California Free Press

Extreme Weather Watch: August 2013 - Floods and Fires

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

August 2013 was prime time for wildfires. The Rim fire, started by a hunter's illegal fire, burned 370 square miles in California. About a quarter of the fire was within Yosemite National Park. More than 5,100 firefighters were battling the flames at their peak. The Rim fire has destroyed 111 buildings, including 11 residences. It has so far cost $72 million to fight and it's still burning. Research in California’s Sierra Nevada found that rising average summer temperatures are strongly associated with an increase in acres burned. An annual increase in average summer temperature of 1º F is associated with a 35 percent growth in burned areas.

Nationally, federal agencies have spent more than $1 billion so far this year, about half last year's total of $1.9 billion, according to the fire center.  There have been 33,000 fires that have burned more than 5,300 square miles, an  area nearly the size of Connecticut.

Jason Sibold, assistant professor of biogeography at Colorado State University, said that, since the 1990s, the climate has been changing, producing hotter, drier and  longer summers in the West. That combined with more people building vacation homes in the woods pushes up costs. "The societal demand to try to control and fight these fires is escalating at the same pace as the climate's warming," he said.

Despite firefighting efforts, more than 960 homes and 30 commercial buildings have burned this year. And 30 firefighters have  died in the effort, including 19 hotshots at Yarnell, Ariz. The annual average  over the past 10 years is 17 dead.

Elsewhere, severe flooding has caused serious damage across southeast Asia, affecting around 9 million people. Thailand was the worst hit. Close to 400 lives have been lost as the capital, Bangkok, was almost entirely submerged. Floods were caused by unusually heavy monsoon rains. Prime Minister Yingluck has warned that the flood waters could stay for as long as a month. The Red Cross believes this will threaten to create a particular type of urban crisis in which public transport grinds to a halt, breaks in electricity leave the city sweltering in 95 degrees F heat and 100% humidity, and the risks of mosquito-borne disease multiply. Crocodiles and venomous snakes are roaming freely.

Russia's Amur River, which marks the border between Russia and China, has caused great flooding. The damage from the unprecedentedly powerful and protracted flooding in Russia’s Far East is estimated at $1 billion — and this is only a preliminary assessment, as there is no end in sight to the plight.

Russia’s president Putin has visited the submerged areas; he flew over the endless spread of water in a helicopter and talked to local residents. “We have never experienced a catastrophe on this scale before,” Vladimir Putin said, instructing the Investigative Committee to check if officials’ actions during the flooding complied with the laws and regulations.

China’s province of Heilongjiang has been hit by summer floods and hailstorms which have affected 4.5 million people and resulted in 12 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) worth of damage. More than 60,000 homes were destroyed and 840,000 people evacuated from Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces due to flooding which happened at the same time as flooding in China's southern Guangdong province. Nankouqian Township, one of the hardest-hit areas, saw 17.7 in of rain, half the average annual total, on August 16 alone. Almost 2 million acres of farm land were ruined in the region which depends heavily on farming. Power and communications lines were downed in several townships.

A new analysis of 12 extreme weather events in 2012 found "compelling evidence that human-caused change was a factor contributing to the event" in at least half of them, according to Thomas Karl, director of the Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Human influences are having an impact on some extreme weather and climate events, according to the report Explaining Extreme Events of 2012 from a Climate Perspective released September 5, 2013.  Scientists from NOAA served as three of the four lead editors on the report.

The report shows that the effects of natural weather and climate fluctuations played a key role in the intensity and evolution of many of the 2012 extreme events. However, in several events, the analyses revealed compelling evidence that human-caused climate change was a secondary factor contributing to the extreme event. “This report adds to a growing ability of climate science to untangle the complexities of understanding natural and human-induced factors contributing to specific extreme weather and climate events,” said Karl. “Nonetheless, determining the causes of extreme events remains challenging.”

 

 

Public Banking: The Antidote to Wall Street’s Domination of the Economy – Part 2

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

California Could Solve Its Budget Problems by Starting a Public Bank Like North Dakota Did

The most solvent state in the US is North Dakota which has low unemployment, no budget deficit and a burgeoning economy. The main reason is that the state has a public bank (BND) in which state revenues and pension funds can be invested making it unnecessary to send the money out of the state to Wall Street. All state revenues are deposited in the BND by law. Instead of Wall Street making the profits on North Dakota's money, North Dakota is making the profits.

Instead of paying interest on debt bonds, North Dakota is reinvesting the interest its public bank makes on infrastructure improvements and lowering state income taxes among other things. Whereas private banks are required by law to extract as much in debt service as the market will bear, a public bank can pass on the lower interest rates it has access to to its customers such as public agencies, local businesses and residents. Infrastructure projects are effectively interest free since the bank returns interest on its loans to the state treasury in the form of an annual dividend.

The BND's revenues have been a major boost to the state budget. In the first decade of this century the BND contributed over $300 million to state coffers, a substantial sum for a state with a population one-fifteenth the size of Los Angeles County. In April 2011 the BND reported annual profits of  over $62 million. These profits belong to North Dakota's citizens and they are generated without state income taxes. In fact the BND added nearly as much to the state's general fund from 2007 to 2009 as oil and gas tax revenues did.

As mentioned in Part 1, California could follow North Dakota's lead and start a public bank. The Public Bank of California (PBC) could reap the interest on California's immense pension funds instead of paying interest to Wall Street. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, is the nation’s largest pension fund for government workers. CalSTRS is the pension fund that provides retirement benefits for California's teachers. Together these funds have $400 billion in assets, a huge pot of money which they have been farming out to Wall Street in the hopes of growing this prodigious sum even more. Echoing former New York Mayor Ed Koch, we might ask 'how is Wall Street doing?'

Ellen Brown in her book The Public Bank Solution responds this way:

"Every year from the 2008 banking crisis up through 2012, the BND has reported a return on investment of between 17 percent and 26 percent. Compare that to California's pension funds - CalPERS and CalSTRS - the largest pension funds in the world. From a peak of $260 billion in 2007, CalPERS fell to $160 billion in March 2009, a 37% decline. CalSTRS peaked at $180 billion in October 2007 and dropped to $112 billion in the same period, a 34% decline. They did better in 2011 and 2012, but they are still way below where they were before the crisis. For their questionable performance in managing the CalPERS portfolio, Wall Street firms reported earning $1.1 billion in 2010."

Many pension funds, not just California's, have lost money on Wall Street investing in fancy derivatives.  Many cities have gone bankrupt investing in interest rate swaps. Take San Bernadino and Stockton, for example. Their bankruptcies have let them off the hook for their contributions to CalPERS making that pension fund even worse off. All of this could have been prevented if, instead of farming California municipal and state revenues out to Wall Street, those same revenues could have been invested by a public bank, whether at the state or municipal level. Monies thus invested would not have had to leave the state, would have been earmarked for the benefit of Californians and not subjected to the profit imperatives of Wall Street.

A California public bank could use its power to create credit in many ways. It would have the same power of fractional reserve banking as any other bank. That is it could take in deposits and loan out ten times the amount of those deposits using the deposits as collateral. Instead of paying bond interest to Wall Street, the California public bank (PBC) could use collected interest to pay down its budget deficit. In November 2010 the state of California had outstanding general obligation bonds and revenue bonds of $158 billion. Of that $70 billion was owed just for interest! If California had been funding its debt through its own public bank, the state could have saved that $70 billion which would have been enough to pay its budget deficit several times over. By depositing its revenues and investing its capital on Wall Street, the state is effectively giving this money away to line the pockets of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs.

As a recent example of the fleecing of California by Wall Street consider the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge which just opened recently. The price tag for the new east span jumped from an estimated $1.3 billion in 1996 to $6.3 billion in 2009 to an estimated final price of over $12 billion. due largely to interest on bond debt and other Wall Street finance charges. Commuters will be paying this debt off until at least 2049. Tolls have shot up to $6 during rush hours for regular vehicles and $35 for some trucks. Debt servicing now eats up 55.2% of toll revenue. With a PBC this debt service would be plowed right back into public coffers for the benefit of taxpayers and no toll might be required at all.

Public banking is now under consideration by at least 20 states. Among the states now considering the establishment of a public bank is Pennsylvania. You can check out their website here. This is from their website: "Through partnerships with community banks, credit unions, savings and loans and municipal authorities, public banks inject sustainable and affordable credit into local economies: for business start up and expansion, farmers, students, home buyers and home builders, economic development, infrastructure, assistance to municipalities and  jobs."

It is not just states that can establish public banks. They can be set up by cities and municipalities as well. The City of San Diego could start one. If it did, there might be funds available for such things as improving neighborhoods, fixing potholes, keeping libraries open longer hours, fixing infrastructure such as water lines which burst frequently, more parks and recreation, building adequate facilities for the homeless and many other items. Too bad we just lost a Mayor who might have been interested.

 

 

The Myth of the “Free Market” and How to Make the Economy Work for Us

by Robert Reich

Monday, September 16, 2013                

One of the most deceptive ideas continuously sounded by the Right (and its fathomless think tanks and media outlets) is that the “free market” is natural and inevitable, existing outside and beyond government. So whatever inequality or insecurity it generates is beyond our control. And whatever ways we might seek to reduce inequality or insecurity — to make the economy work for us — are unwarranted constraints on the market’s freedom, and will inevitably go wrong. 

By this view, if some people aren’t paid enough to live on, the market has determined they aren’t worth enough. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of Americans remain unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they work two or three part-time jobs with no idea what they’ll earn next month or next week, that’s too bad; it’s just the outcome of the market.

According to this logic, government shouldn’t intrude through minimum wages, high taxes on top earners, public spending to get people back to work, regulations on business, or anything else, because the “free market” knows best.

In reality, the “free market” is a bunch of rules about (1) what can be owned and traded (the genome? slaves? nuclear materials? babies? votes?); (2) on what terms (equal access to the internet? the right to organize unions? corporate monopolies? the length of patent protections? ); (3) under what conditions (poisonous drugs? unsafe foods? deceptive Ponzi schemes? uninsured derivatives? dangerous workplaces?) (4) what’s private and what’s public (police? roads? clean air and clean water? healthcare? good schools? parks and playgrounds?); (5) how to pay for what (taxes, user fees, individual pricing?). And so on. 

These rules don’t exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments don’t “intrude” on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets aren’t “free” of rules; the rules define them. 

The interesting question is what the rules should seek to achieve. They can be designed to maximize efficiency (given the current distribution of resources), or growth (depending on what we’re willing to sacrifice to obtain that growth), or fairness (depending on our ideas about a decent society). Or some combination of all three — which aren’t necessarily in competition with one another. Evidence suggests, for example, that if prosperity were more widely shared, we’d have faster growth.

The rules can even be designed to entrench and enhance the wealth of a few at the top, and keep almost everyone else comparatively poor and economically insecure. 

Which brings us to the central political question: Who should decide on the rules, and their major purpose? If our democracy was working as it should, presumably our elected representatives, agency heads, and courts would be making the rules roughly according to what most of us want the rules to be. The economy would be working for us.

Instead, the rules are being made mainly by those with the power and resources to buy the politicians, regulatory heads, and even the courts (and the lawyers who appear before them). As income and wealth have concentrated at the top, so has political clout. And the most important clout is determining the rules of the game. 

Not incidentally, these are the same people who want you and most others to believe in the fiction of an immutable “free market.”

If we want to reduce the savage inequalities and insecurities that are now undermining our economy and democracy, we shouldn’t be deterred by the myth of the “free market.” We can make the economy work for us, rather than for only a few at the top. But in order to change the rules, we must exert the power that is supposed to be ours

Sweden Getting 65% of its Energy From Non Fossil Based Fuels NOW!

by John Lawrence and Frank Thomas

Sweden set to get 82% of its energy from non fossil based fuels by 2020

Why is it that other countries can convert from fossil based energy which is destroying the atmosphere and producing global warming to renewables in a relatively short time while the US is lagging way behind? One reason is the lobbying activities of the gas and electric companies to deter individually based solar and wind systems that would detract from the profits generated by their centrally based energy producing systems. Here in San Diego, San Diego Gas and Electric (SDGE) lobbies against any law that would make it profitable for individual homeowners to expand their solar systems and sell their energy back into the grid. SDGE wants the role of selling energy entirely to themselves. And besides they want their ratepayers, not their shareholders, to pay for the decommissioning of the San Onofre nuclear plant.

However, Sweden has done things differently. An article by James Burgess highlights some unique reasons why Sweden has gone from a 75% dependency of fossil fuels in the mid-70s to 35% today. One key factor is that Sweden introduced this culture-changing transition over 22 years ago, as did Germany and Denmark. The incentive came in 1991 when Sweden seriously began taxing carbon to move consumers away from fossil fuels.

In the mid 70s, Sweden got 75% of its energy from fossil based fuels. Their goal is to get only 18% from fossil fuels by 2020. That means that 82% of their energy will be from renewables and nuclear by 2020. This represents enormous progress compared to the meager progress of the US in converting to non fossil based fuels. In the US less than 20% of energy production was from renewables and nuclear in 2010.

Not only Sweden but Germany and Denmark as well are making huge progress towards converting away from polluting carbon based energy production. As the following table shows, Sweden produces 65% of its energy right now from non fossil based fuels:

Table 1: Sweden's % Mix of Total Primary Energy Supply -- 2010

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Oil...................................27%

 

Gas...................................3%

 

Coal..................................5%

 

Sub-Total Fossil Fuels.........35%...vs. Goal 2020 of 18%

 

Nuclear.............................30%...vs. Goal 2020 of 32%

 

Renewables.......................35%...vs. Goal 2020 of 50%

 

GRAND TOTAL.................100%.........................100%

Source

: International Energy Agency -- 2012 Report of Sweden's Energy Outlook

_______________________________________________________________________

 

One of the key elements in Sweden's policy is a carbon tax. In 1991, or 22 years ago, they decided to heavily tax carbon in order to encourage consumers to get away from fossil fuels. The carbon tax system has changed a bit over the years, increasing from $133 per ton to $150 per ton. This forced consumers to pay more but it has been essential to help persuade people to pursue clean energy sources. Then in the 60s, 70s and thereafter, aggressive investments were made in nuclear and especially biomass and hydropower. This early and proactive action to go green (like Denmark and Germany have done) with their own unique mix of sustainable renewables has resulted in dramatic success.

How does Sweden "get 'er done"? This is from Economonitor:

Firstly, thanks to extensive investment beginning in the 50s and 60s, Sweden now generates most of its electricity from hydroelectric and nuclear power plants. And with the recent rise in wind turbine installations, the country now gets over 47% of all consumed energy from renewable sources.

Oil now only accounts for 27% of Sweden’s energy supply, and is constantly falling due to the increased popularity of biofuels. Natural Gas contributes just three percent, and coal is only really used for industrial purposes and is almost unused as a source of electricity generation. The IEA states that “Sweden has the lowest share of fossil fuels in the energy supply mix among IEA member countries.”

This makes US progress to date to a sustainable energy future (with a few exceptions, e.g., California, Vermont) look like the incredible FARCE it truly is! We are nowhere close to Sweden's (nor Germany or Denmark's) sustainable energy transition to zero-and-low-carbon emitting modern energy systems by 2050 nor the strategic clarity of how to get there. Despite the fast move to low-carbon shale gas, the U.S. clearly appears on a path dominated by fossil fuels for decades.

And as we noted in a prior writing, China especially and India are on a world-leading disaster course as far as CO2/Ch4 atmospheric pollution goes. And this in turn has a huge positive feedback on the increasing rate of Arctic permafrost and deep sea ice meltdowns ... potentially releasing earth-threatening massive amounts of CO2 and highly toxic CH4 into the atmosphere.

Elsewhere, Germany has made huge progress in converting to solar based energy production. Their secret is to encourage individual homeowners and farmers to install solar capacity at their places of residence and business. They do this by making it legal for individuals to sell solar produced energy back into the grid and make a profit on their investment unlike here in the US in general and San Diego in particular where SDGE and other energy producing companies have lobbied against the selling of energy back into the grid. Germany does this by means of a feed-in tariff which pays individuals for their energy production. As a result solar farms have sprouted all over Germany.

Since 2000 Germany has converted 25 percent of its power grid to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass. The architects of the clean energy movement Energiewende, which translates to “energy transformation,” estimate that from 80 percent to 100 percent of Germany’s electricity will come from renewable sources by 2050.

Likewise, Denmark is on a mission to remove carbon-polluting fossil fuels entirely by 2050. In March of 2012, Frank wrote:

Remarkably, Denmark already produces 20% of its total energy needs from renewables versus 8% for the U.S. today. Denmark will increase this percentage to 33% by 2020, meeting the EU 2020 target of 30% comprising wind, biomass, biogas, biofuels, solar. The above range of gross energy consumption mixes in 2050 under different energy scenarios are calculated to meet expected energy  demand in 2050 of 600-700 petajoule (PL) per year.

The Danish are not waiting to learn that fossil fuels are a finite global resource. Protecting future energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are driving Denmark’s transition to a new energy strategy, NOW. The country’s planning for fossil fuel independence is thorough, covering  all contingencies – a far cry from our seemingly “business as usual” market approach to energy supply security, environment, and financing policy initiatives. Danish clean energy investments will be offset by lower fossil fuel expenditures and CO₂ reductions and a proposed security of supply tax. Denmark’s Commission on Climate Change Policy sums up the gradual increased pressure on public budgets as the result of tax revenues lost by reduced use of fossil fuels as follows:

“The government’s objective is to be independent of fossil fuels. This has the effect, that fossil fuels that are highly taxed will be replaced by other, more environmentally friendly types of energy taxed at a lower rate and in some cases tax exempt. In order to offset this detrimental effect on tax revenues, other energy taxes may be increased, provided the overall tax burden is not increased.”

In summary, while more progressive nations like Sweden, Germany and Denmark have adopted aggressive policies to get their countries off of dependence on fossil fuels and onto renewables, the US has left energy policy largely to be controlled by the oil and gas industries and their lobbyists at the state and Federal level. That is why here in San Diego consumers can look forward not to being able to solarize their houses and businesses and to selling energy back into the grid but to continuing rate increases as SDGE lobbies the California Public Energy Commission (PUC). They want to be the sole providers of energy for San Diego and in collusion with the heavily lobbied PUC the sole determinant of what energy consumers will pay.

Taking Exception to Exceptionalism

Published on Wednesday, September 18, 2013 by Moyers & Company    

  by  Bernard Weisberger

 

In the speech last week that put on hold his request to Congress to authorize the bombing of Syria’s chemical weapons sites, President Obama — no mean orator himself — faced a familiar orator’s problem. How would he end on a strong and upbeat note while announcing what was in fact a sensible retreat from his “red line” pledge dictated by clear and overwhelming evidence that both Congress and the public at large had no appetite for any more Middle Eastern interventions? How could he still defend America’s assertion of its role as the enforcer of the “civilized world’s” conscience even as he stepped back from the brink?

Other nations, of course, believe much the same thing, but not with the broad sweep of the claim of America, where we do things on a grander scale.

The words he chose nodded in both directions. “America is not the world’s policeman,” he acknowledged. “[I]t is beyond our means to right every wrong.” Then he added: “But when with modest effort and risk ” (something entirely impossible to guarantee) we can stop children from being gassed to death. . . I believe we should act.” But why us alone? That cued the final trumpet flourish. “That’s what makes America different,” said the president. “That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.” Pleased as I was with the outcome and its sequel so far, I couldn’t help thinking of George M. Cohan’s remark that “many a bum show is saved by the American flag.”

For there it was, the magic word, the popular core belief that we are the recipients of God’s special favor. Other nations, of course, believe much the same thing, but not with the broad sweep of the claim of America, where we do things on a grander scale. It is an essential truth, we say, that we are unique in history because prior to the modern age we had no history.

Our national origin myth is that the United States was born in a state of immaculate innocence. Voiced best in the nineteenth century by the popular historian (and loyal Jacksonian Democrat) George Bancroft it ran like this: The discovery of a “New World,” the Renaissance, the Reformation and the “Enlightenment” of the eighteenth century were all overtures to the grand curtain raising on the birth of the United States. One of our christening gifts was a “virgin” continent sheltered by two oceans, ours to possess without obstruction except for the inconvenient presence of heathen savages without the power to resist modern weapons. The other, even more important, was a blank slate, scrubbed clean of the crimes, errors and follies, the wars and oppressions of the past. We could create, unhindered, whatever government we desired. We could invent a national character for ourselves in whatever form we wished.

What might that be? For the Puritan founder of Massachusetts, John Eliot, we were destined to be a “city on a hill,” the eyes of all mankind turned on us as, in his words, “a model of Christian charity.” In the sweeping imagination of Tom Paine, victory in the American Revolution, would give us the freedom to “begin the world anew.” Fourscore and seven years later, Lincoln announced that the Union’s survival in the Civil War was vital to the entire world, because it was an experiment in democracy whose failure would cause the very idea of popular government to perish from the earth.

In those forms, exceptionalism had a positive face. It inspired the signers of the Declaration of Independence to risk their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. It nerved nineteenth century reformers like abolitionists or women’s rights advocates to fight on to victory in the face of contempt, hostile laws and physical assaults. It gave trade unionists the courage to defy the bullets and billy clubs of repression in their struggle for the equal rights to which America’s founding documents entitled them. To progressives it furnished the patience to persist for years in legal and political battles to make real the Preamble to the Constitution’s oft-forgotten promise to “promote the general welfare.” And it shone again in the peaceful struggle of the modern civil rights movement to hold America to its promises.

But exceptionalism has another uglier mask. Its hidden core of arrogance has often turned it into a kind of nationalism-on-steroids that carries with it imperial swagger, the itch to crush dissent at home, and a defiant statement to the world that we’re free to ignore what Jefferson called “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” Re-branded as “Manifest Destiny” it was used to justify unnecessary invasions of Canada and Mexico, the eventual establishment of colonies in the Pacific and a period as the de facto suzerain over the weak governments of the Latin American nations of this hemisphere.

Curiously, both the benign and the sinister interpretations — the Jekyll and Hyde versions, we might say — have something in common, too long and too commonly neglected by our mythmaking historians. Neither of them is true. We have never been as “original” as they claim.

Democracy was not invented here. Neither were capitalism or Protestantism, the distinguishing characteristics of the first British settlers in North America. Even as colonies we were part of a trans-Atlantic culture. Our books and arts, our faiths and our economic practices were imported mainly from Great Britain and Western Europe. The first simmers of revolt here rested on the colonists’ demand for “the rights of Englishmen” gained in the mother country by uprisings a century earlier that had beheaded one king and deposed another. The elite among our Patriot leaders were familiar with the works of the French philosophers who were busily undermining the intellectual foundations of their absolute monarchy. James Madison, often called “the father of the Constitution” for his heroic labors in the Convention, like many fellow members was familiar with the theories and performances of republics in ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy and the Swiss confederation and Dutch republic of their own time. Knowledge like that guided their own choices among the political and practical deals they had to make as, in your own words, the great charter was “hammered, reasoned, shaped, argued, cajoled and compromised into being.”

As for creating a government on a blank slate free of crimes and errors? No way. By 1787 it already had a century and a half of slavery and the theft of Indian land inscribed on it.

That’s not to deny the radicalism of the American Revolution, or the early existence of new and especially American habits of speech and forms of art. Voting into existence a people’s government — even with a limited electorate at first — was a daring leap into unknown seas, bordered by powerful nations still ruled by hereditary absolute monarchs and aristocrats. We were as much a novelty as the new plants and animals that our frontier exploration parties kept bringing home — a process, it’s worth remembering, also going on in other newly “discovered” parts of the world.

But 1787 was two and a quarter centuries ago. The democratic ideal, if not the practice, has long perched its banners over most of the globe. Our own democracy is no longer a lusty infant, but one of the world’s oldest, plainly suffering plutocratic and imperial dysfunctions and in need of a thorough popular overhaul to reclaim its genuineness.

The version of exceptionalism now peddled by tea party fable-makers has already done our economy noticeable harm. It convinces too many. It turns upside down our supposed hospitality to innovation by attempts to seal us off from learning anything from other, younger democracies. Improvements in health care, education, energy conservation — name your cause — are dismissed out of hand as “socialism,” bent on destruction of “the American way.” That kind of head-in-the-sand obstructionism is what we used to deplore in what we called “backward” parts of the globe. And what a useful tool it is for keeping the rich beneficiaries of our current unequal status quo in the top-dog position!

The damage that “unique” America as Dr. Hyde, fortified by a super-sized military establishment, has done is huge. Where once we independent-minded Yankees scoffed at “heel-clicking Prussian militarism,” the media and political establishments of today brag of our “superb” armed forces, while reporters covering Pentagon press conferences, as well as congressional committee members, struggle to outdo each other in deference to the beribboned generals who appear before them.

The international consequences are even worse. At a time when we need the world’s friendship and cooperation, the exceptionalist mindset licenses administrations of both mainstream parties to override the sovereignty of other nations in the interests of our own safety. Think of drones aimed at terrorists (so identified in secret by us alone) in neutral Pakistan or “allied” Afghanistan that take the lives and homes of nearby or mistakenly targeted civilians. Mere “collateral damage” to us, we ignore the scope of their tragic suffering. Think of CIA kidnappings on the streets of foreign cities under the very noses of their own police forces. Think of the symbolic impact of our refusals to sign international treaties banning the use of land mines or child soldiers, or of the special exemptions we demand from prosecution by local law authorities of crimes committed against civilians by our military personnel in the countries where we have bases established. What kind of self-portrait are we painting?

True, almost all nations commit offenses against common decency and common sense in the mindless fervor of war. Our country is not the only sinner or possibly the worst. But “We’re Number One” hyper-patriotism is simply the collective self-admiration of empty minds. It’s not what the American Revolution was fought for. Not what Tom Paine and Lincoln had in mind. The Declaration of Independence only says that we were seeking “the separate and equal station among the nations of the earth” to which the laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitled us.

That’s why I believe that it’s time to let exceptionalism become a creed outworn. It has lingered too long for whatever good it has done. But won’t that bury its positive and creative side?

Not necessarily. We don’t need that particular prop in order to believe that as a nation we should hope to realize the ideals of justice, individual dignity, decency and mercy embodied somewhere in almost all the world’s religions and secular codes of law from ancient times–if not always achieved, at least as goals to aspire to. This would not be the “isolationism” with which critics of our imperial overreach are now being charged. Rather, the effort to design a new moral compass for international relations in a world whose peoples are now more interdependent than ever. One that does not need the “leadership” of a single super-power–not even the United States.

I have no naïve dreams of armies vanishing overnight. But the unchecked violence of our times must be somehow reduced before it destroys any hopes of a decent future for humanity. If the United States would take an active role as a partner in the process, rather than an armed dictator of terms from a lofty perch of morality, it would go far towards restoring the admiration the world long felt for us when our military establishment was tiny and our practice of democracy was robust. Think what fine speeches could be woven around that essential truth.

© 2013 Public Affairs Television, Inc.

      

Bernard A. Weisberger is a historian who has collaborated on several television series with journalist Bill Moyers, including A Walk Through the 20th Century and Report from Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention. They are now working on The Fighting Spirit: The People vs. The Gilded Age.

10 Percent of World's Largest Companies Produce 73 Percent of Greenhouse Gasses

Greenhouse Gases

EcoWatch / News Report

Published: Sunday 15 September 2013 from Nation of Change

 

These 50 firms are responsible for 73 percent of all the greenhouse gas emissions reported by the world’s largest 500 listed companies—which together represent $87 trillion in investments.

Growing pollution at 50 of the world’s biggest-emitting companies threatens to undermine efforts to prevent catastrophic levels of global warming, according to a new report.

A number of key banks and pension funds have recently shifted their financial support away from carbon-intensive assets, particularly dirty fossil fuel projects.

However new research compiled by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and overseen by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) shows that the 50 global firms with the highest greenhouse gas emissions, operating mostly in the energy, utility and materials sectors, have increased their carbon pollution by 1.65 percent to 2.54 billion tons since 2009.

These 50 firms, including Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, Sasol, Arcelor Mittal and RWE, are responsible for 73 percent of all the greenhouse gas emissions reported by the world’s largest 500 listed companies—which together represent $87 trillion in investments.

Paul Simpson, chief executive at CDP said:

Many countries are demonstrating signs of recovery following the global economic downturn. However, clear scientific evidence and increasingly severe weather events are sending strong signals that we must pursue routes to economic prosperity whilst reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. It is imperative that big emitters improve their performance in this regard and governments provide more incentives to make this happen.

Later this month a United Nations scientific advisory body to governments on climate change will reportedly show that more scientists than ever agree it’s “extremely likely” that human activities—such as burning fossil fuels—have been the main cause of climate change since the 1950s.

Delaying climate policy and therefore action to tackle this problem will triple the cost of having to reduce our emissions in the near future, governments learned today.

It is against this scientific and regulatory backdrop, which puts heavy pressure on governments to take climate action, that key financial trend-setters—like the World Bank—are increasingly shifting their support away from high-carbon assets.

Malcolm Preston, global lead, sustainability and climate change at PwC said:

The report underlines how customers, suppliers, employees, governments and society in general are becoming more demanding of business. It raises questions for some organizations about whether they are focused on sustaining growth in the long term, or just doing enough to recover growth until the next issue arises. With the initial IPCC [International Panel on Climate Change] report only weeks away corporate emissions are still rising.

The world’s top 50 firms may be failing to cut emissions at present but Preston warns that “either business action [to cut emissions] increases, or the risk is regulation overtakes them.”

 

To Achieve Economic Democracy- Revolt Is What We Must

OpEdNews Op Eds 8/22/2013 at 02:02:26

By Sam Amer (about the author) from OpEdNews

We have lived in Santa Barbara California for more than 25 years. We saw and felt the enormous social and economic changes that happened in this town and its environs during that period. I just returned from walking up and down State Street, which is the main drag here. What I just saw and felt is what prompted me to write this essay.

Many of the stores we loved in Santa Barbara are no longer there. Those that remain have reduced their stocks significantly, particularly in luxury items. We see "for rent' or "for lease' signs hanging over many storefronts. Scores of beggars are lining the street. Several accosted me asking for small change. These were not the familiar older winos with unkempt beards who are looking for money just to buy more beer, these were younger people and looking for work. Some even asked me if I knew where they might for apply for jobs. These people are desperate and hopeless. Their plight is heart-wrenching.

Clearly, the economy has deteriorated in Santa Barbara. Many other small towns all across America are experiencing a similar state. Yet, the stock market is at its peak and corporate profits are the highest since the 50's. Our economy is also, supposedly, experiencing a turnaround. But where is it happening? I saw few signs of that on State Street. This town, and many others like it, is in economic trouble. The United States maybe the world's greatest economic power, but it is clearly not doing well by its people.

Something is really wrong here. How can we have corporate profits at a 50-year high and at the same time a 50-year high rate of unemployment? How can that be? The corporations are clearly making great profits while employing fewer and fewer people. Anyhow, they clearly are not employing many Americans. The encouraging economic numbers are clearly disguising deep problems.

From the available economic data, it is also clear that the people at the top of the economic pyramid are doing very well while the rest of us are still in an economic recession. The share of income for the richest 1 percent has tripled since 1980 while the income of the rest remained stagnant; real wages in the US stopped growing in the 1970s. The economic pie has clearly shifted with the biggest slice going to the very rich. In short, the rich have sucked the country dry, leaving little crumbs for the rest of us. It also appears that the rich are not interested in solving our problems or employing more Americans; they are mainly interested in renting their money where they can get the most for it.

All you get from the news media these days are great speeches, including a recent one by President Obama, celebrating our economic recovery and how many new jobs are being created. But most of these are part-time jobs not enough to pay the family bills. Often, you also hear concerns about the disappearing middle class. The so-called economic recovery appears to be mostly due to the rise in the stock and bond markets; you don't see it anywhere else. It does not reflect rises in consumer purchasing power or increases in retail sales.

 The stock market is reaching record levels but bulk of the American public is not feeling any relief. The stock market is increasingly driven by the banking industry. The real economy is wracked by consumer fears, falling wages, joblessness, and low-level jobs for a growing number of people who ar e lucky enough to be working. The stock market figures are clearly reflecting the financial status of the wealthy. Most Americans are barely paying their bills and have had to significantly "downsize" their lifestyles.

Unbelievably, many commentators and talking heads are discussing, at length, whether President Obama should appoint a man or a woman to head the Federal Reserve. Such talk is really disgusting. It shows callousness on the part of our leadership towards the needs of the American people. In reality, who gives a care about the sex of the Federal Reserve chairperson or even what that institution does? Clearly, it is not helping the bulk of the American people.

The country's leaders are mainly interested in helping the banks and other large financial institutions. They don't care much about the rest of us. The recovery on Wall Street bears little relationship to what is happening on Main Street. The "human" economy, the one where people live and work and buy products, is suffering even as Wall Street and the stock market boom. The honchos at the top need to come down from their ivory towers and walk the streets and see and feel how the people are actually living. They should talk to real people and not only the rich who don't know, or even care to know, what needs to be done to help the bulk of the American public. They spend their time worrying about haughty international adventures and problems elsewhere. They need to concentrate on what is happening right here in America.

The bulk of American people are stuck in a permanent recession with no way out. Many people are suffering. They are, in many ways, the victims of our lopsided economy.  The upward mobility that made us the envy of the world, and always gave us our hope, is now history. If you are born poor, the chances are that you will remain poor and your children will have no better lives than the one you got.

Meanwhile, Corporations are making record profits. Their main interest is to take advantage of the situation. They have little social conscience. They strive to fleece the public of what money they have left in any way possible. This applies to most sectors of the economy ranging from health care to education to manufacturing. Every time I visit a doctor's office, a clinic or a hospital for example, I feel that I am entering a den of thieves looking for ways to stiff me more and more. Most of what they do is to find ways to exact more money, mostly as unneeded tests, expensive procedures, hospital stays and massive overcharges. The main purpose of these organizations is not your health but their profit.

Our representatives in Congress are failing to represent the needs of the majority. Instead, they mostly represent the interests of those who, through the legal bribes called campaign contributions, ensure their re-election. Being elected to Congress is no longer about public service. It is about enjoying a cushy job (with good health insurance) and joining the class of the rich and famous. It is about having the connections to help your children and those of your friends and associates get better jobs. The rest of us have no one to care for our needs. We are the forgotten majority.

It cannot continue this way. Something must be done. I'm afraid we can't vote our way out of this situation. We really need a revolution to redress the balance and address the needs of the silent majority. We have to force the changes we need. We need to get together, be tough and demonstrate relentlessly for more economic democracy. Masses of Americans need to March on Washington, occupy government buildings and force the passage of the necessary changes in the laws that govern our country. Interestingly, our demands will not differ significantly from those made in the March on Washington fifty years ago where Martin Luther King gave his famous "I have a dream' speech.

We desperately need to equalize our economy. The rich, and very rich, are just a tiny minority. We have the numbers to outvote them. The majority should rule. At a minimum, we should be able to agree on and force changes in the system along the following lines:

1. The government should financially support those earning less than poverty level incomes to bring them up to that level.

2. Any income, from any source, above that level would be taxed at a progressive tax rate the exact level of which would be determined in accordance with the prevailing budget needs.

3. Corporate income would be treated the same way.

4. An inheritance tax of 80-90% should be instituted depending on the size of the inherited fortune.

5. Institute a single payer health care system.

6. Completely remove the influence of money from politics. Advertising and other expenditures by candidates running for office should be controlled and paid for only by the government.

7. Supreme Court Judges should be directly elected rather than appointed by the usually a politically motivated president.

8. Significantly reduce our expensive international entanglements and concentrate our efforts on our own people's welfare.

We need to start a national dialogue and agree on a list of demands. We need to establish a centralized structure to receive and tally those demands. Then, we should demonstrate and march until our demands are met. As we watch the Egyptians struggle to achieve political democracy, we also need a revolution to achieve economic democracy.

As the majority, we should be able to achieve our aims peacefully. This is not going to be easy but it needs to be done for the welfare and better future for all Americans. While the Egyptian revolution is violent and bloody, ours should be carefully peaceful but determined.

Sam Amer is a Retired Pharmacologist with two masters and a Ph.D.            

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author   and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

'Five Minutes to Midnight' as Climate Change Endgame Threatens

Published on Tuesday, September 3, 2013 by Common Dreams       

Irreversible sea level rise, mass species extinction just around the corner unless immediate action is taken, warns UN

  - Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer

UN climate chief Rajendra Pachauri at 2012 COP18 conference (Screenshot / Responding to Climate Change)

The world is running out of time—and fast—to take action on climate change UN climate chief Rajendra Pachauri warned this week, stating, "We have five minutes before midnight."

The warning comes as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is chaired by Pachauri, is set to release its Fifth Assessment climate change report on September 27.

Preceding IPCC reports have been grim, as is expected of the Fifth Assessment. A recently leaked draft of the report showed the scientists are now more convinced than ever that climate change is the result of human activity. According to scientific consensus represented in the report, the impact of climate change could include a sea level rise of nearly three feet by the end of the century, extreme species extinction, higher intensity of droughts, heatwaves and floods, and vast food shortages across the world.

"We may utilize the gifts of nature just as we choose, but in our books the debits are always equal to the credits," Pachauri told a conference for the organization Green Cross International in Geneva on Monday, quoting Mahatma Gandhi.

"May I submit that humanity has completely ignored, disregarded and been totally indifferent to the debits?" he added.

"Today we have the knowledge to be able to map out the debits and to understand what we have done to the condition of this planet," said Pachauri who urged those who would listen to take action immediately before the five minute window closes.

_______________________

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President Obama: The US Should Follow Sweden’s Renewable Energy Lead

Author: James Burgess  ·  September 6th, 2013  ·from EconoMonitor

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama held a meeting and press conference with Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Prime Minister of Sweden, in which he was asked what the US could learn from Sweden. He replied:

“What I know about Sweden, I think, offers us some good lessons. Number one, the work you have done on energy I think is something the United States can and will learn from. Because every country in the world right now has to recognize if we are going to continue to grow and improve our standard of living while maintaining a sustainable planet, we are going to have to change our patterns of energy use. And Sweden I think is far ahead of many other countries.”

That begs the question, why is Sweden so far ahead of other countries, and how can the US benefit?

Firstly, thanks to extensive investment beginning in the 50s and 60s, Sweden now generates most of its electricity from hydroelectric and nuclear power plants. And with the recent rise in wind turbine installations, the country now gets over 47% of all consumed energy from renewable sources.

Think Progress explains that this high level capacity of renewable energy generation was not luck, but the result of a strong desire to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels, which in the mid-70s accounted for nearly 75% of energy.

Oil now only accounts for 27% of Sweden’s energy supply, and is constantly falling due to the increased popularity of biofuels. Natural Gas contributes just three percent, and coal is only really used for industrial purposes and is almost unused as a source of electricity generation. The IEA states that “Sweden has the lowest share of fossil fuels in the energy supply mix among IEA member countries.”

The biggest driver behind the push to increase renewable and clean energy generation was an early carbon tax adopted back in 1991. The carbon tax system has changed a bit over the years, increasing from $133 per tonne to $150 per tonne, and forcing consumers to pay more, and industry less, but it has been essential to help persuade people to pursue clean energy sources, and raise money that the government could invest in developing renewable energy generating capacity.

Daniel Engström, the director of the Forum for Reforms, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability in Sweden, commented that fewer people in Sweden deny the existence of climate change compared to the US, meaning that there is less opposition to investing in renewable energy. He also remarked that because oil is so expensive, and the carbon tax has been effect for such a long time, that no one actually notices it anymore.

And for any of you who think that Sweden has only reached this level of renewable energy development by over investing in one sector at the expense of the rest of the economy, Fred Bergsten, the director emeritus at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, said that, “Sweden has one of the lowest inflation rates in Europe; it runs a budget surplus every year; its corporate tax rates are considerably lower than U.S. rates; and it spends more on research and development, as a share of its economy, than we do.” Whilst the most European economies collapsed in recent years, Sweden managed to thrive economically, proving that economic success does have to go hand in hand with high carbon emissions.

This piece is cross-posted with OilPrice.com with permission.

Happy Anniversary Lehman Brothers, And What We Haven’t Learned about Wall Street Over the Past Five Years

by Robert Reich

Sunday, September 8, 2013                

While attention is focused on Syria, the gambling addiction of Wall Street’s biggest banks is more dangerous than ever.

Five years ago this September, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and the Street hurtled toward the worst financial crisis in eighty years. Yet the biggest Wall Street banks are far larger now than they were then. And the Dodd-Frank rules designed to stop them from betting with the insured deposits of ordinary savers are still on the drawing boards — courtesy of the banks’ lobbying prowess. The so-called Volcker Rule has yet to see the light of day.

To be sure, the banks’ balance sheets are better than they were five years ago. The banks have raised lots of capital and written off many bad loans. (Their risk-weighted capital ratio is now about 60 percent higher than before the crisis.) 

But they’re back to too many of their old habits.

Consider JPMorgan Chase, the largest of the bunch. Last year it lost $6.2 billion by betting on credit default swaps tied to corporate debt — and then lied about it. Evidence shows the bank paid bribes to get certain counties to buy the swaps. The Justice Department is investigating the bank over improper energy trading. That follows the news that the anti-bribery unit of the Security and Exchange Commission is looking into whether JPMorgan hired the children of Chinese officials to help win business. The bank has also allegedly committed fraud in collecting credit card debt, used false and misleading means of foreclosing on mortgages, and misled credit-card customers in seeking to sell them identity-theft products. The list goes on.

JPMorgan’s most recent quarterly report lists its current legal imbroglios in nine pages of small print, and estimates resolving them all may cost as much as $6.8 billion. That’s not much more than a pittance for a company with total assets of $2.4 trillion and shareholder equity of $209 billion.

Which is precisely the point. No company, least of all a giant Wall Street bank, will eschew a chance to make a tidy profit unless the probability of getting caught and prosecuted, multiplied times the amount of any potential penalty, is greater than the expected profits.

Have we learned nothing since September, 2008? Five years ago this month Wall Street almost went under. We bailed it out. Millions of Americans are still suffering the consequences of the Street’s excesses. Yet the Street’s top guns and fat cats are still treating the economy as their own private casino, and raking in even more than before.

The fact is, the giant Wall Street banks are ungovernable — too big to fail, too big to jail, too big to curtail. They should be split up, and their size capped. There’s no need to wait for Congress to do it; the nation’s antitrust laws are adequate to the job. There is ample precedent. In 1911 we split up Standard Oil. In 1982 we split up Ma Bell. The Federal Reserve has authority to do it on its own in any event. (Would Larry Summers take such an initiative?)

Legislation is needed, however, to resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act that once separated commercial banking from casino capitalism. But don’t hold your breath.

Happy fifth anniversary, Wall Street.

Obama’s Political Capital and the Slippery Slope of Syria

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, September 3, 2013                

Even if the President musters enough votes to strike Syria, at what political cost? Any president has a limited amount of political capital to mobilize support for his agenda, in Congress and, more fundamentally, with the American people. This is especially true of a president in his second term of office. Which makes President Obama’s campaign to strike Syria all the more mystifying.

President Obama’s domestic agenda is already precarious: implementing the Affordable Care Act, ensuring the Dodd-Frank Act adequately constrains Wall Street, raising the minimum wage, saving Social Security and Medicare from the Republican right as well as deficit hawks in the Democratic Party, ending the sequester and reviving programs critical to America’s poor, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and, above all, crafting a strong recovery.

Time and again we have seen domestic agendas succumb to military adventures abroad — both because the military-industrial-congressional complex drains money that might otherwise be used for domestic goals, and because the public’s attention is diverted from urgent problems at home to exigencies elsewhere around the globe.

It would be one thing if a strike on Syria was critical to America’s future, or even the future of the Middle East. But it is not. In fact, a strike on Syria may well cause more havoc in that tinder-box region of the world by unleashing still more hatred for America, the West, and for Israel, and more recruits to terrorism. Strikes are never surgical; civilians are inevitably killed. Moreover, the anti-Assad forces have shown themselves to be every bit as ruthless as Assad, with closer ties to terrorist networks.

Using chemical weapons against one’s own innocent civilians is a crime against humanity, to be sure, but the United States cannot be the world’s only policeman. The UN Security Council won’t support us, we can’t muster NATO, Great Britain and Germany will not join us. Dictatorial regimes are doing horrendous things to their people in many places around the world. It would be folly for us to believe we could stop it all.

Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, are now arguing that a failure to act against Syria will embolden enemies of Israel like Iran and Hezbollah, and send a signal to Iran that the United States would tolerate the fielding of a nuclear device. This is almost the same sort of specious argument — America’s credibility at stake, and if we don’t act we embolden our enemies and the enemies of our allies — used by George W. Bush to justify toppling Saddam Hussein, and, decades before that, by Lyndon Johnson to justify a tragic war in Vietnam.

It has proven to be a slippery slope: Once we take military action, any subsequent failure to follow up or prevent gains by the other side is seen as an even larger sign of our weakness, further emboldening our enemies.

Hopefully, Congress will see the wisdom of averting this slope.

Has Assad Crossed a Red Line In Syria?

 by Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

 SEPT 4. 2013

Is the Gassing of 1400 Syrians More of a Crime Against Humanity Than the Slaughter of 100,000 Syrians?

Frank's take:                                                                                           

Russia’s ongoing multi-dollar sales of advanced massively destructive weapons to Assad’s government has exacerbated the killing fields in Syria. Yet Russia sanctimoniously thinks the rest of the world, namely the U.S., has no right of humanitarian intervention to protect the lives of innocents being slaughtered by chemical weapons and more so by Russia’s own prolific arms sales to Assad’s military forces.                       

Russia would remind us that for many years (1980-88) Saddam Hussein’s army blatantly used mustard and nerve gases at will against Iran and even the people of Iraq. Foreign Policy has just published CIA documents confirming Washington and other western nations knew of Iraq’s production and use of chemical gases and even delivered some raw materials. In fact, the U.S. incredibly falsely accused Iran of using chemical weapons. Super-hypocritically, we and others set the Iraq precedent that a tyrant government leader, no manner how barbarous, can use chemical gases so long as his tyrannical regime is on the right side of western interests.      

Not surprisingly, Russia has been militarily supporting other Middle-East countries (e.g., Iran) as has also the U.S. This is the ‘business as usual’ regional power balancing and containment actions that have been going on for decades in international affairs. Does this mean there’s a moral obligation to standby idly given our history of arming strategically compatible nations and dictators – while closing our eyes to the perverse crimes against humanity committed by those same nations? Is the chemical gassing of people any more of a reason for a western humanitarian intervention than the extraordinary killing of over 100,000 Syrians? The U.S. moral dilemma is self-evident as we have been profitably making the Middle East a transfer station for sophisticated military technology and deadly weapons (e.g., to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya,Iraq) for quite some time.

The moral corruption and hypocrisy in foreign military interventions is deep and pervasive … with all sides participating in the malignant, cynical game of “aiding and abetting preferred or perceived least evil partner” in internal wars and civil conflicts. Over time, this has made it impossible for the general public to distinguish truth and justice or high noble ground from the pure, self-serving power plays and their inhuman, destabilizing side effects.

Of course, this adversarial culture in foreign affairs opens a wide gate for outright lies, deception, beguiling war mongering, promoting questionable military adventures by national leaders – people adept at selling the next foreign societal-engineering fantasy. This is done often under the hype of a national security threat no matter how remote or ill-defined.

It’s about merciless, manipulative power maneuvers with a hierarchical elite claiming a monopoly on moral righteousness and justice … while giving a “treasure trove” to war industry contractors whose morality is seeded in pure money-making funded by an unlimited government budget for weaponry.

And yet here we are in America with one of the world’s worst poverty rates and health care
systems, a very mediocre pre-college education standard, and an economic system that’s systematically gutting middle class purchasing power and decent job progress. In waging wars or military interventions, we are a MASTER … and MONEY is no limit. In waging social-economic equity and job opportunities while stopping the use of our atmosphere as a dumping ground for greenhouse gas emissions, we are a FAILURE … for which MONEY is limited.

Despite admitting all this, I’m prepared to compromise my own conscience that says resorting to war to solve extremely complex societal problems – rooted in centuries-old religious/cultural hatred and tyrannical leaders – is INSANE!  BUT, Syria’s (to be proven) blatant opening up
of a precedent for using  chemical and biological weapons (similar to Iraq’s use that was comfortably ignored) along with Syria’s bulging surfeit of advanced destructive weaponry from Russia is morally heinous.

I would join those that sanction employing a non-foot soldier military humanitarian intervention against Assad’s regime providing following conditions are met. Ironically, I have some company as even Russia has signed an international protocol against using chemical and biological weapons!

The following conditions for sanctioning military force against Syria probably don’t differ significantly from those of the world public today:

• If, and ONLY IF, UN inspectors came forth with incontrovertible proof of Assad’s responsibility for using chemical gas in the killing of over 1400 adults and children;  the U.S. Congress agreed with the UN inspector findings and other transparent evidence; and there’s a reasonably broad coalition of support (possibly including Russia if proof of Assad’s complicity is there),  would I
  reluctantly support a U.S. decision to undertake a surgically targeted air strike on Syria’s chemical gas production/storage sites and on Syria’s ground to air missile/bomb weaponry that projects chemical gases.

I use the “if conditional hypothetical or unlikely clause form” because I’m skeptical the UN inspectors will come up with conclusive proof of Assad’s responsibility for conducting genocidal chemical warfare – proof that is credible to the world community. Besides, wouldn’t Assad be out-of-his-mind to use chemical gases now given the world uproar? Western military retribution would be quick and deservedly savage.                                                                                              

A “small tick attack” action will be futile … and will certainly not impress Assad nor bring peace closer in the Holy Land. Same applies even more so to a “big tick attack” action, likely killing many innocent people. This could well trigger a regional fuse bomb in the Middle East. Neither Obama nor U.S. credibility will grow just by “doing something” as a punishment whereby it’s not clear what good it does or what the consequences thereof are. This would be too stupid for words – and almost idiotic without a reasonably broad coalition of support.                                                                                                  

Given these risks and assuming evidence is inconclusive as to  Assad’s responsibility for chemical gas warfare against his own people, then other than aggressively arming the “correct” rebels, the negotiating table remains the only SANE option.

We shall see!

Frank
Thomas                                                                                                                 
The Netherlands   

John’s
Addendum:

President Obama is somewhat in a bind having declared his intention to militarily intervene in Syria prior to Britain’s backing out of supporting him. Originally, he planned to bypass Congressional approval similar to other US presidents’ precedents, but then, finding himself out on a limb, going it alone, he decided that he had to have some one or some entity in the world supporting his decision for military action and so decided that it would have to be Congress after all.

This creates a sticky wicket for Obama. If Congress votes not to support him, he would either have to really go it alone or else look foolish by backing down and saying in effect that he had been overruled. Thus he would look weak and silly. This is Obama’s dilemma. The best outcome for Obama would be that Congress votes to support him, but when has Congress, especially the Tea Party controlled House, ever been willing to support him? This is the perfect chance for what the Tea Party has sought to accomplish all along – to make Obama look weak and silly and place him in a precarious, untenable position. Therefore, I predict, John Boehner’s declared support of Obama notwithstanding, that the majority in the House will not vote to support Obama. Of course the Democratic controlled Senate, absent the filibuster, probably will. But on this point is the filibuster moot?

As for Obama’s rationale to “spank” Assad, the chemical weapon attack upon civilians, as bad as it was, has not seemed to be the moral imperative for military action as far as the rest of the world is concerned. Military action as envisioned by Obama probably will do little or nothing to dissuade or hamper Assad. The sad fact is that modern warfare has evolved into a situation where the ratio of civilian to participant deaths continues to increase. It comes as no shock that more and more civilians are being slaughtered as deplorable as that is. There is not that much moral difference between a civilian death from a gas attack or a civilian death by any other means. And in modern warfare children are not spared as distasteful as it is. Therefore, a peaceful negotiated settlement is by far the superior solution, chemical weapons or no.

As far as the rationale that Assad is gassing his own people, what is meant by “his own people.” Most of the people being killed are Sunnis and Assad is an Alawite. Again the power structure of a middle eastern country is an ethnic minority while the majority of the people and those being killed are an ethnic majority. Assad is not killing his own people but another ethnic group and there is no love lost
between the two groups. That much should be made clear but the simple minded want to outrage us by declaring Assad is killing “his own people.”

No American interests are threatened by civil war in Syria. However, if the US gets involved, no matter how surgically, this will probably create a larger war in the  Middle East because of all the
entangling alliances involved. For instance, the alliance between Assad  and Iran, who are Shiites, no friends to the Sunnis of Syria, could come into play. And it gives all of the hostile forces involved a greater incentive for attacking Israel. A surgical attack against the Assad regime by the US will not go unresponded to in ways that could create a greater Middle East conflagration that would necessarily precipitate a greater US involvement. The lesson is that surgical strikes do not necessarily remain surgical. One thing leads to another and then another and another.

A better solution would be to send massive humanitarian aid to the Syrian refugees now flooding the borders and even in helping Syrian citizens trapped within Syria who would like nothing better than to get out. On this Obama could conceivably get the rest of the world to rally around a US led effort. A military solution no matter how limited is like opening a can of worms.

A Decade of Flat Wages: The Key Barrier to Shared Prosperity and a Rising Middle Class

By Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz | August 21, 2013

Briefing Paper #365

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The nation’s economic discourse has finally shifted from talk of “grand bargain” budget deals to a focus on addressing the economic challenges of the middle class and those aspiring to join the middle class. Growing the economy from the “middle out” has become the new frame for discussing economic policy. This is long overdue; in our view, an economy that does not provide shared prosperity is, by definition, a poorly performing one. Further, such an economy will not provide sustainable growth without relying on consumption fueled by asset bubbles and escalating household debt. The collapse of the housing bubble and the ensuing Great Recession have laid bare the consequences of this model of unbalanced growth.

The revived discussion of strengthening the middle class, however, has so far failed to drill down to the central problem: The wage and benefit growth of the vast majority, including white-collar and blue-collar workers and those with and without a college degree, has stagnated, as the fruits of overall growth have accrued disproportionately to the richest households. The wage-setting mechanism has been broken for a generation but has particularly faltered in the last 10 years, once the robust wage growth of the late 1990s subsided. Corporate profits, on the other hand, are at historic highs. Income growth has been captured by those in the top 1 percent, driven by high profitability and by the tremendous wage growth among executives and in the finance sector (for more on wage and income growth among the top 1 percent, see Bivens and Mishel 2013).

President Obama’s July 24 speech in Galesburg, Ill., marking the kickoff of the White House’s “A Better Bargain for the Middle Class” initiative, illustrates both the best of this recent focus on the middle class and the failure to adequately acknowledge and address the economy’s failure to broadly raise wages. The president appropriately looked back in time, noting:

In the period after World War II, a growing middle class was the engine of our prosperity. Whether you owned a company, swept its floors, or worked anywhere in between, this country offered you a basic bargain—a sense that your hard work would be rewarded with fair wages and benefits, the chance to buy a home, to save for retirement, and, above all, to hand down a better life for your kids.

And he correctly identified what broke down:

But over time, that engine began to stall. That bargain began to fray. . . . The link between higher productivity and people’s wages and salaries was severed—the income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, while the typical family’s barely budged.

However, when it came to strengthening the middle class, the president was too optimistic. Aside from advocating an increase in the minimum wage, the president overlooked what it will take to solve the wage problem, saying:

With new American revolutions in energy, technology, manufacturing, and health care, we are actually poised to reverse the forces that have battered the middle class for so long, and rebuild an economy where everyone who works hard can get ahead.

Innovations in energy, technology, manufacturing, and health care are undoubtedly important. However, in and of themselves, they will not reestablish the broad-based wage growth and improved job quality needed to generate and sustain middle-class income growth. Nor will they, on their own, permit access to a rising middle class for those now left behind.

EPI’s The State of Working America, 12th Edition (Mishel et al. 2012) provides a comprehensive assessment of recent decades’ wage and benefits trends and an extensive analysis of the causes of wage stagnation and wage inequality. In this paper we document the economy’s continuing failure to provide real wage gains for most workers. We track wage trends (and, where possible, compensation trends, which include not just wages but also fringe benefits such as health care and pensions) using both employer-based and household-based survey data. We focus primarily on trends since 2007, the year the Great Recession began. We generally examine year-over-year trends using calendar years, though to assess the most recent trends we also include year-over-year trends using just the first half of each year. We also discuss these trends in the context of patterns since 2000, as the 2000–2007 business cycle—and especially the recovery years of that business cycle, 2002–2007—were characterized by dismal wage growth. In some cases we provide data going back to 1979, as most workers have experienced weak wage growth for more than three decades.

This paper’s key findings include:

• According to every major data source, the vast majority of U.S. workers—including white-collar and blue-collar workers and those with and without a college degree—have endured more than a decade of wage stagnation. Wage growth has significantly underperformed productivity growth regardless of occupation, gender, race/ethnicity, or education level.
• During the Great Recession and its aftermath (i.e., between 2007 and 2012), wages fell for the entire bottom 70 percent of the wage distribution, despite productivity growth of 7.7 percent.
• Weak wage growth predates the Great Recession. Between 2000 and 2007, the median worker saw wage growth of just 2.6 percent, despite productivity growth of 16.0 percent, while the 20th percentile worker saw wage growth of just 1.0 percent and the 80th percentile worker saw wage growth of just 4.6 percent.
• The weak wage growth over 2000–2007, combined with the wage losses for most workers from 2007 to 2012, mean that between 2000 and 2012, wages were flat or declined for the entire bottom 60 percent of the wage distribution (despite productivity growing by nearly 25 percent over this period).
• Wage growth in the very early part of the 2000–2012 period, between 2000 and 2002, was still being bolstered by momentum from the strong wage growth of the late 1990s. Between 2002 and 2012, wages were stagnant or declined for the entire bottom 70 percent of the wage distribution. In other words, the vast majority of wage earners have already experienced a lost decade, one where real wages were either flat or in decline.
• This lost decade for wages comes on the heels of decades of inadequate wage growth. For virtually the entire period since 1979 (with the one exception being the strong wage growth of the late 1990s), wage growth for most workers has been weak. The median worker saw an increase of just 5.0 percent between 1979 and 2012, despite productivity growth of 74.5 percent—while the 20th percentile worker saw wage erosion of 0.4 percent and the 80th percentile worker saw wage growth of just 17.5 percent.

Trends in average hourly wages and compensation in employer-based surveys

We first look at wage and compensation trends using data drawn from the available surveys of employers, sometimes referred to as establishment data. All of the establishment-based series that provide up-to-date national measures of wage and/or compensation trends are presented in Table 1.

It should be noted that the wage and compensation data in this table are averages, which are all that are available in the establishment data. Averages can be misleading when data are heavily “skewed” at one end. This happens to be the case for U.S. wages and compensation; those at the top have extremely high earnings, thereby pulling up the average. Thus, the average is actually not an accurate measure of the typical worker’s earnings. Later, when we turn to an examination of household data, we are able to look at medians, which are a direct measure of the earnings of the typical worker (i.e., the person in the middle of the distribution). The data demonstrate, however, that across all of the available establishment-based measures, even average wages and compensation have grown anemically, if at all, for more than a decade.

Why Walmart’s Response to my Petition Is Brutally Irrelevant

by Robert Reich

Friday, August 30, 2013                

Yesterday a Walmart spokesman criticized the petition I’ve been circulating that asks Walmart (and McDonalds) to pay their employees at least $15 an hour.

Walmart’s spokesman told the Huffington Post that my petition fails to mention that Walmart is a major job creator and that it promotes some of its employees.

The spokesman is correct. In fact, Walmart is America’s biggest employer. And I’d be shocked if some of its employees weren’t promoted.

But the brute fact is Walmart’s typical employee is still paid less than $9 an hour.

To offer lousy jobs on such an extraordinary scale is not something to brag about. Indeed, the point of the petition — as well as the national movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour — is to recognize that most people who work for big-box retailers like Walmart, as well as those who work in the fast-food industry, are adults. They are responsible for bringing home a significant share of their family’s income. A decent society requires they be paid enough to lift them and their families out of poverty.

When Martin Luther King, Jr., led the March to Washington for Jobs and Justice, fifty years ago this week, one of the objectives of that March was to raise the minimum wage to $2 an hour. $2 an hour in 1963, adjusted for inflation, comes to over $15 an hour in today’s dollars. Walmart doesn’t come close to the American dream.