Citizens Against Taxing Big Oil

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. – (attributed to) Abraham Lincoln

One evening I was watching the news minding my own business when I was astonished by what I saw. It was an ad paid for and produced by the American Petroleum Institute or API. API is the main trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. According to the commercial which depicted what appeared to be ordinary Americans upset because the Congress is considering raising the taxes on the industry by 80 billion dollars in the 2011 budget. According to these ordinary Americans raising taxes during a recession on anyone is bad policy. This rationale sounds eerily familiar to the rhetoric being used to justify keeping the Bush tax cuts. It is this type of blatant propaganda that must be exposed for what it is.

What is amazing to me is that we have all read how energy company profits have been at all-time highs for the last decade. Each quarter they set new record highs not just for energy companies but for all corporations. So with all of these record profits you would think that these concerned energy titans would be using that money to research and develop new cleaner energy technologies right? Wrong. Many of these companies are using less than 1% of their income to research new clean energy technologies. Most of them are using these enormous profits to buy back their stock and thus insuring even larger profits in the future. So at the end of this decade of record profits we are to assume that taxing these companies is going to wreck the economy and kill 400,000 jobs?

We as Americans through the work of our political leaders have been subsidizing an industry that continues to make money hand over fist. We do this not only in paying higher energy bills but also through subsidies to this industry.

All of this political gamesmanship aside, consumers have good reason to be angry. Not only are the oil companies racking up extraordinary profits, they’re doing it while continuing to enjoy generous tax breaks and economic subsidies paid for by the same people who are also paying exceptionally high prices at the pump. Essentially, consumers end up paying oil companies twice for the same product, first subsidizing their production and then buying the finished product at inflated prices. – Larry West

So let me get this straight, the people who are being gouged are upset because the people who are gouging them are going to have pay taxes on these record profits and lose some of the subsidies they don’t need in the first place. How stupid do they take us for? I thought the ad about an energy company being in the people business was bad, but this one sets a new low. The thing that troubles me the most about this ad is that the people being interviewed obviously have no clue who the tax would impact. One woman states that some people are barely hanging on so raising taxes would be a burden. I agree if the tax was for ordinary working people but this tax is on an industry where the top 5 companies made over 550 billion dollars under the Bush administration and has not slowed down since. Are we to assume that the oil industry is just barely hanging on? If it weren’t so dishonest it would be almost comical.

We as a nation I believe will not get serious about clean energy until we make it too painful to continue down the path we are on. Unfortunately humans respond best to two stimuli; pain and fear. Most of the countries that are pioneering clean energy and sustainability are doing so because they had to. Until gas prices reach about $5 a gallon we will continue our urban sprawl with bigger and more congested highways, we will continue to refuse to develop and implement clean energy sources for providing energy to our homes and businesses, and we will ignore rail and other transportation alternatives. The truth is that gas prices will reach $5 the question then becomes do we allow the profits to go to an industry that has repeatedly shown it has no desire to provide clean sustainable energy or do we create a self-imposed tax that will be used to fund the switch to clean energy? How can we expect an industry with little or no incentive to develop the clean energy technologies we need?

Following the oil embargo of 1973 the nation of Iceland embarked on a radical and massive shift in its energy policy. Because the cost of fuel had skyrocketed they made the calculated determination that they would begin to seek alternative fuel sources and conservation. The people of Iceland created a self-imposed tax on oil to fund their transformation to renewable energy and today are reaping the benefits. So while we went left (change suppliers), they went right (reducing dependency and alternative sources). So while they now enjoy the freedom of renewable energy we are still being held hostage by foreign governments (many of whom are hostile to us) through our big oil companies. History has shown us that we will not develop sustainable energy policy until the last drop of oil is gone. The problem with that strategy is by that time it will be too late.

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun. - Ralph Nader

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Republicans & Big Pharma

(By my count, there are still 24 Republicans in the Senate who voted for the drug benefit, including such alleged conservatives as Jim Bunning and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, John Cornyn of Texas, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Orrin Hatch of Utah and Jon Kyl of Arizona.) - Bruce Bartlett

While hypocrisy is not confined to one political party or the other what the Republican senators who are now defending Medicare and fiscal responsibility are doing is beyond the norm even by Washington standards. The Republicans who were standing at the podium with Senator John McCain should have been ashamed. While Senator McCain can stand up and say that he opposed the Medicare Part B plan and voted against it many of his Republican counterparts supported the largest public giveaway in decades. Medicare Part B was George W. and Karl Rove’s attempt to buy the seniors for the 2004 election by providing unfunded prescription drug coverage to seniors.

Not only did they simply attach it to a federal budget that went from a surplus to record deficits they also provided the pharma industry with millions of new customers without requiring any cost reductions or anyway to pay for it. For these same senators to now claim to be fiscal conservatives is laughable. Senator McCain is once again displaying why his “Country First” campaign slogan was empty rhetoric by allowing members of his own party to stand behind him as if they had shared his concerns about the Medicare legislation. If Mr. McCain was the “maverick” he claims to be he would speak out against the hypocrisy being displayed by his fellow senators. It is one thing to be against legislation that is seeking to be budget neutral on philosophical grounds, but not if you voted for the Medicare Part B legislation.

Somewhere in a cave between Louisiana and Mississippi some Republican strategist came up with the strategy that the way you prevent spending on social and domestic issues is by bankrupting the federal coffers through tax-cuts, fighting two wars, and drug giveaways. The thing we have to remember is that by starving social programs there are groups who benefit. If you can reduce the number of middle and low income kids going on to college then your kids have a better opportunity to attend a prestigious college and in turn you reduce the number of graduates that your kids will have to compete against for jobs. The same can be demonstrated for healthcare, jobs, and many other social programs that could benefit the masses. It plays out in the healthcare debate by rationing care to those who are unable to afford the high cost of health insurance thus insuring better healthcare for those who can.

Once again the Republicans are demonstrating their utter lack of regard for average Americans by attempting to block legislation that would begin to free Americans from the yoke that the insurance companies have placed around our national necks. To turn what is clearly a moral issue into a financial issue after you have given away the whole barn would be farcical if it wasn’t so criminal. The way you balance the budget is by spending all of the money? I guess it’s like the joke we had in college for balancing our checkbooks, “You’re not out of money until you run out of checks.” The Republicans have not only run out of money and checks but have also run out credibility.

How are these hypocrites being allowed to stand before the American people without the media presenting the complete story is unconscionable? The American people deserve a media that is willing to call out the hypocrites publicly especially on issues of this magnitude instead of this false objectivity that all voices are equal and all seek what’s best for the majority when in fact this is not true. It is one thing to be against legislation on principal, but you can’t selectively apply these principles when you are in or out of power. If when you were in power not only did you not hold your party to these principles, but you violated those principles you now hold up as sacrosanct then how sacred can these principles be? A famous Republican once stated that the definition of hypocrisy is the man who murders both parents and then ask the court for leniency because he is an orphan. This appears to be the strategy of the current Republican party they were against Medicare before they were for Medicare before they were against it and then for it, etc. etc. How ironic it is to see Republican lawmakers claiming that they are the defenders of a program they have for decades sought to eliminate.

Hypocrite: the man who murdered both his parents... pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan. - Abraham Lincoln

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Is Anyone Ever Ready

Is anyone ever ready to be President? I submit that no one short of an incumbent and maybe not even then is ever ready to immediately be President. I have never understood this false narrative that has been promoted by different candidates, pundits, and news media outlets that anyone who has never been President is ready to be President. Can anyone tell me that any of our past Presidents were actually ready to be commander in chief? How can one prepare for the unknown?

So, if no one can be prepared to be President how then are we to choose who shall lead us. According to McCain and the Republicans it should be based on experience. I would like to examine this notion for a moment. Based on their argument the best President would be the one who brings the most experience. So does history bear out this theory? The good thing about America is that we have history that can be reflected upon-though all too often it isn’t-we can test theories based on past experience. If we choose we can explore and examine the narratives that are presented to us. Maybe if we had exercised a little more due diligence we wouldn’t have had to suffer through the past 8 years.

The conventional wisdom is that the best Presidents were the ones with the most experience, so does the empirical data bear that out? Well based on the experience factor the two Presidents with the most experience would be Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, and James Buchanan. Let’s look at the records of two of these three men and see if the conventional wisdom is right. The Presidencies of these two men should prove once and for all that experience is over-rated. James Buchanan was arguably the worst President prior to George W. Bush. He stood by and watched this nation rip itself apart prior to the Civil War and sided with slave owners. In the case of Buchanan the case is clear that his experience did not translate into greatness or even adequacy in the office of the Presidency.

President Johnson was also considered experienced after serving decades in the Senate. His Presidency began with much promise and ended in agony, with all of his experience he was unable to extricate the country from Vietnam and watched as it tore our nation apart. He left office a defeated and demoralized man. At the time of his ascendancy to the Presidency no one had more power and connections than President Johnson, yet despite all of these things he allowed external events to define his Presidency.

Arguably the greatest President in American history Abraham Lincoln had the shortest experience resume of any President. Abraham Lincoln served 8 years in the Illinois legislature and one term in the U.S. House (1847-1849), a decade before becoming President. The rest of the time he was a lawyer in private practice. By today’s standards he wouldn’t even be considered as a viable contender, he would be laughed off any ticket in America. Yet despite his thin resume he proved that he was more than up for the job. When many others would have cowered and done nothing he demonstrated a commitment and strength of character that no amount of years in Washington could have provided and stood strong when faced with tremendous pressure.

I submit that rather than experience the more important characteristics are temperament and character in making a good or even great President. The sad thing about the election process in America is that these two traits are rarely if ever discussed. If they had been there is no way we would have had George W. Bush even near the Oval Office let alone occupy it. Not only are they rarely discussed by the media, but even rarer by the candidates and the electorate. We must discontinue allowing others to define the issues and what constitutes someone who is electable.

There is no preparation for the Presidency despite the false narratives. Preparation for the Presidency is the same preparation for any other important position in this country. It is the totality of our life experiences; it is our sense of ourselves and our place in the world that prepares us for life. Instead of our continuing to be misled with the deeply rooted game of bait and switch that characterizes our electoral process we must look beyond the Madison Avenue sales pitch and look into the hearts of these men. What do they stand for and what do they believe in, if anything. These are the questions we should be seeking answers to, what lies in their hearts not what lies in their ads. We all know what lies are in their ads.

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George W. Bush is Abraham Lincoln?

I am afraid I owe President Bush an apology. All this time I thought he was Herbert Hoover and now come to find out he is really Abraham Lincoln according to Vice-President Cheney. Here is what I don’t understand, you have Dick Cheney and his ilk making preposterous claims like this unchallenged but when a black man, even a respected minister calls America on its hypocrisy they are lambasted. I am in no way condoning the statements of Pastor Wright, but I have to point out the inconsistency being displayed. The fact that Dick Cheney made this statement should enrage all men of conscious and it dishonors the memory of Abraham Lincoln as well as the men who died in one of our nations darkest hours. President Lincoln must have just rolled over in his grave at this one.

Cheney compared the administration's task now to Abraham Lincoln's during the Civil War. ''He never would have succeeded if he hadn't had a clear objective, a vision for where he wanted to go, and he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the political wars in order to get there,'' Cheney said of Lincoln in an interview broadcast Wednesday on ABC's ''Good Morning America.''[1]

Having dispatched my crack research staff to review the comparison in the event I may have overlooked some hidden similarities, they returned with the following results. George Bush and Abraham Lincoln share these two common traits both are white males and Republican Presidents. So following that logic every white male Republican President could be Abraham Lincoln, this is how low the bar is to clear to be compared with who many consider to be one of our greatest Presidents. So Richard Nixon is also Abraham Lincoln. According to Dick Cheney because Lincoln presided over an unpopular war and Bush is also presiding over an unpopular war they are comparable. I personally find the comparison of the Civil War with the Iraq War a travesty. How could anyone in their right mind draw any similarities between the two, unless Mr. Cheney is finally conceding that what we have in Iraq is a civil war. In which case his acknowledgment of this fact would be the closet thing we have had to date of honesty on his behalf.

No Mr. Cheney the are a few distinctions between the war that was thrust upon Lincoln and the war created by you and Bush. Lincoln did not invade a sovereign nation on the pretense of WMD’s or support for 9/11 terrorists. Claims which were later to be proved false. To compare ousting Saddam Hussein with ending slavery is ludicrous and once again displays how far from reality Dick Cheney has gone. So, it is ok for the Vice-President of the US to make these types of statements but we are going to fall apart as a nation because of the comments of a black pastor that before this incident few people even knew? Give me a break. If we as a nation were able to survive the divisiveness of Bush and Cheney, we can certainly survive a little dose of black reality television. Of course in America war and death are easier subjects to broach than race. We don’t mind the carnage and the mortgaging of our futures for a little death and mayhem, but God forbid if we open a discussion about race. Who put the turd in the swimming pool?

''The surge ... has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror,'' the president said. ''We are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his terror network. And the significance of this development cannot be overstated.''

Bush appeared to be referring to recent cooperation by local Iraqis with the U.S. military against the group known as al-Qaida in Iraq, a mostly homegrown, though foreign-led, Sunni-based insurgency. Experts question how closely -- or even whether -- the group is connected to the international al-Qaida network. As for bin Laden, he is rarely heard from and is believed to be hiding in Pakistan.[2]

And finally it is good to know that we are finally defeating an enemy that didn’t exist before we invaded Iraq. Of course what Bush, Cheney, or McCain have failed to mention is that we are having to pay these people not to attack our troops. Is democracy the best? Well, I am glad to see that while we may be unable to export democracy, we sure don’t have a problem exporting capitalism. If you can’t beat ‘em, pay ‘em. Of course this begs the eventual question of what happens when the money runs out? I would be really interested to hear John McCain answer to that question, especially since he could be the next Abraham Lincoln.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

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The Best Government Money Can Buy 4

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Great men are almost always bad men."[1]

My final suggestion for reforming our democracy is to place term limits on our elected offices. I do not believe that the Founding Fathers of this country believed that an elected office should be a lifetime career. As the quote states, power is a very corrupting influence and as our elected officials become more powerful many of their moral compasses become askew. The Founding Fathers debated term limits and considered adding them to the Constitution, but decided against it because it would limit the choices of the people. One must remember though that they would have never considered the idea that someone would want to be a lifetime politician. Why?

Times have changed since those days; entrenched incumbency has not made our government freer or more responsive. In fact it has had the opposite effect, due to the rules for elections being tilted towards incumbency political power has been retained in the hands of the few. Just look at the last two decades of Presidential politics in America: Bush, Clinton, Bush, & Clinton? The only reason we don’t have another Bush in the wings is because he married a Hispanic. Politics is not a family business to be handed down from parent to child, public service should be something we do for a limited period of time and then move on. The framers believe that politics would be a part-time job made up of citizen legislators, not the career politicians we have today.

John Adams put it well when he said: Representatives are "like bubbles on the sea of matter ... they rise, they break and to that sea return. This will teach the great political virtues of humility patience and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey."[2]

Today we have more than a 90% reelection rate for incumbents, this lack of turnover continues to stagnate our democratic process. With such a low turnover rate many politicians have become complacent and out of touch with their constituents. This in turn has led to more partisanship and entrenchment of political views of elected officials. Besides if you can’t get done what you need to get done in two terms then you’re lousy and probably need to find another job anyway; maybe EPA, FEMA, or one of those cushy jobs.

Entrenched incumbency is bad for the body politic in a number of ways. Today short of a war or a corruption scandal it is next to impossible to remove an incumbent. Incumbents have their whole term to fundraise so they come into the election cycle with usually more money that their challengers. Incumbents usually have the backing of their party leaders, so they have the whole political machinery behind them. Because incumbents are in office they are able to do redistricting when the time comes, so they can gerrymander districts to ensure their incumbency. Finally, there is the advantage of pork barrel spending that comes with incumbency; the incumbent can bring home the bacon to his/her district.

Institute a two term limit for all elected offices.

For all the reasons stated above, I believe we need to limit all office holders to two terms. Because the Congress only gets two years we should increase their terms to four years and reduce the Senate to four years. This would allow us to only have to vote every four years, except for some special initiative and would put everyone on the same election cycle.

Term limits would help prevent the career politicians from staying in office forever. In just my lifetime I can think of many politicians that lasted long past their usefulness and allowed many others that were outside of the mainstream to continue to wield power (ie. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurman, etc.). Term limits would allow citizen legislators to return to politics, instead of politicians looking for careers, they would know they had two terms to accomplish their goals maximum. Democracy’s need new fresh ideas and blood to remain vibrant and responsive, this can only happen when there is a rotational system in place. Many current incumbents have no fear of being ousted so they no longer represent the people who elected them; instead they represent those who fill their campaign coffers. This is how despite an overall majority of Americans disagreeing with a policy, that policy does not change.

Term limits would allow elected officials to vote on principle and not just to prolong their careers. Term limits will not stop some politicians from peddling their votes, but it would lessen the effect. Unlike today where there are so many votes up for sell, we couldn’t get all the clowns out in any election. Term limits would allow our representatives to be more representative of the will of the people. Term limits will also help to remove corrupt politicians from other districts. There are many politicians that have been caught red-handed and yet they continue to be re-elected, term limits will force voters in those districts to elect someone else and clean up the political system at the same time.

As I stated at the beginning none of these suggestions are cure-alls for what ails the American democracy, but they would go a long way to restoring faith and trust in a system that sorely needs it. Many of the messes we find ourselves in today could have been avoided by implementing these three simple suggestions.

"that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." – Abraham Lincoln

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[1] Lord Acton

[2] http://www.ustl.org/Research/1999articles/990414dailymountaineagle.html

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The Best Government Money Can Buy

(This is part 1 of a 4 part series)

Here is an example of how the candidates on the Republican side want to balance the budget. As usual they want to take from the poor and working class Americans to give to the rich, instead of doing a top down economic model they want to use a bottom up model. This will continue to reallocate the wealth of the nation from the bottom to the top, as it has been going for the past few decades.

“We will require agency heads to present five to up to as much as 20 percent reductions in their annual budget,” Giuliani says in one ad, titled “Will Do.” “It’s the only way to reduce spending . . . I will restore fiscal discipline and cut wasteful spending in Washington.”[1]

I have never understood why spending money to improve the lives of the poor, improve the quality of our food and water supply, and providing quality public education is considered wasteful; while giving money to corporations is considered worthy. We must change our priorities from corporate welfare and the military industrial complex to the quality of life issues for all Americans. We will never be able to provide government by the people, for the people until we remove the corporate influence from our political landscape. This will be very difficult due to the fact that for some ungodly reason corporations were given the status of personhood for the purpose of legal standing. With the 1886 Supreme Court decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific, the personhood of the corporation began and with it came the death knell of we the people by the people government. Here is how one great American put it.

"Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."[2]

To read this, one could imagine that it was written recently by an attorney familiar with the recent corporate malfeasance cases or the recent Medicare prescription drug debacle, but you would be wrong. This was written over 140 years ago by Abraham Lincoln, and they have turned out to be prophetic. Through a series of maneuvers corporations have won personhood in some sort of surreal alter reality. Corporations are not people; they never have been and never will be. The goal of a corporation is to reflect the collective investment goals of its shareholders, because of its legal fiduciary function as prescribed by law. Because of this singular goal all other pursuits are non-existent, pursuits that we as humans ascribe a moral value. Corporations are not bound by any moral codes of behavior and hence are able to pursue their only goal profits at the expense of all other goals, even if this creates harm or death to others. This is evidenced by all of the corporate scandals, death, and mayhem visited upon us by the pursuit of profit margins and share price. Let’s not be fooled despite those feel-good corporate image commercials, corporations do not have a conscience to express.

What does all this history have to do with democracy today you may ask? It is relevant because we are expecting corporations to behave like citizens and people and they cannot. Because they have no conscience to prick, to expect them to stop using their money to influence and buy government officials because of our outrage is foolish and naïve. Make no mistake it is not just the Republicans that do the bidding of the corporations, it is the Democrats as well. There does not seem to be a shortage of corporate lackeys taking their turns at the troughs of corporate money. These corporations have poisoned our political dialog and have short circuited our democracy. Until both parties get serious about reigning in the corporations we will just be spitting into the wind with any talk of political change.

How is it possible that the majority of Americans can be against a bill or a policy and yet that bill or policy still goes forward? As long as we continue to allow money to pollute our system, we have no democracy. It is funny how others can see what we have become so blind to. It is not cultural or racial why others in the world do not want our democracy; they see the hypocrisy of it all. They recognize that corporations will reign over the people, that the pursuit of profits will create an immoral entity that will overrule the will of the people.

I believe that to return to government for the people, by the people we will need to begin to reform our system. I propose beginning in 3 areas, while these are not cure-alls they will atleast begin to reverse the current trend. Please continue to follow this series for my proposals.

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[1] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/18453.html

[2] http://www.uuworld.org/2003/03/feature1a.html

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