Another big bailout! CEER Houston Director Stefania Tomaskovic on Environmental Justice.

CEER Houston Director Stefania Tomaskovic visits with Politics Done Right to discuss environmental justice, the environment, and more. The Silicon Valley Bank bailout is proof of a failed system.

Stefania Tomaskovic

CEER Houston Director Stefania Tomaskovic on Environmental Justice.

Stefania Tomaskovic, Ph.D., (she/her) serves as Coalition Director for the Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience. She believes that a strong, resilient Texas is possible: one where every person can access safe, affordable housing, where every neighborhood has healthy air, water, and soil, and where our economy is strengthened by meaningful work opportunities that support healthy livelihoods without doing harm to each other or the environment.

Prior to joining CEER, Stefania worked with Public Citizen, a national nonprofit group dedicated to representing the people’s voice in the halls of power. Stefania has also worked as a chaplain and a geologist.

CEER’s mission is to raise awareness of the connections between pollution, place, and the public’s health. It envisions a region that is equitable, environmentally sustainable, and economically strong, where residents have the opportunity to live, work, learn, play, and pray free from environmental hazards. To make that vision a reality, we advocate for public and private investment in protecting communities by cleaning up hazards that contaminate our air, water, and land while at the same time preventing or reducing flooding.

Stefania explains the meaning of environmental justice as uses Houston’s air pollution, which leads the nation and its distribution patterns. She provides the sad reality about the locations of cancer alleys throughout the area,

Dr. Tomaskovic explains the current state of climate change. How does it affect us locally, nationally, and internationally? Most importantly, she speaks about the requirements of climate justice.

• Root causes
• Rights
• Reparations
• Participatory Democracy

Is Texas and other states, and the national government doing enough?

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Another big bailout!

The “geniuses” who run our economy, the titans of finance, do what they do best. They gamble our money. They sneer at regulations that protect the taxpayers from their ineptitude and faux-libertarian stance. They ultimately fail because our private finance sector is nothing but a deck of cards that ultimately falls. And then they beg for a bailout.

One must remember that Silicon Valley Bank lobbied Congress to remove banks of around their size from the type of stress testing major banks must go through. Trump signed the law. Now the bank has failed after making investments that are expected of these titans of finance. We must remember that our financial sector is a gambling casino largely devoid of intellect.

Newsweek reported on the debacle, adding,

While largely unknown outside California’s Silicon Valley tech corridor, SVB has for decades been a go-to financial institution for the country’s technology and health start-ups. One of the 20 biggest banks in the United States, it had over $200 billion in assets by the end of last year, according to CNN.

As of Friday, however, SVB was left in freefall as clients began a run on the institution, spurred on by higher interest rates and other factors, resulting in a spiraling chain reaction that has threatened to sink the institution and leave its customers in financial jeopardy.

In the fallout of Friday’s run on the bank, some reports noted that a rollback of banking regulations by former President Donald Trump might have weakened SVB’s ability to manage risks associated with interest rates. In 2018, according to The New York Times, Trump signed a bill that axed regulatory requirements for regional banks with less than $250 billion in assets.

Under the new rules, such institutions no longer had to submit to “stress testing” by the Federal Reserve and were no longer required to keep a certain amount of cash on hand to protect against the effects of financial shocks, the newspaper reported.

In the fallout of Friday’s run on the bank, some reports noted that a rollback of banking regulations by former President Donald Trump might have weakened SVB’s ability to manage risks associated with interest rates. In 2018, according to The New York Times, Trump signed a bill that axed regulatory requirements for regional banks with less than $250 billion in assets.

If you want to understand the callousness and disregard of these executives, note that on Friday, the day of the bank’s collapse, they all got bonuses. These crooks knew their bank was in trouble. Why is anybody getting a bonus?

The government came to rescue millionaires’ and billionaires’ deposits. But they cannot fight to rescue those fraught with $10,000 of student debt. Will the middle class, who are constantly ripped off by these thugs in ties, continue to twist their minds in pretzels to defend these guys as they continue to sell Americans a false dream? We will cover much more of this on our 3:00 PM program as well on the internet.

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