Politics Plus

While the Obama Administration seems to be giving the environment back seat to jobs creation, Republican environmental policy is a complete disaster.  Under normal circumstances, they couch their position in lies, claiming that they are “protecting” the EPA by gutting it, but when they are actively sucking Koch, some actually tell the truth about their intent, probably forgetting that someone else is listening.

The Koch brothers and the foundation they fund, Americans for Prosperity, are among the biggest backers of the right’s anti-environment movement, pushing for the repeal of environmental laws and regulations on both the state and federal level. Those efforts continued at AFP’s annual Defending the American Dream Summit this weekend, as attacks on the EPA came from seemingly every prominent speaker and in multiple panels.

Former pizza magnate Herman Cain (R) drew some of his largest cheers when he declared that the EPA “needs an attitude adjustment,” while former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) decried the burden of federal regulations on job creation. But while Romney has insisted in the past that Republicans aren’t “anti-regulation” and other conservatives have insisted that the party doesn’t want to defund the EPA, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) — the Congressman from Koch — made it clear during an environmental panel that that was exactly his goal…

…Watch it:

 

Pompeo is hardly the only Republican to state plainly that defunding the EPA is one of the GOP’s primary goals. In July, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) said the EPA “would be discontinued” if the GOP gained control of the Senate and the White House… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

If Republicans have their way, views like the one pictured above will become a distant memory.  The alternative to voting them out is global catastrophe.

To the delight of giant corporations these days, the deck is stacked in their favor, and the Republican Party is doing everything they can to stack the deck even further.  Republicans want to lower their taxes, protect their subsidies, and allow them to run hog wild, unrestrained by regulations to protect consumers from their predation.  For the rest of us, Republicans are sabotaging the economy.  Lets see how stacked the deck is and how Republicans are hurting the 99%.

If you needed evidence that corporate tax rates are far too low and large corporations receive far too many tax benefits, look no further than the new study just published by Citizens for Tax Justice.

CTJ undertook a study of the 280 largest companies in the United States to see what they actually paid (or didn’t pay) in taxes. From their press release:

“These 280 corporations received a total of nearly $224 billion in tax subsidies,” said Robert McIntyre, Director at Citizens for Tax Justice and the report’s lead author. “This is wasted money that could have gone to protect Medicare, create jobs and cut the deficit.”

30 Companies average less than zero tax bill in the last three Years, 78 had at least one no-tax year.

Financial services received the largest share of all federal tax subsidies over the last three years. More than half the tax subsidies for companies in the study went to four industries: financial services, utilities, telecommunications, and oil, gas & pipelines. 

U.S. corporations with significant foreign profits paid tax rates to foreign countries that were almost a third higher than they paid to the IRS on their domestic profits.

That $224 billion number is really significant. If we were to extrapolate that into a ten-year number to compare with CBO analyses of various revenue proposals, it would be an expenditure of about $750 billion over a ten-year period. Imagine that. We wouldn’t have to worry about Medicare cuts or deep cuts to discretionary spending if those tax preferences were rolled back… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Crooks and Liars>

I encourage you to click through to the rest of this story.

At the same time Republicans are sabotaging our economy, both by obstructing demand stimulus on the national level and by forcing our government workers, teachers, police and firefighters into the ranks of the unemployed, thereby shedding public sector jobs to offset private sector job growth. Ed Schultz exposes this hypocrisy with Robert Reich.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

That chart Ed used to show how Republicans are gutting public sector jobs is so important that I found it for you to reference.  Think how much better off we’d be if Republican Governors and state legislatures not fired these important people to give more money to millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals, like the Koch brothers.

Every Republican in office is one Republican too many!

Since I first moved to Portland, 32 years ago, I have noticed changes in the climate.  Summers are getting hotter, and winters are getting colder.  Three out of the last four years have set records for both summer heat and winter cold.  The changes have been subtle, but they have been clear.  We need to stop strangling the planet, before the planet strangles us.  Instead we are setting records in the emission of greenhouse gasses.

The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide has jumped by a record amount, according to the US department of energy, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

"The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, the co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The world pumped about 564m more tons (512m metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009, an increase of 6%. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries, China, the US and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.

It is a "monster" increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate department of energy figures in the past.

Extra pollution in China and the US account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Common Dreams>

I’m more worried about India and the US than I am about China.  The Chinese are forging ahead of the rest of the world in green energy technology.  India seems unwilling to cooperate.  The Obama administration tried to make inroads, but was blocked by Republican filibusters in the Senate.  Now the Obama administration seems more interested in the jobs that the production of dirty energy can create than protecting the planet.  Even worse, Republicans are doing their best to emasculate the EPA.

We need to institute a carbon control program.  Personally, I prefer a carbon tax to cap and trade, because the proceeds can be invested in green energy R&D.  In addition, we need to move the subsidies, currently wasted on big oil, gas, and coal, to support green energy.

Of course some will argue that it does no good for us to clean up our carbon, unless other major polluters do too, but if enough nations agree to both reduce their carbon emissions and embargo the goods and services of those nations who refuse to do so, other nations will fall into line.

I would also see more research directed at developing fusion.  It is clean, and once we reach the threshold,  where we get more energy out than we put in, we will have a virtually limitless supply of clean energy.