By BENICIO VIERO SCHMIDT*
Commentary on recent events
The Citizen's Income program continues to be the scene of the great dispute between fiscal expansionists and those who defend the ceiling voted when the government was still that of Michel Temer. The dispute is big and deputy Marcio Bittar promised to deliver the report with the solution this week. It is suspected – the market points out – that the government should pass the hand on the simplified income tax return, under which 20% is deducted (rule in force for more than 40 years) or/and then the government will confiscate some resources in the educational field. Everything seems doable. What seems unlikely is changing the ceiling in the current situation because the market has already expressed its opposition, as has Minister Paulo Guedes.
Regarding the Federal Supreme Court, it can be said that what is happening now has never been seen. The President of the Republic is not pressured, he pressures his peers from other powers so that his nominee, Cássio Nunes, is endorsed as the new minister of the STF. Nothing like it has ever been seen, including the famous dinner this past Saturday at the home of former STF president Dias Toffoli with the presence of Davi Alcolumbre, president of the Senate, the nominee himself and the president of the Republic. This coexistence is more than a formal coexistence. It is, in fact, a certain promiscuity between the powers.
Regarding the environment, the forests in the Amazon continue to burn and the Pantanal continues to burn. Conama's new rules are back in force with the overthrow of the injunction that suspended it. They come into force, unfortunately, due to the general misery of the environment in Brazil, and to the lack of control of public policy over this great resource, this immense capital that is the Brazilian environment.
Finally, it is curious that just as the elections in São Paulo are being nationalized to the extent that one of the candidates adhered to the support received from the President of the Republic, it is also remarkable to verify how the American elections are being internationalized with the projections about whether the victory of Biden, or about the victory of the ailing Trump.
*Benicio Viero Schmidt is a retired professor of sociology at UnB. Author, among other books, of The State and urban policy in Brazil (LP&M).