Wall Street Reform: If Obama Can't Win This Message War . . .
Unfortunately, David Corn gets this one pretty well right. The points he makes could be expanded into criticisms of Dem "message management" generally.
This has been personally frustrating to me for a long time: that the Republicans are waging a War of Messaging, relentlessly and (usually) with focus and discipline, while the Dems seem undecided whether there is a war, or a debate, or maybe a potentially-friendly game of some kind that is unfortunately beset with confusion and misunderstanding. As a result the Dems appear, year after year, to be unfocused and disorganized and, year after year, they get their butts thoroughly kicked by the Republicans. The Dems have a good message consultant in Drew Westin, but they pay little attention to him. The Republicans have one in Frank Luntz, and they follow his talking points with impressive discipline (as well as digesting talking points regularly from corporate think-tanks and consultants, as well as focus-groups, etc.).
Yes, Obama won in '08, and yes, he has been an inspirational speaker. But considering the monumental disaster of the Bush years, the wrecked economy, McCain's frequent lies, exaggerations and hypocrisies, etc., and the stunningly spectacular incompetence of Sarah Palin (more fully revealed since the election, but plenty on display during), it's worrying that the election was so close (tho not close enough to steal, as it was in '04).
Obama won praise for not delivering devastating, albeit perfectly legitimate, criticisms of Bush and, especially, McCain during the campaign -- for "taking the high road". I didn't participate in that praise. If the economy hadn't tanked, Obama likely would have lost, and the "high-road" strategy would be looking like another Dem wishy-washy failure against the Republican poltical-military juggernaut.
How would I have managed things differently? Apart from messaging points like Corn's (below), I would approach things generally like this....
Treat with honor and dignity statements and actions by your oponents (politicians and media alike) that reflect honesty and integrity. But where your opponents are guilty of scurrilous lies and major crimes, make sure they pay a political price. Call them out publicly, by name, showing what's wrong with their attack, referencing the relevant facts (because you can't trust journalists to do it for you), and challenging the offender to deny the facts, or to apologize. Never ignore attacks (as Obama so often did), because you then allow your opponent leverage in their own message-framing, and passively nurture public suspicions about you; you must fearlessly -- and obviously fearlessly -- stand up for yourself. Whatever you do, make sure that your opponents suffer public-poll pain whenever they tell outrageous lies against you. Make them gun-shy about doing it.
More than that, use language that is colorful, specific, evocative. Don't refer to "the Senate Majority Leader" without using his name, "Mitch McConnell", which is more easily associated with a face among the majority of the public who follow events only marginally. If he's going to be corporate whore, make sure the public sees a corporate whore when they see that face. Invite your opponents to stop fighting and to start cooperating -- but if they won't give up the fight, do not pretend that there is no war!
Republican strategists might be quite happy if Republicans have low public support, as long as they share it with the Democrats -- as long as the public despises politics in general, or Washington, or everything. That's bad for incumbents, who are mostly Democratic now. But the Democrats don't have to share the public gutter with the Republicans. If they got their messaging right -- and their policies! -- they could associate themselves with specific policies that the public like, and leave the Republicans in the gutter.
(Just to be clear, if anyone is confused about it: tho the above comments are given under the mantle of a strategic advisor to the Democrats, my politics are only slightly aligned with standard Dem positions. In these particular comments, that can be obscured by the stultifyingly narrow reality of two-party politics. Between the Democrats and the Republicans, I stand with the Democrats; but that doesn't mean that I stand with the Democrats....not more than a toe, or sometimes two.)
--MBC
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/19/wall-street-reform-if-obama-cant-win-this-message-war
David Corn
Wall Street Reform: If Obama Can't Win This Message War . . .
04/19/10
Let's review. For years, Wall Street masters of the universe, exploiting the deregulation swing of the 1990s, cooked up various financial instruments that virtually no one could understand -- not even the chief executives of the big firms -- and then when the credit default swaps hit the fan, the collapse of their trillion-dollar casino created a black hole that sucked up much of the economy, destroying more than 8 million jobs. But now that the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress, after bailing out the billionaire bozos, are finally moving to create new rules for the Gang That Couldn't Speculate Straight, Wall Street's reprobates have deployed hundreds of lobbyists to beat back these new safeguards. On top of that, Republicans are marching in lockstep opposition to the legislation that would establish these new rules, arguing that Obama and the Dems are actually bailing out the banks with these new regs.
Huh? If the regs aren't tough on Big Finance, why has Wall Street mobilized to thwart them? And if the reform package is a bailout for the banks, shouldn't the banks' lobbyists be trying to grease the way for the legislation instead of derailing it? The short explanation is the obvious one: The Republicans are not telling the truth. But don't take my word for it. Politifact.com assessed the GOP charge that the Obama-backed reform bill sets up a $50 billion "slush fund" that will be used for Wall Street bailouts and found it to be "false."
What we have here is a case of Republicans claiming up is down -- in order to do the bidding of the Big Finance players who screwed the rest of us. And that means that if Obama cannot win this message war, he really ought to reorganize.
In his first 14 months as president, Obama did a better job enacting major legislation than selling it. He passed nearly $800 billion in stimulus spending, and a wide range of economists have said this measure prevented the loss of another 2 million jobs. Yet with Republicans falsely claiming the stimulus created no new jobs -- a contention labeled a "pants on fire" lie by Politifact -- polls repeatedly have indicated that much of the public does not believe the stimulus has yielded jobs. And after Republicans bleated about non-existent "death panels" and a non-existent government takeover of health care, polls also have noted significant public skepticism about the just-passed health care overhaul. Obama aides and Democrats routinely say that public opinion regarding health care will move their way as Americans encounter the direct benefits of the measure. But that shift has yet to happen. (Gallup reported on Thursday that 45 percent of Americans say it was "a good thing" that Congress passed health care legislation, and 49 percent say it was "a bad thing." That marked little change from two weeks earlier -- and mirrored what Gallup polls had found during the months before the bill was approved by Congress.)
So Obama is 0 for 2 on the major message fronts. And he's been up against a rather feckless Republican leadership. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell? House Minority Leader John Boehner? These are not the most impressive political strategists. But with untruths -- even untruths that have been exposed -- they have prevented the president from reaping public opinion gains with his legislative victories.
Now comes the battle over Wall Street reform. The White House has been trying to get a fast jump on Republicans' false talking points. After McConnell declared that the package would institutionalize "taxpayer-funded bailouts of Wall Street banks," the White House slammed him on its blog, showing that McConnell's accusation was contradicted by the actual text of the bill. (McConnell's newest argument against the Wall Street reform legislation repeats a line Republicans used during their failed effort to stop health care reform: "We ought to go back to the drawing board.") On Friday, Obama decried the fact that Wall Street's "army of lobbyists" have found "some willing allies on the other side of Congress who have been trying to carve out a lot of exceptions and special loopholes so that people on Wall Street can keep making these risky bets without oversight." The goal of this partnership, he said, is to load the bill with "lobbyist-driven loopholes that put American taxpayers at risk." And, Obama declared, "every member of Congress is going to have to make a decision: Are they going to side with the special interests and the status quo, or are they going to side with the American people?" He vowed to veto legislation that does not include provisions to regulate the derivatives market.
This is a decent start. But as is often the case, Obama could be tougher on the Republicans. He could toss aside the usual Washington euphemisms (such as referring to "some" people on the "other side of Congress"). He ought to state plainly: The Republicans -- all the Republicans in the Senate -- are trying to kill this reform. Each of the 41 GOP senators has signed a letter opposing the legislation. It's deja vu all over again: complete GOP intransigence. This ought to prompt Obama to go ballistic.
Many Americans remain angry about Wall Street. They see that the money-traders made billions devising complicated and self-serving games that imperiled the entire economy; then they were bailed out, while unemployed Americans had to fend for themselves. And obscene mega-corporate bonuses resumed. People are right to be ticked off. Obama might find it useful to show that he shares that anger -- over and over. The White House can't finesse this point and deploy outrage once in a while. Taking the occasional populist poke won't suffice -- especially if the other side is again pushing a big lie. Obama needs to remind Americans repeatedly that he feels their rage and understands their cynicism. And Obama must show that. In other words, it's not only what he says, but how he says it.
Depicting the legislative battle over Wall Street reform as one in which lawmakers must side with either "special interests" or the "American people" is fine, but it doesn't thrill. If I could be so bold as to suggest a tutor for the president, he should spend a little time with Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who chairs an independent congressional panel overseeing the TARP bailout. She cooked up the idea for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which is part of the reform package now being debated in the Senate. She's exceptionally good at talking about these financial issues in clear-cut fashion. She does know how to display utter contempt for Big Finance -- without appearing shrill or marginal. "This is families versus banks," she likes to say, noting that there are not two sides to this issue. Not unless you're a rapacious Wall Streeter looking to preserve your opportunity to play dice with the American economy. She has pointed an accusing finger at specific banks, financial firms and GOP legislators to make a plain case: You are placing Americans in harm's way, and this must not stand. Put her up against McConnell or Boehner, and this debate would be settled within minutes.
To win the Wall Street reform message war -- and perhaps to win the legislative battle in the Senate -- Obama might have to call out the Republicans and the banks with more ferocity. The details of financial reform are even more complicated than those of health care reform. Neither side will succeed by scoring points about the details of a provision regarding collateralized debt obligations. You have to prevail in the struggle for control of the overarching narrative. Obama and the D's can do best by convincing Americans that Warren is right, that this is a fight between American families and the banks -- and that they are on the side of families, while the Republicans are in league with the rich schemers of Wall Street. With Americans still mad about the economic meltdown, with the GOP bedding down with Wall Street, this ought to be a cakewalk for Obama. That is, if he lets loose and puts his mouth where the money is.
UPDATE: In his weekly Internet and radio address, Obama did target McConnell and GOP Sen. John Cornyn: "Just the other day, in fact, the Leader of the Senate Republicans and the Chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee met with two dozen top Wall Street executives to talk about how to block progress on this issue. Lo and behold, when he returned to Washington, the Senate Republican Leader came out against the common-sense reforms we've proposed." Again, this is an okay start, but Obama will have to keep the pressure on McConnell. In that same address, Obama said, "My hope is that we can put this kind of politics aside. My hope is that Democrats and Republicans can find common ground and move forward together." WIth McConnell signaling that his hope is to kill Obama's initiative, it might be time for the president to declare war--and explain to the American public why there is no other alternative.
Thursday, 22 April 2010
AlterNet: Facing the Threat from the Far Right, Noam Chomsky Says He 'Has Never Seen Anything Like This'
AlterNet: Facing the Threat from the Far Right, Noam Chomsky Says He 'Has Never Seen Anything Like This'
Facing the Threat from the Far Right, Noam Chomsky Says He 'Has Never Seen Anything Like This'
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Posted on April 19, 2010, Printed on April 22, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146523/
This article first appeared on TruthDig.
Noam Chomsky is America’s greatest intellectual. His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate. Chomsky has done this despite being blacklisted by the commercial media, turned into a pariah by the academy and, by his own admission, being a pedantic and at times slightly boring speaker. He combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect. He curtly dismisses our two-party system as a mirage orchestrated by the corporate state, excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for being fops and courtiers and describes the drivel of the commercial media as a form of “brainwashing.” And as our nation’s most prescient critic of unregulated capitalism, globalization and the poison of empire, he enters his 81st year warning us that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.
“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”
“The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen,” Chomsky went on. “Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”
“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”
“I listen to talk radio,” Chomsky said. “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing.”
Chomsky has, more than any other American intellectual, charted the downward spiral of the American political and economic system, in works such as “On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures,” “Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture,” “A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West,” “Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky,” “Manufacturing Consent” and “Letters From Lexington: Reflections on Propaganda.” He reminds us that genuine intellectual inquiry is always subversive. It challenges cultural and political assumptions. It critiques structures. It is relentlessly self-critical. It implodes the self-indulgent myths and stereotypes we use to elevate ourselves and ignore our complicity in acts of violence and oppression. And it makes the powerful, as well as their liberal apologists, deeply uncomfortable.
Chomsky reserves his fiercest venom for the liberal elite in the press, the universities and the political system who serve as a smoke screen for the cruelty of unchecked capitalism and imperial war. He exposes their moral and intellectual posturing as a fraud. And this is why Chomsky is hated, and perhaps feared, more among liberal elites than among the right wing he also excoriates. When Christopher Hitchens decided to become a windup doll for the Bush administration after the attacks of 9/11, one of the first things he did was write a vicious article attacking Chomsky. Hitchens, unlike most of those he served, knew which intellectual in America mattered. [Editor’s note: To see some of the articles in the 2001 exchanges between Hitchens and Chomsky, click here, here, here and here.]
“I don’t bother writing about Fox News,” Chomsky said. “It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, ‘Look how courageous I am.’ But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.”
Chomsky, because he steps outside of every group and eschews all ideologies, has been crucial to American discourse for decades, from his work on the Vietnam War to his criticisms of the Obama administration. He stubbornly maintains his position as an iconoclast, one who distrusts power in any form.
“Most intellectuals have a self-understanding of themselves as the conscience of humanity,” said the Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein. “They revel in and admire someone like Vaclav Havel. Chomsky is contemptuous of Havel. Chomsky embraces the Julien Benda view of the world. There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you pursue truth and justice it will always mean a diminution of power and privilege. If you pursue power and privilege it will always be at the expense of truth and justice. Benda says that the credo of any true intellectual has to be, as Christ said, ‘my kingdom is not of this world.’ Chomsky exposes the pretenses of those who claim to be the bearers of truth and justice. He shows that in fact these intellectuals are the bearers of power and privilege and all the evil that attends it.”
“Some of Chomsky’s books will consist of things like analyzing the misrepresentations of the Arias plan in Central America, and he will devote 200 pages to it,” Finkelstein said. “And two years later, who will have heard of Oscar Arias? It causes you to wonder would Chomsky have been wiser to write things on a grander scale, things with a more enduring quality so that you read them forty or sixty years later. This is what Russell did in books like ‘Marriage and Morals.’ Can you even read any longer what Chomsky wrote on Vietnam and Central America? The answer has to often be no. This tells you something about him. He is not writing for ego. If he were writing for ego he would have written in a grand style that would have buttressed his legacy. He is writing because he wants to effect political change. He cares about the lives of people and there the details count. He is trying to refute the daily lies spewed out by the establishment media. He could have devoted his time to writing philosophical treatises that would have endured like Kant or Russell. But he invested in the tiny details which make a difference to win a political battle.”
“I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions,” Chomsky said when asked about his goals. “Don’t take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can’t. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. There is plenty of information. You have got to learn how to judge, evaluate and compare it with other things. You have to take some things on trust or you can’t survive. But if there is something significant and important don’t take it on trust. As soon as you read anything that is anonymous you should immediately distrust it. If you read in the newspapers that Iran is defying the international community, ask who is the international community? India is opposed to sanctions. China is opposed to sanctions. Brazil is opposed to sanctions. The Non-Aligned Movement is vigorously opposed to sanctions and has been for years. Who is the international community? It is Washington and anyone who happens to agree with it. You can figure that out, but you have to do work. It is the same on issue after issue.”
Chomsky’s courage to speak on behalf of those, such as the Palestinians, whose suffering is often minimized or ignored in mass culture, holds up the possibility of the moral life. And, perhaps even more than his scholarship, his example of intellectual and moral independence sustains all who defy the cant of the crowd to speak the truth.
“I cannot tell you how many people, myself included, and this is not hyperbole, whose lives were changed by him,” said Finkelstein, who has been driven out of several university posts for his intellectual courage and independence. “Were it not for Chomsky I would have long ago succumbed. I was beaten and battered in my professional life. It was only the knowledge that one of the greatest minds in human history has faith in me that compensates for this constant, relentless and vicious battering. There are many people who are considered nonentities, the so-called little people of this world, who suddenly get an e-mail from Noam Chomsky. It breathes new life into you. Chomsky has stirred many, many people to realize a level of their potential that would forever been lost.”
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.
Facing the Threat from the Far Right, Noam Chomsky Says He 'Has Never Seen Anything Like This'
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Posted on April 19, 2010, Printed on April 22, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146523/
This article first appeared on TruthDig.
Noam Chomsky is America’s greatest intellectual. His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate. Chomsky has done this despite being blacklisted by the commercial media, turned into a pariah by the academy and, by his own admission, being a pedantic and at times slightly boring speaker. He combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect. He curtly dismisses our two-party system as a mirage orchestrated by the corporate state, excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for being fops and courtiers and describes the drivel of the commercial media as a form of “brainwashing.” And as our nation’s most prescient critic of unregulated capitalism, globalization and the poison of empire, he enters his 81st year warning us that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.
“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”
“The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen,” Chomsky went on. “Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”
“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”
“I listen to talk radio,” Chomsky said. “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing.”
Chomsky has, more than any other American intellectual, charted the downward spiral of the American political and economic system, in works such as “On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures,” “Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture,” “A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West,” “Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky,” “Manufacturing Consent” and “Letters From Lexington: Reflections on Propaganda.” He reminds us that genuine intellectual inquiry is always subversive. It challenges cultural and political assumptions. It critiques structures. It is relentlessly self-critical. It implodes the self-indulgent myths and stereotypes we use to elevate ourselves and ignore our complicity in acts of violence and oppression. And it makes the powerful, as well as their liberal apologists, deeply uncomfortable.
Chomsky reserves his fiercest venom for the liberal elite in the press, the universities and the political system who serve as a smoke screen for the cruelty of unchecked capitalism and imperial war. He exposes their moral and intellectual posturing as a fraud. And this is why Chomsky is hated, and perhaps feared, more among liberal elites than among the right wing he also excoriates. When Christopher Hitchens decided to become a windup doll for the Bush administration after the attacks of 9/11, one of the first things he did was write a vicious article attacking Chomsky. Hitchens, unlike most of those he served, knew which intellectual in America mattered. [Editor’s note: To see some of the articles in the 2001 exchanges between Hitchens and Chomsky, click here, here, here and here.]
“I don’t bother writing about Fox News,” Chomsky said. “It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, ‘Look how courageous I am.’ But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.”
Chomsky, because he steps outside of every group and eschews all ideologies, has been crucial to American discourse for decades, from his work on the Vietnam War to his criticisms of the Obama administration. He stubbornly maintains his position as an iconoclast, one who distrusts power in any form.
“Most intellectuals have a self-understanding of themselves as the conscience of humanity,” said the Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein. “They revel in and admire someone like Vaclav Havel. Chomsky is contemptuous of Havel. Chomsky embraces the Julien Benda view of the world. There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you pursue truth and justice it will always mean a diminution of power and privilege. If you pursue power and privilege it will always be at the expense of truth and justice. Benda says that the credo of any true intellectual has to be, as Christ said, ‘my kingdom is not of this world.’ Chomsky exposes the pretenses of those who claim to be the bearers of truth and justice. He shows that in fact these intellectuals are the bearers of power and privilege and all the evil that attends it.”
“Some of Chomsky’s books will consist of things like analyzing the misrepresentations of the Arias plan in Central America, and he will devote 200 pages to it,” Finkelstein said. “And two years later, who will have heard of Oscar Arias? It causes you to wonder would Chomsky have been wiser to write things on a grander scale, things with a more enduring quality so that you read them forty or sixty years later. This is what Russell did in books like ‘Marriage and Morals.’ Can you even read any longer what Chomsky wrote on Vietnam and Central America? The answer has to often be no. This tells you something about him. He is not writing for ego. If he were writing for ego he would have written in a grand style that would have buttressed his legacy. He is writing because he wants to effect political change. He cares about the lives of people and there the details count. He is trying to refute the daily lies spewed out by the establishment media. He could have devoted his time to writing philosophical treatises that would have endured like Kant or Russell. But he invested in the tiny details which make a difference to win a political battle.”
“I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions,” Chomsky said when asked about his goals. “Don’t take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can’t. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. There is plenty of information. You have got to learn how to judge, evaluate and compare it with other things. You have to take some things on trust or you can’t survive. But if there is something significant and important don’t take it on trust. As soon as you read anything that is anonymous you should immediately distrust it. If you read in the newspapers that Iran is defying the international community, ask who is the international community? India is opposed to sanctions. China is opposed to sanctions. Brazil is opposed to sanctions. The Non-Aligned Movement is vigorously opposed to sanctions and has been for years. Who is the international community? It is Washington and anyone who happens to agree with it. You can figure that out, but you have to do work. It is the same on issue after issue.”
Chomsky’s courage to speak on behalf of those, such as the Palestinians, whose suffering is often minimized or ignored in mass culture, holds up the possibility of the moral life. And, perhaps even more than his scholarship, his example of intellectual and moral independence sustains all who defy the cant of the crowd to speak the truth.
“I cannot tell you how many people, myself included, and this is not hyperbole, whose lives were changed by him,” said Finkelstein, who has been driven out of several university posts for his intellectual courage and independence. “Were it not for Chomsky I would have long ago succumbed. I was beaten and battered in my professional life. It was only the knowledge that one of the greatest minds in human history has faith in me that compensates for this constant, relentless and vicious battering. There are many people who are considered nonentities, the so-called little people of this world, who suddenly get an e-mail from Noam Chomsky. It breathes new life into you. Chomsky has stirred many, many people to realize a level of their potential that would forever been lost.”
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Europe Finds Cleaner Energy Source by Burning Trash - NYTimes.com
Europe Finds Cleaner Energy Source by Burning Trash - NYTimes.com
April 12, 2010
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
HORSHOLM, Denmark — The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here are at peace with the hulking neighbor just over the back fence: a vast energy plant that burns thousands of tons of household garbage and industrial waste, round the clock.
Far cleaner than conventional incinerators, this new type of plant converts local trash into heat and electricity. Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago.
In that time, such plants have become both the mainstay of garbage disposal and a crucial fuel source across Denmark, from wealthy exurbs like Horsholm to Copenhagen’s downtown area. Their use has not only reduced the country’s energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration.
With all these innovations, Denmark now regards garbage as a clean alternative fuel rather than a smelly, unsightly problem. And the incinerators, known as waste-to-energy plants, have acquired considerable cachet as communities like Horsholm vie to have them built.
Denmark now has 29 such plants, serving 98 municipalities in a country of 5.5 million people, and 10 more are planned or under construction. Across Europe, there are about 400 plants, with Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands leading the pack in expanding them and building new ones.
By contrast, no new waste-to-energy plants are being planned or built in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency says — even though the federal government and 24 states now classify waste that is burned this way for energy as a renewable fuel, in many cases eligible for subsidies. There are only 87 trash-burning power plants in the United States, a country of more than 300 million people, and almost all were built at least 15 years ago.
Instead, distant landfills remain the end point for most of the nation’s trash. New York City alone sends 10,500 tons of residential waste each day to landfills in places like Ohio and South Carolina.
“Europe has gotten out ahead with this newest technology,” said Ian A. Bowles, a former Clinton administration official who is now the Massachusetts state secretary of energy.
Still, Mr. Bowles said that as America’s current landfills topped out and pressure to reduce heat-trapping gases grew, Massachusetts and some other states were “actively considering” new waste-to-energy proposals; several existing plants are being expanded. He said he expected resistance all the same in a place where even a wind turbine sets off protests.
Why Americans Are Reluctant
Matt Hale, director of the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, said the reasons that waste-to-energy plants had not caught on nationally were the relative abundance of cheap landfills in a large country, opposition from state officials who feared the plants could undercut recycling programs and a “negative public perception.” In the United States, individual states and municipalities generally decide what method to use to get rid of their waste.
Still, a 2009 study by the E.P.A. and North Carolina State University scientists came down strongly in favor of waste-to-energy plants over landfills as the most environmentally friendly destination for urban waste that cannot be recycled. Embracing the technology would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions and local pollution, but also yield copious electricity, it said.
Yet powerful environmental groups have fought the concept passionately. “Incinerators are really the devil,” said Laura Haight, a senior environmental associate with the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Investing in garbage as a green resource is simply perverse when governments should be mandating recycling, she said. “Once you build a waste-to-energy plant, you then have to feed it. Our priority is pushing for zero waste.”
The group has vigorously opposed building a plant in New York City.
Even Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has championed green initiatives and ranked Copenhagen’s waste-fueled heating on his list of environmental “best practices,” has shied away from proposing to get one built.
“It is not currently being pursued — not because of the technology, which has advanced, but because of the issue in selecting sites to build incinerators,” said Jason Post, the mayor’s deputy press secretary on environmental issues. “It’s a Nimby issue. It would take years of hearings and reviews.”
Nickolas J. Themelis, a professor of engineering at Columbia University and a waste-to-energy proponent, said America’s resistance to constructing the new plants was economically and environmentally “irresponsible.”
“It’s so irrational; I’ve almost given up with New York,” he said. “It’s like you’re in a village of Hottentots who look up and see an airplane — when everybody else is using airplanes — and they say, ‘No, we won’t do it, it’s too scary.’ ”
Acceptance in Denmark
Attitudes could hardly be more different in Denmark, where plants are placed in the communities they serve, no matter how affluent, so that the heat of burning garbage can be efficiently piped into homes.
Planners take pains to separate residential traffic from trucks delivering garbage, and some of the newest plants are encased in elaborate outer shells that resemble sculptures.
“New buyers are usually O.K. with the plant,” said Hans Rast, president of the homeowners’ association in Horsholm, who cut a distinguished figure in corduroy slacks and a V-neck sweater as he poured coffee in a living room of white couches and Oriental rugs.
“What they like is that they look out and see the forest,” he said. (The living rooms in this enclave of town houses face fields and trees, while the plant is roughly some 400 yards over a back fence that borders the homes’ carports). The lower heating costs don’t hurt, either. Eighty percent of Horsholm’s heat and 20 percent of its electricity come from burning trash.
Many countries that are expanding waste-to-energy capacity, like Denmark and Germany, typically also have the highest recycling rates; only the material that cannot be recycled is burned.
Waste-to-energy plants do involve large upfront expenditures, and tight credit can be a big deterrent. Harrisburg, Pa., has been flirting with bankruptcy because of a $300 million loan it took to reopen and refit an old public incinerator with the new technology.
But hauling trash is expensive, too. New York City paid $307 million last year to export more than four million tons of waste, mostly to landfills in distant states, Mr. Post said. Although the city is trying to move more of its trash by train or barge, much of it travels by truck, with heavy fuel emissions.
In 2009, a small portion of the city’s trash was processed at two 1990-vintage waste-to-energy plants in Newark and Hempstead, N.Y., owned by a private company, Covanta. The city pays $65 a ton for the service — the cheapest available way for New York City to get rid of its trash. Sending garbage to landfills is more expensive: the city’s costliest current method is to haul waste by rail to a landfill in Virginia.
While new, state-of-the-art landfills do collect the methane that emanates from rotting garbage to make electricity, they churn out roughly twice as much climate-warming gas as waste-to-energy plants do for the units of power they produce, the 2009 E.P.A. study found. Methane, the primary warming gas emitted by landfills, is about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, the gas released by burning garbage.
The study also concluded that waste-to-energy plants produced lower levels of pollutants than the best landfills did, but nine times the energy. Although new landfills are lined to prevent leaks of toxic substances and often capture methane, the process is highly inefficient, it noted.
Laws Spur New Technology
In Europe, environmental laws have hastened the development of waste-to-energy programs. The European Union severely restricts the creation of new landfill sites, and its nations already have binding commitments to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 2012 under the international pact known as the Kyoto Protocol, which was never ratified by the United States.
Garbage cannot easily be placed out of sight, out of mind in Europe’s smaller, densely populated countries, as it so often is in the United States. Many of the 87 waste-to-energy plants in the United States are in densely populated areas like Long Island and Cape Cod.
While these plants are generally two decades old, many have been progressively retrofitted with new pollution filters, though few produce both heat and power like the newest Danish versions.
In Horsholm only 4 percent of waste now goes to landfills, and 1 percent (chemicals, paints and some electronic equipment) is consigned to “special disposal” in places like secure storage vaults in an abandoned salt mine in Germany. Sixty-one percent of the town’s waste is recycled and 34 percent is incinerated at waste-to-energy plants.
From a pollution perspective, today’s energy-generating incinerators have little in common with the smoke-belching models of the past. They have arrays of newly developed filters and scrubbers to capture the offending chemicals — hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, dioxins, furans and heavy metals — as well as small particulates.
Emissions from the plants in all categories have been reduced to just 10 to 20 percent of levels allowed under the European Union’s strict environmental standards for air and water discharges.
At the end of the incineration process, the extracted acids, heavy metals and gypsum are sold for use in manufacturing or construction. Small amounts of highly concentrated toxic substances, forming a paste, are shipped to one of two warehouses for highly hazardous materials, in the Norwegian fjords and in a used salt mine in Germany.
“The hazardous elements are concentrated and handled with care rather than dispersed as they would be in a landfill,” said Ivar Green-Paulsen, general manager of the Vestforbraending plant in Copenhagen, the country’s largest.
In Denmark, local governments run trash collection as well as the incinerators and recycling centers, and laws and financial incentives ensure that recyclable materials are not burned. (In the United States most waste-to-energy plants are private ventures.) Communities may drop recyclable waste at recycling centers free of charge, but must pay to have garbage incinerated.
At Vestforbraending, trucks stop on scales for weighing and payment before dumping their contents. The trash is randomly searched for recyclable material, with heavy fines for offenders.
The homeowners’ association in Horsholm has raised what its president, Mr. Rast, called “minor issues” with the plant, like a bright light on the chimney that shone into some bedrooms, and occasional truck noise. But mostly, he said, it is a respected silent neighbor, producing no noticeable odors.
The plant, owned by five adjacent communities, has even proved popular in a conservative region with Denmark’s highest per-capita income. Morten Slotved, 40, Horsholm’s mayor, is trying to expand it. “Constituents like it because it decreases heating costs and raises home values,” he said with a smile. “I’d like another furnace.”
April 12, 2010
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
HORSHOLM, Denmark — The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here are at peace with the hulking neighbor just over the back fence: a vast energy plant that burns thousands of tons of household garbage and industrial waste, round the clock.
Far cleaner than conventional incinerators, this new type of plant converts local trash into heat and electricity. Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago.
In that time, such plants have become both the mainstay of garbage disposal and a crucial fuel source across Denmark, from wealthy exurbs like Horsholm to Copenhagen’s downtown area. Their use has not only reduced the country’s energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration.
With all these innovations, Denmark now regards garbage as a clean alternative fuel rather than a smelly, unsightly problem. And the incinerators, known as waste-to-energy plants, have acquired considerable cachet as communities like Horsholm vie to have them built.
Denmark now has 29 such plants, serving 98 municipalities in a country of 5.5 million people, and 10 more are planned or under construction. Across Europe, there are about 400 plants, with Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands leading the pack in expanding them and building new ones.
By contrast, no new waste-to-energy plants are being planned or built in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency says — even though the federal government and 24 states now classify waste that is burned this way for energy as a renewable fuel, in many cases eligible for subsidies. There are only 87 trash-burning power plants in the United States, a country of more than 300 million people, and almost all were built at least 15 years ago.
Instead, distant landfills remain the end point for most of the nation’s trash. New York City alone sends 10,500 tons of residential waste each day to landfills in places like Ohio and South Carolina.
“Europe has gotten out ahead with this newest technology,” said Ian A. Bowles, a former Clinton administration official who is now the Massachusetts state secretary of energy.
Still, Mr. Bowles said that as America’s current landfills topped out and pressure to reduce heat-trapping gases grew, Massachusetts and some other states were “actively considering” new waste-to-energy proposals; several existing plants are being expanded. He said he expected resistance all the same in a place where even a wind turbine sets off protests.
Why Americans Are Reluctant
Matt Hale, director of the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, said the reasons that waste-to-energy plants had not caught on nationally were the relative abundance of cheap landfills in a large country, opposition from state officials who feared the plants could undercut recycling programs and a “negative public perception.” In the United States, individual states and municipalities generally decide what method to use to get rid of their waste.
Still, a 2009 study by the E.P.A. and North Carolina State University scientists came down strongly in favor of waste-to-energy plants over landfills as the most environmentally friendly destination for urban waste that cannot be recycled. Embracing the technology would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions and local pollution, but also yield copious electricity, it said.
Yet powerful environmental groups have fought the concept passionately. “Incinerators are really the devil,” said Laura Haight, a senior environmental associate with the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Investing in garbage as a green resource is simply perverse when governments should be mandating recycling, she said. “Once you build a waste-to-energy plant, you then have to feed it. Our priority is pushing for zero waste.”
The group has vigorously opposed building a plant in New York City.
Even Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has championed green initiatives and ranked Copenhagen’s waste-fueled heating on his list of environmental “best practices,” has shied away from proposing to get one built.
“It is not currently being pursued — not because of the technology, which has advanced, but because of the issue in selecting sites to build incinerators,” said Jason Post, the mayor’s deputy press secretary on environmental issues. “It’s a Nimby issue. It would take years of hearings and reviews.”
Nickolas J. Themelis, a professor of engineering at Columbia University and a waste-to-energy proponent, said America’s resistance to constructing the new plants was economically and environmentally “irresponsible.”
“It’s so irrational; I’ve almost given up with New York,” he said. “It’s like you’re in a village of Hottentots who look up and see an airplane — when everybody else is using airplanes — and they say, ‘No, we won’t do it, it’s too scary.’ ”
Acceptance in Denmark
Attitudes could hardly be more different in Denmark, where plants are placed in the communities they serve, no matter how affluent, so that the heat of burning garbage can be efficiently piped into homes.
Planners take pains to separate residential traffic from trucks delivering garbage, and some of the newest plants are encased in elaborate outer shells that resemble sculptures.
“New buyers are usually O.K. with the plant,” said Hans Rast, president of the homeowners’ association in Horsholm, who cut a distinguished figure in corduroy slacks and a V-neck sweater as he poured coffee in a living room of white couches and Oriental rugs.
“What they like is that they look out and see the forest,” he said. (The living rooms in this enclave of town houses face fields and trees, while the plant is roughly some 400 yards over a back fence that borders the homes’ carports). The lower heating costs don’t hurt, either. Eighty percent of Horsholm’s heat and 20 percent of its electricity come from burning trash.
Many countries that are expanding waste-to-energy capacity, like Denmark and Germany, typically also have the highest recycling rates; only the material that cannot be recycled is burned.
Waste-to-energy plants do involve large upfront expenditures, and tight credit can be a big deterrent. Harrisburg, Pa., has been flirting with bankruptcy because of a $300 million loan it took to reopen and refit an old public incinerator with the new technology.
But hauling trash is expensive, too. New York City paid $307 million last year to export more than four million tons of waste, mostly to landfills in distant states, Mr. Post said. Although the city is trying to move more of its trash by train or barge, much of it travels by truck, with heavy fuel emissions.
In 2009, a small portion of the city’s trash was processed at two 1990-vintage waste-to-energy plants in Newark and Hempstead, N.Y., owned by a private company, Covanta. The city pays $65 a ton for the service — the cheapest available way for New York City to get rid of its trash. Sending garbage to landfills is more expensive: the city’s costliest current method is to haul waste by rail to a landfill in Virginia.
While new, state-of-the-art landfills do collect the methane that emanates from rotting garbage to make electricity, they churn out roughly twice as much climate-warming gas as waste-to-energy plants do for the units of power they produce, the 2009 E.P.A. study found. Methane, the primary warming gas emitted by landfills, is about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, the gas released by burning garbage.
The study also concluded that waste-to-energy plants produced lower levels of pollutants than the best landfills did, but nine times the energy. Although new landfills are lined to prevent leaks of toxic substances and often capture methane, the process is highly inefficient, it noted.
Laws Spur New Technology
In Europe, environmental laws have hastened the development of waste-to-energy programs. The European Union severely restricts the creation of new landfill sites, and its nations already have binding commitments to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 2012 under the international pact known as the Kyoto Protocol, which was never ratified by the United States.
Garbage cannot easily be placed out of sight, out of mind in Europe’s smaller, densely populated countries, as it so often is in the United States. Many of the 87 waste-to-energy plants in the United States are in densely populated areas like Long Island and Cape Cod.
While these plants are generally two decades old, many have been progressively retrofitted with new pollution filters, though few produce both heat and power like the newest Danish versions.
In Horsholm only 4 percent of waste now goes to landfills, and 1 percent (chemicals, paints and some electronic equipment) is consigned to “special disposal” in places like secure storage vaults in an abandoned salt mine in Germany. Sixty-one percent of the town’s waste is recycled and 34 percent is incinerated at waste-to-energy plants.
From a pollution perspective, today’s energy-generating incinerators have little in common with the smoke-belching models of the past. They have arrays of newly developed filters and scrubbers to capture the offending chemicals — hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, dioxins, furans and heavy metals — as well as small particulates.
Emissions from the plants in all categories have been reduced to just 10 to 20 percent of levels allowed under the European Union’s strict environmental standards for air and water discharges.
At the end of the incineration process, the extracted acids, heavy metals and gypsum are sold for use in manufacturing or construction. Small amounts of highly concentrated toxic substances, forming a paste, are shipped to one of two warehouses for highly hazardous materials, in the Norwegian fjords and in a used salt mine in Germany.
“The hazardous elements are concentrated and handled with care rather than dispersed as they would be in a landfill,” said Ivar Green-Paulsen, general manager of the Vestforbraending plant in Copenhagen, the country’s largest.
In Denmark, local governments run trash collection as well as the incinerators and recycling centers, and laws and financial incentives ensure that recyclable materials are not burned. (In the United States most waste-to-energy plants are private ventures.) Communities may drop recyclable waste at recycling centers free of charge, but must pay to have garbage incinerated.
At Vestforbraending, trucks stop on scales for weighing and payment before dumping their contents. The trash is randomly searched for recyclable material, with heavy fines for offenders.
The homeowners’ association in Horsholm has raised what its president, Mr. Rast, called “minor issues” with the plant, like a bright light on the chimney that shone into some bedrooms, and occasional truck noise. But mostly, he said, it is a respected silent neighbor, producing no noticeable odors.
The plant, owned by five adjacent communities, has even proved popular in a conservative region with Denmark’s highest per-capita income. Morten Slotved, 40, Horsholm’s mayor, is trying to expand it. “Constituents like it because it decreases heating costs and raises home values,” he said with a smile. “I’d like another furnace.”
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Is Net Neutrality Dead? A calmer view of the recent ruling that hamstrings the FCC.
By Tim Wu
Posted Tuesday, April 13, 2010, at 1:03 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski took office last summer, he was probably hoping to have fun with things like broadband plans, spectrum reform, and other stuff that excites telecom geeks. But the Bush administration had left behind a surprise. Last week, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declared that, thanks to Bush-era rulemakings, the FCC lacked many of the powers Genachowski needs to do his job. An alarmist, in fact, might see the decision as leveling the FCC almost as cleanly as an actual bomb would.
The calmer view, however, is that the ruling doesn't really mean the death of net neutrality, the National Broadband Plan, spectrum reform, or the FCC itself. It's a pain, but mostly it sends Genachowski on a cleanup mission. The FCC is a delayed victim of Bush's Grover Norquist program. (Remember "drown [government] in the bathtub"?) Yet by statute, the agency retains enormous powers over every form of communication by wire; it simply has to turn them back on.
Technically, it means declaring cable and DSL broadband the common carriers of our age (as Susan Crawford recently explained in a New York Times op-ed). What does that mean? To answer this, we need to go back to 1910, when, during the Taft administration, Congress passed a law declaring that the telegraph, telephone, and radio were to be treated just like the railroads, as "common carriers." The term is critical for understanding anything about what's going on today.
The idea of the common carrier stems from the premise that some businesses, by their very nature, are "public callings." Typically, such carriers of goods or people (taxicabs, railroads, ferries, bridges) and information (telegraph, telephone) have been charged with a duty not to discriminate among customers and not to charge exorbitant prices. You run into this all the time, even if you aren't aware of it: Consider that when you get in a New York taxi, the driver must charge you the posted rate and take you where you want to go. That's common carriage in action.
It's easy to understand why ancient courts thought such duties were important. Imagine yourself, late one stormy night, arriving at the sole inn in a remote town. At that point, the innkeeper has incredible power over you. He could extort whatever price you might pay. He could deny you service altogether. Or imagine a railroad that charged much less to John Rockefeller's Standard Oil than to any would-be rival in exchange for certain kickbacks. Or a telegraph owner who had a monopoly and refused to carry Democratic newswires.
Given these kinds of problems, from 1910 on, firms that offered communications services were declared common carriers and obligated, basically, to treat everyone the same and not to charge outrageous prices. But as the 21st century began, the Bush administration, in one of several experiments in neoclassical economics, decided to abandon the common carrier model for communications. Cheered on by economists, industry, and some technologists, the FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, declared that both DSL service and cable broadband were no longer covered by the FCC's authority to regulate common carriers. Instead, they were "information services," a category over which the FCC had limited say (more limited than even Powell thought). That is why the D.C. Circuit said last week that the FCC lacked the authority to punish Comcast when it began to block the popular BitTorrent protocol. It isn't that the court hobbled the FCC; under Powell, the FCC, it turned out, had crippled itself.
A realist might say the whole effort to cripple the FCC was motivated by an ideological commitment to the principle that most laws ought not apply to corporations, which are, after all, people too. But for the less cynical, there is an underlying economic logic. Economists in the 1990s argued that competition had done away with the need for the old protections. Access to the broadband Internet, the FCC projected in the early 2000s, would soon be a "highly competitive market," making the old rules unnecessary.
Unfortunately, by 2006, it was obvious that things had gone horribly wrong. Instead of more competition in broadband, every year brought less. There are plenty of firms and individuals on the Internet—bloggers, Bing, Wikipedia, and the rest—but increasingly few firms carrying the information. The problem is that Powell's deregulation, meant to foster "competition," freed the Bell and cable companies to eliminate most of their actual competitors. AT&T, broken up in 1984, re-emerged. The cable industry integrated into just a few megafirms, like Comcast. Today, there is every sign of more consolidation, and even the re-emergence of an outright monopoly in high-speed broadband (more than 50 mbps) in many parts of the nation.
Even if the Bush FCC was wrong about the glory of competition, was it perhaps right to cripple the FCC? Might we be better off with a disabled agency, one limited, effectively, to licensing radio and TV stations? The idea may sound appealing, like kicking over your brother's sand castle, but you pretty quickly begin to see the problems. The truth is, we actually do rely on broadband as our common carrier, much as our ancestors relied on trains and the way we still rely on taxis and innkeepers. The problems and likely abuses in a system everyone depends on haven't really changed, and why should they? Technology changes, but human nature doesn't. Then as now, carriers have the means and reason to discriminate, charge exorbitant prices, and confuse customers with weird bills.
Over the summer, the FCC is likely to re-establish its common-carrier authority over broadband. It needs this to continue its pet project, the National Broadband Plan, a signature Obama administration effort to get fast Internet access to more Americans. It also needs the power to punish any knavish conduct that may arise. This will amount to reversing a short-lived experiment and returning to the policies that date from the Taft administration (and in a more fundamental sense, to far older common-law principles). Chairman Michael Powell was a thoughtful fellow, but he made a mistake. The premise for getting rid of common carriage—that rising competition is solving every problem—has proved both theoretically and factually wrong. To recognize this isn't politics; it's error correction.
By Tim Wu
Posted Tuesday, April 13, 2010, at 1:03 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski took office last summer, he was probably hoping to have fun with things like broadband plans, spectrum reform, and other stuff that excites telecom geeks. But the Bush administration had left behind a surprise. Last week, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declared that, thanks to Bush-era rulemakings, the FCC lacked many of the powers Genachowski needs to do his job. An alarmist, in fact, might see the decision as leveling the FCC almost as cleanly as an actual bomb would.
The calmer view, however, is that the ruling doesn't really mean the death of net neutrality, the National Broadband Plan, spectrum reform, or the FCC itself. It's a pain, but mostly it sends Genachowski on a cleanup mission. The FCC is a delayed victim of Bush's Grover Norquist program. (Remember "drown [government] in the bathtub"?) Yet by statute, the agency retains enormous powers over every form of communication by wire; it simply has to turn them back on.
Technically, it means declaring cable and DSL broadband the common carriers of our age (as Susan Crawford recently explained in a New York Times op-ed). What does that mean? To answer this, we need to go back to 1910, when, during the Taft administration, Congress passed a law declaring that the telegraph, telephone, and radio were to be treated just like the railroads, as "common carriers." The term is critical for understanding anything about what's going on today.
The idea of the common carrier stems from the premise that some businesses, by their very nature, are "public callings." Typically, such carriers of goods or people (taxicabs, railroads, ferries, bridges) and information (telegraph, telephone) have been charged with a duty not to discriminate among customers and not to charge exorbitant prices. You run into this all the time, even if you aren't aware of it: Consider that when you get in a New York taxi, the driver must charge you the posted rate and take you where you want to go. That's common carriage in action.
It's easy to understand why ancient courts thought such duties were important. Imagine yourself, late one stormy night, arriving at the sole inn in a remote town. At that point, the innkeeper has incredible power over you. He could extort whatever price you might pay. He could deny you service altogether. Or imagine a railroad that charged much less to John Rockefeller's Standard Oil than to any would-be rival in exchange for certain kickbacks. Or a telegraph owner who had a monopoly and refused to carry Democratic newswires.
Given these kinds of problems, from 1910 on, firms that offered communications services were declared common carriers and obligated, basically, to treat everyone the same and not to charge outrageous prices. But as the 21st century began, the Bush administration, in one of several experiments in neoclassical economics, decided to abandon the common carrier model for communications. Cheered on by economists, industry, and some technologists, the FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, declared that both DSL service and cable broadband were no longer covered by the FCC's authority to regulate common carriers. Instead, they were "information services," a category over which the FCC had limited say (more limited than even Powell thought). That is why the D.C. Circuit said last week that the FCC lacked the authority to punish Comcast when it began to block the popular BitTorrent protocol. It isn't that the court hobbled the FCC; under Powell, the FCC, it turned out, had crippled itself.
A realist might say the whole effort to cripple the FCC was motivated by an ideological commitment to the principle that most laws ought not apply to corporations, which are, after all, people too. But for the less cynical, there is an underlying economic logic. Economists in the 1990s argued that competition had done away with the need for the old protections. Access to the broadband Internet, the FCC projected in the early 2000s, would soon be a "highly competitive market," making the old rules unnecessary.
Unfortunately, by 2006, it was obvious that things had gone horribly wrong. Instead of more competition in broadband, every year brought less. There are plenty of firms and individuals on the Internet—bloggers, Bing, Wikipedia, and the rest—but increasingly few firms carrying the information. The problem is that Powell's deregulation, meant to foster "competition," freed the Bell and cable companies to eliminate most of their actual competitors. AT&T, broken up in 1984, re-emerged. The cable industry integrated into just a few megafirms, like Comcast. Today, there is every sign of more consolidation, and even the re-emergence of an outright monopoly in high-speed broadband (more than 50 mbps) in many parts of the nation.
Even if the Bush FCC was wrong about the glory of competition, was it perhaps right to cripple the FCC? Might we be better off with a disabled agency, one limited, effectively, to licensing radio and TV stations? The idea may sound appealing, like kicking over your brother's sand castle, but you pretty quickly begin to see the problems. The truth is, we actually do rely on broadband as our common carrier, much as our ancestors relied on trains and the way we still rely on taxis and innkeepers. The problems and likely abuses in a system everyone depends on haven't really changed, and why should they? Technology changes, but human nature doesn't. Then as now, carriers have the means and reason to discriminate, charge exorbitant prices, and confuse customers with weird bills.
Over the summer, the FCC is likely to re-establish its common-carrier authority over broadband. It needs this to continue its pet project, the National Broadband Plan, a signature Obama administration effort to get fast Internet access to more Americans. It also needs the power to punish any knavish conduct that may arise. This will amount to reversing a short-lived experiment and returning to the policies that date from the Taft administration (and in a more fundamental sense, to far older common-law principles). Chairman Michael Powell was a thoughtful fellow, but he made a mistake. The premise for getting rid of common carriage—that rising competition is solving every problem—has proved both theoretically and factually wrong. To recognize this isn't politics; it's error correction.
Two Disgraceful Failures: How Congress and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are botching their only chance to reform Wall Street.
By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Tuesday, April 13, 2010, at 3:20 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before it's too late, we need to try to salvage the investigations of the financial meltdown and overhaul the proposed financial reform bills.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has so far been a waste. Some momentary theater has been provided by the witnesses who have tried to excuse, explain, or occasionally admit their role in the cataclysm of the past two years. While this has ginned up some additional public outrage, it hasn't deepened our knowledge about what critical players knew or did. There is a simple reason for this: The commission has not issued a single subpoena. Any investigator will tell you that you must get the documentary evidence before you examine the witnesses. The evidence is waiting to be seized from the Fed, AIG, Goldman Sachs, and on down the line. Yet not one subpoena.
Rather than accept Robert Rubin's simple disclaimers about Citigroup, why hasn't the FCIC combed through the actual communications among the board, the executive committee, the audit committee, and the risk-management committee? Why hasn't the FCIC collected AIG's e-mails with the Fed and Goldman Sachs? Unless the subpoenas are issued, we will lose the chance to make the record.
Because the FCIC report is going to be issued too late to directly affect the financial reform legislation now being debated, its primary utility will be to set out the historical record in excruciating detail. If the commissioners don't do this, they fail. If Republican stonewalling on the commission is preventing issuance of subpoenas, then FCIC Chairman Phil Angelides should either get Congress to alter the process whereby subpoenas are issued or threaten to resign rather than preside over a sham. Maybe this would shock the other members of the commission into doing what needs to be done. There are still too many secrets being hidden inside the e-mails, permitting guilty parties to lie and cover up their misdeeds.
Take, for example, the missing information about AIG. The real reasons the AIG counterparties were paid 100 cents on the dollar have never been revealed. Taxpayers invested $180 billion in AIG to stabilize the financial markets, not to honor every contract AIG had entered. Everybody and everything should have been subject to negotiation. Indeed, virtually everything other than the counterparty payments to investment banks was re-negotiated. But Goldman and others walked away with billions, unbothered. Yet the Treasury and the Fed have failed to reveal more about why those payments were made in full. This is not just a footnote. It goes to the core of the relationship among Wall Street, the secretary of the treasury, and the Fed.
The situation in Congress is no better. The reform proposals under consideration are classic rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic. They will modestly rejigger how Wall Street is monitored but do nothing to fix the real problems.
There is strong evidence that banks are still playing shell games to mask their levels of debt. And banks are not honestly accounting for the value of their enormous commercial real estate holdings. Even if the proposed congressional reforms pass, we will still have a "too big to fail" structure, now with explicit, not implicit, federal guarantees behind these institutions. We still have executive compensation that is based on a heads-we-win, tails-you-lose structure, creating the same risk asymmetry that caused the crisis.
The banks are making the creation of a consumer protection agency the litmus test for reform's success or failure. While a consumer protection agency would be a step forward, it isn't the critical measure of reform's success. The creation of the agency matters less than who is in charge at the OCC, OTS, FDIC, the Fed, or the new consumer agency. By and large, the government already has the regulatory powers that exist at the new agency: What we need are government officials who have the courage to act on those powers and challenge Wall Street.
During the pallid congressional debate over reform, Washington has utterly abandoned the structural reform that we actually need. There is an international consensus that banks are too big and the concentration within the banking sector is increasing, not decreasing. Fundamental reform will not come from having a few regulators "oversee" the sector. Reform will come from breaking apart the overly concentrated banks and separating them. The banks need to be broken up as AT&T and Standard Oil were busted, in order to stimulate competition and creativity.
Perhaps it's not too late for Congress to consider adding these three simple rules to its reform bill:
-Banks receiving taxpayer guarantees cannot engage in any nonbanking activity. Institutions must choose: Either you can have public guarantees or you assume risk through investment banking and proprietary trading, but you can't have both.
-Increase capital requirements to no less than 15 percent, and require on-balance-sheet disclosure of all material information pertaining to liabilities of the entity.
-require that banks pay penalties, dilute equity, eliminate management options, and repay executive bonuses before receiving any taxpayer bailout.
Americans have been betrayed by Washington over financial reform. Our leaders have failed to get the evidence, failed to push back when clearly inadequate explanations were provided, and failed to explore the structural reforms that will work. Pretend tears will drip from bankers' eyes after the consumer protection agency is created. Then their wolfish teeth will slowly break into a grin, the pure delight that Washington has failed to do anything meaningful to restructure the banking sector.
By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Tuesday, April 13, 2010, at 3:20 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before it's too late, we need to try to salvage the investigations of the financial meltdown and overhaul the proposed financial reform bills.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has so far been a waste. Some momentary theater has been provided by the witnesses who have tried to excuse, explain, or occasionally admit their role in the cataclysm of the past two years. While this has ginned up some additional public outrage, it hasn't deepened our knowledge about what critical players knew or did. There is a simple reason for this: The commission has not issued a single subpoena. Any investigator will tell you that you must get the documentary evidence before you examine the witnesses. The evidence is waiting to be seized from the Fed, AIG, Goldman Sachs, and on down the line. Yet not one subpoena.
Rather than accept Robert Rubin's simple disclaimers about Citigroup, why hasn't the FCIC combed through the actual communications among the board, the executive committee, the audit committee, and the risk-management committee? Why hasn't the FCIC collected AIG's e-mails with the Fed and Goldman Sachs? Unless the subpoenas are issued, we will lose the chance to make the record.
Because the FCIC report is going to be issued too late to directly affect the financial reform legislation now being debated, its primary utility will be to set out the historical record in excruciating detail. If the commissioners don't do this, they fail. If Republican stonewalling on the commission is preventing issuance of subpoenas, then FCIC Chairman Phil Angelides should either get Congress to alter the process whereby subpoenas are issued or threaten to resign rather than preside over a sham. Maybe this would shock the other members of the commission into doing what needs to be done. There are still too many secrets being hidden inside the e-mails, permitting guilty parties to lie and cover up their misdeeds.
Take, for example, the missing information about AIG. The real reasons the AIG counterparties were paid 100 cents on the dollar have never been revealed. Taxpayers invested $180 billion in AIG to stabilize the financial markets, not to honor every contract AIG had entered. Everybody and everything should have been subject to negotiation. Indeed, virtually everything other than the counterparty payments to investment banks was re-negotiated. But Goldman and others walked away with billions, unbothered. Yet the Treasury and the Fed have failed to reveal more about why those payments were made in full. This is not just a footnote. It goes to the core of the relationship among Wall Street, the secretary of the treasury, and the Fed.
The situation in Congress is no better. The reform proposals under consideration are classic rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic. They will modestly rejigger how Wall Street is monitored but do nothing to fix the real problems.
There is strong evidence that banks are still playing shell games to mask their levels of debt. And banks are not honestly accounting for the value of their enormous commercial real estate holdings. Even if the proposed congressional reforms pass, we will still have a "too big to fail" structure, now with explicit, not implicit, federal guarantees behind these institutions. We still have executive compensation that is based on a heads-we-win, tails-you-lose structure, creating the same risk asymmetry that caused the crisis.
The banks are making the creation of a consumer protection agency the litmus test for reform's success or failure. While a consumer protection agency would be a step forward, it isn't the critical measure of reform's success. The creation of the agency matters less than who is in charge at the OCC, OTS, FDIC, the Fed, or the new consumer agency. By and large, the government already has the regulatory powers that exist at the new agency: What we need are government officials who have the courage to act on those powers and challenge Wall Street.
During the pallid congressional debate over reform, Washington has utterly abandoned the structural reform that we actually need. There is an international consensus that banks are too big and the concentration within the banking sector is increasing, not decreasing. Fundamental reform will not come from having a few regulators "oversee" the sector. Reform will come from breaking apart the overly concentrated banks and separating them. The banks need to be broken up as AT&T and Standard Oil were busted, in order to stimulate competition and creativity.
Perhaps it's not too late for Congress to consider adding these three simple rules to its reform bill:
-Banks receiving taxpayer guarantees cannot engage in any nonbanking activity. Institutions must choose: Either you can have public guarantees or you assume risk through investment banking and proprietary trading, but you can't have both.
-Increase capital requirements to no less than 15 percent, and require on-balance-sheet disclosure of all material information pertaining to liabilities of the entity.
-require that banks pay penalties, dilute equity, eliminate management options, and repay executive bonuses before receiving any taxpayer bailout.
Americans have been betrayed by Washington over financial reform. Our leaders have failed to get the evidence, failed to push back when clearly inadequate explanations were provided, and failed to explore the structural reforms that will work. Pretend tears will drip from bankers' eyes after the consumer protection agency is created. Then their wolfish teeth will slowly break into a grin, the pure delight that Washington has failed to do anything meaningful to restructure the banking sector.
Study Finds No Improvement In Curbing Death During Pregnancy, Childbirth Among British Women | GantDaily.com
London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) –
A study of maternal mortality in 181 countries showed that the number women in Britain who died during pregnancy or childbirth remained the same the past two decades. In contrast, pregnant women in some poorer and wealthier nations that U.K. had improved rates of survival for the same time frame, while pregnant or giving birth.
The study compared death rates for women during their pregnancy or childbirth from 1980 to 2008. Globally, deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth went down to 343,000 annually in 2008, from 500,000 in 1980. The rate of decline was 1.4 percent yearly.
The maternal death rate for British women remained at 8.2 per 100,000 live birth, placing U.K. on the 23rd spot only. Poorer European nations such as Hungary, Poland and Albania had better rates of 7.1, 7.4 and 8.1 per 100,000 live births. On top of the list is Italy with just 3.9 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live birth.
Among the reasons why maternal death rates among British women did not change were a growing number of late pregnancies and obesity – which increase pregnancy complications.
The U.S. was even lower than the U.K. at 39th place, with a maternal death rate of 16.7 for every 100,000 live birth.
Dr. Christopher Murray, one of the authors of the study, said he was encouraged and surprised by the result of the study. Murray said that while the maternal death rate is still quite high, the numbers indicate improvement better than expectations.
The study was published in the Lancet Journal of Medicine.
A study of maternal mortality in 181 countries showed that the number women in Britain who died during pregnancy or childbirth remained the same the past two decades. In contrast, pregnant women in some poorer and wealthier nations that U.K. had improved rates of survival for the same time frame, while pregnant or giving birth.
The study compared death rates for women during their pregnancy or childbirth from 1980 to 2008. Globally, deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth went down to 343,000 annually in 2008, from 500,000 in 1980. The rate of decline was 1.4 percent yearly.
The maternal death rate for British women remained at 8.2 per 100,000 live birth, placing U.K. on the 23rd spot only. Poorer European nations such as Hungary, Poland and Albania had better rates of 7.1, 7.4 and 8.1 per 100,000 live births. On top of the list is Italy with just 3.9 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live birth.
Among the reasons why maternal death rates among British women did not change were a growing number of late pregnancies and obesity – which increase pregnancy complications.
The U.S. was even lower than the U.K. at 39th place, with a maternal death rate of 16.7 for every 100,000 live birth.
Dr. Christopher Murray, one of the authors of the study, said he was encouraged and surprised by the result of the study. Murray said that while the maternal death rate is still quite high, the numbers indicate improvement better than expectations.
The study was published in the Lancet Journal of Medicine.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Fox and Drudge Sucker Tea Partiers with a Big Lie About Taxes « SpeakEasy
Fox and Drudge Sucker Tea Partiers with a Big Lie About Taxes « SpeakEasy
Fox and Drudge Sucker Tea Partiers with a Big Lie About Taxes
Posted By Joshua Holland On April 13, 2010 @ 10:00 am In Uncategorized | 9 Comments
Here’s how Fox Nation and the Drudge Report were fanning the flames of their readers’ simmering tribalism last week, courtesy of Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog:
Here are Drudge and Fox Nation right now:
Those banner headlines led to an AP story that might make wingnut blood boil, but was in reality about a rather irrelevant bit of Tax Day trivia:
Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it’s simply somebody else’s problem.
About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability….
Many people continue to labor under the false belief that the United States has a progressive tax system.
Here’s the reality: after decades of assault on the taxes that fall disproportionately on the wealthy, we now have an effective flat tax.
Poor people in this country pay around 40 percent of their incomes in taxes, give or take 5 percent.
Rich people in this country also pay around 40 percent of their incomes in taxes, give or take 5 percent.
And folks in between pay around 40 percent of their incomes in taxes, give or take 5 percent.
The idea that most working people don’t pay taxes — an incredibly popular talking-point on the right — is the product of a rather easy-to-understand Big Lie.
You simply pretend that the most progressive tax in the United States, the federal income tax, is the only tax that Americans pay. You move the goal-posts, beginning the discussion with a statement of fact — ‘many people pay no federal income taxes’ — and then shifting to an egregious falsehood: ‘many people pay no taxes.’ It’s a simple but incredibly effective lie of omission.
Here are the facts (as I lay ‘em out in my upcoming book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy (And Everything Else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America)).
According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis conducted in 2007, it’s true that the wealthiest one percent paid more in Federal income taxes than the bottom 90 percent kicked in.
But what else did the CBO find? Drudge won’t tell you, but the CBO also said that the top one percent paid 5 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while the bottom 50 percent — many of whom pay nothing in federal taxes — paid 10 percent of their take, twice as much proportionately.
It also found that those in the bottom 80 percent of the earnings ladder paid around 9 percent of their incomes in Social Security taxes; the top one percent paid just 1.6 percent of theirs. After the income tax, payroll taxes represent the largest share of the federal take — those dollars represent a much bigger piece of the pie than corporate income taxes or taxes on capital gains.
A 2009 study by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy looked at state and local taxes in greater detail. It concluded, “nearly every state and local tax system takes a much greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from the wealthy. That is, when all state and local income, sales, excise and property taxes are added up, most state tax systems are regressive [emphasis theirs].”
The researchers found that those in the top 1 percent of the heap paid around 5 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes; the next 4 percent paid about 7 percent of theirs; the middle 5th paid just over 9 percent and those at the bottom of the ladder, the poorest 20 percent of the population, forked over almost 11 percent of their incomes on average to state and local governments.
They also looked at excise taxes — taxes on gas, cigarettes, alcohol and other goodies. They found that the “average state’s consumption tax structure is equivalent to an income tax with a 7.1 percent rate for the poor, a 4.7 percent rate for the middle class, and a 0.9 percent rate for the wealthiest taxpayers.”
So, as I said up top, we really have a flat tax. That’s the conclusion of a 2007 study by Boston University economists Laurence J. Kotlikoff and David Rapson, who found that when you add it all up — state and local taxes, federal taxes and excise fees – “The average marginal tax rate on incomes between $20,000 and $500,000 is 40.3%, the median tax rate is 41.8%, and the standard deviation of all of those rates is 5.3 percentage points. Basically, most of us pay about 40%, plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.”
The thing is, this isn’t just a Big Lie, but a beautiful example of right-populism. This is how you shift the focus of people who are rightly angry about their loss of economic security from those above them on the social hierarchy — the elites who in fact can influence their own outcomes — to those who are poorer (and/or darker) than them.
Is it effective? Steve M. sampled some of the responses from Fox Nation commenters:
I believe the half that don’t pay taxes are the ones working for this administration, the average American would go to jail if they don’t pay their taxes!
****
What percentage are elected officials and federal workers?
****
47% of households will pay no income taxes.
I want to know what percentage of households actually get a check from the govt. ie bought votes
****
If they dont pay then why should we?
BOYCOTT ALL UNION GROCERY STORES!
Obama and the Democrats (commies) have committed treason
www.impeachobamacampaign.com
ITS TIME TO IMPEACH THE IDIOT OBAMA
It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. As vile as they may appear at times, at the end of the day the tea-party types are just suckers. Easy marks.
Fox and Drudge Sucker Tea Partiers with a Big Lie About Taxes
Posted By Joshua Holland On April 13, 2010 @ 10:00 am In Uncategorized | 9 Comments
Here’s how Fox Nation and the Drudge Report were fanning the flames of their readers’ simmering tribalism last week, courtesy of Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog:
Here are Drudge and Fox Nation right now:
Those banner headlines led to an AP story that might make wingnut blood boil, but was in reality about a rather irrelevant bit of Tax Day trivia:
Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it’s simply somebody else’s problem.
About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability….
Many people continue to labor under the false belief that the United States has a progressive tax system.
Here’s the reality: after decades of assault on the taxes that fall disproportionately on the wealthy, we now have an effective flat tax.
Poor people in this country pay around 40 percent of their incomes in taxes, give or take 5 percent.
Rich people in this country also pay around 40 percent of their incomes in taxes, give or take 5 percent.
And folks in between pay around 40 percent of their incomes in taxes, give or take 5 percent.
The idea that most working people don’t pay taxes — an incredibly popular talking-point on the right — is the product of a rather easy-to-understand Big Lie.
You simply pretend that the most progressive tax in the United States, the federal income tax, is the only tax that Americans pay. You move the goal-posts, beginning the discussion with a statement of fact — ‘many people pay no federal income taxes’ — and then shifting to an egregious falsehood: ‘many people pay no taxes.’ It’s a simple but incredibly effective lie of omission.
Here are the facts (as I lay ‘em out in my upcoming book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy (And Everything Else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America)).
According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis conducted in 2007, it’s true that the wealthiest one percent paid more in Federal income taxes than the bottom 90 percent kicked in.
But what else did the CBO find? Drudge won’t tell you, but the CBO also said that the top one percent paid 5 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while the bottom 50 percent — many of whom pay nothing in federal taxes — paid 10 percent of their take, twice as much proportionately.
It also found that those in the bottom 80 percent of the earnings ladder paid around 9 percent of their incomes in Social Security taxes; the top one percent paid just 1.6 percent of theirs. After the income tax, payroll taxes represent the largest share of the federal take — those dollars represent a much bigger piece of the pie than corporate income taxes or taxes on capital gains.
A 2009 study by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy looked at state and local taxes in greater detail. It concluded, “nearly every state and local tax system takes a much greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from the wealthy. That is, when all state and local income, sales, excise and property taxes are added up, most state tax systems are regressive [emphasis theirs].”
The researchers found that those in the top 1 percent of the heap paid around 5 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes; the next 4 percent paid about 7 percent of theirs; the middle 5th paid just over 9 percent and those at the bottom of the ladder, the poorest 20 percent of the population, forked over almost 11 percent of their incomes on average to state and local governments.
They also looked at excise taxes — taxes on gas, cigarettes, alcohol and other goodies. They found that the “average state’s consumption tax structure is equivalent to an income tax with a 7.1 percent rate for the poor, a 4.7 percent rate for the middle class, and a 0.9 percent rate for the wealthiest taxpayers.”
So, as I said up top, we really have a flat tax. That’s the conclusion of a 2007 study by Boston University economists Laurence J. Kotlikoff and David Rapson, who found that when you add it all up — state and local taxes, federal taxes and excise fees – “The average marginal tax rate on incomes between $20,000 and $500,000 is 40.3%, the median tax rate is 41.8%, and the standard deviation of all of those rates is 5.3 percentage points. Basically, most of us pay about 40%, plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.”
The thing is, this isn’t just a Big Lie, but a beautiful example of right-populism. This is how you shift the focus of people who are rightly angry about their loss of economic security from those above them on the social hierarchy — the elites who in fact can influence their own outcomes — to those who are poorer (and/or darker) than them.
Is it effective? Steve M. sampled some of the responses from Fox Nation commenters:
I believe the half that don’t pay taxes are the ones working for this administration, the average American would go to jail if they don’t pay their taxes!
****
What percentage are elected officials and federal workers?
****
47% of households will pay no income taxes.
I want to know what percentage of households actually get a check from the govt. ie bought votes
****
If they dont pay then why should we?
BOYCOTT ALL UNION GROCERY STORES!
Obama and the Democrats (commies) have committed treason
www.impeachobamacampaign.com
ITS TIME TO IMPEACH THE IDIOT OBAMA
It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. As vile as they may appear at times, at the end of the day the tea-party types are just suckers. Easy marks.
Small-City Mayor Takes on the Pentagon -- War Spending Should Be Spent on Americans, Not on Killing Afghans | | AlterNet
Small-City Mayor Takes on the Pentagon -- War Spending Should Be Spent on Americans, Not on Killing Afghans | | AlterNet
Small-City Mayor Takes on the Pentagon -- War Spending Should Be Spent on Americans, Not on Killing Afghans
By Jo Comerford, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on April 12, 2010, Printed on April 13, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146408/
To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates fromTomDispatch.com here.]
Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities “squabble over crumbs,” as he puts it, while so much local money pours into the Pentagon’s coffers and into America’s wars. He’s so sick and tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he’s decided to do something about it. He’s planning to be the first mayor in the United States to decorate the façade of City Hall with a large, digital “cost of war” counter, funded entirely by private contributions.
That counter will offer a constantly changing estimate of the total price Binghamton’s taxpayers have been paying for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001. By September 30, 2010, the city’s “war tax” will reach $138.6 million -- or even more if, as expected, Congress passes an Obama administration request for supplemental funds to cover the president’s “surge” in Afghanistan. Mayor Ryan wants, he says, to put the counter “where everyone can see it, so that my constituents are urged to have a much-needed conversation.”
In doing so, he’s joining a growing chorus of mayors, including Chicago's Richard Daley and Boston's Thomas Menino, who are ever more insistently drawing attention to what Ryan calls the country’s “skewed national priorities,” especially the local impact of military and war spending. With more than three years left in his current term, Ryan has decided to pull out all the stops to reach his neighbors and constituents, all 47,000 of them, especially the near quarter of the city’s inhabitants who currently live below the poverty line and the 9% who are officially unemployed.
A Hard Hit Rust-Belt City
Like so many post-industrial rust-belt communities, Binghamton was hard hit by the financial meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed, though it faired better than a number of similar cities, in part because Ryan, his administration, and the Binghamton City Council are a smart and scrappy crew. No doubt that’s why he earned the New York State Conference of Mayors Public Administration and Management award two years running.
These days, however, even the smartest and scrappiest of mayors still has to face grim reality. In July 2009, as the city began developing the 2010 budget, Ryan projected a $7 million shortfall. Contributing factors included a likely $700,000 decline in sales tax revenue, ever rising healthcare costs, increased pension contributions to replace funds lost in the market during the collapse of 2008-09, and a $500,000 drop in the return on the city's investment portfolio.
With worse times ahead, thanks in part to the projected end of federal stimulus money and a city drained dry of reserves, Ryan has had to face a classically unpalatable choice: raise city sales taxes from 7% to an unheard of 24% or cut city jobs. He chose jobs, as have the vast majority of mayors and governors across the country, eliminating 39 of them. In the process, he sought greater program efficiencies and wrestled with ways to increase city revenues while cutting ever closer to Binghamton’s proverbial bone.
It was in the context of this kind of local pain that Ryan was stunned to discover just how much of Binghamton’s taxes were going to the military and to our distant wars, and how little was coming back to Binghamton in the form of aid and services. “When I first saw the cost of war numbers and made the connections,” Ryan remarks, “I had to wonder if we're ever going to get our priorities straight as a nation. It's like we're facing an attack on government. As a mayor, I can see so clearly what increased federal spending could do for the people of my city.”
Ryan's message doesn't resonate with all of his constituents -- some have walked out on his public appearances -- but he's used to controversy and convinced that Americans had better get their heads straight soon. “People are hurting so bad,” he insists, “that, like it or not, we're all going to have to look at things seriously if we want our situation to change.”
Heads should swivel, he thinks, when faced with the $138.6 million Binghamton’s taxpayers are out of pocket since 2001 for the Iraq and Afghan wars. And that’s not even counting the city's share of the supplemental funds Congress will undoubtedly agree to this spring to cover the Afghan “surge” or the city's portion of the basic Pentagon budget for the same period.
For a small city with an annual budget of $81.1 million, $138.6 million would be a hefty sum, even in non-recessionary times. For the same amount of money, Ryan could fund the Binghamton city library for the next 60 years, or pay for a four-year education for 95% of the incoming freshman class at the State University of New York at Binghamton, or offer four years of quality health coverage for everyone in Binghamton 19 or younger, or secure renewable electricity for every home in the city for the next 11 years. If he was feeling really flush, he could fully fund one-third of New York State's Head Start slots for one year.
For the same sum, Ryan could also authorize a $2,900 tax refund for every woman, man, and child in Binghamton or pay the salaries of all of Binghamton's hard-hit public school teachers and staff for about two years.
For $138.6 million, Mayor Ryan could hire 2,765 public safety officers for a year, or simply refund the 12 police positions cut in the latest budget contraction and guarantee those salaries for the next 230 years. Ridiculous? These days, no one is laughing in Binghamton or other cities like it.
A Community Starved by War
As tax day looms on April 15th, Ryan increasingly thinks about where Binghamton’s tax dollars will be heading and dreams about a government system that would have the potential to raise and spend tax revenue in the service of social benefits like affordable healthcare.
He’s disturbed by how Binghamton’s tax dollars will be distributed and what they will -- and won't -- buy for his city. Consider, for instance, where the 2009 taxes paid by a median income Binghamton household actually went. That year, such a household's income hovered around $30,000 annually, while its members paid approximately $738 in federal income taxes.
According to the tax-day analysis of the National Priorities Project (NPP), an overwhelming 218 of those dollars went to pay for military expenditures and interest on military-related debt (generated, in part, by current war spending). The next highest amount -- $137 -- went to healthcare, including Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
In 2009, $67, nearly 10 cents on every tax dollar, went to an aggregated category of spending NPP has titled “government,” tripling it in a single year, largely thanks to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), otherwise known as the bank bailout, whose cost every community in America has had to shoulder. Fifty-eight dollars (8.5 cents on every income-tax dollar) went to increased unemployment insurance payments and job-training initiatives, also a rise from the previous year.
Not surprisingly, the $15 that went to elementary, secondary, higher, and vocational education in 2009 represented a drop from 2008, a loss of a penny on every tax dollar. There’s no way, of course, that Mayor Ryan's dream of free, quality education from kindergarten to college is likely to happen on but 2% of every individual federal income tax dollar. Nor will we usher in the green techno-revolution that he and President Obama both support, by spending 2.5 cents on every dollar for the combined categories of the environment, energy, and science, and another 1.3 cents of every dollar on transportation.
“It's a double whammy," Ryan says. "We have a revenue problem and a values and priorities problem in this nation.”
Some desperate city leaders have suggested that the Mayor cut workers' pensions to help close the city’s budget gap. Matt Ryan doesn't see that as a solution to anything. “I have secretaries making $25,000 or $30,000. I'm not about to cut their net, such as it is. We have to think long haul. We have to look at fundamental changes if we're going to make it as a country. We should all be talking about this -- all the time.”
A construction crew will soon arrive to install Binghamton's “cost of war” counter which will overlook the city's busiest intersection and spur conversation around tax day. During the three minutes local motorists wait at the nearby traffic light, they can join Mayor Ryan in waving good-bye to $100. And Binghamton as a whole can grapple with spending $49,650 in war costs every day of 2010.
Jo Comerford is the executive director of the National Priorities Project. Previously, she served as director of programs at the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and directed the American Friends Service Committee's justice and peace-related community organizing efforts in western Massachusetts.
Copyright 2010 Jo Comerford
Small-City Mayor Takes on the Pentagon -- War Spending Should Be Spent on Americans, Not on Killing Afghans
By Jo Comerford, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on April 12, 2010, Printed on April 13, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146408/
To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates fromTomDispatch.com here.]
Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities “squabble over crumbs,” as he puts it, while so much local money pours into the Pentagon’s coffers and into America’s wars. He’s so sick and tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he’s decided to do something about it. He’s planning to be the first mayor in the United States to decorate the façade of City Hall with a large, digital “cost of war” counter, funded entirely by private contributions.
That counter will offer a constantly changing estimate of the total price Binghamton’s taxpayers have been paying for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001. By September 30, 2010, the city’s “war tax” will reach $138.6 million -- or even more if, as expected, Congress passes an Obama administration request for supplemental funds to cover the president’s “surge” in Afghanistan. Mayor Ryan wants, he says, to put the counter “where everyone can see it, so that my constituents are urged to have a much-needed conversation.”
In doing so, he’s joining a growing chorus of mayors, including Chicago's Richard Daley and Boston's Thomas Menino, who are ever more insistently drawing attention to what Ryan calls the country’s “skewed national priorities,” especially the local impact of military and war spending. With more than three years left in his current term, Ryan has decided to pull out all the stops to reach his neighbors and constituents, all 47,000 of them, especially the near quarter of the city’s inhabitants who currently live below the poverty line and the 9% who are officially unemployed.
A Hard Hit Rust-Belt City
Like so many post-industrial rust-belt communities, Binghamton was hard hit by the financial meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed, though it faired better than a number of similar cities, in part because Ryan, his administration, and the Binghamton City Council are a smart and scrappy crew. No doubt that’s why he earned the New York State Conference of Mayors Public Administration and Management award two years running.
These days, however, even the smartest and scrappiest of mayors still has to face grim reality. In July 2009, as the city began developing the 2010 budget, Ryan projected a $7 million shortfall. Contributing factors included a likely $700,000 decline in sales tax revenue, ever rising healthcare costs, increased pension contributions to replace funds lost in the market during the collapse of 2008-09, and a $500,000 drop in the return on the city's investment portfolio.
With worse times ahead, thanks in part to the projected end of federal stimulus money and a city drained dry of reserves, Ryan has had to face a classically unpalatable choice: raise city sales taxes from 7% to an unheard of 24% or cut city jobs. He chose jobs, as have the vast majority of mayors and governors across the country, eliminating 39 of them. In the process, he sought greater program efficiencies and wrestled with ways to increase city revenues while cutting ever closer to Binghamton’s proverbial bone.
It was in the context of this kind of local pain that Ryan was stunned to discover just how much of Binghamton’s taxes were going to the military and to our distant wars, and how little was coming back to Binghamton in the form of aid and services. “When I first saw the cost of war numbers and made the connections,” Ryan remarks, “I had to wonder if we're ever going to get our priorities straight as a nation. It's like we're facing an attack on government. As a mayor, I can see so clearly what increased federal spending could do for the people of my city.”
Ryan's message doesn't resonate with all of his constituents -- some have walked out on his public appearances -- but he's used to controversy and convinced that Americans had better get their heads straight soon. “People are hurting so bad,” he insists, “that, like it or not, we're all going to have to look at things seriously if we want our situation to change.”
Heads should swivel, he thinks, when faced with the $138.6 million Binghamton’s taxpayers are out of pocket since 2001 for the Iraq and Afghan wars. And that’s not even counting the city's share of the supplemental funds Congress will undoubtedly agree to this spring to cover the Afghan “surge” or the city's portion of the basic Pentagon budget for the same period.
For a small city with an annual budget of $81.1 million, $138.6 million would be a hefty sum, even in non-recessionary times. For the same amount of money, Ryan could fund the Binghamton city library for the next 60 years, or pay for a four-year education for 95% of the incoming freshman class at the State University of New York at Binghamton, or offer four years of quality health coverage for everyone in Binghamton 19 or younger, or secure renewable electricity for every home in the city for the next 11 years. If he was feeling really flush, he could fully fund one-third of New York State's Head Start slots for one year.
For the same sum, Ryan could also authorize a $2,900 tax refund for every woman, man, and child in Binghamton or pay the salaries of all of Binghamton's hard-hit public school teachers and staff for about two years.
For $138.6 million, Mayor Ryan could hire 2,765 public safety officers for a year, or simply refund the 12 police positions cut in the latest budget contraction and guarantee those salaries for the next 230 years. Ridiculous? These days, no one is laughing in Binghamton or other cities like it.
A Community Starved by War
As tax day looms on April 15th, Ryan increasingly thinks about where Binghamton’s tax dollars will be heading and dreams about a government system that would have the potential to raise and spend tax revenue in the service of social benefits like affordable healthcare.
He’s disturbed by how Binghamton’s tax dollars will be distributed and what they will -- and won't -- buy for his city. Consider, for instance, where the 2009 taxes paid by a median income Binghamton household actually went. That year, such a household's income hovered around $30,000 annually, while its members paid approximately $738 in federal income taxes.
According to the tax-day analysis of the National Priorities Project (NPP), an overwhelming 218 of those dollars went to pay for military expenditures and interest on military-related debt (generated, in part, by current war spending). The next highest amount -- $137 -- went to healthcare, including Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
In 2009, $67, nearly 10 cents on every tax dollar, went to an aggregated category of spending NPP has titled “government,” tripling it in a single year, largely thanks to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), otherwise known as the bank bailout, whose cost every community in America has had to shoulder. Fifty-eight dollars (8.5 cents on every income-tax dollar) went to increased unemployment insurance payments and job-training initiatives, also a rise from the previous year.
Not surprisingly, the $15 that went to elementary, secondary, higher, and vocational education in 2009 represented a drop from 2008, a loss of a penny on every tax dollar. There’s no way, of course, that Mayor Ryan's dream of free, quality education from kindergarten to college is likely to happen on but 2% of every individual federal income tax dollar. Nor will we usher in the green techno-revolution that he and President Obama both support, by spending 2.5 cents on every dollar for the combined categories of the environment, energy, and science, and another 1.3 cents of every dollar on transportation.
“It's a double whammy," Ryan says. "We have a revenue problem and a values and priorities problem in this nation.”
Some desperate city leaders have suggested that the Mayor cut workers' pensions to help close the city’s budget gap. Matt Ryan doesn't see that as a solution to anything. “I have secretaries making $25,000 or $30,000. I'm not about to cut their net, such as it is. We have to think long haul. We have to look at fundamental changes if we're going to make it as a country. We should all be talking about this -- all the time.”
A construction crew will soon arrive to install Binghamton's “cost of war” counter which will overlook the city's busiest intersection and spur conversation around tax day. During the three minutes local motorists wait at the nearby traffic light, they can join Mayor Ryan in waving good-bye to $100. And Binghamton as a whole can grapple with spending $49,650 in war costs every day of 2010.
Jo Comerford is the executive director of the National Priorities Project. Previously, she served as director of programs at the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and directed the American Friends Service Committee's justice and peace-related community organizing efforts in western Massachusetts.
Copyright 2010 Jo Comerford
The Preposterous Reality: 25 Hedge Fund Managers Are Worth 680,000 Teachers (Who Teach 13 Million Students) | | AlterNet
The Preposterous Reality: 25 Hedge Fund Managers Are Worth 680,000 Teachers (Who Teach 13 Million Students) | | AlterNet: "The Preposterous Reality: 25 Hedge Fund Managers Are Worth 680,000 Teachers (Who Teach 13 Million Students)"
The Massey disaster: Is 'Coal Baron' Don Blankenship to blame? - The Week
The Massey disaster: Is 'Coal Baron' Don Blankenship to blame? - The Week
The Massey disaster: Is 'Coal Baron' Don Blankenship to blame?
The CEO of Massey Energy is emerging as a villain in the tragedy of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. Why?
posted on April 9, 2010, at 6:00 PM
Don Blankenship. Photo: Corbis
Don Blankenship, the 60-year-old chief executive of Massey Energy, is rapidly becoming the perceived villain in the West Virginia coal mining disaster that killed at least 25 people this week. Massey's 42 coal mines — including Upper Big Branch, where the deadly explosion occured — have received more than 2,000 safety violations this year. An unapologetic free marketeer, Blankenship has been accused by critics of putting the company's bottom line ahead of worker safety. Some commentators are even calling for him to be charged with murder. (Watch the Massey CEO talk about "nonsensical" safety rules.) Here's a look at the "Coal Baron" of Appalachia — and why everyone is blaming him for the disaster:
Who is Don Blankenship?
Donald L. Blankenship is the chief executive of Massey Energy Company, owner of the Upper Big Branch mine, which exploded this week. He joined the firm as a manager in 1982, and worked his way to the top. Including stock options, he was paid more than $19 million by Massey in 2008.
Why are people blaming him for the disaster?
The Upper Big Branch mine has received 124 safety violations this year, and Massey's 41 other coal mines in the area have racked up more than 2,000 violations this year between them. Critics say Blankenship's anti-union, anti-regulatory stance contributed to a culture of poor safety and health at the company.
What are his political views?
Considered the "ultimate free marketeer," Blankenship is vigorously opposed to government regulation of his industry. "Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miners' safety," he said at an anti-regulatory rally last September. "The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming."
How does he treat workers?
The company tries to cultivate "camaraderie," according to Ian Urbina and John Leland in The New York Times. Massey miners are called "members," not employees. Some even fly the Massey flag in front of their homes. Blankenship rewards his workers, too: Last year he hosted a July 4 party on the grounds of his home, with entertainment from rocker Ted Nugent. Massey reportedly pays better than mines owed by other companies, but their benefits packages are smaller.
Is Blankenship a political contributor?
Yes. He contributed more than $30,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee last year, has supported Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and controversially donated $3 million to the campaign of a West Virginia judge who later helped overturn a $50 million judgement against Massey. The episode apparently formed the basis of John Grisham's 2008 legal thriller The Appeal.
Who does he think is to blame for the tragedy?
No one. In an interview with ABC, he said that life is inherently risky. "There's 42,000 people a year killed on the highways," he said. "So there's dangers in everything, and we're trying to minimize that danger as best we can." The numerous safety violations, he told other reporters, are "unfortunately a normal part of the mining process."
What does he think of the media coverage?
On his Twitter feed, which is "basically a string of zingers aimed at environmentalists, Democrats, and green-thinking Republicans," he has accused the media of "indignity" in its coverage of the disaster. Blankenship has had run-ins with the media before. In 2008, he warned an ABC cameraman that he would be shot for taking photos. (see video here)
What are his defenders saying?
Brian Glasser, a lawyer in Charleston who has brought suits against Massey, told The New York Times: "He honestly believes what he is doing is materially benefiting the lives of the people who work for him... To make him an enemy of the people is not fair to him."
The Massey disaster: Is 'Coal Baron' Don Blankenship to blame?
The CEO of Massey Energy is emerging as a villain in the tragedy of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. Why?
posted on April 9, 2010, at 6:00 PM
Don Blankenship. Photo: Corbis
Don Blankenship, the 60-year-old chief executive of Massey Energy, is rapidly becoming the perceived villain in the West Virginia coal mining disaster that killed at least 25 people this week. Massey's 42 coal mines — including Upper Big Branch, where the deadly explosion occured — have received more than 2,000 safety violations this year. An unapologetic free marketeer, Blankenship has been accused by critics of putting the company's bottom line ahead of worker safety. Some commentators are even calling for him to be charged with murder. (Watch the Massey CEO talk about "nonsensical" safety rules.) Here's a look at the "Coal Baron" of Appalachia — and why everyone is blaming him for the disaster:
Who is Don Blankenship?
Donald L. Blankenship is the chief executive of Massey Energy Company, owner of the Upper Big Branch mine, which exploded this week. He joined the firm as a manager in 1982, and worked his way to the top. Including stock options, he was paid more than $19 million by Massey in 2008.
Why are people blaming him for the disaster?
The Upper Big Branch mine has received 124 safety violations this year, and Massey's 41 other coal mines in the area have racked up more than 2,000 violations this year between them. Critics say Blankenship's anti-union, anti-regulatory stance contributed to a culture of poor safety and health at the company.
What are his political views?
Considered the "ultimate free marketeer," Blankenship is vigorously opposed to government regulation of his industry. "Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miners' safety," he said at an anti-regulatory rally last September. "The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming."
How does he treat workers?
The company tries to cultivate "camaraderie," according to Ian Urbina and John Leland in The New York Times. Massey miners are called "members," not employees. Some even fly the Massey flag in front of their homes. Blankenship rewards his workers, too: Last year he hosted a July 4 party on the grounds of his home, with entertainment from rocker Ted Nugent. Massey reportedly pays better than mines owed by other companies, but their benefits packages are smaller.
Is Blankenship a political contributor?
Yes. He contributed more than $30,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee last year, has supported Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and controversially donated $3 million to the campaign of a West Virginia judge who later helped overturn a $50 million judgement against Massey. The episode apparently formed the basis of John Grisham's 2008 legal thriller The Appeal.
Who does he think is to blame for the tragedy?
No one. In an interview with ABC, he said that life is inherently risky. "There's 42,000 people a year killed on the highways," he said. "So there's dangers in everything, and we're trying to minimize that danger as best we can." The numerous safety violations, he told other reporters, are "unfortunately a normal part of the mining process."
What does he think of the media coverage?
On his Twitter feed, which is "basically a string of zingers aimed at environmentalists, Democrats, and green-thinking Republicans," he has accused the media of "indignity" in its coverage of the disaster. Blankenship has had run-ins with the media before. In 2008, he warned an ABC cameraman that he would be shot for taking photos. (see video here)
What are his defenders saying?
Brian Glasser, a lawyer in Charleston who has brought suits against Massey, told The New York Times: "He honestly believes what he is doing is materially benefiting the lives of the people who work for him... To make him an enemy of the people is not fair to him."
Coal baron Don Blankenship respects money, but safety not so much | Midwest Voices
Coal baron Don Blankenship respects money, but safety not so much | Midwest Voices
Coal baron Don Blankenship respects money, but safety not so much
Don Blankenship
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Coal baron Don Blankenship is the ultimate free marketeer, a trendy niche in this day of seething resentment against government big and small.
He has clever names for environmentalists (greeniacs) and brainless congressmen (scarecrows).
His outspoken hatred of taxes and regulations won him a seat on the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
He has no use for unions and he abhors “nuisance” lawsuits, though he’s filed a few. A few years ago, he spent millions to run a judge out of office.
Last year, Blankenship forked over $1 million to help sponsor the huge “Friends of America” rally, which brought 70,000 people to a reclaimed mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia to watch big-time entertainers and listen to rants about environmentalists and government regulators.
“Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety,” Blankenship told a cheering crowd at that rally. “The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming.”
He should have given government more credit.
Its regulators have fined Blankenship’s companies repeatedly over the years. They know a few things about safety, and they knew there were problems in Blankenship’s mines.
This week, an explosion in the Upper Big Branch coal mine in Montcoal, W. Va., killed 25 workers. Four more men are missing. It’s the worst mining disaster in 25 years.
The cause so far is unknown. But Kevin Stricklin, an administrator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, stated the obvious when he told news organizations: “Something went very wrong here.”
Blankenship has invested heavily in defiance over the years.
His companies paid $4.2 million in fines and penalties after two workers died in a fire in a Blankenship mine in 2006. His primary company, Massey Energy, paid a $20 million fine in 2008 for clean water violations found by the Environmental Protection Agency.
In 2004, Blankenship contributed $3 million to fund a deceptive advertising campaign that unseated a West Virginia state Supreme Court judge. The benefactor of that largess responded by tipping the court balance in a decision that threw out a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy.
Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the “bought” judge should have disqualified himself from the case.
These examples represent just a sliver of the money Blankenship has spent over the years paying fines, fighting unions and contributing to candidates and political groups nationwide that share his disdain for taxes, regulations and environmental concerns.
Better that he would have invested those dollars in safety precautions and worker training at his mines. Twenty-nine men might be safe if he had.
Blankenship is a brazen member of a club that promotes its own interests by tearing down any individual or institution that might stand in its way.
The spin is working. Americans have heard so much about “corrupt” unions, “greedy” trial lawyers, “activist” judges and “job-killing” regulators that a good percentage of us think we’d be better off without any of them.
We wouldn’t. In fact, safety inspectors and regulators need more clout to protect workers in dangerous jobs. Judges need a separation from big money and electoral politics. Unions need more authority to insist on safe conditions for workers.
No one was cheering Don Blankenship’s blustery, free-market principles this week. According to The New York Times, he prepared to address a crowd outside his mangled mine but was shouted down.
People accused him of putting profit ahead of workers’ lives. Someone threw a chair. Police officers escorted the coal executive from the scene.
Blankenship should have heeded the judges, unions and regulators whom he so reviled. Turns out they could have protected him.
Editorial board member Barbara Shelly can be reached at bshelly@kcstar.com or 816-234-4594. She blogs at voices.kansascity.com
Submitted by barbshelly on April 8, 2010 - 1:51pm.
Barb Shelly| Login or register to post comments1333 reads Delicious Digg
Blankenship-GOP Collusion Should Be Investigated,
Submitted by Truthfairy on April 9, 2010 - 4:37pm.
Great article.
This tragic event has lifted the veil on GOP corruption and hypocrisy with big free marketeer donors. Blankenship-Bush-GOP repeatedly violated the Constitution by robbing mine workers and their families, and state agencies, of their right to justice.
This must be investigated. What we now know is the tip of the iceberg:
In October 2000, a Massey Energy subsidiary was responsible for the largest man-made environmental disaster east of the Mississippi (until 2008), when a coal slurry impoundment broke and spilled 245 million gallons of toxic sludge in the headwaters of two creeks in Kentucky. MSHA of federal Office of Surface Mining said Massey ignored warning signs of the breakthrough...MASSEY AGREED TO $3.25 MILION IN FINES & DAMAGES. Massey's insurance paid $58.8 million in clean up costs. (industry.BNET.com 4.7.2010).
BUT U.S. Sec of Labor Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. McConnell (R-KY), “put on the brakes” on the MSHA investigation into the spill by placing a McConnell staffer in charge. In 2002 a $5,600 fine was levied to replace the $3.25 mil. That September Massey gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by McConnell. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 10/2/06, OpenSecrets]
In 2006 Massey’s Aracoma Coal Co. agreed to “plead guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony, and pay $4.5 million in criminal and civil fines” after two workers were burned alive in a fire at the Aracoma Mine. The mine “had 25 violations of mandatory health and safety laws” before the fire on January 19, 2006, but Massey CEO Don Blankenship passed the deaths off as “statistically insignificant.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06; Charleston Gazette, 12/24/08]
In 2006 Blankenship spent between $2 & $3 million backing 41 GOP mid-term candidates - $50k each according to the WVa Record.
On 10/22/2006, NY Times' Ian Urbina wrote in his article, Wealthy Coal Executive Hopes to Turn Democratic West Virginia Republican, "In a state where candidates who win typically spend less than $20,000, Mr. Blankenship has poured more than $6 million into political initiatives."
In 2007, President Bush appointed a senior Massey executive to DOE!!
Massey Energy was cited for 1300 safety violations since 2005. Fifty of those violations are said to be 'unwarrantable failure", violations involving life and death failures over ventilation and other issues. Don Blankenship said the violations are "just a part of running a mine". (Democracy Now)
For six years, under Bush administration, most of Massey's amassed fines were cancelled or reduced.
Ken Cuccinelli and others in Virginia government - overwhelmingly Republican – are/were deeply in the pocket of Massey Energy and Don Blankenship, far more concerned with doing their bidding than in protecting workers, the environment, etc. It's also worth noting that Virginia's two previous AG's, Jerry Kilgore (2002-2005) and Bob McDonnell (2006-2009), apparently did nothing to rein in out-of-control Massey Energy on worker safety, the environment, or anything else. Neither did Mark Earley (1998-2001) or Jim Gilmore (1994-1997). (Blue Virginia)
One could go on for ever with specific examples. Suffice it to say that this Don Blankenship ran his mines with criminal reckless disregard for the lives of his miners and unlawful reckless disregard for federal and state safety regulations, as well as utter disrespect for the constiutional right to justice and impartiality. Throughout, it appears he was aided and abetted by Republican lawmakers, probably some Democrats too, and his ties to the Bush administration.
Now that this has become public, it would be an additional crime of omission not to conduct an investigation and restore justice to those hurt.
.
Read more: http://voices.kansascity.com/node/8539#ixzz0l0daCI9D
Coal baron Don Blankenship respects money, but safety not so much
Don Blankenship
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Coal baron Don Blankenship is the ultimate free marketeer, a trendy niche in this day of seething resentment against government big and small.
He has clever names for environmentalists (greeniacs) and brainless congressmen (scarecrows).
His outspoken hatred of taxes and regulations won him a seat on the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
He has no use for unions and he abhors “nuisance” lawsuits, though he’s filed a few. A few years ago, he spent millions to run a judge out of office.
Last year, Blankenship forked over $1 million to help sponsor the huge “Friends of America” rally, which brought 70,000 people to a reclaimed mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia to watch big-time entertainers and listen to rants about environmentalists and government regulators.
“Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety,” Blankenship told a cheering crowd at that rally. “The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming.”
He should have given government more credit.
Its regulators have fined Blankenship’s companies repeatedly over the years. They know a few things about safety, and they knew there were problems in Blankenship’s mines.
This week, an explosion in the Upper Big Branch coal mine in Montcoal, W. Va., killed 25 workers. Four more men are missing. It’s the worst mining disaster in 25 years.
The cause so far is unknown. But Kevin Stricklin, an administrator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, stated the obvious when he told news organizations: “Something went very wrong here.”
Blankenship has invested heavily in defiance over the years.
His companies paid $4.2 million in fines and penalties after two workers died in a fire in a Blankenship mine in 2006. His primary company, Massey Energy, paid a $20 million fine in 2008 for clean water violations found by the Environmental Protection Agency.
In 2004, Blankenship contributed $3 million to fund a deceptive advertising campaign that unseated a West Virginia state Supreme Court judge. The benefactor of that largess responded by tipping the court balance in a decision that threw out a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy.
Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the “bought” judge should have disqualified himself from the case.
These examples represent just a sliver of the money Blankenship has spent over the years paying fines, fighting unions and contributing to candidates and political groups nationwide that share his disdain for taxes, regulations and environmental concerns.
Better that he would have invested those dollars in safety precautions and worker training at his mines. Twenty-nine men might be safe if he had.
Blankenship is a brazen member of a club that promotes its own interests by tearing down any individual or institution that might stand in its way.
The spin is working. Americans have heard so much about “corrupt” unions, “greedy” trial lawyers, “activist” judges and “job-killing” regulators that a good percentage of us think we’d be better off without any of them.
We wouldn’t. In fact, safety inspectors and regulators need more clout to protect workers in dangerous jobs. Judges need a separation from big money and electoral politics. Unions need more authority to insist on safe conditions for workers.
No one was cheering Don Blankenship’s blustery, free-market principles this week. According to The New York Times, he prepared to address a crowd outside his mangled mine but was shouted down.
People accused him of putting profit ahead of workers’ lives. Someone threw a chair. Police officers escorted the coal executive from the scene.
Blankenship should have heeded the judges, unions and regulators whom he so reviled. Turns out they could have protected him.
Editorial board member Barbara Shelly can be reached at bshelly@kcstar.com or 816-234-4594. She blogs at voices.kansascity.com
Submitted by barbshelly on April 8, 2010 - 1:51pm.
Barb Shelly| Login or register to post comments1333 reads Delicious Digg
Blankenship-GOP Collusion Should Be Investigated,
Submitted by Truthfairy on April 9, 2010 - 4:37pm.
Great article.
This tragic event has lifted the veil on GOP corruption and hypocrisy with big free marketeer donors. Blankenship-Bush-GOP repeatedly violated the Constitution by robbing mine workers and their families, and state agencies, of their right to justice.
This must be investigated. What we now know is the tip of the iceberg:
In October 2000, a Massey Energy subsidiary was responsible for the largest man-made environmental disaster east of the Mississippi (until 2008), when a coal slurry impoundment broke and spilled 245 million gallons of toxic sludge in the headwaters of two creeks in Kentucky. MSHA of federal Office of Surface Mining said Massey ignored warning signs of the breakthrough...MASSEY AGREED TO $3.25 MILION IN FINES & DAMAGES. Massey's insurance paid $58.8 million in clean up costs. (industry.BNET.com 4.7.2010).
BUT U.S. Sec of Labor Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. McConnell (R-KY), “put on the brakes” on the MSHA investigation into the spill by placing a McConnell staffer in charge. In 2002 a $5,600 fine was levied to replace the $3.25 mil. That September Massey gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by McConnell. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 10/2/06, OpenSecrets]
In 2006 Massey’s Aracoma Coal Co. agreed to “plead guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony, and pay $4.5 million in criminal and civil fines” after two workers were burned alive in a fire at the Aracoma Mine. The mine “had 25 violations of mandatory health and safety laws” before the fire on January 19, 2006, but Massey CEO Don Blankenship passed the deaths off as “statistically insignificant.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06; Charleston Gazette, 12/24/08]
In 2006 Blankenship spent between $2 & $3 million backing 41 GOP mid-term candidates - $50k each according to the WVa Record.
On 10/22/2006, NY Times' Ian Urbina wrote in his article, Wealthy Coal Executive Hopes to Turn Democratic West Virginia Republican, "In a state where candidates who win typically spend less than $20,000, Mr. Blankenship has poured more than $6 million into political initiatives."
In 2007, President Bush appointed a senior Massey executive to DOE!!
Massey Energy was cited for 1300 safety violations since 2005. Fifty of those violations are said to be 'unwarrantable failure", violations involving life and death failures over ventilation and other issues. Don Blankenship said the violations are "just a part of running a mine". (Democracy Now)
For six years, under Bush administration, most of Massey's amassed fines were cancelled or reduced.
Ken Cuccinelli and others in Virginia government - overwhelmingly Republican – are/were deeply in the pocket of Massey Energy and Don Blankenship, far more concerned with doing their bidding than in protecting workers, the environment, etc. It's also worth noting that Virginia's two previous AG's, Jerry Kilgore (2002-2005) and Bob McDonnell (2006-2009), apparently did nothing to rein in out-of-control Massey Energy on worker safety, the environment, or anything else. Neither did Mark Earley (1998-2001) or Jim Gilmore (1994-1997). (Blue Virginia)
One could go on for ever with specific examples. Suffice it to say that this Don Blankenship ran his mines with criminal reckless disregard for the lives of his miners and unlawful reckless disregard for federal and state safety regulations, as well as utter disrespect for the constiutional right to justice and impartiality. Throughout, it appears he was aided and abetted by Republican lawmakers, probably some Democrats too, and his ties to the Bush administration.
Now that this has become public, it would be an additional crime of omission not to conduct an investigation and restore justice to those hurt.
.
Read more: http://voices.kansascity.com/node/8539#ixzz0l0daCI9D
This week in comically evil corporate behavior | Grist
This week in comically evil corporate behavior | Grist
Snidely Q. Blankenship
This week in comically evil corporate behavior 4
by Jonathan Hiskes
7 Apr 2010 10:43 AM
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Australia, Big Oil, Business, China, Climate & Energy, coal, Don Blankenship, Exxon Mobil, jackassery, news, oceans, West Virginia «less
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Updated
It’s only Wednesday and we've already got way more than a week's worth of comically evil behavior from the fossil-fuel sector.
Item the first:
A Chinese coal freighter tried to take a shortcut through Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and rammed into the world-reknowned ecological treasure. The stranded ship remains in danger of breaking apart and spilling its 1,075 tons of heavy engine fuel into the marine park (2.5 tons have already leaked).
Captain Wang Jichan, of the Chinese state-controlled conglomerate Cosco, doesn’t get it. He told authorities the leak is “not serious” and that he’s more worried about pesky rescuers consuming his crew’s food and water: "They need some more water because the rescue team is consuming the water and food. They need that. That is a problem at the moment."
Item the second:
In response to the tragic coal-mine explosion that killed at least 25 of his workers, notorious coal baron Don Blankenship shrugged off his company’s history of safety. “Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process,” said the Massey Energy CEO.
This from a businessman who wrote a 2005 memo instructing supervisors not to waste time on safety precautions and whose company was called “one of the worst in the industry” by a government safety regulator.
Item the third:
ExxonMobil paid no U.S. income taxes last year, despite reaping a record $45 billion profit, Forbes reports. By using legal accounting methods and Caribbean tax shelters, the energy giant was able to avoid paying a cent to the IRS. At the same time, it complains about its tax “burden.”
Update: Exxon clarifies that it did pay U.S. taxes last year (it won't say how much). It continues to use offshore tax shelters and moan about its tax burden.
Update: Item the fourth:
A Chevron pipeline spilled 18,000 gallons of crude oil into a canal in the Delta National Wildlife Refuge southeast of New Orleans. These accidents are tough to keep up with.
Remember, these are the captains of industry who tell us we can’t afford to change our current way of doing things. This is the status quo they’re working frantically to defend. Good times.
Snidely Q. Blankenship
This week in comically evil corporate behavior 4
by Jonathan Hiskes
7 Apr 2010 10:43 AM
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Australia, Big Oil, Business, China, Climate & Energy, coal, Don Blankenship, Exxon Mobil, jackassery, news, oceans, West Virginia «less
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It’s only Wednesday and we've already got way more than a week's worth of comically evil behavior from the fossil-fuel sector.
Item the first:
A Chinese coal freighter tried to take a shortcut through Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and rammed into the world-reknowned ecological treasure. The stranded ship remains in danger of breaking apart and spilling its 1,075 tons of heavy engine fuel into the marine park (2.5 tons have already leaked).
Captain Wang Jichan, of the Chinese state-controlled conglomerate Cosco, doesn’t get it. He told authorities the leak is “not serious” and that he’s more worried about pesky rescuers consuming his crew’s food and water: "They need some more water because the rescue team is consuming the water and food. They need that. That is a problem at the moment."
Item the second:
In response to the tragic coal-mine explosion that killed at least 25 of his workers, notorious coal baron Don Blankenship shrugged off his company’s history of safety. “Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process,” said the Massey Energy CEO.
This from a businessman who wrote a 2005 memo instructing supervisors not to waste time on safety precautions and whose company was called “one of the worst in the industry” by a government safety regulator.
Item the third:
ExxonMobil paid no U.S. income taxes last year, despite reaping a record $45 billion profit, Forbes reports. By using legal accounting methods and Caribbean tax shelters, the energy giant was able to avoid paying a cent to the IRS. At the same time, it complains about its tax “burden.”
Update: Exxon clarifies that it did pay U.S. taxes last year (it won't say how much). It continues to use offshore tax shelters and moan about its tax burden.
Update: Item the fourth:
A Chevron pipeline spilled 18,000 gallons of crude oil into a canal in the Delta National Wildlife Refuge southeast of New Orleans. These accidents are tough to keep up with.
Remember, these are the captains of industry who tell us we can’t afford to change our current way of doing things. This is the status quo they’re working frantically to defend. Good times.
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