$2.2 Trillion in Environmental Damage

 Posted by at 4:22 am  Politics
Feb 202010
 

I wrote a college term paper for freshman level Economics, in which I suggested that the only way to fight pollution was to stop allowing polluters to externalize the costs of that pollution.  My economics professor agreed and told me it was years ahead of it’s time.  I sent a copy to whoever my Congressman was at the time and never received a reply.  Too bad.  Had they paid attention then, we would not now be facing this.

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world’s biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.
The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.
Later this year, another huge UN study – dubbed the “Stern for nature” after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern – will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.
Ahead of changes which would have a profound effect – not just on companies’ profits but also their customers and pension funds and other investors – the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment initiative and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly ordered a report into the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world, which includes household names from the UK’s FTSE 100 and other major stockmarkets.
The study, conducted by London-based consultancy Trucost and due to be published this summer, found the estimated combined damage was worth US$2.2 trillion (£1.4tn) in 2008 – a figure bigger than the national economies of all but seven countries in the world that year.
The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies’ combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others.
“What we’re talking about is a completely new paradigm,” said Richard Mattison, Trucost’s chief operating officer and leader of the report team. “Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them.”
The biggest single impact on the $2.2tn estimate, accounting for more than half of the total, was emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Other major “costs” were local air pollution such as particulates, and the damage caused by the over-use and pollution of freshwater.
The true figure is likely to be even higher because the $2.2tn does not include damage caused by household and government consumption of goods and services, such as energy used to power appliances or waste; the “social impacts” such as the migration of people driven out of affected areas, or the long-term effects of any damage other than that from climate change. The final report will also include a higher total estimate which includes those long-term effects of problems such as toxic waste.
Trucost did not want to comment before the final report on which sectors incurred the highest “costs” of environmental damage, but they are likely to include power companies and heavy energy users like aluminium producers because of the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels. Heavy water users like food, drink and clothing companies are also likely to feature high up on the list.
Sukhdev said the heads of the major companies at this year’s annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, were increasingly concerned about the impact on their business if they were stopped or forced to pay for the damage.
“It can make the difference between profit and loss,” Sukhdev told the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture last week. “That sense of foreboding is there with many, many [chief executives], and that potential is a good thing because it leads to solutions.”
The aim of the study is to encourage and help investors lobby companies to reduce their environmental impact before concerned governments act to restrict them through taxes or regulations, said Mattison.
“It’s going to be a significant proportion of a lot of companies’ profit margins,” Mattison told the Guardian. “Whether they actually have to pay for these costs will be determined by the appetite for policy makers to enforce the ‘polluter pays’ principle. We should be seeking ways to fix the system, rather than waiting for the economy to adapt. Continued inefficient use of natural resources will cause significant impacts on [national economies] overall, and a massive problem for governments to fix.”…

Inserted from <The Guardian>
An externalized cost is the part of the true cost of producing a product or service that the producer is allowed to leave for someone else to pay.  Pollution is a prime example, because if taxpayers pay to clean up a toxic waste dump,  if others suffer ill health due to exposure to waste products, or if costal cities drown due to global climate change, those costs have or will have been passed on to someone else.
All costs must be included in the cost of all goods and services.
But, but, but… it might put some corporations out of business!
So be it.  If the true costs (with all environmental costs internal) of a product or service are so high that there is insufficient demand to support the producer, then that producer ought to fail.
But, but, but… It might cost corporations 1/3 of their profits!
So be it.  If internalizing all costs cuts their profits, their profits are too high.
I have no doubt that Republicans will unanimously oppose this idea.  How odd.  Because what I am arguing here is really nothing more that capitalism in a free market.

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Tax the Rich!

 Posted by at 4:06 am  Politics
Feb 202010
 

For years the GOP, with the complicity of some Democrats, has used our tax code to transfer wealth from the poor and middle classes to the very rich.

taxrich1

For Democrats wavering in their resolve to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, shocking new data from the IRS should hopefully stiffen their backbones. Between 2001 and 2007, the 400 richest taxpayers doubled their annual incomes to an average of $345 million, while their effective tax rate plummeted to only 16.6% from 29.4% in 1993.

Following recent analyses confirming that income inequality in the United States has reached record levels, noted tax journalist David Cay Johnston summed up the new data, "The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low. The numbers tell the tale of the widening chasm between the rich and everyone else:

In 2007 the top 400 taxpayers had an average income of $344.8 million, up 31 percent from their average $263.3 million income in 2006, according to figures in a report that the IRS posted to its Web site without announcement that were discovered February 16…

Adjusted for inflation to 2009 dollars, the top 400 enjoyed a 27 percent increase in their income, or nine times the rate of increase for the bottom 90 percent…Since 1992, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen their incomes rise by 13 percent in 2009 dollars, compared with an increase of 399 percent for the top 400.

Unsurprisingly, the public disclosure of the top 400 report first introduced by the Clinton administration was halted by President Bush (only to be reinstituted by the Obama White House last year). Unsurprising that is, because the sheer size of the massive windfall for America’s rich due to the Bush tax cuts would make a Warren Buffet blush.

 

taxrich2 

As the Center for American Progress noted, the Bush tax cuts delivered a third of their total benefits to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. And to be sure, their payday was staggering. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities detailed that by 2007, millionaires on average pocketed $120,000 from the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Those in the top 1% stashed an extra $45,000 a year. As a result, millionaires saw their after-tax incomes rise by 7.6%, while the gains for the middle quintile and bottom 20% of Americans were a paltry 2.3% and 0.4%, respectively. (Other CBPP studies demonstrated that the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the mushrooming deficits during his tenure in the White House and will continue to do so over the next decade.)

And as the New York Times uncovered in 2006, the 2003 Bush dividend and capital gains tax cuts offered almost nothing to taxpayers earning below $100,000 a year. Instead, those windfalls reduced taxes "on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000." As the Times revealed in a jaw-dropping chart, "the top 2 percent of taxpayers, those making more than $200,000, received more than 70% of the increased tax savings from those cuts in investment income." So it should come as no surprise that the income share of the 400 richest Americans doubled over the past decade.

 

taxrich3 

And yet, the usual suspects among the Republican Party (and some quislings among the Democrats) are pleading that the rich should be spared even as their share of the national wealth reaches stratospheric levels…

Inserted from <Crooks and Liars>

I have long held that a seldom discussed cause of the Republican recession is this grotesque transfer of wealth.  As the filthy rich sucked up more and more of our nation’s wealth, lower and middle class Americans found themselves getting poorer in real terms.  Everything was going up except their stagnant wages.  The housing bubble would never have occurred, if these Americans, encouraged by smooth-talking predators,  had not felt the need to leverage the equity in their homes to educate their children, pay for their sky-rocketing health care premiums, or just maintain their standard of living.

Most economies resemble a pyramid in which a broad base holds up a small capstone.  But in today’s GOP rendered economy, the capstone has become so heave that its weight is crushing the base.  Until this gross inequity is addressed, there can be no escape from the bubble/crash cycle.  The solution is easy enough, if we have the political will to do it.  Tax the rich.  For example, if rich people had Social Security and Medicare payments deducted from their entire salaries, including bonuses and stock, the solvency issue in those programs would be instantly cured.

Cousin FatCat has a different opinion.

taxtherich

.

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Open Thread – 2/20/2010

 Posted by at 4:05 am  Open Thread, Personal
Feb 202010
 

Yesterday I accomplished little.  Barely able to see, I took an intended short nap and slept all day.  Today I will be away most of the day attending a board meeting for the nonprofit for which I volunteer.  My schedule looks pretty clear Sunday through Tuesday, so I’ll be catching up then.  Ugh!  What a week!  At least I can see again.

Today’s Jig Zone puzzle took me 3:56.  To do it, Click Here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

Rep. Brad Ellworth (D-IN) has decided to run for the Senate seat currently held by Evan Bayh.

Faux Noise ambush specialist, Griff Jenkins, was ambushed by Think Progress at CPUKE.

 

Cartoon:

What’s up for the weekend?

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The Afghanistan Story

 Posted by at 12:55 am  Editorial, Politics
Feb 192010
 

On November 5, I posted this article as part of Blog Blast for Peace.  I am reposting it today, because they are featuring this article as I learned in the following email:

I wish the world could recognize today the sound of all our voices – crying for peace.
I applaud your entry for BlogBlast For Peace on November 5, 2009. I learned and was reminded of a great deal in this post. I am just now getting around to all the entries….reading them carefully.
One thing is certain: Bloggers and journalists in 50 countries have spoken in record numbers and continue to speak.
When will they listen?
You are #1640 in the official peace globe gallery found here. http://blogblastforpeace.com/
It will post February 19, 2010 and will be linked back to this post.
Welcome to the peace globe movement. I am reminded to keep going and let the people speak.
You spoke eloquently.
I appreciate your time and effort, Tomcat.
Mimi Lenox

Thank you, Mimi.  Contributing my small part was an honor.
Before I begini5J, I wish to give credit to a rather remarkable woman on Facebook named Mimi Lenox.   She started a Facebook “cause” which has become quite successful, Blog Blast for Peace.  It is an annual event every November 5, and this article is my contribution to that cause.
Before long, President Barack Obama will have to commit himself on a way to proceed in the Afghanistan War.  It struck me that most Americans know little or nothing about that nation, because that’s not how the MSM covers news.  Most major networks cover only the sensational.  The one that does try to do a small amount of education does so only because they are the propaganda arm of the Republican party.  Education based on lies is not helpful.  So to assist you, here’s my take on the subject.
Afghanistan occupies an area between the middle east and the Indian sub continent.  It is peopled by at least a dozen separate ethnic groups including Baluch, Chahar Aimak, Turkmen, Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Nuristani, Arab, Kirghiz, Pashai and Persian.  The Pashtun are the largest and represent about half the population.  The Tajik represent about one fourth of the population.  While there are small religious communities from other faiths, Islam is the country’s principle religion, brought there by Arabs in the eighth and ninth centuries.  Before that, Afghanistan was often occupied but seldom ruled by the Persians, Greeks, and Sassanians.  The Mongols ruled there from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries.  Next Afghanistan was caught between two warring empires, the Mughal of India and the Safavid of Iran.  Both concentrated on destroying the region’s population and resources to deny it to each other.
In 1747, Ahmad Shah, a Pashtun, unified and expanded the country well beyond it’s present borders.  After his death Afghanistan entered a period of civil war.  In the nineteenth century, Afghanistan became a bone of contention between the British Empire and Czarist Russia.  It became a British protectorate until 1919.  Following the Russian Revolution, Afghanistan revolted with Soviet help.  Britain agreed to Afghanistan’s independence, but secretly organized a coup by King Zahir Shaw.  He ruled as a complete dictator until ke was overthrown in 1973 by family members who declared a Republic.  Dahoud became President, supported by the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan, a pro Moscow party.  The PDPA overthrew Dahoud in 1978.  Moscow, not pleased with the progress of “reforms”.  They invaded in 1979 and turned the government over to Karmal.
Following the Soviet invasion, the USA provided aid and weapons to the Mujahedeen.  The CIA, under Reagan and the GOP,  paid $30 million to Osama bin Laden to organize a network of terrorists and unleash them against the USSR.  In 1989 the Soviets withdrew.  The US had a perfect opportunity to help build the nation and use the goodwill we had developed.  But with the Soviets gone, GHW Bush and the GOP had no interest.  The country remained in a state of chaos until the ISI, Pakistani Intelligence, aided a new religious group, the Taliban, who stabilized the country over the next ten years.  In the meantime, Osama bin Laden had turned against the US, because he objected to US forces being stationed in his Saudi homeland during and after the First Gulf War.
afghanistan_pipeline_map To the north, a vast reserve of natural gas was discovered in Turkmenistan.  Allowed to develop without interference, it would become part of the Russian Gazprom network.  But Big Energy in the US had other ideas.  Unocal planned a pipeline between the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan and Karachi in Pakistan on the Gulf of Oman, cutting Russia out of the loop.  The route ran across Afghanistan, right through the enclave being used by bin Laden for his training camps.  So Unocal, backed by the Carlisle Group, a hedge fund whose most active participants are the Saudi Royal family and the Bush family, for the Taliban to agree to an election, to give the Taliban an aura of legitimacy, and a deal to build the pipeline.  The Taliban would not agree to an election.  Women’s rights groups got wind of the negotiations and objected in support of Afghan women and Clinton refused to invade as Unocal requested, so Unocal backed off and began negotiations with the Northern Alliance.  In 2,000 the pipeline was back on the table, because a stolen election in the US put the GOP back in power under GW Bush.  He threatened the Taliban to either turn over bin Laden or face military consequences.  Bin Laden launched his own preemptive strike to hit the US before we could get him.  That strike was the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon on 9/11/2001.  The rest is history.  The US invaded Afghanistan and installed a Unocal employee, Hamid Karzai to head our puppet government there.
Had we started nation building at that time, we still had an opportunity to stabilize Afghanistan, but GW “Chicken Hawk” Bush, Dick “5 deferment” Cheney, and Donald “I got Saddam his first chemical weapons” Rumsfeld were focused on attacking Iraq, in a failed attempt to control their oil and establish permanent military bases there.
In the meantime, Afghanistan has divided into two camps: a small, thoroughly corrupt, urban elite that controls the large cities and a much more populous, decentralized rural majority that hates the elite minority and the foreign powers whose backing keeps that minority in power.
So this is the mess Obama inherited.  The Afghan people have good cause to distrust foreigners, developed over centuries, and thanks to GOP duplicity from three different administrations, they have ample cause to hate Americans.  As much as I would love to see Afghanistan brought into the 21st Century, and Afghan women given the human rights they deserve, our troops are the wrong nationality in the wrong place at the wrong time to accomplish that goal.
Unfortunately, we have commitments with several allies to be there, so we cannot arbitrarily withdraw and leave them holding the bag, but the time has come to negotiate a withdrawal with those allies and work with the UN to alter the mandate backing our presence there.  Our men and women in uniform are far too precious to spend their blood on a war that we will not win.

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Austin and Beyond

 Posted by at 12:51 am  Uncategorized
Feb 192010
 

Let me begin by offering my condolences to the victims of this mad man and their families, as well as his wife and daughter.  This is a tragedy.

crash-plane-austin Joseph Stack, the 53-year-old software engineer who piloted the plane that slammed into an IRS building in Austin this morning, posted an online suicide note railing against the federal government. The note, unearthed by the Statesman.com, blasts taxes, the legal system, corporate execs, and the bailout.

“If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time.” writes Stack.

“We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all,” he continues.

“We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.”

Stack goes on to condemn the federal bailout, writing, “Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?”

Stack also takes a shot at the health care system, and the Washington stalemate that has

hindered reform:

Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

What appears to be a right-wing Facebook group [delinked – facebook has axed the group] celebrating Stack has 198 members. The site features the Gadsden flag [Don’t tread on me] and the following description:

Finally an American man took a stand against our tyrannical government that no longer follows the constitution and is turned its back on its founding fathers and the beliefs this country was founded on.

Two people have been hospitalized, and one is unaccounted for… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Alternet>

Before I left yesterday, I read Stack’s manifesto in its entirety.  The man was clearly a wing-nut.  From the text I could not tell whether he was one of ours or one of theirs.  Once is that far gone, it’s difficult to tell the difference.  I only hope this serves to remind us all that, when people, such as Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, call for violence as a solution for our nation’s ills, there are people in our society, who are so imbalanced that, on occasion, one will act out those calls.

The teabagger types, who formed and joined the facebook group lionizing this nut case should be ashamed.  They are so warped that I feel sick just thinking about it.

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Open Thread – 2/19/2010

 Posted by at 12:50 am  Open Thread, Personal
Feb 192010
 

Yesterday I had my visual field test.  The good thing is that my glaucoma is no worse and they’re done with me for a year.  The bad news is that all those drops temporarily screwed up my vision something awful.  Everything is still a blur.  How I do with comments and visits will depend on hw wel I can see later.

Today’s Jig Zone puzzle took me 8:09, because I couldn’t see the dang thing.  To do it, Cluck Here.  How did you do?

No Short takes today.  Sorry.

Cartoon:

TGIF!

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Why Democrats Must Go It Alone

 Posted by at 3:13 am  Politics
Feb 182010
 

It has become abundantly clear that no progress is possible as long as Democrats try to include Republicans in their plans.  The reason they keep trying is they fear that they will lose votes, if the public perceives them as partisan.  A recent poll belies that fear.

polling The vast majority of opposition to health care and allowing gays to serve openly in the military is coming from people who already say there’s no chance they’ll vote Democratic this fall. That’s an indication of minimal fallout for Congressional Democrats by acting on these issues.
37% of Americans say they will definitely not vote Democratic for Congress this year. 34% say they definitely will and that leaves roughly 30% of the country up for grabs.
Right now 50% of voters say they oppose President Obama’s health care plan to just 39% in support. Digging a little deeper on those numbers though 64% of respondents planning or open to voting Democratic this fall support it with only 22% opposed. The overall numbers are negative only because of 94/1 opposition among folks who have said there is no way they’ll vote Democratic this fall.
It’s a similar story when it comes to the prospect of repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ Over 54% of voters support it with 37% opposed. But among the voters Democrats need to make happy- the ones planning to or considering voting for them this year- there is 72/24 support for letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military. The total numbers are brought down only because of 59/25 opposition with folks who will never vote for them anyway…
…Full results here. [PDF] [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Public Policy Polling>
Regular readers probably know that, before I became disabled, I worked in opinion research.  I examined the poll and found the questions worded and ordered in such a way as to be non-biased.  The only bias I found was in the demographics of the sample, as slight more self-identified ‘conservatives’ were included than liberals.  If the results are at all skewed, the actual situation is better than reported.
What Democrats should learn from this poll is that the people they would turn off by going it alone are people who weren’t going to vote for them anyway.
Rachel Maddow discussed the attempt by progressive Senators to pass the public option through reconciliation, which I reported yesterday, and also discussed reconciliation with Bernie Sanders.
 

She raises an excellent point.  It’s impossible to negotiate an agreement with someone who changes their policy every time you agree to their policy.  The bottom line here is that the GOP has only one policy: to disagree on everything.
Let reconciliation roll!

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McCain Caught in Yet Another Lie

 Posted by at 3:13 am  Politics
Feb 182010
 

Aren’t you glad McConJob lost last year?

McConJob-liar Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — who is facing a primary challenge from former right-wing GOP congressman J.D. Hayworth — played along with Fox News host Sean Hannity’s uninformed idea that the recent snow storms in the mid-Atlantic region disprove that the earth’s climate is changing. “I think they made some movie that showed that the earth was going to freeze over as a result of global warming. I never quite understood that,” McCain said.

Yesterday, a local Arizona conservative talk radio host [ideologue delinked] told McCain that “80 percent” of global warming science “is based on fraud and misinformation.” Despite having previously refuted such nonsense publicly, McCain again remained silent. Pandering to the far right, the Arizona senator later said he “never” supported capping carbon emissions:

Q: If we knew then what we know today about these scientists and this fraud, would you still be in favor of capping carbon emissions at 2000 levels?

MCCAIN: I’ve never favored it at a certain level. I’ve favored reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the good of — I mean we all know that greenhouse gases are bad! But I’ve said, in order to achieve that we have to have nuclear power as a component of it…

…In fact, McCain has actually co-sponsored cap-and-trade legislation. “We need a successor to Kyoto, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner,” McCain wrote in a 2008 op-ed. And during the his 2008 presidential campaign, he delivered a major speech on his plan to address climate change. “A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy,” he said in the speech. And he specifically outlined his plan to cap carbon “at a certain level”:

McCAIN: We will cap emissions according to specific goals, measuring progress by reference to past carbon emissions. By the year 2012, we will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission…by 2020, a return to 1990 levels…and so on until we have achieved at least a reduction of sixty percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050.

This isn’t the first time McCain has tried to run to the right on this issue to fit his political objectives. During the 2008 campaign, he tried to claim that by supporting cap-and-trade, he wasn’t endorsing any “mandatory cap.” But of course, a “cap” is in fact a “mandatory” limit. The New York Times noted last week that McCain “is likely to keep his distance” from his previous support of cap-and-trade and addressing global warming, an issue he “once led” on, because of Hayworth’s primary challenge… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

The once great maverick transformed himself into just another GOP liar in his quest for power.  Wasn’t it bad enough that he put our nation in peril by attempting to put Bimbo Barbie a heartbeat away from the presidency?  He’s has now turned his back on all the good things for which he used to stand.  Even more pathetic, he’s the best of the Republican leaders.

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