nearly a decade, but the federal minimum wage remains at just $7.25 an hour, the equivalent of $15,000 per year.
Governor Romney, do you think $7.25 an hour is a moral wage, and if not, will you commit to raising the federal minimum wage? If so, to what, and by when?"
More from Art Lipson, Patriotic Millionaire, Utahn, and Managing Partner at Western Investment, LLC:
"Despite the many differences we have on policy issues, I believe Governor Romney has shown himself to be a moral and truthful person. If elected, I hope he will bring those qualities to the US Senate where they are so badly needed. And I urge Governor Romney to run his campaign with integrity as well, including having the courage to tell the truth about President Trump's failure to deliver on key promises he made during the election. Utahns, indeed all Americans, need the truth right now more than they need just about anything."
To schedule an interview or for further comment, please contact Sam Quigley at sam@patrioticmillionaires.org.
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
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Dems Spotlight Project 2025 Plan to Wield 'Zombie Law' Against Abortion Rights
Project 2025 "includes a detailed blueprint for a future Republican president to impose a backdoor national abortion ban with a stroke of the pen," a pair of House Democrats warned.
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Two congressional Democrats who spearheaded the Stop Project 2025 Task Force warned Thursday that abortion rights opponents are laying the groundwork to revive and wield a 151-year-old law to ban abortion nationwide.
In a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, who is under growing pressure to drop out of the 2024 race, Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) noted that the Project 2025 agenda crafted by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups "includes a detailed blueprint for a future Republican president to impose a backdoor national abortion ban with a stroke of the pen by willfully misapplying this antiquated and unconstitutional statute."
The statute in question is the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that prohibits the mailing of any "instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing" that "may, or can, be used or applied for producing abortion." Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) is leading the Democratic effort to defang the law.
According to the health policy research organization KFF, the Comstock Act "has not been applied to the mailing of abortion materials in the last fifty years." A trio of legal experts recently described the law as the "most significant national threat to reproductive rights."
Huffman and Raskin noted in their letter Thursday that the statute "was used to prosecute freethinking publisher DeRobigne Mortimer 'D.M.' Bennett," who "was sentenced to 13 months of hard labor in 1879 for mailing an anti-marriage pamphlet that advocated for women's bodily autonomy."
"Emma Goldman was hounded, silenced, and incarcerated for speaking out in favor of contraception," the House Democrats added. "Ida Craddock was charged multiple times for distributing writings on women's rights and sexual relations between husband and wife; she was re-arrested in 1902 after serving a three-month prison sentence, convicted, and died by suicide before serving her five-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Anna Trow Lohman also died by suicide rather than facing trial for distributing birth control and abortifacients."
"MAGA activists are now working to resuscitate this near-dormant law to advance their far-right agenda."
Huffman and Raskin wrote that while the U.S. Supreme Court "largely overturned most of the Comstock Act through landmark decisions on free speech, abortion, and birth control" over the course of the 20th Century, "many of these decisions have been eroded and attacked" by the current conservative-dominated Supreme Court.
"MAGA activists are now working to resuscitate this near-dormant law to advance their far-right agenda," warned the two Democrats, who called on Biden to issue pardons for "Bennett, Goldman, Craddock, and any others who were unjustly convicted under the Comstock Act" to make clear that he "stands against any efforts in the past, present, or future to weaponize the Comstock Act against Americans' individual rights to free speech and reproductive autonomy."
Huffman and Raskin's letter came a day after The Washington Posthighlighted that Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio)—the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump—joined dozens of GOP lawmakers last year in calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to "shut down all mail-order abortion operations," citing the Comstock Act and other federal statutes.
The Biden Justice Department has said the Comstock Act "does not prohibit the mailing of certain drugs that can be used to perform abortions where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully."
While Trump has sought to distance himself from Project 2025 and stopped short of explicitly endorsing a federal abortion ban, the platform that Republican delegates approved earlier this week at the party's convention in Milwaukee declares, "We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied life or liberty without due process, and that the states are, therefore, free to pass laws protecting those rights."
As The Intercept's Shawn Musgrave observed Wednesday, abortion opponents welcomed that line as an endorsement of the notion of "fetal personhood."
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The head of the human rights group said Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law is enabling "rampant torture" of Palestinian detainees and "institutionalizes enforced disappearance."
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Israel is using its dubious Unlawful Combatants Law to arbitrarily detain Palestinians from the Gaza Strip—including women and children—indefinitely without charge and trial, according to an Amnesty International report published Thursday.
All 27 former detainees interviewed by the rights group described being tortured by Israeli forces.
Amnesty documented the cases of 21 men, five women, and one 14-year-old boy taken from Gaza and held in indefinite incommunicado detention in facilities including the notorious Sde Teiman camp in Israel's Negev Desert for periods of up to four-and-a-half months, without access to lawyers or contact with their families.
"All those interviewed by Amnesty International said that during their incommunicado detention, which in some cases amounted to enforced disappearance, Israeli military, intelligence, and police forces subjected them to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment," the report states.
"Israeli authorities are using the Unlawful Combatants Law to arbitrarily round up Palestinian civilians from Gaza and toss them into a virtual black hole."
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"While international humanitarian law allows for the detention of individuals on imperative security grounds in situations of occupation, there must be safeguards to prevent indefinite or arbitrary detention and torture and other ill-treatment," Amnesty International secretary general AgnèsCallamard said in a statement. "This law blatantly fails to provide these safeguards. It enables rampant torture and, in some circumstances, institutionalizes enforced disappearance."
"Our documentation illustrates how the Israeli authorities are using the Unlawful Combatants Law to arbitrarily round up Palestinian civilians from Gaza and toss them into a virtual black hole for prolonged periods without producing any evidence that they pose a security threat and without minimum due process," Callamard added. "Israeli authorities must immediately repeal this law and release those arbitrarily detained under it."
According to the report, "those detained included doctors taken into custody at hospitals for refusing to abandon their patients; mothers separated from their infants while trying to cross the so-called 'safe corridor' from northern Gaza to the south; human rights defenders, [United Nations] workers, journalists, and other civilians."
Former detainees at Sde Teiman said they were blindfolded and handcuffed for their entire imprisonment, forced to remain in painful stress positions for hours on end, and prevented from speaking to other prisoners or even raising their heads.
Said Maarouf, a 57-year-old pediatrician kidnapped by Israeli troops during an attack on al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City in December 2023, was detained for 45 days at Sde Teiman. He described being constantly blindfolded and handcuffed, beaten, starved, and forced to sit on his knees for long periods.
A 14-year-old boy taken from his home in Jabalia in January was held for 24 days at Sde Teiman. He told Amnesty that he was jailed with more than 100 adults in a single barrack and was kicked, punched in the head, and repeatedly burned with cigarettes. Amnesty observed bruises and burns on the child's body when it examined him in February. Like other detainees interviewed by the rights group, the boy said he was always blindfolded and handcuffed and was not permitted to see a lawyer or his relatives.
Earlier this year, Israeli medics working at Sde Teiman said amputations of hands and feet due to injuries from constant handcuffing were "a routine event."
The five women interviewed by Amnesty were initially jailed at a military detention center in an illegal Israeli settler colony in the occupied West Bank, then at Dimon women's prison in northern Israel. All five said they were beaten during transport.
One woman taken on December 6 said she was separated from her two children—ages 4 and 9 months—and initially held alongside hundreds of male prisoners. She was beaten, forced to remove her veil and photographed without it, and subjected to the mock execution of her husband.
"On the third day of detention, they put us in a ditch and started throwing sand," she said. "A soldier fired two shots in the air and said they executed my husband and I broke down and begged him to kill me too, to relieve me from the nightmare."
Another woman said guards threatened: "We will do to you what Hamas did to us. We will kidnap and rape you."
These and other accounts are consistent with the testimonies of Israeli whistleblowers and former prisoners at Sde Teiman and other Israeli detention facilities.
Former detainees and human rights defenders have described Sde Teiman as "Israel's Guantánamo" and "more horrific than Abu Ghraib"—the notorious U.S. military prison in Iraq where prisoners were tortured and dozens died. Palestinians held at Sde Teiman and at other detention sites described being electrocuted, mauled and even raped by dogs, constantly beaten, starved, and subjected to other torture and abuse. Other former Sde Teiman detainees said they witnessed a prisoner raped to death, possible executions, and other atrocities.
IDF officials told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz last month that the IDF is investigating the in-custody deaths of dozens of detainees, including 36 who died or were killed at Sde Teiman since October, when Israel began its retaliatory war following the attack by Hamas-led militants that left more than 1,100 Israelis and foreign nationals dead—some of whom were killed by Israeli troops.
Over 240 other people, mostly Israelis, were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. A Human Rights Watch report published Wednesday details war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder and rape perpetrated by members of five Palestinian armed groups that took part in the October 7 attacks.
Since October, Israel's siege, bombardment, and invasion of Gaza has left at least 139,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people forcibly displaced, and starvation—sometimes deadly—running rampant.
Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan has also applied for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including "extermination."
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Report Shows How Lawmakers in GOP-Dominated South Harm Workers
"It will be important for Southerners from all backgrounds," one expert wrote, "to stand together and build the coalitions needed to demand policymakers create a new economic development model."
Jul 18, 2024
"For at least the last 40 years, pay and job quality for workers across the South has been inferior compared to other regions—thanks to the racist and anti-worker Southern economic development model."
That's according to a Thursday report by Chandra Childers, a senior policy and economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The new publication is part of her "Rooted in Racism and Economic Exploitation" series.
Previous documents in the series have discussed how "Southern politicians claim that 'business-friendly' policies lead to an abundance of jobs and economic prosperity" but in reality, their failed model is designed "to extract the labor of Black and brown Southerners as cheaply as possible" and has resulted in "economic underperformance."
"Because of the political opposition to unions, when workers try to organize, employers know that they can illegally intimidate them, refuse to recognize the union, or negotiate a contract in bad faith."
Thursday's report dives into various elements of the Southern economic development model, which "is characterized by low wages, limited regulations on businesses, a regressive tax system, subsidies that funnel tax dollars to the wealthy and corporations, a weak safety net, and staunchly anti-union policies and practices."
Childers uses a U.S. Census Bureau definition of the South, which includes: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
The EPI report highlights that "Southern states have lower median wages than other regions," "low-wage workers make up a larger share of the workforce across the South," and "every state that lacks a state minimum wage" is in the region.
The publication also points out the decline of coverage from employer-provided health insurance and pensions in the South, as well as how workers there "have less access to paid leave than their peers in other regions" and "Southern state lawmakers have also disempowered local communities."
"Across the South, most states have passed so-called right-to-work laws, with the exceptions of Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia," Childers detailed. "Right-to-work laws do not, in any way, guarantee workers will have access to a job if they want one. They simply make it harder for unions to be financially sustainable."
"In addition to right-to-work laws and the overall opposition from political leaders across the region, workers seeking to organize a union typically face intense opposition from employers," she continued. "Further, because of the political opposition to unions, when workers try to organize, employers know that they can illegally intimidate them, refuse to recognize the union, or negotiate a contract in bad faith—with little to no fear of being held accountable by political leaders."
While "there are city and county officials who support higher minimum wages and access to pensions and paid leave for workers" in the South, she explained, their ability to take action is limited by preemption, which "is when state policymakers either block a local ordinance or dismantle an existing ordinance" intended to help the working class.
Childers' report doesn't explicitly point fingers at particular political parties, but the region has been largely dominated by Republican officials during the past four decades covered by the analysis.
While the Republican presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump is clearly making a play for working-class voters by selecting Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as the vice presidential candidate and inviting International Brotherhood of Teamsters general president Sean O'Brien to speak at this week's convention—provoking criticism from progressive politicians and labor leaders—Southern GOP leaders continue to display disdain toward efforts to organize workers.
As Volkswagen employees in Tennessee began voting on whether to join the United Auto Workers in April, six Southern GOP governors put out a joint statement saying they were "highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states."
EPI said at the time that the governors' anti-union statement "clearly shows how scared they are that workers organizing with UAW to improve jobs and wages will upend the highly unequal, failed anti-worker economic development model of Southern states."
The Chattanooga vote was a success, but the following month organizers faced a tough loss at a pair of Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama, where the UAW is now seeking a new election. Meanwhile, regional GOP policymakers have ramped up attacks on unions, advancing legislation that makes organizing harder.
"To begin to work toward changing the Southern economic development model," Childers argued, "it will be important for Southerners from all backgrounds—across race, ethnicity, gender, immigrant statuses, and income levels—to stand together and build the coalitions needed to demand policymakers create a new economic development model."
The expert urged people across the South to fight for a model that includes a living wage, guaranteed health insurance, pensions, and paid leave.
"Finally, and perhaps most important, workers must be able to come together in a union to demand fair wages and benefits, a safe working environment, and the ability to have a say about their workplace—even when politicians are intransigent," she stressed. "This is a model that would serve the interests of all Southerners."
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