September 13, 2017
Page 13
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O PINION
Boycott Coke and Pass the Soft Drink Tax
Both actions will do
public good
L ew C hurCh
Eleanor Greene’s commentary (You
Can Vote Every Day With Your Dollars,
Portland Observer, Aug. 23 issue) was
right on the mark. In the age of Trump,
while some of us push for impeachment
at the federal level, it is vital at the local
level to boycott corporations that sell
out workers and consumers alike, and
to support progressive ballot measures
community by community.
Here in Portland, we have a chance to
do just that by supporting a ballot mea-
sure to appear before voters next year.
The proposal is to pass a soft drink tax
in Multnomah County, a much-needed
step to protect our kids and our commu-
nity from a perfectly legal, but never-
theless deadly substance to our health
and wellbeing.
But how are soft drinks and oth-
er sugar products harmful, much less
deadly, to folks in Oregon and the other
49 states? For one thing, obesity is at
epidemic levels. For another, it is esti-
mated that 30 percent of Americans, or
nearly 100 million people, are either
pre-diabetic or have Diabetes Type 1 or
Type 2.
Like taxing cigarettes (another ‘le-
gal but deadly’ product), a tax on soft
drinks is a way to decrease consump-
by
tion, increase public resources for edu-
cation and health care programs, and to
encourage multinational food corpora-
tions -- like Atlanta’s Coca-Cola com-
pany -- to move more quickly to make
and market a healthier product. That is,
to stop marketing and selling “diabetes
in a bottle.”
At Portland State University, our
local Gray Panthers chapter believes
more advocacy for the public good is
needed both before the election, and
possibly, afterwards, as well. That more
is a boycott against all Coke products,
including Coke, Tab, Sprite, Tab, Fan-
ta, Fresca, Mello Yello, Ramblin Root
Beer, Dasani, PowerAde, Minute Maid
and (in a recent corporate acquisition)
Vitamin Water.
But why boycott Coke products?
Why not simply just vote for the soft
drink tax itself? There are several rea-
sons. The first is called Citizens United.
Longtime Oregonians, consumers
and activists alike note that in our ‘lib-
eral, progressive’ state, many ballot
measures start out at 20 points ahead in
the polls and appear to be sure bets to
pass on election night -- only to fail mis-
erably, by as much as 20 points, after
a barrage of out-of-state cash embalms
and then entombs such proposals. Take
Measure 97, the GM food labeling, and
the fluoride ballot measure of a few
years ago in Multnomah County, as ex-
amples.
Also, we know from the lies of the
Trump Administration and from TV
advertising paid for by Wall Street
firms that all you have to do is lie often
enough and long enough to convince
enough swing voters in key locations
(think Michigan, Wisconsin and Penn-
sylvania in the last presidential elec-
tion) to reverse the expected outcomes
of elections.
Between now and the 2018 election,
Portland Gray Panthers will circulate
petitions both to sign folks up to not buy
Coke products, and, to vote for the soft
drink tax. Depending on the outcome
of the election, our coalition will then
evaluate whether to consider extending
the boycott any further.
A soft drink tax has been made law
in several U.S. cities already, including
Philadelphia, Seattle and San Francis-
co. Portland needs to reject some of our
recent right-wing behavior and live up
to our progressive reputation. A few
bad actors can certainly taint Portland’s
image, from the deranged but still rac-
ist murders on a MAX train in May to
the alt right rally in downtown Portland
where some of us were dismayed to ob-
serve a Confederate flag softly blowing
in the wind on the shores of the Willa-
mette River.
One frequent alt-right argument
against taxing sugar products is totally
bogus: That a so-called ‘sales tax’ on
some grocery items is somehow ‘harm-
ful’ to minority communities. This argu-
ment posits that it ‘penalizes the poor’
for low-income folks to not have the
individual ‘freedom’ to buy sugar prod-
ucts, willy-nilly. This is a lie.
Coca-Cola, in particular, as the em-
blematic brand of global capitalism, has
a long history of penalizing the poor.
The American Friends Service Commit-
tee organized a boycott of Coke decades
ago to protest the white power, white
minority apartheid regime in Pretoria.
Environmental activists have boycotted
Coke to protest the company’s role in
opposing passage of a national bottle
bill, or recycling legislation. Lastly, UK
anti-slavery organizer, and progressive
evangelical Christian, William Wilbur-
force, organized a 20-year “sugar boy-
cott” to help end the British slave trade
in the early 1800s.
Health care -- as we are witnessing in
Washington, D.C. -- is at the center of a
civil war now. Let’s at least take back, in
Multnomah County, a small part of our
health care, from the false advertising and
sugar-drenched profits of the Coca-Co-
la corporation’s ‘profits first, health care
last’ business model. As one PSU organiz-
er has stated bluntly, “They will sell you
diabetes -- and call it freedom.”
Lew Church is the coordinator of the
Portland Gray Panthers and founding
publisher and editor of two activist
Portland State University papers, the
PSU Rearguard and PSU Agitator.
An Anti-Poverty Program that Makes It Pay to Work
So why won’t the
feds expand it?
by a diti
k atti
Imagine a govern-
ment-funded anti-poverty
tool that encouraged peo-
ple to work. Now imagine
that it’s popular with both
Democrats and Repub-
licans, in red states and
blue.
Turns out we’ve had just such a tool
since 1975: the Earned Income Tax
Credit, or EITC.
The EITC is of the most popular and
effective anti-poverty tools. It’s a refund-
able tax credit for workers in eligible
low-income families, especially those
with children.
The credit works on a phase in, phase-
out system. Qualifying families receive
more tax credits as income increases up
to a certain threshold, and then slow-
ly phases out as income increases past
that point. That makes it less likely that
workers will turn away jobs or raises for
fear of losing benefits.
The federal EITC helped 6.5 million
low-income families in 2015, including
3.3 million children. However, the cur-
rent EITC — which tops out
at around $5,500 for families
with two kids — isn’t enough
to help the millions of families
struggling financially. Childless
workers get almost no benefit at
all, and millions of single par-
ents still struggle.
Proposals to expand the cred-
it are popular among politicians of both
parties, including Republicans Paul
Ryan and Marco Rubio, Democratic Sen.
Sherrod Brown, and former President
Obama. Their ideas include expanding
the credit for childless workers and in-
creasing the credits given to low-income
families.
However, the federal government has
been dragging its heels, leaving it to
states to try to fill the gap. Hawaii recent-
ly adopted a state-level EITC, bringing
the total to 29 (plus the District of Co-
lumbia). Others include Republican-led
states like Oklahoma, Louisiana, Iowa,
and Kansas.
But the feds just can’t agree on how
to fund it.
At a time of extreme inequality, the
best option would be to raise the funds by
increasing taxes on the wealthy. In Ha-
waii, for example, the credit is offset by
higher rates for those earning more than
$300,000 annually. More than 107,000
low-income Hawaiians are expected to
benefit from this legislation.
Yet others favor raising revenue from
existing taxes that hit the poorest the
hardest, like gas and sales taxes.
However, this seems unfair, since peo-
ple without jobs have to pay these tax-
es even though they don’t benefit from
the EITC. A better solution would be to
reduce these regressive taxes and make
sure wealthy individuals and large cor-
porations pay their fair share.
Since taking office, President Trump
hasn’t displayed any interest in expand-
ing the EITC.
Instead, he’s sought to make it more
difficult for working families to benefit
by requiring that recipients provide So-
cial Security numbers when claiming the
credit. This would make it harder for im-
migrant families, both documented and
otherwise, to claim the credit even if they
qualify for it.
Meanwhile, the president is hitting
the road to campaign for tax cuts for the
wealthiest. All of his tax proposals to
date would significantly cut taxes for the
wealthy, giving more and more breaks to
corporations and their wealthy CEOS.
There were high hopes that Ivanka
Trump might become a champion of
such family-friendly policies. But one
of her main contributions to the Trump
campaign, an “affordable” childcare
policy, would amount to a pitiful $20 in
help for families making under $40,000,
Bloomberg estimates. And it appears
to have been removed from the Trump
website.
Rather than fighting to make it more
difficult to get the EITC, the Trump ad-
ministration should work to expand the
credit, and actually help make America
great for the middle class.
Aditi Katti is a Next Leader at the In-
stitute for Policy Studies. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.