Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Time to End Free Trade
From The Times
March 31, 2009
Let's shake off the shackles of free trade
The G20 leaders must be flexible - a little protectionism could give nations vital breathing space
by Noreena Hertz
Today the leaders of the world's 20 biggest economic powerhouses will converge on London. The mood is sombre. They face the greatest global economic crisis yet. They acknowledge that it was man-made: the outcome of extreme risk-taking, shameful lack of oversight and a complacent blindness to the downside of untrammelled free-market economics. They are nervously conscious that decisions must be made without reference to the very tools and theories on which they have relied for the past 30 years.
These leaders are in uncharted waters. Waters that churn and spew out conventional wisdoms, economic laws and long-accepted axioms as, one by one, they prove ill-suited for these times. The absolutism of the key tenets of neoliberalism: privatisation, deregulation, balanced budgets have been rejected by all but the most dogmatic. Apart from one - the primacy of free trade.
It is basically sacrosanct. While banks are nationalised, bonuses recalled and trillions of dollars of debt racked up, while pretty much every concept, belief or ideal is interrogated, contorted or set aside, “free trade is good” continues to be a totemic truth, ring-fenced from debate. No questioning of this axiom is even on the G20 agenda.
In fact, the free trade brigade, which encompasses most mainstream politicians, business leaders and thinkers - outside France, that is - seems to be on evangelical overdrive. “The solution to the crisis is more free trade,” President Lula da Silva of Brazil says. The Chinese Commerce Minister announces that Beijing is “firmly opposed to trade protectionism”, while Gordon Brown expressly warns against abandoning “the gospel of free trade”.
“The gospel of free trade.” What an extraordinary thing to say. Surely the past few months have taught us that there is no economic or financial principle we should not challenge.
Moreover, their dogmatism smacks of duplicity. Mr Brown's anti-protectionist stance can hardly be reconciled with his “British jobs for British workers” battlecry. It's not just Mr Brown: a new World Bank report states that 17 of the G20 countries have set up protectionist barriers in recent months.
So we have countries publicly preaching free trade, but making protectionist moves on the sly. Such dissemblance creates two problems. It fosters distrust between nations at a time when, without trust, there is almost no chance of reaching a collective solution to the crisis. And it sends out a dangerous message to electorates - that their leaders are unwilling to embrace the intellectual honesty and flexibility needed to question absolutely everything they have held dear in economic policy over three decades - no caveats.
We urgently need a frank, honest and grown-up discussion about the final frontier of neoliberalism - free trade. Instead we get scaremongering: “Remember the 1930s; don't take us back there.” This isn't even an accurate representation of the past. Economic historians now explain the collapse of world trade in the 1930s not as a result of protectionism, but of shrinking demand and a lack of trade credits.
We also continue to be presented with a false dichotomy - free trade versus protectionism. What we need is a nuanced analysis of where on the free trade-protectionism scale nations need and want to be positioned, and what the implications of that are.
The ability to have this discussion openly is vital when countries are under huge pressure from voters to protect jobs and businesses and create compelling narratives about their own recovery. The truth is that, when used specifically, and limited by time, as Sweden and Japan did after the 1970s oil shocks, protectionism can be a lifeline for a struggling country. It can provide a breathing space to retrench.
I'm not advocating trade war, or proposing that powerful countries be allowed to erect trade barriers with impunity. It's just that I don't think protectionism should be seen as a taboo. Instead we should see it as a tool that can be deployed to address local economic freefall, but can also create far-reaching collateral damage.
Its use, therefore, must be sanctioned by the global community, practised with caution, within guidelines. Perhaps there is a role for the World Trade Organisation, not in enforcing the letter of the free trade law, but in adjudicating what is fair and right at present.
If such a system had been in place it could have meant, for example, that the UK would not have lost large swaths of investment in its wind farm industry as it did last week. It turned out that other countries had been providing far more significant subsidies and grants, which are trade barriers of a kind, than the UK. In fact, protecting nascent industries in the environmental sector might be essential for some countries to meet emissions reductions targets while ensuring energy security. For the poorest countries, being granted a period to nurture some industries may allow them to develop sectors with the resilience to withstand the rough and tumble of the marketplace.
The G20 meeting will show us if the world is led by intellectual sophisticates or a dogmatic generation unable to respond powerfully and flexibly to our economic nadir. Productive trade arrangements will be pivotal to our futures. Rather than simply restating old beliefs about the supremacy of free trade, the G20 should place it under the microscope. If we have learnt anything over the past few months it should be that economic axioms are, at best, schools of thought, and that wisdom comes not from blindly accepting convention but from interrogating and challenging what we think we know.
Noreena Hertz is a Fellow of the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and author of The Silent Takeover.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6005068.ece
Monday, March 30, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Pro-gun Democrats put an end to plans to reinstate weapons ban
CONGRESSMAN MIKE ROSS(D-AR)
Democratic Congressman Mike Ross of Arkansas has been leading a campaign to head off any attempts to pass new gun control legislation. The efforts of Ross and other pro-gun rights Democrats seem to have paid off.
Congressman Ross leads effort to keep gun control law at bay
By Wendy Ledbetter
The Daily Siftings Herald www.siftingsherald.com
Thu Mar 26, 2009,
PRESCOTT — U.S. Congressman Mike Ross said a delegation of pro-gun Democrats was successful in stopping the possibility of reinstating a weapons ban that had expired five years ago.
In a telephone interview Wednesday, Ross said he had led the effort, which included a 65-member delegation. The group wrote a letter in opposition to reinstating the weapons ban, which had recently been discussed by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
Ross said his reasons for speaking out against the weapons ban are simple. “The Second Amendment to the Constitution gives us all the right to own firearms,” Ross said. Ross said that ownership of firearms for hunting is one aspect, but that owning firearms for personal protection is an equally important part of that right.
The weapons ban that had reportedly been discussed by Holder’s office was in effect from 1994 through 2004 when a sunset clause adopted at its passage came into effect, eliminating the law from the books. That law banned some types of weapons, reportedly aimed specifically at assault weapons. While it can be argued that the goal of that ban was to eliminate weapons typically used in crimes, there are some studies available that dispute the effectiveness of that claim.
The problem with that ban, according to Ross, is that crime didn’t go down. “Criminals will get guns whether we have gun control laws or not,” Ross said in a press release issued earlier this week. “Regulating guns will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but it will keep guns out of the hands of those trying to defend themselves from criminals.”
During the telephone interview, Ross said that he enjoys hunting and that the sport is a way of life for many in rural America. He said there is also a responsibility on those who hunt to share that with the next generation. “It’s not only part of our heritage, it’s a big part of what we are,” Ross said. “It is up to us to take our children hunting and teach them that this is an important part of our heritage and our tradition. I love to deer hunt, duck hunt. I take my son with me every chance I get.”
Ross said there have also been rumors that ammunition would be heavily taxed or unavailable. He said that has never been a part of any announced plan and that he would fight equally hard against such a plan.
Ross said he believes there is some question in the minds of the general public as to who among the members of Congress is pro-gun control. While he said that party affiliations are sometimes a factor, he said the “address” is also a factor. “It has more to do with who those people represent,” Ross said.
Ross said there are many who believe — as he does — in the “common sense” approach. The 65 who supported Ross’s plan to object to additional gun control is, according to Ross, proof of that.
The delegation has apparently put an effective end to any plan to reinstate the weapons ban. Ross said that both Holder and President Barack Obama have issued statements to that effect.
“I think we got their attention,” Ross said. “If they do (make an attempt at gun control laws), I’ll be there in force.”
http://www.siftingsherald.com/news/x1047908387/Congressman-Ross-leads-effort-to-keep-gun-control-law-at-bay
Corporations shift R & D to low-cost countries
object width="480" height="295">
From Economy in Crisis:
In the latter half of the 20th Century and thus far into the 21st Century, America has witnessed millions of blue and white-collar jobs outsourced to low-wage Third World Countries. As jobs are outsourced America loses billions in revenues and tax dollars while wages are transferred elsewhere. The remedy to the problem has always been innovation. However, now it appears that much of this innovation is being offshored as well.
According to Ron Hira and Philip E. Ross research and development spending is rapidly being transferred to China, India and other low-wage nations.
“Now even innovation appears to be fleeing to low-cost countries, as they seemingly leapfrog the traditional stages of development,” they write. “Clearly, we are at the beginning of a fundamental shift in where Research and Development (R&D) is performed.”
This shift is hardly recognized by industry experts because multinational companies based in developed nations are increasingly offloading R&D work to subsidiaries in China and India. However, the spending still shows up on the parent companies books, making it appear as though the R&D spending occurred in the home country of the multinationals.
There are a myriad of reasons behind this growing trend. First, “free trade” has opened up markets all over the world. The two biggest markets, thus holding the most earning potential, are China and India. Both nations have populations that exceed one billion. To better market products to these populations companies are increasingly “localizing” R&D, allowing the companies to better adapt and sell products.
In addition, “free trade” has provided multinational companies the opportunity to invest in markets they hope to gain access in. Think foreign automakers in the U.S.
“Free trade” has also proven to provide multinational companies with the means to greatly increase profits by outsourcing R&D work. For instance, at Google’s Bangalore, India R&D center the average employee makes $30,000 annually. That is a fraction of the salary a similar worker would make in Silicon Valley.
Finally, China and India have used their huge trade surpluses, mainly generated through trade with America, to make enormous investments in the infrastructure and human capital needed to attract R&D work. In 1999, China had just 30 R&D centers. Last year, they had a total of 116. Over the past decade, China has had an average annual increase in spending on R&D infrastructure. In addition, China is graduating two to three times the engineers that the U.S. is.
Source IEEE Spectrum:
Now even innovation appears to be fleeing to low-cost countries, as they seemingly leapfrog the traditional stages of development. Clearly, we are at the beginning of a fundamental shift in where R&D is performed.
China is indeed graduating huge numbers of engineers—two to three times as many as the United States produces.
http://economyincrisis.org/articles/show/2653
From Economy in Crisis:
In the latter half of the 20th Century and thus far into the 21st Century, America has witnessed millions of blue and white-collar jobs outsourced to low-wage Third World Countries. As jobs are outsourced America loses billions in revenues and tax dollars while wages are transferred elsewhere. The remedy to the problem has always been innovation. However, now it appears that much of this innovation is being offshored as well.
According to Ron Hira and Philip E. Ross research and development spending is rapidly being transferred to China, India and other low-wage nations.
“Now even innovation appears to be fleeing to low-cost countries, as they seemingly leapfrog the traditional stages of development,” they write. “Clearly, we are at the beginning of a fundamental shift in where Research and Development (R&D) is performed.”
This shift is hardly recognized by industry experts because multinational companies based in developed nations are increasingly offloading R&D work to subsidiaries in China and India. However, the spending still shows up on the parent companies books, making it appear as though the R&D spending occurred in the home country of the multinationals.
There are a myriad of reasons behind this growing trend. First, “free trade” has opened up markets all over the world. The two biggest markets, thus holding the most earning potential, are China and India. Both nations have populations that exceed one billion. To better market products to these populations companies are increasingly “localizing” R&D, allowing the companies to better adapt and sell products.
In addition, “free trade” has provided multinational companies the opportunity to invest in markets they hope to gain access in. Think foreign automakers in the U.S.
“Free trade” has also proven to provide multinational companies with the means to greatly increase profits by outsourcing R&D work. For instance, at Google’s Bangalore, India R&D center the average employee makes $30,000 annually. That is a fraction of the salary a similar worker would make in Silicon Valley.
Finally, China and India have used their huge trade surpluses, mainly generated through trade with America, to make enormous investments in the infrastructure and human capital needed to attract R&D work. In 1999, China had just 30 R&D centers. Last year, they had a total of 116. Over the past decade, China has had an average annual increase in spending on R&D infrastructure. In addition, China is graduating two to three times the engineers that the U.S. is.
Source IEEE Spectrum:
Now even innovation appears to be fleeing to low-cost countries, as they seemingly leapfrog the traditional stages of development. Clearly, we are at the beginning of a fundamental shift in where R&D is performed.
China is indeed graduating huge numbers of engineers—two to three times as many as the United States produces.
http://economyincrisis.org/articles/show/2653
Democratic Governor adds nuclear power to state energy plan
West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin
The Register-Herald [www.register-herald.com] reports that nuclear energy is part of Democratic Governor Joe Manchin's state energy plan:
Nuclear power added to W.Va. energy portfolio
March 27, 2009
By Mannix Porterfield
REGISTER-HERALD REPORTER
CHARLESTON — Nuclear power is back on the table, this time as part of Gov. Joe Manchin’s energy portfolio.
Before exiting the Senate Finance Committee, members made sure Friday the bill contained nuclear power and natural gas.
“Our purpose is to stay ahead and be proactive in what we do here in West Virginia,” Sen. Mike Green, D-Raleigh, said.
Green’s Energy, Industry and Mining Committee wrestled with nuclear power over a bill that would drop an “effective ban” in current state code.
Unable to agree, the full panel set up a subcommittee, which dumped the bill that would remove the requirement a plant needs a site for disposing of radioactive wastes.
Manchin told The Register-Herald this year during an editorial board interview he wanted to see the entire gamut of energy considered — solar, wind, water and even nuclear.
Green was pleased with the finance panel’s decision to revive nuclear power, and so was Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha, who pushed the earlier legislation.
“I think it’s an alternative source of energy,” he said.
“I’ve talked to numerous people in the coal association and they have no problems with this. They understand the bigger picture. We’re all in this to try to position West Virginia to be a predominant producer, a major producer of energy.”
Even if nuclear plants eventually arrive — one estimate says not for fully a decade — McCabe said coal would remain king.
“We know coal is going to be primary and continue to be primary,” he said. “But we’ve got to kind of cover our flanks wherever it might be appropriate. I think it’s a nice addition.”
Not to be overlooked is the inclusion of natural gas, which Green saluted as a source with a lower emission of carbon dioxide.
Like McCabe, the Beckley resident emphasized coal remains the top energy source with a renewed emphasis on cleaner burning and different technologies associated with the fossil fuel.
Green has attended a national symposium on advanced clean coal technology for the past three years.
A plant in Tampa, Fla., is the cleanest coal-fired facility in the world, he noted.
“Unfortunately, most of that coal is barged in from Venezuela or down in the Caribbean,” he said.
“I believe the governor is doing a great thing in promoting renewable and alternatives if we truly want to be recognized as a leader in energy. This is the way the nation is going.”
http://www.register-herald.com/local/local_story_086223645.html
China's Military Spending Grows Despite Economic Downturn
Writing in The China Post [www.chinapost.com.tw], John J. Metzler warns of Beijing's ambition to emerge as the world's leading military power.
China 'going global' with military
By John J. Metzler, Special to The China Post
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Despite the economic downturn affecting much of China's export —oriented economy, there's an unquestionable upturn in its military spending according to a new Pentagon report on Beijing's military developments. And while decadelong military spending trends continue, there's a redefinition of Beijing's military mission from its traditional standoff with rival Taiwan to a more global posture stretching from the South China Sea to the shores of Somalia. Though the People's Republic of China's military spending is roughly double that of a decade ago, the facts emerge that the mainland's military forces are focusing not on the old doctrine of a huge but unwieldy people's/peasant army, but on lean and mean troop levels, upgrades to newer generation aircraft and naval vessels, and sophisticated electronic, computer, and cyber warfare techniques. Moreover, there's a distinct lack of transparency in the amounts for military spending on specific programs which are fueled by Beijing's massive foreign exchange reserves, by a budding nationalism, and its vision to be a great power.
The Pentagon report asserts that the Chinese “armed forces continue to develop and field disruptive military technologies,” including “nuclear, space, and cyber warfare.” Such capabilities were surprisingly shown by the PRC's shooting down of a communications satellite, the growing sophistication of PRC computer warfare and computer virus capabilities, and the reality that China's high technology industries, often indirectly subsidized and enhanced by American and East Asian investors, have noticeably improved capability in such vital areas. In a time of crisis, cyber warfare could target, disrupt, and disable civil communications, electronic power grids, air traffic control, and naturally military communications themselves.
On a more traditional note, the number of medium range missiles facing Taiwan across the Taiwan Straits has grown despite the welcome political thaw in relations between Beijing and Taipei. The report states that the PRC is developing “coercive capabilities,” towards Taiwan and “these same capabilities could in the future be used to pressure Taiwan toward a settlement of the cross-straits dispute on Beijing's terms while simultaneously attempting to deter, delay or deny any possible U.S. support for the island in case of conflict.
Let's not forget that while there is currently conciliatory talk between the Peoples' Republic and its democratic rivals on Taiwan, Beijing's rulers have never renounced the use of force to bring what they describe as a “renegade province” under the control of the Chinese communists. While commercial, cultural, tourist and transportation links have blossomed between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits, the ultimate status and sovereignty of the Republic of China on Taiwan as a free and democratic island remains threatened. The PRC's naval modernization received renewed attention when Beijing dispatched ships to the Somali coast to assist in U.N. efforts in anti-piracy operations. Though this long-range naval deployment underscores Beijing's blue-water naval capacities, this is hardly a threat as much as a maritime milestone; a return to the very coastlines plied by Chinese vessels during the Ming Dynasty. The fabled fleets of Admiral Cheng Ho sailed these waters in the 1400s more than fifty years before Portuguese mariners arrived from the opposite direction.
What is far more troubling is that Beijing's Marxist mandarins have looked to the vastness of the South China Sea as a kind of Sino Mare Nostrum; evoking the concept of Our Sea, which Mussolini's nationalists used to describe the Mediterranean as an Italian Lake. The South China Sea is claimed by Beijing, but bordered by the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia. Also, the disputed but resource-rich Parcel and Spratly islands are scattered through this basin. China claims the sea as its territorial waters and is willing to exert de facto control of this vital region as part of its exclusive economic zone, its shipping lanes of communication, and a southern defense bulwark.
Recently, Chinese vessels harassed an American naval surveillance ship near the PRC submarine base on Hainan island. The U.S. Navy sent a destroyer to escort the surveillance vessel to safe waters. Though the incident fortunately did not escalate, the lesson is clear; this is China's geographic neighborhood.
While the U.S. and many NATO nations remain transfixed on the Taliban threat in Afghanistan, rogue players like North Korea and Islamic Iran will take advantage of the situation to destabilize the equilibrium. Meanwhile, serious but cautious players like the PRC shall probe the parameters of this classic sphere of influence. China's “Mare Nostrum,” may soon become a geopolitical fact as Beijing tips the global balance of power.
John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/the-china-post/john-metzler/2009/03/28/201981/p1/China-%27going.htm
Friday, March 27, 2009
James Lovelock on Nuclear Energy
object width="425" height="344">
From well-respected scientist James Lovelock's preface to the book "Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy" by Bruno Comby:
I spent my childhood in the English countryside over 70 years ago where we lived a simple life without telephones or electricity. Horses were still a normal source of power and we hardly imagined radio and television. One thing I remember well was how superstitious we all were and how tangible was the concept of evil. Men and women who in other ways were intelligent, fearfully avoided places said to be haunted, and they would suffer inconvenience rather than travel on Fridays that were the 13th day of the month. Their irrational fears fed on ignorance and were quite common. I cannot help thinking that they persist, but now these fears are about the products of science. This is particularly true of nuclear power plants that seem to stir the dread that in the past was felt about a moonlit graveyard thought to be infested with werewolves and vampires.
The fear of nuclear energy is understandable through its association in the mind with the horrors of nuclear warfare, but it is unjustified; nuclear power plants are not bombs. What at first was a proper concern for safety has become a near pathological anxiety and much of the blame for this goes to the news media, the television and film industries, and fiction writers. All these have used the fear of things nuclear as a reliable prop to sell their wares. They, and the political disinformers who sought to discredit the nuclear industry as potential enemies, have been so successful at frightening the public that it is now impossible in many nations to propose a new nuclear power plant.
No source of power is entirely safe, even windmills are not free of fatal accidents, and Bruno Comby's fine book gives a true and balanced account of the great benefits and small risks of nuclear power. I wholeheartedly agree with him and I want to put it to you that the dangers of continuing to burn fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) as our main energy source are far greater and they threaten not just individuals but civilization itself. Much of the first world behaves like an addicted smoker: we are so used to burning fossil fuels for our needs that we ignore their insidious long-term dangers.
Polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has no immediate consequences, but continued pollution leads to climate changes whose effects are only apparent when it is almost too late for a cure. Carbon dioxide poisons the environment just as salt can poison us. No harm comes from a modest intake, but a daily diet with too much salt can cause a lethal quantity to accumulate in the body.
We need to distinguish between things that are directly harmful to people, and things that harm indirectly by damaging our habitat the Earth.
Bubonic plague in the Middle Ages was directly harmful, caused immense personal agony and killed thirty percent of Europeans, but it was a small threat to civilization and of no consequence for the Earth itself. The burning of carbon fuels and the conversion of natural ecosystems to farmland cause no immediate harm to people but slowly impair the Earth's capacity to self-regulate and sustain, as it has always done, a planet fit for life. Although nothing we do will destroy life on Earth, we could change the environment to a point where civilization is threatened.
Sometime in this or the next century we may see this happen because of climate change and a rise in the level of the sea. If we go on burning fossil fuel at the present rate, or at an increasing rate, it is probable that all of the cities of the world now at sea level will beflooded. Try to imagine the social consequences of hundreds of millions of homeless refugees seeking dry land on which to live. In the turmoil, they may look back and wonder how humans could have been so foolish as to bring so much misery upon themselves by the thoughtless burning of carbon fuels. They may then reflect regretfully that they could have avoided their miseries by the safe benefice of nuclear energy.
Nuclear power, although potentially harmful to people, is a negligible danger to the planet. Natural ecosystems can stand levels of continuous radiation that would be intolerable in a city. The land around the failed Chernobyl power station was evacuated because its high radiation intensity made it unsafe for people, but this radioactive land is now rich in wildlife, much more so than neighboring populated areas. We call the ash from nuclear power nuclear waste and worry about its safe disposal. I wonder if instead we should use it an an incorruptible guardian of the beautiful places of the Earth. Who would dare cut down a forest in which was the storage place of nuclear ash?
Such is the extent of nuclear anxiety that even scientists seem to forget our planet's radioactive history. It seems almost certain that a supernova event occurred close in time and space to the origin of our solar system.
A supernova is the explosion of a large star. Astrophysicists speculate that this fate may overtake stars more than three times as large as the Sun. As a star burns - by fusion - its store of hydrogen and helium, the ashes of the fire accumulate at the centre, in the form of heavier elements like silicon and iron. If this core of dead elements, which are no longer able to generate heat and pressure, should much exceed the mass of our own sun then the inexorable force of its own weight will cause its collapse in a matter of seconds to a body no larger than 18 miles (30 kilometers) in diameter but still as heavy as a star. We have here, in the death throes of a large star, all the ingredients for a vast nuclear explosion. A supernovae, at its peak, produces stupendous amounts of heat, light and hard radiations, about as much as the total produced by all the other stars in the same galaxy.
Explosions are never one hundred percent efficient. When a star ends as a supernova, the nuclear explosive material, which includes uranium and plutonium, together with large amounts of iron and other burnt-out elements, scatters in space, as does the dust cloud of a hydrogen bomb test.
Perhaps the strangest thing about the Earth is that it formed from lumps of fall-out from a star-sized nuclear bomb. This is why even today there is still enough uranium left in the Earth's crust to reconstitute on a minute scale the original event.
There is no other credible explanation of the great quantity of unstable elements still present. The most primitive and old-fashioned Geiger counter will indicate that we stand on the fall-out of a vast ancient nuclear explosion. Within our bodies, half a million atoms, rendered unstable in that event, still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored from that fierce fire of long ago.
Life began nearly four billion years ago under conditions of radioactivity far more intense than those that trouble the minds of certain present-day environmentalists. Moreover, there was neither oxygen nor ozone in the air so that the fierce unfiltered ultra-violet radiation of the sun irradiated the surface of the Earth. We need to keep in mind the thought that these fierce energies flooded the very womb of life.
I hope that it is not too late for the world to emulate France and make nuclear power our principal source of energy. There is at present no other safe, practical and economic substitute for the dangerous practice of burning carbon fuels.
James Lovelock
http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/loveprefaceen.htm
http://www.comby.org/livres/livresen.htm#nuclear
From well-respected scientist James Lovelock's preface to the book "Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy" by Bruno Comby:
I spent my childhood in the English countryside over 70 years ago where we lived a simple life without telephones or electricity. Horses were still a normal source of power and we hardly imagined radio and television. One thing I remember well was how superstitious we all were and how tangible was the concept of evil. Men and women who in other ways were intelligent, fearfully avoided places said to be haunted, and they would suffer inconvenience rather than travel on Fridays that were the 13th day of the month. Their irrational fears fed on ignorance and were quite common. I cannot help thinking that they persist, but now these fears are about the products of science. This is particularly true of nuclear power plants that seem to stir the dread that in the past was felt about a moonlit graveyard thought to be infested with werewolves and vampires.
The fear of nuclear energy is understandable through its association in the mind with the horrors of nuclear warfare, but it is unjustified; nuclear power plants are not bombs. What at first was a proper concern for safety has become a near pathological anxiety and much of the blame for this goes to the news media, the television and film industries, and fiction writers. All these have used the fear of things nuclear as a reliable prop to sell their wares. They, and the political disinformers who sought to discredit the nuclear industry as potential enemies, have been so successful at frightening the public that it is now impossible in many nations to propose a new nuclear power plant.
No source of power is entirely safe, even windmills are not free of fatal accidents, and Bruno Comby's fine book gives a true and balanced account of the great benefits and small risks of nuclear power. I wholeheartedly agree with him and I want to put it to you that the dangers of continuing to burn fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) as our main energy source are far greater and they threaten not just individuals but civilization itself. Much of the first world behaves like an addicted smoker: we are so used to burning fossil fuels for our needs that we ignore their insidious long-term dangers.
Polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has no immediate consequences, but continued pollution leads to climate changes whose effects are only apparent when it is almost too late for a cure. Carbon dioxide poisons the environment just as salt can poison us. No harm comes from a modest intake, but a daily diet with too much salt can cause a lethal quantity to accumulate in the body.
We need to distinguish between things that are directly harmful to people, and things that harm indirectly by damaging our habitat the Earth.
Bubonic plague in the Middle Ages was directly harmful, caused immense personal agony and killed thirty percent of Europeans, but it was a small threat to civilization and of no consequence for the Earth itself. The burning of carbon fuels and the conversion of natural ecosystems to farmland cause no immediate harm to people but slowly impair the Earth's capacity to self-regulate and sustain, as it has always done, a planet fit for life. Although nothing we do will destroy life on Earth, we could change the environment to a point where civilization is threatened.
Sometime in this or the next century we may see this happen because of climate change and a rise in the level of the sea. If we go on burning fossil fuel at the present rate, or at an increasing rate, it is probable that all of the cities of the world now at sea level will beflooded. Try to imagine the social consequences of hundreds of millions of homeless refugees seeking dry land on which to live. In the turmoil, they may look back and wonder how humans could have been so foolish as to bring so much misery upon themselves by the thoughtless burning of carbon fuels. They may then reflect regretfully that they could have avoided their miseries by the safe benefice of nuclear energy.
Nuclear power, although potentially harmful to people, is a negligible danger to the planet. Natural ecosystems can stand levels of continuous radiation that would be intolerable in a city. The land around the failed Chernobyl power station was evacuated because its high radiation intensity made it unsafe for people, but this radioactive land is now rich in wildlife, much more so than neighboring populated areas. We call the ash from nuclear power nuclear waste and worry about its safe disposal. I wonder if instead we should use it an an incorruptible guardian of the beautiful places of the Earth. Who would dare cut down a forest in which was the storage place of nuclear ash?
Such is the extent of nuclear anxiety that even scientists seem to forget our planet's radioactive history. It seems almost certain that a supernova event occurred close in time and space to the origin of our solar system.
A supernova is the explosion of a large star. Astrophysicists speculate that this fate may overtake stars more than three times as large as the Sun. As a star burns - by fusion - its store of hydrogen and helium, the ashes of the fire accumulate at the centre, in the form of heavier elements like silicon and iron. If this core of dead elements, which are no longer able to generate heat and pressure, should much exceed the mass of our own sun then the inexorable force of its own weight will cause its collapse in a matter of seconds to a body no larger than 18 miles (30 kilometers) in diameter but still as heavy as a star. We have here, in the death throes of a large star, all the ingredients for a vast nuclear explosion. A supernovae, at its peak, produces stupendous amounts of heat, light and hard radiations, about as much as the total produced by all the other stars in the same galaxy.
Explosions are never one hundred percent efficient. When a star ends as a supernova, the nuclear explosive material, which includes uranium and plutonium, together with large amounts of iron and other burnt-out elements, scatters in space, as does the dust cloud of a hydrogen bomb test.
Perhaps the strangest thing about the Earth is that it formed from lumps of fall-out from a star-sized nuclear bomb. This is why even today there is still enough uranium left in the Earth's crust to reconstitute on a minute scale the original event.
There is no other credible explanation of the great quantity of unstable elements still present. The most primitive and old-fashioned Geiger counter will indicate that we stand on the fall-out of a vast ancient nuclear explosion. Within our bodies, half a million atoms, rendered unstable in that event, still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored from that fierce fire of long ago.
Life began nearly four billion years ago under conditions of radioactivity far more intense than those that trouble the minds of certain present-day environmentalists. Moreover, there was neither oxygen nor ozone in the air so that the fierce unfiltered ultra-violet radiation of the sun irradiated the surface of the Earth. We need to keep in mind the thought that these fierce energies flooded the very womb of life.
I hope that it is not too late for the world to emulate France and make nuclear power our principal source of energy. There is at present no other safe, practical and economic substitute for the dangerous practice of burning carbon fuels.
James Lovelock
http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/loveprefaceen.htm
http://www.comby.org/livres/livresen.htm#nuclear
Faith Coalition Leads Mobilization To End Poverty
New Initiative Engages Thousands of Christians in Historic 3‐day Conference
Calling On Congress & the Administration to End Poverty
On April 26‐29, 2009, a broad and diverse coalition of faith‐based organizations, churches and global anti‐poverty groups will convene The Mobilization to End Poverty (M2EP) – a historic gathering where thousands of Christians and anti‐poverty leaders will engage in a transformative experience of education, worship, community, and activism in Washington, D.C.
Together, this powerful group will call on President Obama and the new Congress to make overcoming poverty a political priority and to develop a national plan that addresses this moral and spiritual crisis. This initiative is being hosted by Sojourners, the largest network of progressive Christian in America, and represents one of the largest anti‐poverty coalitions with lead sponsors including Convoy of Hope, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, ONE, Oxfam, Wesley Theological Society, and World Vision. For the full list of partner organizations
please visit: www.sojo.net/mobilization
In this economic crisis, we are witnessing the devastating effects of financial insecurity as more people lose their jobs, their savings, their homes, and their healthcare. More and more from the middle class are falling into the ranks of 36 million Americans living below the poverty line, and the billions worldwide who live in extreme poverty. Continuing the status quo of poverty is intolerable. The Mobilization to End Poverty will assemble a constituency capable of
generating radical change and bold leadership from both the Church and our government.
Fortunately, President‐elect Barack Obama has already committed to cutting domestic poverty by half in ten years and achieving the Millennium Development goals that will dramatically reduce extreme global poverty. However, he will face tremendous obstacles in attempting to fulfill these promises. It is because of these obstacles and the current economic crisis that the Mobilization to End Poverty comes at a critical period in the life of our nation. This is a crisis of opportunity where the Church can rightly assume its leadership role in fulfilling our duty to
take care of the “least of these” (Matthew 25).
Sojourners has invited President Barack Obama to address The Mobilization and will be
working to secure his participation.
MOBILIZATION TO END POVERTY DETAILS
Date / Location: April 26‐29, 2009 • Washington Convention Center • Washington, D.C.
Partner organizations: American Baptist Churches USA, Beatitudes Society, Bread for the World, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Center for Community Change, Children’s Defense Fund, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Community Devlopment Association, Christian Reformed Church in North America, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Emergent Village, Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia, Evangelicals for Social Action, Gamaliel Foundation, Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches,Greater New Jersey Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, Hispanic Leadership Conference, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA, Lumunos, Lutheran Congregational Services, Massachusetts Council of Churches, Micah Challenge USA, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, New Hampshire Council of Churches, New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, New York Faith and Justice, North Carolina Council of Churches, PICO National Network, Reformed
Church in America, Rhode Island State Council of Churches, The General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church, Urban Ministries, Inc., UrbanFaith.com, West Virginia Council of Churches.
Featured speakers: President‐elect Obama*, Jim Wallis, Rich Stearns, Tavis Smiley, Gov. Mike Huckabee*, Alexia Kelly, Rep. John Lewis, Sharon Watkins, John Perkins, Angela Glover Blackwell, Jeffery Sachs, Wesley Granberg‐Michaelson, Mark Hanson, Brian McLaren, and many others. (* invited)
Capitol Hill Day: The Mobilization will be brought to the Capitol Hill with hundreds of advocates meeting their elected officials and asking for commitments and leadership on a national plan to reduce domestic and international poverty.
Workshops and training sessions: Participants will study the complex factors that contribute to poverty and how Christians can effectively and realistically respond. Advanced skills training in organizing and advocacy will also be offered.
Worship: The Mobilization will be a gathering of the Church, rooted in prayer and worship each day. Ecumenical services will bring us together in the Spirit to equip us to speak and act on behalf of our brothers and sisters.
For more information please visit: www.sojo.net/mobilization
Sojourners’ mission is to articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world. Visit www.sojo.net, and www.GodsPolitics.com.
IBM Using Tax Dollars To Move Jobs Overseas
Computerworld [www.computerworld.com] reports that IBM is using tax monies to shift more jobs overseas. Patrick Thibodeau writes:
Social network Twitter and message boards brought the fallout of IBM's layoffs on Thursday to life, as employees posted the news about their job losses in real time.
But there was political reaction as well. A state Assembly member questioned how a company that receives taxpayer assistance can also cut employees and move jobs overseas.
New York State Assemblyman Greg Ball, a Republican whose district includes IBM's home county of Westchester, called for a legislative hearing to look into IBM's layoffs in light of the state's multimillion-dollar investments to help the company.
"My fear is that IBM has planned to offshore large portions of [its] business and meanwhile [is] accepting taxpayer dollars under a guise of keeping those positions here," Ball said in an interview. "And if that's the case, then those dollars should be returned."
IBM officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Last July, New York said that it would provide $140 million in grants to IBM, which in turn was investing $1.5 billion to create 1,000 new jobs in nanotechnology. The agreement also included $65 million in provisions to help IBM retain jobs at its East Fishkill plant in Dutchess County, an area also represented by Ball.
IBM confirmed its job action but declined to provide any detail about how many employees were affected or where they were located. The Alliance@IBM, which was expecting between 4,000 and 5,000 layoffs, said by Thursday evening that it had counted 3,251 workers who had been laid off and given a severance package.
The union believes that IBM is shifting jobs overseas. One IBM employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said managers were vague about the reason for the layoffs, citing the economy generally. "All I am hearing is they have to make hard decisions based on the economy," the employee said. But the employee also pointed out that IBM's services unit was doing well and making a profit -- something the company has cited in its financial reports.
Ron Hira , an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of Outsourcing America, said IBM has spelled out a plan to shift jobs to India and "they are executing on it: Jettison high-cost workers in the U.S. and substitute them for workers in low-cost countries like India."
IBM's offshoring could also raise questions about projects funded under the government's massive stimulus plan. "If policymakers want to create jobs with taxpayer dollars, then they ought to ensure this creates jobs in the U.S. and not in India or other countries," said Hira. "IBM is clearly trying to hide the fact that stimulus dollars it receives will actually create jobs overseas rather than here in America."
On a union message board, layoff news was shared.
"I just [received a] call from my manager and got 30-day notice. ... Good luck to all," wrote one, anonymously. There were messages on Twitter as well, with one person lamenting how he wished he hadn't turned on his cell phone to hear the bad news. Another asked people on Twitter to re-tweet news of his layoff.
Like others, he is now looking for a job.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9130639
Thursday, March 26, 2009
AFL-CIO Now Blog: Frances Perkins, for God, FDR and America's Workers
A very interesting article about Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor during the FDR Administration, from the AFL-CIO's Now Blog:
At least two generations of lawyers, teachers, scholars, government workers and union activists crowded in the AFL-CIO Gompers Room in Washington, D.C., to hear about one of the union movement’s most beloved heroes—Frances Perkins, labor secretary in Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency and the first woman in American history to serve in the Cabinet.
As Downey observed:
The AFL-CIO is a place Frances believed in so much. She wasn’t from the labor movement herself, but she was a very strong supporter of the idea that workers need to organize into unions so they can negotiate better wages and working conditions.
The event was held on the anniversary of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire that killed nearly 150 workers, mostly females. The fire, witnessed by Perkins, was pivotal to launching her lifetime of activism on behalf of the nation’s workers.
Downey described Perkins’ best-known achievements, including the Social Security Act enacted in 1935—which gave us Social Security, “unemployment insurance and the system that became Aid to Dependent Children, which was originally designed to help mothers raising their children alone.”
Then in 1938 there was the Fair Labor Standards Act that set a 40-hour workweek to prevent workers from getting broken down by exhaustion, a minimum wage that ensured they would receive a certain level of compensation, a ban on child labor and the creation of overtime pay for workers asked to work long hours.
Perkins also was a pivotal figure in creating the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration—but what is less known is that Perkins saved thousands of people from the Nazis.
Back then, the Immigration Department was part of the Labor Department, and she brought tens of thousands of immigrants to the United States to get them away from the Nazis before most Americans knew the dangers they faced over there. Why did she know so many people were in danger? It’s because Hitler started killing and imprisoning labor leaders right from the start, in 1933. Labor leaders here knew what was coming, and they told Frances.
In a lively Q&A session with the audience, Downey was asked if Perkins had any proteges. The answer was: plenty. “Esther Peterson of the consumer movement was an important protege.” (Both Perkins and Peterson, incidentally, have rooms in AFL-CIO headquarters named in their honor.) And “there were secretaries of labor following her who considered themselves her proteges.”
But some proteges who knew Perkins best were from her last years at Cornell University. She was hired as a visiting lecturer there in the late 1950s and, improbably, lived in a small upstairs room at Telluride House with a bunch of exuberant, sometimes rambunctious young men who were honors students at the school and young enough to be her grandchildren. As Downey noted:
Frances had this unique ability to spot people with enormous potential when they were young and unformed.
There was clearly no ideological litmus test for Frances Perkins’ friendship. “She attracted to her people who had ideas,” says Downey—some on the left, others on the right. Among those closest to her at Cornell were Chris Breiseth, later the president of Wilkes University and of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute; former deputy defense secretary and World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, who would be a pallbearer at Perkins’ funeral; the philosopher Allan Bloom; Walter Berns, then a junior faculty member at Cornell who would become an eminent conservative legal philosopher; and former Defense Department official Abe Shulsky.
Berns and Shulsky were at the AFL-CIO for Downey’s appearance and afterward reminisced about Perkins. Berns noted that despite her status as having been the most powerful woman in the nation, “she was so practical and down to earth. She was engaged in the nitty-gritty of politics.”
Shulsky, who was from Brooklyn (”My parents were impressed I’d met Frances Perkins,” he jokes), remembers that she
felt a duty to take care of people, a real commitment to helping people as a vocation. She had a great mixture of idealism and realism in politics. She knew how to make deals to get this vote and that vote, but she never lost her moral compass.
That moral compass explains a lot about Frances Perkins. As Downey asked in her talk, “Why did she do all that she did?”
It wasn’t for riches. She ended up living in a small dormitory room. She didn’t get a lot of glory or fame by the time she died. And she suffered very badly for what she’d done. She was ridiculed and stigmatized, and even suffered an impeachment attempt.
The real answer, according to Downey, was in something Perkins wrote to Justice Felix Frankfurter just as she was leaving office:
I came to work for God, FDR and the millions of forgotten, plain common working men.
If that was her goal, she succeeded as few others in this country ever have.
Annie Schneiderman Valliere, great niece of Rose Schneiderman, who helped found the International Ladies Garment Workers Union after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, performed a medley of labor songs during the AFL-CIO event.
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/03/26/frances-perkins-for-god-fdr-and-the-millions-of-forgottenworking-men/
America's Economic Crisis: The Case for Deficit Spending
During normal economic conditions, I would agree that deficit reduction must be a top priority. We are now facing the most significant financial crisis since the Great Depression. Now is the time to stimulate our economy and rebuild America's infrastructure. This is not the time to be fixated on deficits.
Robert Borsage of the Campaign for America's Future makes the case for deficit spending.
Learning Deficits
www.ourfuture.org
By Robert Borosage
March 26th, 2009 - 4:00am ET
Will Obama's transformative budget survive? As his press conference last night illustrated, it runs a serious risk of drowning in a swamp of cant.
The budget is getting strafed by politicians in both parties for its deficits and debt. (The deficit is the annual shortfall between revenue and spending; debt is essentially the accumulation of net deficits over time).
Republicans, having joined Rush Limbaugh in betting that Obama fails, have done most of the ranting. Sen. Judd Gregg, lead Republican on the Senate budget committee, fulminates that if we pass Obama's budget, "this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt. Our dollar will become devalued."
Richard Shelby, top Republican on the banking committee, warns Cassandra-like that Obama's budget will put the country on "the fast road to financial destruction." Eric Cantor, the hyperbolic House Republican Whip, brings it down to his favored level, railing about wasteful spending like "money that goes to remove pig odor."
Conservative Democrats are chiming in also. Sen. Evan Bayh has formed what must be the twentieth new democratic rump group, arguing that "families and businesses are tightening their belts to make ends meet -- and Washington should too." Kent Conrad, Democratic head of the budget committee, is pushing for deep cuts in spending on domestic programs. "Moderate" Senators are expressing growing opposition to the president's spending plans. Even the Chinese, America's biggest creditor, are wringing their hands about U.S. deficits, suggesting perhaps a new international currency might be needed to replace the dollar.
Before this babble completely drowns out reason, a little common sense might be useful.
1. The new-found Republican fiscal probity is worth less than a drunkard's morning-after regret.
For the last decade, they merrily embraced the Dick Cheney dictum that "Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter. They doubled the national debt when the economy was growing, exactly at the height of the business cycle when they should have moved budgets into balance and reduced debt burdens. Fully $1.4 trillion of the largest annual "Obama" deficit -- the $1.8 billion the CBO projects for FY 2009 that ends this October -- was bequeathed to him from George Bush; the remainder comes from worsening conditions and the Obama stimulus spending to put people back to work..
Now as the economy verges on a depression, Republicans are indicting Obama for raising spending and deficits. This is like a gambling addict squandering the family fortune in a Las Vegas blowout and then scolding his wife for borrowing money to keep the kids in college. Had Republican leaders any sense of decency, they would just shut up and let adults address the mess they have left.
2. The greater worry in the short term is that the deficits may be too small, not too large.
We've just suffered what Warren Buffett calls an "economic Pearl Harbor." The accelerating downturn is turning into a global collapse. Consumers are cutting back; businesses laying off workers; exports have plummeted. The Fed has already cut interest rates to near zero. The only thing lifting this economy is deficit spending at the federal level. Senators intoning the comfortable mantras of the last years like Even Bayh can't seem to grasp that we're in a big-time trouble. If we took his advice, and cut federal spending and deficits, it would simply contribute to a downturn that is already the worst since the 1930s.
That's why the high-church of economic conservatism, the International Monetary Fund, is calling on countries across the world to borrow more to stimulate the economy, not less. And that's why all the talk about deficits in the out years -- six, eight, ten years from now -- is simply a dangerous distraction. The Congress isn't passing the budget for a 2019. It is passing one for next year, and it should be spending more, not less, to put people to work and get the economy going. Once the economy recovers, we can act to bring deficits down to a sustainable level.
3. We can afford to take on the debt.
Before joining Judd Gregg in rending garments and mumbling darkly about the end of the world, legislators would be well advised to inhale deeply, calm themselves and look around. The Congressional Budget Office predicts budget deficits will total some $9.3 trillion over 10 years (Obama's budget which is more optimistic about the pace of recovery projects $6.97 billion). That's a lot of money.
But this is a very big economy at $15 trillion a year and hopefully soon growing again. Bill Gates undoubtedly carries more debt than I or you do. But the burden of that debt -- the carrying charges in relation to his income or the debt in relation to his assets -- is far less than mine or thine. He can afford to take on more debt.
After years of conservative misrule, the US isn't in as good shape as Bill Gates, but it isn't broke either, particularly in comparison to other industrial nations. The current US public debt is about 40% of our annual economic production (GDP). It's been far higher -- reaching as much as 109% of GDP coming out of World War II. Post-war growth brought the burden down to about 25% GDP until Reagan gave us over to the seductive supply-siders and doubled the debt burden to about 49% GDP. Clinton brought it down to 33% and Bush drove it back up to about 40% even though the economy was growing.
Under Obama's plans, the national debt will rise as a percentage of the economy to about 65-67%. That's a big change. But the reason countries carry low levels of debt is so they can borrow when trouble comes. And this is the mother of all trouble.
But what is notable about that increase is that it will leave the US carrying only about the same debt burden that Germany, France and Canada were carrying -before they began adding to it in the current economic downturn. According the analysis of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2008, Germany's public debt was at 65%, France at 66%, and Canada at 64%. The Italians, always somewhat more fiscally dissolute, were at 106%. Sober Japan, coming out of its lost decade, carried a public debt that was182% of its country GDP.
None of these countries are going bankrupt. The Euro isn't turning into toilet paper. The Japanese haven't boarded up the country. We are urging all of these countries to borrow and spend more to help counter the downturn. We can afford the Obama deficits and more if necessary to lift us out of what looks increasingly like a global depression. (And that's why if the Chinese are looking for a new currency to supplant the dollar, they'll have to invent it.)
4. The most dangerous deficit is our public investment deficit.
Fact is we can't really afford to cut the public investments Obama would make in education, new energy, health care and 21st century infrastructure. For too many years, we've starved basic investments to pay for adventure abroad or top end tax cuts at home. Now we have a national security imperative to invest in new energy, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and begin to address catastrophic climate change. We can't compete as a high wage economy in a global economy without providing our children with a world-class pre-K to college (or advanced training) education. We must make the changes needed to provide Americans affordable high quality health care while getting health care costs under control. And we've paid the costs everyday of allowing our basic infrastructure to decay -- from unsafe water to gridlocked roads to falling bridges to the outmoded electric grid.
Obama's budget and recovery plans run up deficits to put people back to work while making a down payment on investments vital to our future. His domestic spending plans are, if anything, already too austere, reducing domestic discretionary spending to a lower percentage of the economy than under Reagan or Clinton or the Bushes. He argues correctly that we have to make investments in these areas to move our economy to sustainable growth, and away from the disastrous bubble economy that has now exploded in our faces. It is notable that his Republican critics don't dispute him on this point. They simply stand firm against any tax increases on the wealthy, while calling for cutting spending to reduce the deficits -- without ever offering a budget of their own to let us know exactly what it is they think should be cut.
The lesson? Let's make certain we spend enough to get this economy going. Once we do that, we must guard against making Roosevelt's mistake of trying to balance budgets too quickly, driving the economy back into the pits, as he did in 1937. Ignore the hyperventilating about America's pending bankruptcy. But let's make certain we stop spending money on pig odor, or whatever it is goofy Eric Cantor is whining about.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009031326/learning-deficits
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
South Carolina State Senator Ford says vouchers a civil rights issue
The Charleston Regional Business Journal [www.charlestonbusiness.com] Reports:
Democratic Sen. Ford calls for school choice program
By Molly Parker
Published March 24, 2009
Calling school reform the new civil rights movement, Democratic S.C. Sen. Robert Ford joined several Republican colleagues on Tuesday to push the state to adopt a school choice program.
“I’m the one lonely black Democrat attending,” Ford said of the noon press conference at the Statehouse. “The rest are conservative Republicans who have been pushing vouchers for a long, long time.”
Several weeks ago, Ford, who represents Charleston County, filed bill S.520 to provide a tax credit for anyone who pays tuition to send a child to either a private school or to a public school other than the one the child is assigned to attend.
“It doesn’t make sense for elected officials to tell parents that we have to do something to improve the public schools, but, in the meantime, you’re going to have to keep little Johnnie at this failing school,” Ford said. “That doesn’t make no kind of sense to me.”
Ford said his legislation is intended to provide a tax credit of $3,500 per child for parents who choose to pay tuition for elementary and secondary school.
Grants and tuition assistance would be provided to low-income families whose children are attending failing public schools, Ford said.
Because this topic is so controversial in nature, Ford said he doubts lawmakers will reach an accord on it this year. Still, he urged action.
“For the sake of children, we’ve got to get to it fast,” he said. “Any elected official not supporting sending kids out of failing schools is really not concerned with kids.”
http://www.charlestonbusiness.com/news/26984-democrat-sen-ford-calls-for-school-choice-program
Monday, March 23, 2009
Paul Krugman speaks out against "cash for trash" plan
Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman speaks out against the Obama Administration's embrace of the Paulson "cash for trash" plan. I agree with Krugman. This proposal may be very popular on Wall Street but it will only fuel public outrage on Main Street.
Financial Policy Despair
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times www.nytimes.com
March 22, 2009
Over the weekend The Times and other newspapers reported leaked details about the Obama administration’s bank rescue plan, which is to be officially released this week. If the reports are correct, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has persuaded President Obama to recycle Bush administration policy — specifically, the “cash for trash” plan proposed, then abandoned, six months ago by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
This is more than disappointing. In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair.
After all, we’ve just been through the firestorm over the A.I.G. bonuses, during which administration officials claimed that they knew nothing, couldn’t do anything, and anyway it was someone else’s fault. Meanwhile, the administration has failed to quell the public’s doubts about what banks are doing with taxpayer money.
And now Mr. Obama has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they’re doing.
It’s as if the president were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street. And by the time Mr. Obama realizes that he needs to change course, his political capital may be gone.
Let’s talk for a moment about the economics of the situation.
Right now, our economy is being dragged down by our dysfunctional financial system, which has been crippled by huge losses on mortgage-backed securities and other assets.
As economic historians can tell you, this is an old story, not that different from dozens of similar crises over the centuries. And there’s a time-honored procedure for dealing with the aftermath of widespread financial failure. It goes like this: the government secures confidence in the system by guaranteeing many (though not necessarily all) bank debts. At the same time, it takes temporary control of truly insolvent banks, in order to clean up their books.
That’s what Sweden did in the early 1990s. It’s also what we ourselves did after the savings and loan debacle of the Reagan years. And there’s no reason we can’t do the same thing now.
But the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, apparently wants an easier way out. The common element to the Paulson and Geithner plans is the insistence that the bad assets on banks’ books are really worth much, much more than anyone is currently willing to pay for them. In fact, their true value is so high that if they were properly priced, banks wouldn’t be in trouble.
And so the plan is to use taxpayer funds to drive the prices of bad assets up to “fair” levels. Mr. Paulson proposed having the government buy the assets directly. Mr. Geithner instead proposes a complicated scheme in which the government lends money to private investors, who then use the money to buy the stuff. The idea, says Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, is to use “the expertise of the market” to set the value of toxic assets.
But the Geithner scheme would offer a one-way bet: if asset values go up, the investors profit, but if they go down, the investors can walk away from their debt. So this isn’t really about letting markets work. It’s just an indirect, disguised way to subsidize purchases of bad assets.
The likely cost to taxpayers aside, there’s something strange going on here. By my count, this is the third time Obama administration officials have floated a scheme that is essentially a rehash of the Paulson plan, each time adding a new set of bells and whistles and claiming that they’re doing something completely different. This is starting to look obsessive.
But the real problem with this plan is that it won’t work. Yes, troubled assets may be somewhat undervalued. But the fact is that financial executives literally bet their banks on the belief that there was no housing bubble, and the related belief that unprecedented levels of household debt were no problem. They lost that bet. And no amount of financial hocus-pocus — for that is what the Geithner plan amounts to — will change that fact.
You might say, why not try the plan and see what happens? One answer is that time is wasting: every month that we fail to come to grips with the economic crisis another 600,000 jobs are lost.
Even more important, however, is the way Mr. Obama is squandering his credibility. If this plan fails — as it almost surely will — it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to persuade Congress to come up with more funds to do what he should have done in the first place.
All is not lost: the public wants Mr. Obama to succeed, which means that he can still rescue his bank rescue plan. But time is running out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/opinion/23krugman.html?_r=1
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Public support for nuclear energy increasing in the U.S.
News from Gallup.Com
Gallup's annual environment poll finds that 59% of Americans saying they favor nuclear power as one of the ways to provide energy for the United States, surpassing the previous high of 56%. A majority of Americans believe that nuclear power plants are safe.
To view the entire story, visit
http://www.gallup.com/poll/117025/Support-Nuclear-Energy-Inches-New-High.aspx
EPI study shows unionization has no impact on business failure
A newly released paper from the Economic Policy Institute presents solid evidence that unionized companies are no more likely than nonunion firms to go out of business. Of course, this study will not change the minds of union-haters but it is a powerful argument for passing the Employee Free Choice Act. And better paid unionized workers will be more able to purchase products and services thereby stimulating the economy.
The following is a press release from EPI:
In the debate over legislation to expand employees’ right to choose union representation in the workplace, the organized business lobby has been drumming up fears that enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act would kill jobs by forcing more employers out of business. That claim is not borne out by historical data or existing credible research, according to a new report released today by the Economic Policy Institute. In “Still Open for Business” John DiNardo, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan (see full bio below), compared data on business failures among unionized and similar nonunion firms. He concluded that unionized businesses are no more likely than nonunion ones to fail.
http://epi.3cdn.net/86c7a36112348f4103_dgm6bhgpf.pdf
“The conclusion that unions drive firms out of business is often discussed as if it followed inexorably from incontrovertible premises, but it doesn’t,” explained DiNardo. “ It’s ultimately an empirical question whether the simplest supply and demand story taught in introductory economics textbooks bears on the question of economic consequences of unionism on business failures – and the best evidence suggests that it does not.“
DiNardo’s paper reviews research by others which compares unionized to otherwise identical non-union workers and consistently finds that union workers are paid better. Even among identical twins, for example, the unionized twin earns more than his nonunion brother or sister. While no single mechanism has been identified that reconciles this evidence with the evidence from “natural experiments” that unionization has no effect on business failures, there are several possible ways that are consistent with the evidence. One way, for example, is that unionized firms are adapting rather than closing – often with changes that could end up being beneficial. In some cases the firm that pays a little more to its unionized employees might pay a little less to its CEO and managers, for example, resulting in less overall wage inequality in the workplace. In others the higher costs for wages might be offset by productivity gains. But DiNardo emphasizes that the best evidence shows that unionization has no causal effect on business failures.
DiNardo’s analysis explains that the theory underlying the claims about business failures, taken to its logical conclusion, would produce workplace scenarios so far divorced from reality as to be absurd: wholesale displacement of workers or business failures based on minuscule fluctuations in pay rates, for example. As he explains, the theory’s simplicity makes it seem appealing – but that simplicity is also what makes it a bad predictor of actual events. The reality, as DiNardo’s review of the data and existing research shows, is that in this case simplicity is simply wrong.
http://www.epi.org/page/-/pdf/20090320-unions-jobs-pr.pdf
Friday, March 20, 2009
Congressman Gene Taylor wants to end insurance antitrust exemption
Mississippi's Clarion-Ledger reports:
Mississippi 4th District U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor and fellow Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon filed a bill Thursday to remove the federal antitrust exemption from the insurance industry.
The legislation follows the controversy involving American International Group Inc., which has received $182 billion in bailout money and paid out about $165 million in bonuses to about 400 employees in its Financial Products unit.
According to a news release from Taylor's office, the insurance exemption from antitrust laws gave AIG a free pass to become "too big to fail," leaving taxpayers to bail them out or risk further damage to the U.S. economy.
"Insurance companies believe that they are above the law," Taylor said in the news release. "When it comes to the federal laws, they are. After Hurricane Katrina, insurance companies took advantage of the lack of federal oversight to bill the National Flood Insurance Program for wind damage. Taxpayers also paid for FEMA trailers, home repair grants, subsidized loans, and tax deductions for property damage that insurance should have covered."
"AIG was gambling with people’s life savings and lost it all to speculative and shady transactions and contributed to the current crisis. We must insure this never happens again," DeFazio said.
The proposed Insurance Industry Competition Act would repeal the exemption and authorize the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to apply antitrust laws to anticompetitive behavior by insurance companies. It would not affect each state’s ability to regulate the business.
The McCarran-Ferguson Act passed in 1945 has exempted the business of insurance companies from the federal antitrust laws so they can collude to prices.
Such oversight, according to Taylor’s news release, could ensure the industry does not engage in anticompetitive conduct like price fixing, agreements not to pay and divvying up geographical areas.
During testimony Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, William Berkley, board chairman of the American Insurance Association, acknowledged today's economic crisis points up "the need for more — not less — regulatory efficiency."
But he testified an independent, centralized federal regulator is what the industry needs.
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20090320/NEWS/90320020
http://www.taylor.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=467&Itemid=35
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Froma Harrop: Let’s talk about jail time for culprits of AIG fiasco
Columnist Froma Harrop is right on target. The AIG crowd and other Wall Street fraudsters need to be in jail - preferably with the rapists and murderers.
Let’s talk about jail time for culprits of AIG fiasco
By FROMA HARROP
Houston Chronicle www.chron.com
March 18, 2009
Anyone who has watched Law & Order over the years, as I have, knows that the ending must feel right. The circumstances of the crime may be complex and the legal issues muddy, but in the end, most viewers are left feeling that some justice has been served.
The great American audience sees no justice in paying $165 million in bonuses to the AIG executives whose reckless conduct led to a $170 billion (so far) bailout of their company. There may be far more expensive outrages in the AIG story, but the bonuses hit the public’s already aggravated injustice nerve. Reducing them would not do.
What truly rankles is the argument that AIG, now 80 percent owned by the taxpayer, has no choice but to cough up the money: The sacrosanct contract requires the bonus payments. Also, not paying them might prompt the “talent” to depart, leaving less experienced hands to fix the mess.
No Law and Order would end like that. Fortunately, other plots are available.
Brush aside the congressional theatrics about taxing the bonuses to their eyeballs. Let’s talk jail time.
William Black, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, envisions a federal investigation into AIG’s past accounting, securities disclosures and executive-pay program. Black was the litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and helped bag the “Keating Five” lawmakers during the savings-and-loan scandal in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
As the bottom was falling out of its derivatives trading, AIG was reporting healthy profits, he told me. That’s not allowed. Meanwhile, the company created a short-term bonus system for its top execs. The massive prior bonuses should be clawed back, he said, “and we do that by establishing that there is accounting fraud and by putting in intelligent, vigorous investigators.”
Speaking of which, Goldman Sachs said that it had no material exposure to AIG, but we now learn that it has received $13 billion in AIG bailout money. “That’s a felony to make a false disclosure,” Black adds.
The solution is to split AIG’s financial products unit off of the conventional insurance business and let it file for bankruptcy. Then we’ll see what sort of payback is truly due the financiers who gambled on the housing market. “The contract they (Goldman and others) made was that if you don’t pay us because you’re insolvent, we’re simply a general creditor and we get only pennies on the dollar” in a bankruptcy, Black notes. “How come that contract isn’t sacrosanct?”
Back to AIG. In addition to making extremely risky contracts and being leveraged to the hilt, the company failed to put in appropriate loss reserves should something go wrong. The reserves are required under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), according to Black. These are the rules accountants must follow in preparing financial statements.
“If you’re publicly traded, the SEC rules require that you follow GAAP,” he says. “If you don’t follow GAAP, then it’s securities fraud.”
The excuse that the auditor gave the accounting a green light won’t fly. Enron and the infamous Lincoln Savings & Loan had clean opinions, too.
The “buzz on Wall Street” is that the bonus-deprived AIG employees might leave, then “simply turn around and trade against AIG’s book,” writes Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times Dealbook column. “Why not? They know how bad it is.” (Trading against book involves using what is known about weaknesses in what a company owns to presumably short sell the stock.)
I asked Black about this scenario. He almost laughed. Using that inside information would be securities fraud, “and everyone that hires them would be frauds.”
It’s time that the Obama administration stopped issuing statements of shock as it coddles the Wall Street bankrupts. The public wants more than the bonus money back. It wants justice.
Harrop is a syndicated columnist based in Providence, R.I.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6320003.html
http://www.fromaharrop.com/
Rep. Bruce Braley introduces the CARS Act
House Populist Caucus leader Bruce Braley has an innovative proposal to stimulate the economy and help the environment. Braley introduced legislation today that would allow consumers to trade in their old car for a new and more fuel-efficient vehicle made in America.
Washington, DC - Today, Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) announced that he introduced the CARS Act, which provides incentives for consumers to purchase new, fuel-efficient cars and trucks, helping boost our economy and save American jobs.
Braley introduced the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) Act with Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) and Rep. Candice Miller (R-Michigan). The CARS Act would take older, gas-guzzling vehicles off the road and spur new car sales by providing consumers with a $3,000 to $7,500 incentive to buy more fuel-efficient cars, trucks or use mass transit. The bill provides graduated incentives based on greater fuel efficiency.
"The CARS Act will save American jobs, boost our economy, and decrease our dependence on foreign oil," Braley said. "This bill will achieve many goals: consumers will get a break to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles; we will all benefit from a reduction of greenhouse gases; and we will save American jobs by jumpstarting the auto industry. We can get our country moving in the right direction while helping American manufacturers and investing new, fuel-efficient cars and trucks."
New car purchases that qualify for this incentive must achieve a minimum of 27 miles per gallon on highways, while new trucks must achieve a minimum of 24 mpg for highway driving. The CARS Act provides the option to trade in used cars for a voucher towards the purchase of a new, more fuel-efficient car, or for a mass transit voucher.
A similar concept was recently implemented in Germany, where sales of new vehicles increased over 20 percent in February 2009, versus the same month a year ago.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Senators Tester, Baucus and 65 House Dems oppose any gun ban
Montana's Democratic Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester have expressed strong opposition to any gun ban. http://www.ktvq.com/Global/story.asp?S=9946955
Associated Press - March 18, 2009 6:34 PM ET WASHINGTON (AP) - Sixty-five House Democrats say they'll oppose any attempt by the Obama administration to revive a ban on military-style weapons.
http://www.kpax.com/global/story.asp?s=10031337
From the NRA-ILA:
Today in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, 65 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, led by Congressman Mike Ross (D-AR), expressed their opposition to the reinstatement of the failed 1994 ban on semi-automatic firearms and ammunition magazines. These congressmen cited numerous studies that proved the 1994 ban was ineffective, and they strongly urged Attorney General Holder to stop his effort and instead focus on the enforcement of existing gun laws.
http://www.nraila.org/media/PDFs/AWBLettertoHolder309.pdf
TV ads urge key Blue Dog Dems to back Obama budget
WASHINGTON, March 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- USAction today announced it has purchased air time in five Congressional districts to urge key "Blue Dog" Democrats who serve on the House Budget Committee to resist special interests and vote for President Obama's proposed budget outline.
The ads, which began airing Wednesday, will be broadcast in the districts of Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark., Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-LA., Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-NC., and Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas. All five members serve on the House Budget Committee, which is expected to begin mark up on President Obama's budget proposal next week.
The five spots are customized for each member. For example, the script for the ad airing in Boyd's Tallahassee-based district, reads:
"President Obama has proposed a budget plan that turns the page on the failed economic policies of the past - creates jobs - and changes the way things are done in Washington. When it comes to creating and protecting jobs, Congressman Boyd has always stood up for the people of Florida. But now the special interests in Washington are squeezing him to oppose the President's budget. Call Congressman Boyd. Tell him to stand up to the special interests and stand with the working people of Florida. Tell him to support President Obama's budget."
The ads can be viewed at www.youtube.com/usaction.
"President Obama's budget proposal will rebuild and renew America as we meet our challenges head on," said USAction Program Director Alan Charney. "His budget will restore tax fairness and make significant down payments in health care reform, education and energy independence."
USAction is a leader of Rebuild and Renew America Now, a coalition of more than 80 national groups and more than 500 local and state groups united behind the principles laid out in President Obama's budget outline.
SOURCE USAction
Fritz Hollings speaks out on the economy
Former Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) talks about America's economic crisis and how to solve it in a column at the Huffington Post.
Hollings writes:
The United States has always paid for its wars. For 200 years we paid for the Revolution, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, even LBJ's Great Society, and had yet to reach a national debt of $1 trillion -- until 1982. Now our government in the past eight years has borrowed, spent, and added to the national debt $5 trillion.
The Congressional Budget Office reported that in the first four years of the Bush term, deficits were caused by: 48% tax cuts, 37% wars, and 15% increased spending. We kept the government on steroids during the Bush years and household debt of $7 trillion joined the binge.
By the time Obama took office the Federal Reserve had injected another $2 trillion steroids. With $14 trillion stimulation, we were losing jobs like gangbusters. Stimulation was not working. Last year we stimulated exactly $1 trillion, $35 billion, and lost jobs. According to the Secretary of the Treasury, we have a deficit or stimulated the economy $960 billion this fiscal year (3/16/09) and are still losing jobs.
Last night, Ben Bernanke on 60 Minutes said he saw light at the end of the tunnel at the end of the year. So any more stimulation is politically out of the question. So the government, like households, should hunker down, stop spending where it can, and plug the hole of offshoring jobs in the ship of state.
The need to act now and for the long haul is to dismiss Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner to be replaced by Paul Volcker and Jared Bernstein.
Plug the hole of offshoring and raise revenues for the government we provide by:
1. Enacting a 10% value added tax to be effective the first of next year. It will take the rest of this year for the Internal Revenue Service and business to gear up for a VAT. But even in these lean times a 5% VAT would bring in $700 billion; and once we start operating in the black, we can let up on corporate and middle income taxes. The VAT is double-whammy. It will not only help us pay our bills, but eliminate the 17% Chinese VAT as an inducement to offshore to China.
2. Cancelling the tax benefit to offshoring.
3. Immediately quota automobile imports. In the last eight years we've caused Detroit a trillion dollar competition in foreign subsidized car imports. Bailouts for GM and Chrysler will be wanting next year when cheap Chinese hybrids start coming in.
4. Globalization is nothing more than a trade war with production looking for a country cheaper to produce. Globalization is not going away, but governments have to compete. Economically, our government is at a "comparative disadvantage" in international trade. We insist on industry providing a high standard of living, but refuse to protect industry when it does. We stupidly cry "free trade." If any in Washington thinks China is going to engage in free trade, they need custodial care. At present, we couldn't go to a real war if we wanted to because we would have to wait for the troops' equipment to be imported. Activate the Secretary of Commerce's list of those items critical to our national security by exacting tariffs or quotas.
5. Start developing an industrial policy. We want to keep markets as open as possible, but Chinese, Japanese and Korean competition in globalization won't permit it. We can keep trying; but a measured industrial policy will be necessary, using our country's production and rich market to open world markets. At present, our production and rich market is in disrepair, needing rebuilding. We have an industrial policy for domestic commerce like anti-trust, provisions against price fixing, etc. But we need an industrial policy for foreign commerce like agricultural quotas. This will put America back to work and save our economy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-ernest-frederick-hollings/now-and-for-the-long-run_b_175343.html
Link with information on Senator Hollings new book titled Making Government Work.
http://www.sc.edu/uscpress/2008/3760.html
Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings has enjoyed a remarkable career in public service as a South Carolina legislator (1949–1954), Lieutenant Governor (1955–1959), Governor
(1959–1963), U.S. Senator (1966–2005), and U.S. presidential candidate (1983–1984). A visionary workhorse, Hollings has focused throughout his career on putting government on a sound financial basis and promoting economic development to create opportunities. Recognized as a policy expert on the budget, telecommunications, the environment, defense, trade, and space, he is the author of the Coastal Zone Management Act (1972), the Ocean Dumping Act (1972), and the Automobile Fuel Economy Act (1975) and coauthor of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act (1985). Hollings led in the creation of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children in 1972 and passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Time to tax executive bonus payments
WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), joined by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and 10 other Senate Democrats, warned AIG executives in a letter Tuesday to give up the controversial bonuses they stand to receive or else prepare for Congress to tax the payments to virtually nothing.
In a letter to AIG CEO Edward Liddy, the Democratic senators warned that they would pass a “steep tax,” to recoup the bonus payments if the executives refused to forego them.
“In America, we believe in rewarding success. AIG is attempting to reward the most extreme failure,” wrote the lawmakers.
“I believe that any bonuses or other special benefits paid to these highly paid people should be pulled back. Congress should pass a bill taxing the payments at 100 percent minus the amounts owed on those sums for other income or payroll taxes. They should not receive an extra dime,” Harkin said. “Some of these financial institutions have no end to their greed and outrageous expectations of what they deserve. This is not about contractual obligation. These are companies that would be bankrupt without government assistance and the contracts would have likely been voided.”
Even though AIG has already received more than $170 billion in taxpayer funds to stay afloat, Liddy has refused to forego the bonuses and retention payments, citing contractual requirements. President Barack Obama has instructed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to pursue every legal avenue to withhold payment. But Senate Democrats are sending the signal that they will pursue their own remedy if AIG executives insist on taking the money.
“This shameful act of corporate misconduct must not be allowed to stand. The feds required union workers at GM and Ford to renegotiate their contracts and accept lower pay as a condition for receiving bailout money, so why shouldn’t wealthy executives at AIG be required to do the same?” questioned Harkin.
A copy of the letter, signed by Harkin, Reid and 10 other Democrats, appears below.
March 17, 2009
Edward Liddy
Chairman and CEO
American International Group
70 Pine Street
New York, NY 10270
Dear Mr. Liddy,
We write today to express our outrage at American International Group’s recently revealed multi-million dollar bonus payments. In these perilous economic times, it is unconscionable for the American taxpayer to find out that the very employees responsible for running the company into the ground have now received “performance-based” awards that are hundreds of times as large as the average American’s yearly salary. If these contracts are not renegotiated immediately, we will take action to make American taxpayers whole by recouping all of the bonuses that AIG has paid out to its financial products unit, which, by all accounts, is primarily responsible for the near-failure of the company and the devastating impact on the global financial markets.
For a company that would not exist anymore but for a $170 billion taxpayer funded rescue, it is simply morally unacceptable to spend $165 million on bonus payments, and especially offensive to spend $450 million over the next two years rewarding the employees that helped fuel the nation’s financial crisis. Given the fact that it was the employees in this unit that brought your firm to the brink of bankruptcy and caused such havoc in the world, rewarding them is not only morally reprehensible, but entirely indefensible on any business grounds. It is the grossest perversion of the idea of a “performance bonus” imaginable. In America, we believe in rewarding success. AIG is attempting to reward the most extreme failure.
We insist that you immediately renegotiate these contracts in order to recoup these payments and make the American taxpayer whole. We stand ready to take the difficult, but necessary step of working to enact legislation that would allow the government to recoup these bonus payments, perhaps by imposing a steep tax-- as high as 91 percent--that will have the effect of recovering nearly all of the bonuses that have been paid out since AIG turned to taxpayers for help.
At a time when families across the country are struggling to make ends meet, and hundreds of thousands of Americans are losing their jobs each month, the hubris of this company, and these employees, to demand taxpayer assistance for these bonus payments is simply and plainly unacceptable. We urge you to bring your employees to the table to renegotiate these contracts immediately. We expect that you will report back to Congress on your efforts to recoup these payments in short order. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Senators Harkin, Schumer, Reid, Murray, Akaka, Boxer, Carper, Feinstein, Klobuchar, Lincoln, Menendez, Merkley
In the House of Representatives,Democrats announced today that legislation could come as soon as this week to ensure that AIG executives do not receive $156 million in bonus payments to executives who oversaw the collapse of the insurance giant, and that other companies that have received billions of dollars in federal bailout money would not be allowed to pay bonuses to their executives and top employees. Congressman George Miller (D-CA) issued the following statement:
“AIG executives did not earn a bonus, they should not accept a bonus, and if they already did accept it they should return the bonus. If they don't return the bonus money voluntarily, we’re going to get the money back for the taxpayer."
One step Miller is advocating would tax as much as 100 percent of the bonuses AIG executives receive. He co-sponsored legislation today by Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) to do just that.
Another California Democrat Mike Thompson introduced the “Taxpayer Protection Act,” which would impose a 90 percent tax on all bonuses paid by businesses such as AIG that received rescue money from the government.
“It’s outrageous that some of the same bankers who helped create this economic mess are now going to be rewarded for their failures with taxpayer dollars,” said Congressman Thompson. “By taxing all bonuses paid out by companies that received money to help them stay afloat, we’ll send a message to these folks that business as usual is no longer acceptable. I would prefer to tax these bonuses at 100% but that level is considered confiscatory and doesn’t pass legal muster.”
Currently, the IRS withholds 25 percent from bonuses less than $1 million and 35 percent for bonuses more than $1 million dollars. Under Congressman Thompson’s legislation, any entity that received assistance under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 would be subject to a bonus tax rate of 90 percent.
Congressman Thompson is a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over all tax-related matters coming before Congress.
Monday, March 16, 2009
David Gushee: Mr. President, we need more than lip service
David Gushee, a leading moderate evangelical and Obama supporter, is calling on the President to deliver on his campaign promise for abortion reduction measures. Gushee wrote the following column for USA Today [www.usatoday.com]:
Mr. President, we need more than lip service
Centrist evangelicals like me embraced Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to help bridge the gaps of the culture wars. Instead, the president’s short record on abortion-related issues is familiar— and disappointing — rather than revolutionary.
By David P. Gushee
It's no secret that a group of self-identified centrist or moderate evangelicals built a friendly relationship with Barack Obama and rejected the Christian right's vilification of him. I am in this group, which has also included megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, evangelical lobbyist Rich Cizik, academic-activist Ron Sider and others.
This positive relationship has flowed from three factors.
First, Obama worked to establish a relationship with us by reaching out early in his run for the presidency. Second, he promised transformational leadership that could bridge longstanding gaps in the culture wars. Finally, Obama's positions on a number of issues — such as torture, the climate, taxes, health care, Iraq and education — struck me, at least, as more consistent with broadly pro-life and pro-justice Christian values than the standard Republican alternative. (I remain convinced on that point.)
I knew from the beginning that if Obama took typical Democratic positions on abortion-related issues, this centrist evangelical friendliness toward him and his administration would be tested. I knew that during the campaign he had hewed closely to the standard Democratic pro-choice line. But his party's platform also promised a commitment to abortion-reduction efforts, and he has echoed that language. Some of us continue to dream that he will roll out a major abortion-reduction initiative.
All too familiar
Such an initiative has not been offered. But what has occurred are a series of disappointingly typical Democratic abortion-related moves:
First, the new president followed precedent by overturning the so-called Mexico City policy, which basically had withheld U.S. Agency for International Development funding from any organization that discusses, advocates or provides abortion as a method of family planning. Republicans withhold the money; Democrats provide it. Not great, but predictable. I stayed quiet on this one.
Next, Obama revoked the "provider refusal" rule that President Bush promulgated by executive order very late in his presidency. The stated aim of this rule was to protect medical professionals from being forced as a condition of employment to provide health care services or information about services, such as abortion or contraception, that violated their consciences. Provider-conscience exceptions related to abortion are not new; the concern from the pro-choice side was that Bush's version of that rule had become too broad. Concluding that the basic idea of conscience exceptions was probably safe, I stayed quiet again.
Then the president nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be head of the massive Department of Health and Human Services. The nomination of Sebelius, a Catholic whose bishop has condemned her stance on abortion, has gotten entangled in both national and Catholic abortion politics. Her opponents argue that she is a pro-choice extremist; her allies say she is a conscientious Catholic who has reduced abortion by 10% in Kansas. I signed on to a statement that was viewed as offering uncritical support for Sebelius. What I meant to say was that given the inevitability that Obama would choose a pro-choice HHS secretary, it seemed positive he would pick one with an abortion-reduction track record. I wish I had stayed out of this one, too.
Finally, last week Obama signed his long-promised reversal of Bush policies on embryonic stem cell research. Again, this was not a surprise, either politically or, sadly, morally. A country that is willing to permit the destruction of a fetus at five months, when that destroyed fetus can provide no conceivable utilitarian benefit to society, is certainly going to permit the destruction of a leftover frozen embryo on the promise that it can contribute to medical breakthroughs someday.
Mexico City, conscience clause, Sebelius, embryonic stem cells. In each case, I have been asked by friends at Democratic or progressive-leaning think tanks not just to refrain from opposing these moves, but instead to support them in the name of a broader understanding of what it means to be pro-life. I mainly refused.
But I do confess that my desire to retain good relationships with the Obama team has tempted me to give what was asked in return for the big payoff of a serious abortion-reduction initiative that I could wholeheartedly support.
What to do?
But this kind of calculation is precisely what has gotten Christian political activists in trouble in the past, not just for 40 years but for 1,600 years. We gain access to Caesar in order to affect policy; we hold onto access even if it involves compromising some of what we want in policy; in the end, we can easily forget what policies we were after in the first place. I think this definitely happened to the Christian right. It doesn't need to be repeated by the Christian center or left.
My understanding of the majestic God-given sacredness of human life tells me that a society that legally permits abortion on demand is deeply corrupt. It pays for adult sexual liberties with the lives of defenseless developing children. That practice, in turn, desensitizes society to the implications of paying for prospective medical cures with defenseless frozen embryos, which themselves are available because our society pays for medically assisted reproductive technology by producing hundreds of thousands of these embryos as spares. And yes, that same commitment to life's sacredness has grounded my opposition to paying for national security with torture, or paying for today's affluence with tomorrow's environmental destruction.
Christian conscience requires me to make this case even if it has no chance of prevailing in American society. And if we lose on abortion, as it appears we will lose for a long time to come, Christian conscience requires me to ask the government not to require citizens to pay for procuring services that violate their sacred beliefs.
And if we lose there, as it appears we will, Christian conscience requires me to insist that religious institutions and professionals not be required as a condition of accreditation, or employment, or contact with federal dollars, to actively facilitate or perform deeds that their conscience forbids them from doing.
And if we lose there, then the entire relationship between religious faith and American society will move into a period of profound crisis.
President Obama, we need more than lip service on these crucial issues. Bring the transformational change your promises led us to hope for.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/03/mr-president-we.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
