With the proliferation of natural disasters like the recent Nashville, Tennesee, floods and man made disasters like the oil rig explosion and the West Virginia mine explosion taking a far greater toll on American lives than terrorism, maybe it's a good idea to reevaluate our priorities. Natural disasters are far more likely to account for more casualties going forward than terrorism is, and we should be prepared for them instead of considering each one some kind of rare event or Act of God that no one could have anticipated or predicted. Massive snowstorms and rainstorms which produce massive flooding are becoming normal events due, no doubt, to global warming. Global warming results in more moisture in the atmosphere. In fact water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased about 5% over the 20th century and 4% since 1970. Monster snow storms like Snowmageddon and Snowpocalypse which hit Philadelphia and Baltimore this winter are caused by excess moisture in the air due to global warming. Although global temperatures have increased they are still cold enough to produce snow and ice storms.
There are also an increased number and size of tornadoes like the one that hit Yazoo City, Mississippi, on April 24 that left 10 people dead. Disaster preparedness needs to be put on a par with anti-terrorism measures because natural disasters are causing far more deaths and destruction of property. And after each disaster, the Federal government has to step in and provide relief. That means that the taxpayers are on the hook for increasing amounts of money which is only borrowed and added to the national debt because not enough is budgeted for these increasingly more common events. President Obama announced after the oil rig disaster that British Petroleum would pay the full amount for the cleanup which is expected to reach $10 billion, but subsequently it has been pointed out that, because of a loophole in the law, actually BP is only on the hook for $75 million and guess who bears the rest of the cost? The US government aka the taxpayers. No wonder national deficits are increasing. While record amounts go to the military industrial complex each year, far too little is budgeted for the events that actually take the worst toll on American lives - natural and man made disasters. While record precipitation is bad for areas prone to flooding, it actually has produced something beneficial for California - large snow packs in the Sierra Mountains from which emanates California's water supply.
As far as man made disasters are concerned, most of them are caused by deregulation. Stricter regulatory standards might have prevented both the mine disaster in the Upper Big Branch mine and the oil rig disaster. Both companies fought off stricter safety standards which would have cost them more money to implement. Massey Energy had a panoply of violations which it managed to evade paying any penalties for or correcting do to loopholes in the law which allowed them to continue violating as long as they challenged them in court. British Petroleum lobbied against systems which might have provided a more fail safe shut off of the gushing oil. Now they will undoubtedly get out of paying for it due to another loophole in the law no doubt placed there by oil company lobbyists.
The Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for both terrorism and natural disasters, has to have its budget beefed up while at the same time decreasing the military budget. There needs to be a realignment between the US' actual needs for protection and its imagined needs. As natural disasters take an increasing toll, the monetary cost (hundreds of millions in property damage from the Nashville floods alone) needs to take prority over military spending. The cost of cleaning up natural disasters cannot just simply continue to be added to the defict and the national debt. BP will probably tie up their portion of the responsibility for the oil rig disaster in court with the result being that taxpayers will foot most of the bill. Exxon Mobil tied up the Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound and over 20 years later has not paid the full amount for the aftermath which was court ordered. Exxon Mobil has dragged its feet in paying the costs of damages to local fishermen while making record profits for itself. The original amount of punitive damages to be paid to the fishermen was $5 billion. That amount was reduced to 4 billion, raised back up to $4.5 billion, then cut to $2.5 billion, then further reduced to $507 million. A Supreme Court ruling is expected soon on whether Exxon should pay interest on this payment after 20 years of waiting. BP will likely use the courts to leave taxpayers holding the bag for the spillage in the Gulf especially since we have belatedly found out that the law limiting their liability is on their side.
Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil made record profits in 2007 ($40.61 billion) and 2008 ($45.2 billion) as it continued to shortchange Alaskan fishermen. It also paid no US taxes in 2008.
Last week, Forbes magazine published what the top U.S. corporations paid in taxes last year. “Most egregious,” Forbes notes, is General Electric, which “generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.” Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS:
Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.
Mother Jones’ Adam Weinstein notes that, despite benefiting from corporate welfare in the U.S., Exxon complains about paying high taxes, claiming that it threatens energy innovation research. Pat Garofalo at the Wonk Room notes that big corporations’ tax shelter practices similar to Exxon’s shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto U.S. taxpayers. In fact, in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that “two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005.”
So US corporations (and no doubt BP will follow suit) continue to make record profits while dumping any losses on US taxpayers just as Wall Street bankers did. While other countries such as Norway tax the profits on oil drilling 50% thereby generating profit for the national treasury, the US foolishly just gives away the oil leases so that all profits go to the corporations while the majority of the losses are paid by US taxpayers. No wonder the US has an immense national debt! And global warming produced natural disasters (unbudgeted for) will only continue to get worse adding even more. While the Times Square bomber didn't manage to kill a single person and was caught immediately thanks to excellent police work by the FBI and others not to mention citizen vigilance, which helped to prevent an event which could have produced a number of casualties, the casualties and property damage due to excessive precipitation and high winds continues to mount. Do we have our priorities straight when we continue to allocate billions to the military-industrial complex and paltry amounts to Homeland Security? Homeland Security in addition to being responsible for terrorism and natual disasters is also reponsible for protecting our borders against illegal immigration. Although illegal immigration continues to take its toll on American society, relatively paltry amounts are allocated to it while fantasy wars of aggression continue to be fought abroad. And the cost of supporting over 1000 military bases on foreign soil continues to mount.
The Homeland Security budget for 2010 is $55 billion while the miltary budget is about $1 trillion - orders of magnitude greater. US budget priorities are totally out of whack. While good intelligence and police work has done much to protect US citizens from terrorist attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have only increased their liklihood due to killing of civilians and stoking the fires of resentment towards the US who are considered to be foreign invaders. Protection against terrorist attacks which have killed very few US citizens and caused very little property damage compared to natural disasters primarilyshould consist of defensive not an offensive measures. The Times Square bomber was caught in part due to a fingerprint database. His finger prints matched those left on the Nissan Pathfinder. A national ID card including links to a fingerprint database would do more to prevent terrorism than the combined efforts of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force because terrorists are just as likely to be American citizens as foreign citizens. And it would identify people in the country illegally at the same time. A national database of student visa holders would have prevented the 9/11 attacks since a lot of them had overstayed their student visas. It can be shown categorically that defensive measures can and will prevent future attacks at a fraction of the cost of military adventurism which is only increasing their liklihood.
But the real wild card here - and something which can bankrupt the US unless it's figured into the annual budget - is preparedness for natural disasters. Increased moisture in the atmosphere caused by global warming will continue to produce massive rainstorms, snowstorms, hurricanes and tornadoes, increased casualties and billions of dollars of property damage, much of which will be borne privately by American citizens who will become destitute in the process. As if the recession in and of itself weren't enough to devastate the middle class! The US hasn't even recovered from Hurricane Katrina 5 years ago! The US can expect to be devastated by ongoing natural disasters. In order to prevent a fiscal disaster as well we have to budget and plan for them.
