WASHINGTON — Inside the White House, the mood was bristling with tension. Hundreds of protesters were gathering outside the gates, shouting curses at President Donald Trump and in some cases throwing bricks and bottles. Nervous for his safety, Secret Service agents abruptly rushed the president to the underground bunker used in the past during terrorist attacks.
The scene Friday night, described by a person with firsthand knowledge, kicked off an uneasy weekend at the White House as demonstrations spread after the brutal death of a black man in police custody under a white officer’s knee. While in the end officials said they were never really in danger, Trump and his family have been rattled by protests near the Executive Mansion that turned violent for a third night Sunday.
After days in which the empathy he expressed for George Floyd, the man killed, was overshadowed by his combative threats to ramp up violence against looters and rioters, Trump spent Sunday out of sight, even as some of his campaign advisers were recommending that he deliver a nationally televised address before another night of possible violence. The building was even emptier than usual as some White House officials planning to work were told not to come in case of renewed unrest.
Thousands of protesters demonstrated peacefully near the White House during the day, but by nightfall, with hundreds still in the streets, the scene turned more volatile as crowds surged forward against lines of riot police with plastic shields as the two sides vied for control of Lafayette Square across from the White House. Protesters threw water bottles, set off fireworks and burned a pile of wood and at least one car.
One of the fires on H Street NW a block from the White House may have spread because soon afterward flames erupted in the basement of St. John’s Episcopal Church, the iconic “church of presidents” attended at least once by every chief executive going back to James Madison, but were soon doused by firefighters. Businesses far away from the White House boarded up to guard against vandalism, and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser ordered an 11 p.m. curfew. The White House turned off at least some of its exterior lights.
Trump remained cloistered inside, periodically sending out Twitter messages like “LAW & ORDER!” until the evening, when he went quiet. While some aides urged him to keep off Twitter, Trump could not resist blasting out a string of messages through the day berating Democrats for not being tough enough and attributing the turmoil to radical leftists.
“Get tough Democrat Mayors and Governors,” he wrote. Referring to his presumptive Democratic presidential opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, he added: “These people are ANARCHISTS. Call in our National Guard NOW. The World is watching and laughing at you and Sleepy Joe. Is this what America wants? NO!!!”
The president said his administration “will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” referring to the shorthand for “anti-fascist,” and scheduled a meeting with Attorney General William Barr for Monday morning. But antifa is a movement of activists who dress in black and have used tactics similar to those of anarchists, not an organization with a clear structure that can be penalized under law. Moreover, American law applies terrorist designations to foreign entities, not domestic groups.
By targeting antifa, however, Trump effectively paints all the protests with the brush of violent radicalism without addressing the underlying conditions that have driven many of the people who have taken to the streets. Demonstrations have broken out in at least 75 cities in recent days, with governors and mayors deploying the National Guard or imposing curfews on a scale not seen since the aftermath of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
While Trump has been a focus of anger, particularly among the crowds in Washington, aides repeatedly have tried to explain to him that the protests were not only about him, but about broader, systemic issues related to race, according to several people familiar with the discussions. Privately, Trump’s advisers complained about his tweets, acknowledging that they were pouring fuel on an already incendiary situation.
“Those are not constructive tweets, without any question,” Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the Senate, said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m thankful that we can have the conversation. We don’t always agree on any of his tweets beforehand, but we have the ability to sit down and dialogue on how we move this nation forward.”
Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and supporter of Trump, said the president, with election looming in five months, is focused on catering to his core supporters rather than the nation at large. “Trump is far more divisive than past presidents,” Eberhart said. “His strength is stirring up his base, not calming the waters.”
But Trump’s absence rankled the Democrats he was criticizing.
“What I’d like to hear from the president is leadership,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “And I would like to hear a genuine care and concern for our communities and where we are with race relations in America.”
Some campaign advisers were pressing for a formal address to the nation as early as Sunday. But White House officials, recalling Trump’s error-filled Oval Office address in March about the spread of the coronavirus, cautioned that it was not necessary. Trump quizzed advisers throughout the day Sunday about whether he should give an Oval Office address.
Trump already tried to recalibrate by ripping up his speech at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday after the launch of the new crewed SpaceX rocket and adding a long passage about Floyd. In the speech, Trump repeated his calls for law and order, but in more measured terms and leavened by expressions of sympathy for Floyd’s family, whom he had called to offer condolences.
Aides were disappointed that the remarks, delivered late Saturday afternoon as part of a speech otherwise celebrating the triumph of the space program, did not get wider attention, but they said they hoped they would break through. Several administration officials said Trump was genuinely horrified by the video of Floyd’s last minutes, mentioning it several times in private conversations over the last few days.
After Trump returned to the White House from Florida on Saturday, he found a White House again under siege. This time, security was ready. Washington police blocked off roads for blocks around the building, while hundreds of police officers and National Guard troops ringed the exterior perimeter wearing helmets and riot gear and holding up plastic shields.
The scene was similar Sunday night as well. Protesters shouted “no justice, no peace,” and “black lives matter” as well as chanting expletives at Trump. Washington icons like the Hay-Adams Hotel and the Oval Room restaurant, damaged from the night before, were boarded up.
Graffiti was spray-painted for blocks, including on the historic Decatur House a block from the White House: “Why do we have to keep telling you black lives matter?”
-Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, The New York Times-
WASHINGTON — As the coronavirus worked its way across the United States, it cleaved the country's workforce in two: those who have the ability to work from home, and those who do not.
From baristas to hotel workers to tourism operators, people whose job requires them to show up in-person were among the hardest hit in the waves of layoffs, and also those on the low end of the US pay scale.
Unemployment is now at a level not seen in since the Great Depression nearly a century ago, and moving higher, while the coronavirus is expected to threaten the country for months to come, factors analysts fear will only serve to deepen inequality for workers in the world's largest economy.
"People who are well-off and highly skilled and work from home are going to demand that their employers make accommodations for them," said Jesse Rothstein, a former chief economist at the Labor Department who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
But "lower skilled workers... are taking on more risk without more pay."
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has described the pandemic as "a great increaser of inequality," but experts say that is not inevitable, particularly if Congress passes new stimulus measures to support battered businesses and consumers.
"Every single cleavage we had before is widening," said Claudia Sahm, a former principal economist with the Federal Reserve who is now with the Washington Center for Economic Growth.
"We have an opportunity to do something better than what we were doing before, but it will not just happen. It has to be a policy effort."
AN UNEQUAL RECESSION
When the coronavirus arrived, the US economy had a tight labor market, with an unemployment rate near a historic low of 3.5 percent in February, while long-stagnant wages were just starting to rise.
Yet the job market was not as healthy as it appeared.
The US Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI) -- which uses government employment statistics to gauge the balance between non-supervisory jobs with decent pay and those without -- has been charting downwards for years.
In February, the JQI was back near its all-time low reached in March 2012 as many of the jobs being created paid below the mean weekly wage, according to the index compiled by a consortium of academics and researchers.
And a study late last year from the Brookings Institution found 44 percent of US workers qualify as "low wage," with median annual earnings of just $18,000 a year.
When the pandemic hit and sent the unemployment rate to 14.7 in April and the economy into an almost-certain recession, low-paid workers in industries like leisure, hospitality and food services were laid off in such large numbers their absence skewed average wages upwards.
While government data show most consider their layoffs to be temporary, Michael Weber, an associate professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, warned that if businesses close or scale back staffing, job seekers will be forced to compete against each other, driving wages lower, as is typical in recession job markets.
WHO'S HIRING?
Grocery store chain Kroger, e-commerce giant Amazon and several fast food companies have announced massive hirings since the pandemic hit, but offer no safe haven.
"Those are the very jobs that are under criticism over the last few years given that they pay unreasonably low wages," Weber said. And those type of jobs "come hand-in-hand with more precarious income situation."
Robert Hockett, a law professor at Cornell University who is a principal researcher on the JQI, said job seekers could demand risk premiums at workplaces where they face exposure to the coronavirus, or take equity stakes in struggling companies to help keep them afloat.
In fact, the Fed reported this week that Boston area employers were giving workers temporary pay increases of up to 30 percent, in part to compensate for the increased risk and hold onto their employees.
But unemployed workers could end up forced to accept whatever jobs they can find, particularly if Congress fails to extend the small business loans and unemployment benefits temporarily expanded in the $2.2 trillion CARES Act approved in March.
"We're kind of on a tightrope or a knife's edge at this moment," Hockett said in an interview.
President Donald Trump's administration has been lukewarm towards further spending on aid for workers, predicting the coronavirus will be defeated and a strong economic rebound starting in July, even as many economists remain skeptical of a rapid, V-shaped recovery.
"It's all going to ride on how desperate workers are," Hockett said, "And that's going to ride on public policy positions."
Agence France-Presse
AKRON, Ohio — Colin Robertson wonders why he pays federal taxes on the $18,000 a year he makes cleaning carpets, while the tech giant Amazon got a tax rebate.
His concerns about a tilted economic playing field recently led Robertson to join the Akron chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. At a gathering this month, as members discussed Karl Marx and corporate greed over chocolate chip cookies, it was not long before talk turned to income inequality and how the government helps the wealthy avoid taxes.
“One of the benefits of taxation is taking it and using it for the collective good,” said Robertson, 25, comparing his minimal income to the roughly $150 billion net worth of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and the world’s richest person.
“He could be taxed at 99.9 percent and still have millions left over,” Robertson said, “and I’d be homeless.”
It is a topic that several presidential candidates, led by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have hammered recently as they travel the campaign trail, spurred by a report that 60 Fortune 500 companies paid no federal taxes on $79 billion in corporate income last year. Amazon, which is reported to be opening a center in an abandoned Akron mall that will employ 500 people, has become the poster child for corporate tax avoidance; last year it had an effective tax rate of below zero — receiving a rebate — on income of $10.8 billion.
For decades, profitable companies have been able to avoid corporate taxes. But the list of those paying zero roughly doubled last year as a result of provisions in President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax bill that expanded corporate tax breaks and reduced the tax rate on corporate income.
“Amazon, Netflix and dozens of major corporations, as a result of Trump’s tax bill, pay nothing in federal taxes,” Sanders said last week during a Fox News town-hall-style event. “I think that’s a disgrace.”
Corporations’ ability to whittle down their tax bills has long been a target of criticism by Democrats, and this presidential campaign is no exception, particularly among left-wing candidates who argue that corporations should be accountable for wage inequality and its impact on low- and middle-income workers.
Here in Ohio, even though unemployment has hit an 18-year low, several counties still have jobless rates significantly higher than the national rate, 3.8 percent, and the statewide rate, 4.4 percent. Ohioans have witnessed so many factory closures over the years that they seem to live with a permanent sense of economic wariness. The question for Democrats is how to leverage that to their advantage as they try to retake the state, which Trump won by 8 percentage points in 2016.
David Betras, the Democratic chairman in Mahoning County, a traditionally blue stronghold of union voters that Trump nearly carried in 2016, said that Democrats had not yet figured out how to use the economic angst of laid-off employees and minimum-wage workers to defeat Trump in Ohio in 2020.
“Believe it or not, if you listen to the president, he addresses that issue,” Betras said. “He does it with a lot of smoke and very many mirrors, but he’s at least talking about how good the economy is and what I’ve done for you. ‘I’m with you. I have your back.’”
Even as candidates focus on corporate taxation, Betras said the issue didn’t resonate with voters in the same way as more familiar topics like health care or immigration. “It appeals to a small slice of the electorate,” he said. (Betras, a lawyer, has endorsed Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio for the Democratic nomination.)
A Gallup poll last fall suggested that taxes were generally a more important issue for Republicans than for Democrats.
In an election in which Democrats will seek to win back voters who supported President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then switched to Trump, some Democrats also worry that calls to increase corporate taxes might actually turn off swing voters in this critical state, those like Thomas Chhay, a student at the University of Akron.
“I lean Republican,” Chhay, 18, said last week while having lunch at the university’s student union. “I agree with corporate tax cuts unless the companies ship the jobs overseas.”
The list of profitable companies that pay no corporate taxes, compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, also includes Goodyear and three other Ohio companies, including the Akron-based electric utility FirstEnergy.
The company, which has the naming rights to the Cleveland Browns’ stadium, paid no taxes last year on $1.5 billion in income, according to the analysis, and will receive additional tax credits that can be used in the future. In a win for consumers, some of that will be returned to the utility’s customers.
Several of the Democratic candidates have called for changes to the corporate system and Warren has gone the furthest in issuing a detailed plan to alter the corporate system. Under her proposal, corporations would pay a new 7% tax on every dollar over $100 million in profits they earn anywhere in the world. She estimated the new tax would apply to roughly 1,200 companies and bring in $1 trillion.
Under Warren’s plan, Amazon would have paid $698 million instead of $0 in federal taxes for 2018. In a statement, the company said it “pays all the taxes we are required to pay in the US and every country where we operate.”
Sanders, in his 2016 presidential campaign and in this one, has routinely talked about closing loopholes and capturing some of the billions in profits that multinationals have kept overseas in tax havens and out of the Internal Revenue Service’s reach.
Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota senator who is also running, has taken a different approach. She has tied a proposed increase in the corporate tax rate, to 25 percent from the current 21 percent, to plans to rebuild bridges, roads and airports nationwide. About $400 billion of her trillion-dollar infrastructure plan would be financed by the tax increase.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who officially entered the race on Thursday, has not issued a formal proposal on corporate taxes. In remarks last May, however, he blamed a “yawning” income gap for tearing the country apart. “We have to deal with this tax code,” he said. “It’s wildly skewed toward taking care of those at the very top. It overwhelmingly favors investors over workers.”
In surveys, more Americans support raising the corporate tax rate than lowering it or leaving it unchanged. And several Democratic candidates, like the former housing secretary Julián Castro, invoke “fair share” rhetoric in speeches or vow to undo the recent Republican tax law. Others, like Sen. Kamala Harris of California, have focused more on the individual income tax and reducing the burden on working families.
But raising the headline tax rate on corporations will not eliminate the corporate zero-rate club, which also results from companies taking advantage of loopholes and the way global profits are taxed.
Two years ago, Trump appeared at a sold-out rally in working-class Youngstown, the seat of Mahoning County, and delivered a message full of economic reassurance.
“I was looking at some of those big, once incredible job-producing factories,” the president said. “Those jobs have left Ohio. They’re all coming back. They’re all coming back. Don’t move. Don’t sell your house.”
But it has not entirely worked out that way.
General Motors, one of the companies on the zero-tax list, recently idled a large plant near Youngstown that produced the Chevrolet Cruze, a decision that helped increase the company’s stock price even as GM paid no federal taxes on $4.32 billion in income.
“What was promised to these people was more jobs,” said David Green, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112, which represents workers at the plant, which is in Lordstown. “When you give them the tax break and they take the jobs away, that’s like a double whammy. That’s a lose, lose.”
Lordstown is in Trumbull County, where the unemployment rate was 6.6 percent in March and many of those who work are eligible for public assistance. “Working people can get free cheese? The system is broken,” Green said.
Notwithstanding Trump’s entreaty two years ago that local workers stay put, Tyler Savin, a real estate agent, said the idling of the plant had added to his home listings and that many sellers would not get their asking prices as they leave Ohio for other GM locations.
Savin, 22, was among the customers last week at Tommy Dogg’s Bar and Grill in nearby Niles, the birthplace of both Ryan, the local favorite-son candidate, and William McKinley, a Republican president who was known for imposing tariffs on foreign goods.
Savin likes Sanders, Biden and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, but will ultimately vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is, he said in a whisper lest pro-Trump patrons overhear.
“I think corporations should pay their taxes, like Amazon,” he said. But he said health care and support for abortion rights were more important to him.
Jeff Williams, 57, who manages a convenience store on the midnight shift, had heard about Amazon’s tax breaks on the radio. Last week, as he sat outside his home in Niles catching the first warm rays of the year, he also was doing some comparison.
He was treated for cancer, heart disease and two hernias last year but was not able to deduct his expenses, he said. Amazon, meantime, availed itself of a full suite of tax breaks. “Amazon doesn’t pay taxes, but I pay taxes,” Williams said.
Akron, about an hour west, is faring better economically. Mayor Daniel Horrigan will not confirm or deny it, but Amazon is believed to be the company he has recruited to move into Akron’s Rolling Acres Mall, a once-thriving shopping center that closed in 2008, becoming a symbol of both the recession and the retail disruption caused by online shopping.
Amazon would not comment on whether it planned to open a facility there.
Horrigan has been working to invigorate the economy of Akron, historically known as the Rubber City for its role in tire manufacturing. The tire jobs have mostly moved elsewhere.
Goodyear, which made the list of 60 by paying no federal corporate income taxes, employs 64,000 people worldwide, but only 3,000 of them remain in Akron, mostly in the company’s headquarters. A spokesman said the company’s 2018 tax situation stemmed from “historical losses in U.S. operations.”
The Democratic Socialists have close to 100 members in Akron, many of them supporters of Sanders. Those attending last week’s meeting ranged from a stay-at-home mother who said she had not been able to pay her water bill for a year to a college professor, David Pereplyotchik.
Pereplyotchik, 37, said he believed the group should come up with a viable alternative to the corporate tax and wage system in the United States.
“If we’re fighting for something, what version of the thing are we fighting for?” asked Pereplyotchik, who teaches philosophy. “It seems like if you just make them pay employees more, they’re just not going to hire employees.”
Robertson, the carpet cleaner, has his own idea: nationalizing the companies. “I think forcing them to pay higher alone is inefficient,” he said, “and taxation alone is inefficient.”
2019 New York Times News Service
source: news.abs-cbn.com
