Quick Hits & 1 Long Hit 5/6/08
The Climate Security Act needs to be strengthened. You can use the League of Conservation Voter’s action page to request your Senators to do so.
Oil hit $122 per barrel in trading today. That’s double what it was one year ago. That’s more pressure exerted on families’ budgets.
Buyout billionaire Henry Kravis saved $96 million through tax loopholes in 2006 alone. That’s just one buyout billionaire, in one year, making use of one loophole (tax evasion scheme)! Just think how much these private equity crooks are costing taxpayers who are already battling financial hardships and home foreclosures. BraveNewFilms has a video about this and a request for the presidential candidates to close the buyout industry’s tax evasion scheme.
The Bush “administration” has lost 400 employee laptops that conduct delicate, often secret, diplomatic relations with foreign countries, an internal audit has found.
Ironically, the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program is administered by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS), which is responsible for the security of the department’s computer networks and sensitive equipment, including laptops, among other duties.
These are the same idiots who want to convince Americans they can responsibly handle access to information about the lives of Americans while demanding no Congressional oversight. HAHAHAHAHA! I don’t know what’s worse though: the above or the fact that Rep. Steny Hoyer and others are still willing to grant retroactive immunity to proven lawbreaking telecommunications corporations.
Analysts are reportedly torn over what an energy windfall profits tax would do. A few things here: corporations were given tax breaks by President Bush and Congress. Now that Democrats want the breaks to expire, what are Republicans and corporations calling the action? That’s correct: a tax increase. They’re spinning it like the tax was never before applied and woe to the poor corporations that are earning profits in the billions every quarter.
Re-applying fair taxes on the oil corporations could provide long-overdue dollars to renewable energy research and development. There needs to be a much larger focus on the development side of things. Technologies exist to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions - we need to help drive them into the marketplace more efficiently.
If oil corporations raise gas prices to regenerate their ridiculous profits, a majority of consumers will not blame the government. It would be clear at that point which entity was really responsible for excessive prices.
Pro-corporate analysts in the article bring up the fact that Google has a profit margin of 25% while oil corporations have profit margins closer to 10% and nobody is recommending a windfall profits tax on Google. Can you point to an example of how you or your family is paying more for goods because of Google? Oil corporations are directing more of their profits to buying back their stock, enriching stock holders. They should be directing that money to developing refining capacity. They’ve ignored refineries for decades and we’re paying the price for that short-sightedness at the pump.
Of course, the ultimate ideological argument has to be presented: government shouldn’t force movement of monies to R&D, the “free-market” should. The Heritage Foundation gets a nod in the article, with David Kreutzer asking if the government could take this capital and do a better job investing it than shareholders can. David and others aren’t willing to recognize that shareholders haven’t been able to make the correct decisions in the past generation. They’re only interested in further enriching themselves and the rest of us get to suffer for it: high gas prices, geopolitical instability and occupying the Middle East are only a few examples.
I, for one, have no more patience for these greedy vampires. The “free-market” has been unable to act in the interests of our society’s citizens. Taxes need to be reapplied to oil corporations and the richest Americans. They need to invest their fair share into our nation’s infrastructure and long-term interests.
May 6, 2008 at 8:07 pm
“Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.” Dr. Phil Chapman wrote in The Australian on April 23. “All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.”
Chapman neither can be caricatured as a greedy oil-company lobbyist nor dismissed as a flat-Earther. He was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology staff physicist, NASA’s first Australian-born astronaut, and Apollo 14’s Mission Scientist.
http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/32821
May 6, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I’ll dismiss anyone who uses silly terminology like “true believers”. Belief is for religion. Understanding is for science. I understand the data and the science behind climate change. Dr. Chapman seems unable to do so. Case in point: the Earth’s average temperature has not been steady or falling in the past decade. It’s 0.3C warmer than in was 10 years ago. Look at the actual data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007
8 out of the 10 warmest years on record occurred in the past 10 years:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/news/cc_global_variability_figures.html#g_a_r_temp
The effect of sunspots has been greatly over-hyped by the denyer crowd. It’s been debunked.
The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a recorded history low last year. The volume of ice is at an all time low - one reason why the record melt last summer occurred.
It’s funny how opinion pieces like this point out anecdotal cases don’t prove anything, yet they cite them anyway. That’s a stupid way to argue something.
The Nature article never stated that global warming was stopping until 2015. Instead of reading opinion pieces by ideological hacks, I recommend reading the article.
By the way, the author of the opinion piece was written by Deroy Murdock, a media fellow with the Hoover Institution. The Hoover Institution has received $295,000 in funding from ExxonMobil alone in just the past nine years. People like Deroy are paid to spread climate change disinformation to the public. It looks like he’s earning his over-sized paychecks.