Category: government

Our government in action, for good, and mostly for worse

Greening the concrete jungle

Seth Anderson0 comment

Green Alley, signed by Richard M Daley
Green Alley, signed by Richard M Daley

Baby steps, yet they should be celebrated because the alternative is sitting on our hands as the planet fries…

THERE are many places in Illinois where you expect to find a prairie. The roof of City Hall in Chicago is not among them. Yet there it is—20,000 square feet (almost half an acre) of shrubs, vines and small trees, 11 storeys above LaSalle Avenue. Planted in 2000, City Hall’s “green roof” reduces the amount of energy needed to cool the building in the summer; captures water during rainstorms, thus reducing the amount of water flowing into Chicago’s already overtaxed sewers; and combats the urban “heat island” effect, which makes cities warmer than nearby rural areas. On average, air temperatures above City Hall are 10-15°F degrees lower than those above the adjacent black-tar roof of the Cook County Building; on hot summer days the difference can be as great as 50°F.

Large as it is, City Hall’s roof accounts for a small proportion of Chicago’s total green-roof space. And those roofs are just one part of Chicago’s Climate Action Plan (CCAP), which was launched in September 2008 and was preceded by years of green initiatives during the tenure of Richard Daley, who from 1989 until earlier this year was mayor of Chicago. CCAP aims to reduce Chicago’s greenhouse-gas emissions to 75% of their 1990 levels by 2020, and to just 20% of their 1990 levels by 2050. In the two years after CCAP’s launch public-transport ridership rose, millions of gallons of water were conserved, hundreds of hybrid buses were added to Chicago’s fleet and over 13,000 housing units and nearly 400 commercial buildings were retrofitted for energy efficiency.

These achievements have come not through sweeping social engineering, or by making Chicagoans dine on tofu, sprouts and recycled rainwater while sitting in the dark, but by simple tweaks. City buses inevitably need replacing; so why not replace them with hybrid models that are not only 60% lower in carbon emissions than standard diesel buses, but also 30% more fuel-efficient and will save an estimated $7m a year in fuel and upkeep? Alleys—Chicago has 1,900 miles of them—will inevitably need repaving; why not repave them with permeable, light-coloured surfaces rather than asphalt to reduce water run-off into sewers and reflect rather than retain the sun’s light and heat?

(click here to continue reading Cities and climate change: Greening the concrete jungle | The Economist.)

There Is Only This Kind
There Is Only This Kind

Daley’s plan has been criticized because implementation has been slow, but at least something is happening, in Chicago, and nine other American metropolitan areas that are leading this effort:

Chicago and New York are just two of the ten American cities—the others are Austin, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle—who are members of the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group (mercifully renamed the C40), which now comprises 58 cities around the world. Roughly 297m people, less than 5% of the Earth’s total, live in the 40 charter-member C40 cities. But they account for 18% of the world’s GDP and 10% of its carbon emissions.

Investing In Solar Power

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Solar Panels - Chicago Center for Green Technology
Solar Panels – Chicago Center for Green Technology

Jobs, green energy jobs could be a solution to our anemic economy; if we had a functional political class. Instead we have one party1 willing, and able, to sacrifice national prosperity on the alter of upcoming elections, and another party2 too mealy-mouthed to do much about it. Meanwhile, China and the rest of the industrialized world is lapping us in investing in future technologies.

The New York Times reported that “much of China’s clean energy success lies in aggressive government policies that help this crucial export industry in ways most other governments do not,” including “heavily subsidized land and loans.” Those subsidies are part of a comprehensive policy agenda set by the Chinese government, which “sends clear signals to investors,” according to a Brookings Institution report:

Critical to China’s success is its articulation of a comprehensive and long-term state clean energy build out policy that sends clear signals to investors. Through its 12th Five Year Plan, China has identified “new energy” as one among seven “strategic emerging industries” and will invest $760 billion over the next 10 years in this sector alone. A range of complementary policies will guide these investment decisions, including the Renewable Energy Law, national demand-side management regulations, and pilot carbon taxes, among others. China has swiftly made itself a clean energy power, in large part by ensuring the availability of copious, affordable capital at a time it has been short in the United States. And the Deutche Bank Climate Change Advisors said in a recent report that there’s a lot more the U.S. could do to create a policy framework that encourages clean energy investment:

Countries with more ‘TLC’ – transparency, longevity and certainty – in their climate policy frameworks will attract more investment and will build new, clean industries, technologies and jobs faster than their policy lagging counterparts. This is particularly evident in countries such as Germany and China, who have emerged as global leaders in low carbon technologies and investment in recent years.  In stark contrast, a politically divided US Congress and vast budget deficit has resulted in very little significant regulation at the Federal level, with substantial implications for emerging clean technology industries in the US. This climate policy inertia has existed for some time in the US now, with activity on this front largely taking place at the state level. We have long argued that the states must continue to press ahead with climate legislation, but a negative effect of this trend is a patchwork of inconsistent state policies.  The net effect is that while Congress stumbles, the US stands to fall behind.

(click here to continue reading Conservative Media Declare That Solar Power “Doesn’t Work” | Media Matters for America.)

 

Footnotes:
  1. the GOP [↩]
  2. the Democrats [↩]

Vitriol for Bernanke, Despite the Facts

Seth Anderson0 comment

A Fool Too Long
A Fool Too Long

Rick Perry doesn’t seem like the type to let facts get in the way of constant stream of vitriol.

On Aug. 16, while speaking in Iowa, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican presidential candidate, took the demonization of Mr. Bernanke to a new level. He declared in much-quoted remarks — and to appreciative laughter from the crowd — that “we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas,” and that Mr. Bernanke’s monetary policy was “almost treacherous — or treasonous, in my opinion.” The next day, in New Hampshire, Mr. Perry was less inflammatory but more pointed. “They should open their books up,” he said of the Fed. “They should be transparent so that the people of the United States know what they are doing.”…

It’s also hard to fathom what Mr. Perry means when he calls for the Fed to “open its books up.” It publicly releases its current balance sheet every Thursday at approximately 4:30 p.m., and it’s available on the Fed’s Web site. Mr. Perry’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The charge that the Fed is “printing money” seems to be shorthand for recklessly risking or even seeking inflation. That notion “is complete nonsense,” Robert E. Hall, a senor fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution and professor of economics at Stanford, told me. “But it must be exciting to accuse him of things he hasn’t done.”

(click here to continue reading Vitriol for Bernanke, Despite the Facts – NYTimes.com.)

Hmm, Fed open its books every Thursday, at a specific time, and yet Rick Perry continues to insist that the Fed is hiding something. Hmmm. Maybe Mr. Perry just has a reading comprehension problem?

GPS and the 4th Amendment

Seth Anderson0 comment

Shoveling snow apparently optional
Shoveling snow apparently optional

Our erosion of civil liberties continues apace, the police increasingly don’t even bother to get warrants before they put you in their surveillance net. For instance, in the case of suspect Antoine Jones, the police installed a GPS tracking device on his (or his wife’s) Jeep.

Jordan Smith reports on this troubling case:

When are electronic or other forms of surveillance of an individual considered a search under the Fourth Amendment — thus requiring a valid warrant to conduct such surveillance in a manner that protects the individual from “unlawful search and seizure”?

How the U.S. Supreme Court answers that question, in a case on its docket for the term starting in October, will have far-reaching implications for the power of government and for the privacy of individuals, according to lawyers and privacy rights advocates.

If the Court holds that warrants are not required for this type of surveillance, it could mean “the technological death of the Fourth Amendment,” warns Arkansas-based attorney John Wesley Hall, a leading Fourth Amendment expert…

The officers obtained a judicial warrant providing for a 10-day tracking period inside the District of Columbia. However, they actually installed the device after the 10-day window had expired — the reasons have not been brought out in court — and they did so while the Jeep was parked in a public lot in Maryland. The GPS data provided a 24/7 record of all of Jones’ movements in the Jeep over the next month — including, at times, the movements of his wife and family.

(click here to continue reading Big Brother is tracking you: GPS and the 4th Amendment – Obama’s Supreme Court Nominees | Supreme Court Justices – Salon.com.)

ACLU Constitution Free Zone
ACLU Constitution Free Zone

I’d be very surprised if the Roberts Court rules against the police, shocked in fact. Even the fact that some gun rights organizations have filed briefs decrying this destruction of the Fourth Amendment will probably not sway the Court, if history is any guide.

As Leckar1 told the Crime Report, a beeper is a “simple sense-augmenting device,” while a GPS tracking device, designed by the government for military use and only made available since 2000 for civilian applications, is “not sense augmenting; it’s sense supplanting.”

And that is one of the main reasons that in order to pass the Fourth Amendment’s legal standard a warrant is needed to conduct GPS surveillance, Leckar argues.
The “D.C. Circuit was correct to hold that pattern information is dramatically more intrusive than mere information about an individual’s discrete journeys,” his brief argued. “Indeed, the distinction between discrete bits of information and patterns of conduct is well-accepted.”

To privacy and Fourth Amendment advocates, the distinction is crucial.

In a brief supporting Jones before the D.C. Circuit, the Electronic Freedom Foundation and the ACLU, and which they are expected to revive before the Supremes, argued that GPS technology now gives police extraordinary new powers to remotely track individuals over long periods in both public and private realms.

“Without a warrant requirement, an individual’s every movement could be subject to remote monitoring, and permanent recording, at the sole discretion of any police officer,” the brief said.
Gun Owners of America, Inc., Gun Owners Foundation, and several other conservative groups have already filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court urging it to restore “the Fourth Amendment to its original text and purpose.”

Footnotes:
  1. veteran attorney Stephen Leckar, who represents Jones [↩]

Chronic Underemployment Is A Problem

Seth Anderson0 comment

Continental Illinois Bank Building
Continental Illinois Bank Building

How is the US ever going to get out of its economic doldrums when the attention of politicians and the media is so focused on Wall Street and whether the Dow Jones Industrial Average goes down a few points?

Paul Krugman discusses:

Consider one crucial measure, the ratio of employment to population. In June 2007, around 63 percent of adults were employed. In June 2009, the official end of the recession, that number was down to 59.4. As of June 2011, two years into the alleged recovery, the number was: 58.2.

These may sound like dry statistics, but they reflect a truly terrible reality. Not only are vast numbers of Americans unemployed or underemployed, for the first time since the Great Depression many American workers are facing the prospect of very-long-term — maybe permanent — unemployment. Among other things, the rise in long-term unemployment will reduce future government revenues, so we’re not even acting sensibly in purely fiscal terms. But, more important, it’s a human catastrophe.

And why should we be surprised at this catastrophe? Where was growth supposed to come from? Consumers, still burdened by the debt that they ran up during the housing bubble, aren’t ready to spend. Businesses see no reason to expand given the lack of consumer demand. And thanks to that deficit obsession, government, which could and should be supporting the economy in its time of need, has been pulling back.

(click here to continue reading The Wrong Worries – NYTimes.com.)

The government can borrow money for basically nothing (interest rates were less than 1% this week1), so why don’t we invest in our crumbling infrastructure and put people to work? Sewers, bridges, energy grids, public transit and commuter rail, even highways if we must, but do something productive!

Sidewalks Never Sleep
Sidewalks Never Sleep

More Krugman:

To turn this disaster around, a lot of people are going to have to admit, to themselves at least, that they’ve been wrong and need to change their priorities, right away.

Of course, some players won’t change. Republicans won’t stop screaming about the deficit because they weren’t sincere in the first place: Their deficit hawkery was a club with which to beat their political opponents, nothing more — as became obvious whenever any rise in taxes on the rich was suggested. And they’re not going to give up that club.

But the policy disaster of the past two years wasn’t just the result of G.O.P. obstructionism, which wouldn’t have been so effective if the policy elite — including at least some senior figures in the Obama administration — hadn’t agreed that deficit reduction, not job creation, should be our main priority. Nor should we let Ben Bernanke and his colleagues off the hook: The Fed has by no means done all it could, partly because it was more concerned with hypothetical inflation than with real unemployment, partly because it let itself be intimidated by the Ron Paul types.

Something needs to happen, and soon, before we’re all living in cardboard boxes, or afraid to walk down the street because some hungry fellow is going to rob you for your pennies so he can eat

Footnotes:
  1. I thought I heard Paul Krugman say 0.25% on Keith Olbermann’s show, but I’m not positive [↩]

TIF Slush Fund Continues

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Miller Coors HQ West Loop
Miller Coors HQ West Loop

Chicago’s TIF slush fund is the by far the most corrupt thing about Chicago’s government these days, and Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader has been following the story closely:

 

 

But because of loopholes in the state TIF law, the mayor’s pretty much free to spend the money on anything he wants, such as subsidies to corporations in return for unenforced agreements to keep jobs in Chicago. That’s how TIF money ended up subsidizing wealthy corporations setting up shop in the “blighted” communities in and around the Loop.

Ferguson’s July 12 report (available at chicagoinspectorgeneral.org) hones in on the role played by World Business Chicago, an economic development group whose board is appointed by the mayor and includes many of Chicago’s corporate big shots. Among them are Glenn Tilton, who used to be CEO of United Airlines, and Terrence Duffy, chairman of CME Group, formerly known as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

WBC’s mission is to convince other corporate big shots to move jobs if not their headquarters to town, which is supposed to make us swell with civic pride—as though persuading, say, MillerCoors to move its corporate headquarters here from Milwaukee and Denver is the corporate equivalent of the Bears beating the Packers.

…

Anyway, as Ferguson points out, it’s not just that the folks at the WBC call on other corporate hotshots to move to town. It’s that they use handouts from the TIFs as one of the lures.

As Ferguson found, from 2005 to 2010, WBC wrote letters to the city’s TIF overseers, recommending subsidies for 12 corporations, including Accretive Health, ArcelorMittal USA, Block 37, CareerBuilder.com, CME Group, CAN, MillerCoors, NAVTEQ, United Airlines, Willis Group, and Ziegler and Ccompanies.

 

(click here to continue reading Mayor Emanuel does the TIF reform dance | Ben Joravsky on Politics | Chicago Reader.)

Self Portrait with South View

Why do these wealthy corporations need tax payer money to build, especially during these dire economic times? Nobody really has a good answer. In the West Loop, Roundy’s got money from the TIF fund to build an upscale store called Mariano’s Fresh Market, directly across the street from an existing (and recently built) Safeway (Dominick’s), and a few blocks from a proposed Wal-Mart…

Yet just last month Emanuel’s administration signed off on a deal to give $7 million—taken from the Near West TIF district—to a bunch of developers so they can build an upscale grocery store at Monroe and Halsted.

Wow, where do I start?

First of all, the area is hardly blighted—it’s booming by Chicago standards.

Second, it doesn’t need a grocery store—there’s a Dominick’s right across the street.

And third, there are any number of more pressing needs for that $7 million. Every unit of local government is freaking broke—Mayor Emanuel just grimly announced that the city’s deficit is $600 million and counting.

I asked city officials if the developers had substantiated a claim that, but for the TIF, the land could not be developed. I’m still waiting for them to get back to me on that one.

The city says the grocery store will create 200 new jobs. That amounts to a subsidy of $35,000 a job—if we actually get all the jobs. And let’s face it—the city has never done much to monitor job agreements in the past.

I think we’d all be better off if Mayor Emanuel just closed the Near West Side TIF and sent the roughly $54 million it has in reserves back to the city, schools, parks, and county, which were all foolish to give it up in the first place.

(click here to continue reading Mayor Emanuel does the TIF reform dance | Ben Joravsky on Politics | Chicago Reader.)

And to top it off, this site isn’t even a blighted building, up until a few years ago, MB Financial, a mid-sized bank with over $10,000,000,000 in assets, was headquarted in this building. They moved across the street into a newer, sleeker building, but their old location isn’t exactly a shit hole.

Muddying the Budget Waters With Social Security

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Forget-me-not Social Security
Forget-me-not Social Security

We’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating…

And that is the issue hanging like a dark cloud over the broader discussion to bolster Social Security, especially in such a politically charged atmosphere.

Many people misunderstand how the program operates. Payroll taxes stream into the trust fund that is used to pay current retirees’ benefits. When there is a surplus, that money is invested in a special type of Treasury bond that pays interest to the trust fund. At the end of last year, the trust fund had about $2.6 trillion. And though last year was the first year since 1983 that the fund paid out more than it received in tax revenue, it still continued to grow because of the interest accrued — and it is estimated to continue to grow through 2022.

Since the money in the trust fund is held in Treasury securities, taxes collected are essentially being lent to the federal government to pay for whatever it wants (and this allows the government to borrow less from the public). That is where some of the confusion comes into play about how Social Security is used to pay for things that are unrelated to the program. But it is really no different from China lending the government money by investing in Treasuries.

“Social Security does not, and cannot by law, add a penny to the federal debt,” said Nancy Altman, co-director of Social Security Works, an advocacy organization that promotes the preservation of the program. “It, by law, cannot pay benefits unless it has sufficient income to cover the cost, and it has no borrowing authority to make up any shortfall.”

And, she added, it is not in crisis. “Its long-range funding shortfall should be dealt with on its own legislative vehicle, separate from deficit-reduction talks and after those talks are concluded,” she added.

(click here to continue reading Muddying the Budget Waters With Social Security – NYTimes.com.)

 

Boehner House GOP Is Delusional

Seth Anderson0 comment

A Monster Maker an Eye
A Monster Maker an Eye

The Republicans won’t be happy until the US turns into a sister economy to Somalia, Afghanistan, North Korea or Yemen. You know, free reign for businesses, zero social spending, except to make sure religious zealots are in charge of bedrooms, while our national infrastructure totters on collapse. Here’s more proof:

To secure enough votes from his own members for his plan, Speaker Boehner is amending it to basically turn it into Cut, Cap, and Balance Lite.

Here’s the key new provision that is apparently going to win enough GOP votes to pass the bill:

The debt ceiling would be raised immediately but not by enough to get the government through next year. To get the second debt ceiling increase, House Republicans want a balanced budget constitutional amendment to pass both chambers first and be referred to the states.

(click here to continue reading Practically Delusional | Talking Points Memo.)

Circumstantial Evidence - Panatomic X
Circumstantial Evidence – Panatomic X

and from the NYT:

House Republicans muscled through a revised debt limit plan without a single Democratic vote on Friday night and headed toward a confrontation with the Senate, where Democrats were anxiously awaiting the newly passed measure so they could reject it. President Obama has also threatened to veto it.

About 24 hours after the first Republican proposal backed by Speaker John A. Boehner stalled, the House voted 218 to 210 to approve a plan that would increase the federal debt ceiling in two stages, with the second installment of $1.6 trillion contingent on Congressional approval of a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. The Constitutional amendment provision was added to attract conservatives who balked Thursday.

 

(click here to continue reading House Passes Boehner’s New Debt Plan – NYTimes.com.)

Dirty politics sullies all involved

Dirty politics sullies all involved

So a Balanced Budget constitutional ammendment? Really? And what are the odds such a beast would pass into law? And how quickly? I did a little quickie research using Wikipedia and and a time and date calculator. The fastest amendment I found to pass was the 21st, which repealed the 18th Amendment (Prohibition). Even this took 289 days.

Others (I didn’t check all)

Bill of Rights: 533 days

13 Amendment (Emancipation): 608 days

16th Amendment (allows Congress to collect income tax, still in dispute by some zealots): 1,325 days

18th Amendment (Prohibition): 534 days

You get the idea – the GOP wants our economy to remain in a tailspin until at least the 2012 election, because political calculations trump governing the country.

and the Senate isn’t going along with this fake plan so quickly in any case:

The Senate has killed the latest effort by the House to raise the government’s borrowing cap.

Democrats and several Republicans killed the GOP measure by a 59-41 vote Friday night, just minutes after it arrived from the House. Democrats opposed the measure because it would require another painful debt-limit debate early next year.

(click here to continue reading Senate kills House debt limit bill – Chicago Sun-Times.)

Bush Administration Prevented Regulation of Perchlorate In Drinking Water

Seth Anderson0 comment

Mendenhall Glacier Melt Off

Mendenhall Glacier Melt Off

Simply and unequivocally criminal. Disgustingly craven, and a lot more besides. We wrote about this travesty back in November, 2008.

The EPA’s controversial 2008 decision not to regulate a drinking water contaminant long connected to impaired brain development and decreased learning capability in infants had more to do with the interests of the Bush administration than with scientific findings regarding its safety, according to a report (146 page PDF) released Tuesday by a congressional watchdog agency, the LA Times reports.

Perchlorate is a toxin in rocket fuel and fireworks, is present in most states’ drinking water, lettuce and milk, and is found in high concentrations near current and former military bases as a byproduct of weapons testing. The E.P.A. currently says it could be contaminating the public wells supplying anywhere from 5 million to 17 million Americans. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to look into the EPA’s evaluation of the known thyroid-disturbant, and found that the path to the no-regulation decision “used a process and scientific analyses that were atypical, lacked transparency, and limited the agency’s independence in developing and communicating scientific findings.”

Instead of the EPA’s usual process—which begins with creating a work group of “professional staff with relevant expertise from across the agency”—the Agency placed a “less inclusive, small group of high-level officials” in charge of the deliberations.

These high-level members included officials who answered directly to the White House, from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture. NASA and the Department of Defense were part of the board as well.

Not included in the work group was the Office of Children’s Health Protection, a bureau essentially created for this purpose, despite the EPA’s conclusion of the risk perchlorate poses to pregnant women and children. The chemical can inhibit iodide uptake, causing increased the risk of neurodevelopmental impairment in fetuses of pregnant women, and contribute to developmental delays and decreased learning capability in infants and children, according to the report.

“Everyone who’s paying attention knows that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson is acutely tuned-in to the political signals coming from the White House – so tuned-in that his conversations with the executive branch have become a form of highly privileged state secret,” Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope told NBC in 2008.

 

The GAO report also found significant flaws in the actual testing process. The work group chose to use data from a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report, which was based primarily on the results of a single two-week clinical study which did not include infants or children younger than six years old.

 

(click here to continue reading Bush Administration, Not Science, Prevented Regulation of Toxin In Drinking Water | TPMMuckraker.)

No Dumping - Drains to Creek
No Dumping – Drains to Creek

Luckily, the Obama administration is a huge improvement in this area at least, and reversed this Bush era mistake last February.

News Corp Skates on Paying US Taxes

Seth Anderson0 comment

Ready for a scotch
Ready for a scotch

What a surprise, News Corp is a tax scofflaw as well as a regular criminal enterprise…

Over the past four years Murdoch’s U.S.-based News Corp. has made money on income taxes. Having earned $10.4 billion in profits, News Corp. would have been expected to pay $3.6 billion at the 35 percent corporate tax rate. Instead, it actually collected $4.8 billion in income tax refunds, all or nearly all from the U.S. government.

The relevant figure is the cash paid tax rate. This is the net amount of corporate income taxes actually paid after refunds. For those four years, it was minus 46 percent, disclosure statements show.

Even on an accounting basis, which measures taxes incurred but often not actually paid for years, News Corp. had a tax rate of under 20 percent, little more than half the 35 percent statutory rate, company disclosures examined by Reuters show. News Corp. had no comment.

 

(click here to continue reading RPT-COLUMN-It pays to be Murdoch. Just ask US gov’t: DCJohnston | Reuters.)

Of course, despite these facts, the ditto-heads on Fox News never stop repeating the mantra about U.S. taxes being too high.

…Update 6:46 PM

Hmm, author retracts article. Strange, but perhaps no conspiracy. Perhaps.

No excuses. But I will explain how I made such a bonehead error.

The other facts I reported remain:

* Among the 100 largest companies in the United States, News Corp has the third largest number of subsidiaries in tax havens, a Government Accountability Office study found in 2009.

* On an accounting basis, which measures taxes incurred but often not actually paid for years, News Corp had a tax rate of under 20 percent, little more than half the 35 percent statutory rate, its disclosures show.

* Murdoch has bought companies with tax losses and fought to be able to use them, which reduces his company’s costs.

* News Corp lawyers and accountants are experts at making use of tax deferrals, though the company’s net tax assets have shrunken from $5.7 billion in 2007 to $3.3 billion last year as the benefits were either used or expired.

 

Local Laws Fighting Obesity Under Siege

Seth Anderson0 comment

Tommy's Grill - Lomo Fuji

Tommy’s Grill – Lomo Fuji

I am opposed to most government meddling, no matter the intent, but this tea party reactionary anti-public health wave is particularly ridiculous. Partially in reaction to the Obama National Health care initiative, partially because Tea Partiers want to eat 2000 calories for breakfast, 2500 calories for lunch, and 3000 calories for dinner, not to mention snacks, and don’t want your shame tactics interfering with their drug, damn it. And stop telling them to exercise either – that’s also a socialist plot!

Several state legislatures are passing laws that prohibit municipalities and other local governments from adopting regulations aimed at curbing rising obesity and improving public health, such as requiring restaurants to provide nutritional information on menus or to eliminate trans fats from the foods they serve.

In some cases, lawmakers are responding to complaints from business owners who are weary of playing whack-a-mole with varying regulations from one city to the next. Legislators have decided to sponsor state laws to designate authority for the rules that individual restaurants have to live by.

Florida and Alabama recently adopted such limits, while Georgia, Tennessee and Utah have older statutes on their books. Earlier this year, Arizona prohibited local governments from forbidding the marketing of fast food using “consumer incentives” like toys.

And this week, Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed the state budget, which contains sweeping limitations on local government control over restaurants.

“All of sudden we’re seeing this legislation get slipped into pending bills at the 11th hour under the radar of public health advocates, which will pre-empt local governments from adopting policies that would improve health in their communities,” said Samantha Graff, senior staff lawyer at Public Health Law & Policy, a nonprofit group that works to combat obesity, among other issues.

(click here to continue reading Local Laws Fighting Fat Under Siege – NYTimes.com.)

Cajun Campfire Breakfast
Cajun Campfire Breakfast

 

 

FBI Invited Hatred-Based Church To Talk To Agents

Seth Anderson0 comment

Federal Bureau of Investigation Chicago Division

Federal Bureau of Investigation Chicago Division

Who had this dumb-ass idea? Any attention paid to the Westboro Baptist Church that doesn’t involve brick-bats is too much.

Jacob Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church demonstrates outside the U.S. Supreme Court during Snyder v. Phelps this past October in Washington, D.C.
The Westboro Baptist Church is infamous for picketing soldiers’ funerals with signs like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “God Hates the USA.” Yet the FBI recently invited leaders of the fundamentalist church to the Quantico Marine base in Virginia to talk to FBI agents as part of the bureau’s counterterrorism training program. But after four sessions this spring, the FBI canceled the arrangement amid criticism from inside the bureau, while church leaders claimed that they had been misled.

The church group, led by Pastor Fred Phelps and based in Topeka, Kan., says its protests are intended to tell the world that God is punishing the U.S. military for America’s tolerance of homosexuality. The pastor claims to be the prophet of God’s wrath.

The FBI first invited the church group to address the FBI’s law enforcement training classes back in 2008. And initially, there were no apparent problems. But the most recent sessions, including three at Quantico and one in Manassass, Va., stirred up controversy.

(click here to continue reading FBI Invited Controversial Church To Talk To Agents : NPR.)

I wonder if this program was the brainchild of one of the alumni of Regent University that infiltrated the Bush Administration?

Reporting without context on the greatest policy achievement ever

Seth Anderson0 comment

Forget-me-not Social Security
Forget-me-not Social Security

Larry Polivka1 argues we should double-down on Social Security instead of trying to gut it, or privatize it2

While Washington rushes to reduce benefits in the name of a nonexistent crisis, the overwhelming reality is that Social Security is becoming more, not less, essential for most Americans. Any changes should be with the goal of strengthening it, not reducing benefits.

Journalists covering the debate seem to have forgotten the essential context. Social Security, after all, is an extraordinary public policy achievement that provides economic security for millions of older Americans. Social Security is the major reason that poverty among those 65 and older has been reduced from 30% to under 10% since 1960. Without Social Security benefits, the percentage of older Americans below the poverty level would now exceed 40%. Over 70% of all retirees depend on Social Security for most of their income. Social Security is the essential pillar of the U.S. system of retirement security.

It is also rapidly becoming even more essential, not less, due to the erosion of the private retirement security system. Defined benefit private pensions have disappeared for most workers and been replaced by poorly funded defined contribution plans (401(k), IRA). Many of the remaining defined benefit plans in both the private and public sectors are underfunded. Most working families have meager savings caused by stagnant or declining incomes and the increasing costs of education, housing and health care. The wage replacement value of Social Security is already expected to decline from 40% to under 30% by 2030 due to increasing taxes and health care costs. These trends will increase the percentage of baby boomer retirees unable to maintain between 70 and 80% of their last wage while working. Over 50% of older boomers and over two thirds of those born between 1960 and 1964 will not be able to achieve that benchmark, which is generally considered necessary to maintain an adequate standard of living in retirement.

At this point, it looks as if most future retirees will be more dependent on Social Security than their parents for their economic security in retirement. This means that the preservation and strengthening of the program should be the central focus of efforts to ensure retirement security for decades to come.

The Social Security Trust Fund currently has a surplus of $2.6 trillion, which is sufficient to keep the program fully solvent until 2037. After 2037, the money flowing into the Trust Fund through the payroll tax will be enough to pay beneficiaries about 75% of benefits currently promised in law. Social Security is not facing an immediate funding crisis; only modest changes are needed to ensure the program’s long term capacity to pay promised benefits

(click here to continue reading Nieman Watchdog > Commentary > Reporting without context on the nation’s greatest policy achievement ever.)

 

Footnotes:
  1. Larry Polivka serves as Scholar in Residence of the Claude Pepper Foundation at Florida State University, focusing his efforts on issues relating to long-term care and retirement security. [↩]
  2. basically the same thing [↩]

Twenty Billion Dollars is a lot of Air Conditioning

Seth Anderson0 comment

I've got a mighty thirst

According to retired brigadier general, Steven Anderson1, the Pentagon spends $20,000,000,000 annually on air conditioning. That’s a lot of simolians.

The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion.

That’s more than NASA’s budget. It’s more than BP has paid so far for damage during the Gulf oil spill. It’s what the G-8 has pledged to help foster new democracies in Egypt and Tunisia.

“When you consider the cost to deliver the fuel to some of the most isolated places in the world — escorting, command and control, medevac support — when you throw all that infrastructure in, we’re talking over $20 billion,” Steven Anderson tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin. Anderson is a retired brigadier general who served as Gen. David Patreaus’ chief logistician in Iraq.

Why does it cost so much?

To power an air conditioner at a remote outpost in land-locked Afghanistan, a gallon of fuel has to be shipped into Karachi, Pakistan, then driven 800 miles over 18 days to Afghanistan on roads that are sometimes little more than “improved goat trails,” Anderson says. “And you’ve got risks that are associated with moving the fuel almost every mile of the way.”

Anderson calculates more than 1,000 troops have died in fuel convoys, which remain prime targets for attack. Free-standing tents equipped with air conditioners in 125 degree heat require a lot of fuel. Anderson says by making those structures more efficient, the military could save lives and dollars.

Still, his $20.2 billion figure raises stark questions about the ongoing war in Afghanistan. In the wake of President Obama’s announcement this week that about 30,000 American troops will soon return home, how much money does the U.S. stand to save?

(click here to continue reading Among The Costs Of War: $20B In Air Conditioning : NPR.)

 

Footnotes:
  1. no relation that I know of [↩]

Tyson Foods Corporate Criminal

Seth Anderson0 comment

Chickens Being Grilled
Chickens Being Grilled

Don’t you love how corporations want to be accorded the same rights as people in some areas, but not others? Able to donate unlimited cash to lobbyists and their politician lackeys, yet able to wantonly break the law without consequence. Sort of a rigged system, isn’t it?

For instance, Tyson Foods:

The issue of the payments resurfaced in November 2006, and this time, Tyson did what it should have done two years earlier: it retained an outside law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, conducted an internal investigation and, under a government program intended to encourage voluntary disclosure of white-collar crime, turned the results over to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The government’s investigation ended this February, when Tyson was charged with conspiracy and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Tyson agreed to resolve the charges with a deferred prosecution agreement in which it “admits, accepts and acknowledges” the government’s statement of facts, and paid a $4 million criminal penalty. The company paid an additional $1.2 million and settled related S.E.C. charges that it maintained false books and records and lacked the controls to prevent payments to phantom employees and government officials.

But what about those at Tyson responsible for the bribery scheme?

Corporations may have assets and liabilities, but they don’t commit crimes — their officers, executives and employees do. And the 23-page letter agreement between Tyson and the Department of Justice, the criminal information, and the S.E.C.’s public statement of facts all withheld names, identifying the participants only as “senior executive,” “VP International,” “VP Audit” and so on.

It would seem self-evident that if Tyson engaged in a conspiracy and violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, then someone at Tyson did so as well. The statute specifically provides for fines of up to $5 million and a prison term of up to 20 years for individuals, as well as fines of up to $25 million for companies.

I assumed the names were withheld because the investigation was continuing and further charges might be forthcoming. I was wrong.

When I called this week, press officers for both the Justice Department and S.E.C. said the investigation was over and no one would be named or charged. This seems to reflect the belief that the deferred prosecution agreement, penalty and S.E.C. settlement largely achieved the government’s objectives, which were to stop the illegal conduct at Tyson and deter future instances. The decision not to pursue cases against individuals seems also to reflect budgetary constraints at both agencies (cases involving foreign witnesses can be especially costly) and, for the Justice Department, the burden in a criminal case of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But surely bribery, not to mention other forms of corporate wrongdoing, would be more effectively deterred if someone was actually held accountable for it.

(click here to continue reading Tyson Foods Agrees It Made Illegal Payments, but No One Was Charged – NYTimes.com.)

I think Tyson shouldn’t be able to evade penalty for their crimes, no matter what their and the SEC’s excuse.