Author Archives: ansonsten

What Does Sarah Palin Have Against the Department of Energy?

by ansonsten Posted on September 8, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Sarah Palin says she wants to eliminate the Department of Energy. This is a perennial conservative hobbyhorse, so let’s dig in a little bit. Just what does this bureaucratic tax sinkhole do, anyway? Here’s a brief summary:

Program
Cost
Comment
Nuclear weapons R&D and cleanup
$18 billion
Can’t do without this, can we?
National laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Yucca Mountain, etc.)
$5 billion
This is mostly basic science, including accelerators, fossil/nuclear/renewable energy research, and nuclear waste disposal. I don’t think Palin has anything against this, does she?
Dams and hydro power
$0
Does Palin want to sell off all the dams we built over the past century? If not, we might as well pay for their upkeep by selling the hydro power they generate.
Energy efficiency
$3 billion
Perhaps this is what she wants to cut? Republicans hate energy efficiency.
Miscellaneous
$3 billion
Good luck finding anything of substance to get rid of here.

Hmmm. There might be some bits and pieces that Republicans object to here, but not much. So why all the hate for the Energy Department? Is it just because it was created by Jimmy Carter? Nah. Who would be childish enough to hold a grudge like that?

In any case, even Republicans agree that we need to do the vast majority of this stuff. So even if Palin managed to kill off the Department of Energy, its functions would just get disbursed to other departments. Would that make any difference? I suppose it means one less chair at cabinet meetings, but it’s hard to see the point otherwise.

One intriguing possibility, raised by Brad Plumer, is that Palin was actually thinking of the Interior Department. He makes a good case. But Palin told Jake Tapper, “I think a lot about the Department of Energy, because energy is my baby.” That being so, it seems unlikely she’d make a mistake so boneheaded. Right?

POSTSCRIPT: It’s worth noting that this is the same con behind nearly every call to eliminate the Department of ______. It sounds dynamic! It cuts the budget! It slashes red tape!

But departments don’t matter. Functions matter, and they just go somewhere else if their department is eliminated. Unless a presidential candidate is willing to specify exactly which functions they want to defund, they aren’t serious. They’re just hawking snake oil to the rubes.

View post: 

What Does Sarah Palin Have Against the Department of Energy?

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What Does Sarah Palin Have Against the Department of Energy?

Here’s Why Phoenix Is Ground Zero for the VA Health Care Scandal

by ansonsten Posted on June 3, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I’ve steered clear of the VA story for the past few days, though not for the obvious reason. Basically, I got to the point where the collective hypocrisy over the whole thing became too much to take. Rather than write an epic rant I might later regret, I decided to just shut up.

However, in one of my last posts on the topic, I urged everyone to keep at least two things in mind. First, there’s a difference between the backlog of vets trying to establish eligibility for VA health care and wait times for vets who are already in the system. Second, always ask: “compared to what?” If you’re claiming that VA health care is terrible on some metric or another, tell us how that compares to private sector health care.

Today, Phil Longman comes along to write knowledgeably about both topics. In particular, he takes on the second one. Here’s Longman on wait-times:

Here’s a key relevant fact that is just the opposite of what most people think. For all the wars we’ve been fighting, the veterans population has been falling sharply….I have visited VA hospitals around the county and often been unnerved by how empty they are. When I visited two of the VA’s four state-of-the-art, breathtakingly advanced polytrauma units, in Palo Alto and Minneapolis, there was hardly a patient to be found.

But at the same time there is a comparatively small countertrend that results from large migrations of aging veterans from the Rust Belt and California to lower-cost retirement centers in the Sun Belt. And this flow, combined with more liberal eligibility standards that allow more Vietnam vets to receive VA treatment for such chronic conditions as ischemic heart disease and Parkinson’s, means that in some of these areas, such as Phoenix, VA capacity is indeed under significant strain.

This regional imbalance in capacity relatively to demand makes it very difficult to manage the VA with system-wide performance metrics. Setting a benchmark of 14 days to see a new primary care doc at a VA hospital or clinic in Boston or Northern California may be completely reasonable. But trying to do the same in Phoenix and in a handful of other sunbelt retirement meccas is not workable without Congress ponying up for building more capacity there.

VA managers have known for years that some of their facilities were gaming the system by using paper lists and other tactics to mask long wait times. Mariah Blake has the whole story here. In other words, contrary to the legion of pundits who seem to have discovered the phrase “perverse incentives” just last week, VA managers aren’t drooling idiots who didn’t realize that incentive systems can be gamed. They knew it perfectly well and were trying to fix it. Rather, the problem was that (a) they failed to set different goals for different facilities, and (b) they’re apparently lousy at oversight.

Regional imbalances also explain why these problems show up only in some facilities and not in others. And it also explains why, on average, VA wait times are actually pretty good and why VA patients generally rate their care higher than private-sector patients. It helps you get a handle on the “compared to what?” question.

Longman’s piece isn’t an apology for the managers who gamed the system in order to spike their bonuses—or for their higher-ups who failed for years to get this under control—but it does explain why it’s happening in some places and not in others. And there’s more to come:

As I’ll argue further in future posts, the key question to ask when confronting the real deficiencies of the VA is “compared to what?” Once that context is established, it becomes clear that VA as a whole continues to outperform the rest of the American health system, making its true lessons extremely important to learn.

Longman is well worth reading if you genuinely want to understand more about how the VA works and how it compares to health care elsewhere. He’ll make you smarter, not dumber.

Follow this link:  

Here’s Why Phoenix Is Ground Zero for the VA Health Care Scandal

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s Why Phoenix Is Ground Zero for the VA Health Care Scandal

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 10, 2014

by ansonsten Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Private First Class Christopher Greene with Troop O (Outlaw), 4th Squadron, Combined Task Force Dragoon, occupies a security position during a partnership patrol with members of the Afghan Uniformed Police Dec. 30, 2013, at Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. Troopers with Outlaw conducted a series of partner missions with the AUP near various security checkpoints throughout the province. (U.S. Army Photo by Sgt. Joshua Edwards)

See original article here – 

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 10, 2014

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 10, 2014

Last-Minute Gift Idea: Great Video Games You Can Download in Minutes

by ansonsten Posted on December 24, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Got a second cousin twice-removed you suddenly remembered to add to your holiday list? You could go the cash money route, but consider slipping in a suggestion to spend that $15 or $20 on one of these game titles playable on a desktop or laptop, or gift the game yourself through Steam, which is like an app store for video games you can play on the computer. (Note that some titles are available only for Mac or Windows.) And you don’t have to be a “gamer” to thoroughly enjoy these games: we’ve picked out titles sure to intrigue a whole host of personality types, from the stoic John Wayne-wannabe to the 90’s obsessed. Get ready to be the coolest aunt/uncle/whatever this xmas.

Kentucky Route Zero

Great for: old souls, Western movie lovers, road trippers

Still from Kentucky Route Zero Cardboard Computer

It starts normally enough: you’re a truck driver for an antique store in town, and you’ve been driving up and down a windy stretch of Kentucky highway trying to make your last delivery for the night and head on home. A wrong turn onto a secret highway steers you into a mysterious, slowly unfolding world that’s equal parts Gabriel Garcia Marquez and No Country For Old Men, with a Bonnie Prince Billy-inflected score, your trusty old hound dog, and a cast of colorful local characters along for the ride. With no combat violence, lots of freeform and pleasantly tangential conversations between characters, and only moderate emphasis on solving puzzles and unraveling the game’s central mystery, the game doesn’t feel like a “game” so much as a meditation on the romantic pull and and shadowy charm of the open road. Note that the game comes out in installments: Acts I and II have been released on the desktop gaming platform Steam. Read more at gaming site Polygon.

Gone Home

Great for: mystery lovers, riot grrrls, the 90’s obsessed

Still from Gone Home Fullbright Company

You know that creepy feeling when you’re in your own house and the lights suddenly go out at night, and you find yourself blindly feeling your way through the one place in the world you’re supposed to know best? Gone Home brilliantly evokes complicated domestic feelings, like coming home after a long time away, or watching your parents and siblings grow and change into people you hardly know, or suspecting that your family history includes a few blindspots perhaps better left in the dark. You’re Katie Greenbriar, a recent college grad just returned from a European summer vacation, and your family moved to a new house while you were traveling. You show up at the new address but no one’s home, which is strange. You begin exploring the huge, cavernous house, hallway by hallway, trying to figure out where everyone is. The game is set in the 90’s, so your missing family members have left behind a slew of riot grrrrl mixtapes, answering machine messages, and newspaper clippings for you to puzzle over. The storyline is gut-punchingly sweet and poignant, with beautifully written plotlines involving teen sexuality, middle-aged restlessness, and both the joys and the terrors of familial devotion. A massively successful, low-budget indie game title from a very small studio, Gone Home is being hailed as a game-changer (ahem) that proves that when it comes to conflict in games, matters of the heart can inflict some seriously deep hit points.

FTL

Great for: stargazers, control freaks, anyone still mourning “Firefly”

Still from FTL Subset Games

Would you cut the power from your medical bay if it meant your shields could be saved? Would you rob a crew member of oxygen if it meant putting out a fire that could end even more lives? These are some of the choices facing you in FTL, where randomly generated encounters with hostile aliens, pirates, and the always-advancing rebel armada mean no two playthroughs are the same. FTL plays almost like a board game where to strategy involves shuffling crewmembers around to tend to shields, weapons, and other ship components as you take turns duking it out with (or flying the hell away from) enemy ships. For that Oregon Trail feel, don’t forget to name your crew after your friends so you can let them know when they’ve been shot/incinerated/captured by pirates.

Botanicula

â&#128;&#139;Great for: Pixar fans, the child-at-heart, the nature lover

Still from Botanicula Amanita Designs

If Charlie Chaplin had stuck around for the digital age, he would have loved Botanicula. The game doesn’t contain a single line of dialog but takes a major cue from the pre-talkies: multitudes of hope and desire are emoted through little gestures and subtle glances, and it’s impossible not to root for the central characters, even if they are just a bunch of bugs. Our heroes—five assorted forest crawlers with little in the way of special abilities or weapons—live happily among the branches and leaves of a lushly glowing tree, but it’s slowly being sucked dry by a malignant spidery force. They skitter around the tree branches trying to diagnose the problem, making their way through a delightful series of scenes and puzzles that evoke a beguiling blend of Alice in Wonderland, PeeWee’s Playhouse, and Pixar movies all at once. A great game experience for the resolutely non-gamer, especially for its widely hailed soundtrack, which perfectly matches the delightfully carnivalesque backdrops and the cutely frenetic animation.

Hotline Miami

Great for: psychopaths, “Drive” lovers, this guy

Still from Hotline Miami Dennaton Games

You wake up to a message on your answering machine telling you to go do some “clean-up work” at a hotel downtown. You drive over, put on a rubber unicorn mask, and proceed to murder every armed thug inside with a combination of baseball bats, machetes, automatic weapons, and your own bare hands. Welcome to Hotline Miami, a neon-lit, 80s-inspired action game as drenched in synth as it is in blood. One wrong move and you’re dead, so expect to replay levels a lot as you puzzle through the perfect way to kill your way through each seedy locale. you’ll also be puzzling through the point behind all this violence thanks to the mysterious messages and masked visitors you receive along the way.

Braid

Great for: art students, the indecisive, anyone with time on their hands

Still from Braid Jonathan Blow

Braid puts you in control of time itself—you can slow things down, freeze, and rewind—as you make your way through a series of increasingly difficult puzzles. Don’t let yourability to rewind away death and failure fool you, though. Braid gets very challenging, particularly for those who just want to stop and admire the beautiful scenery. Stick it through for the story’s mind-bending conclusion, which upends the damsel-in-distress storyline that has persisted in video games from Donkey Kong onward.

Original link – 

Last-Minute Gift Idea: Great Video Games You Can Download in Minutes

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Omega, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Last-Minute Gift Idea: Great Video Games You Can Download in Minutes

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for September 11, 2013

by ansonsten Posted on September 11, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

US Army Pfc. Jordan Adams with Battery B, 3rd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, pulls security during a senior leader engagement with Afghan National Police in Bagram, Parwan province, Afghanistan, Sept. 7, 2013. ANP are one of the critical elements of the Afghan National Security Forces that have assumed responsibility for security throughout Afghanistan. US Army photo by Spc. Alexander Naylor/ Released.

This article: 

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for September 11, 2013

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , | Comments Off on We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for September 11, 2013

Dead zone could break records in Gulf this year

by ansonsten Posted on June 19, 2013

Dead zone could break records in Gulf this year

By John Upton

NOAA

The possible dead zone is shown in red.

Get ready for a swath of marine sterility the likes of which Gulf fishermen have never seen.

NOAA warned Tuesday that a dead zone the size of New Jersey could break records this summer in the Gulf of Mexico. Heavy rainfalls are washing a stew of pollutants and nutrients into the Gulf, feeding outbreaks of algae that will rob the waters of oxygen as they die and decompose. In these oxygen-deprived waters, marine life either flee or die.

The Gulf dead zone is caused every summer by fertilizer and animal waste running off from farms, including those along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Sewage and other sources of nutrient-loaded pollution, such as lawn fertilizers, also play a role. From a NOAA press release:

NOAA-supported modelers … are forecasting that this year’s Gulf of Mexico hypoxic “dead” zone will be between 7,286 and 8,561 square miles which could place it among the ten largest recorded. That would range from an area the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined on the low end to the New Jersey on the upper end. The high estimate would exceed the largest ever reported 8,481 square miles in 2002.

The agency said that the size of the dead zone (which includes marine areas afflicted by zero oxygen and low oxygen) could be reduced by a large storm or hurricane, which would help churn up the water. But even that would not be nearly enough to keep it within the 1,950-square-mile goal set by the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force, a coalition of federal, state and tribal agencies. The aim is to reach that goal by 2015. From the University of Michigan:

“The size of the Gulf dead zone goes up and down depending on that particular year’s weather patterns. But the bottom line is that we will never reach the action plan’s goal of 1,950 square miles until more serious actions are taken to reduce the loss of Midwest fertilizers to the Mississippi River system, regardless of the weather,” said U-M aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia.

Donald Scavia /

University of Michigan

Farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste, some of it from as far away as the Corn Belt, is the main source of the nitrogen and phosphorus that cause the annual Gulf of Mexico “dead zone.”

The news Tuesday was not all doom and gloom, however. The researchers foresee a smaller than average dead zone this summer in Chesapeake Bay. That’s because fewer nutrients are flowing into the estuary than in years past. Again from NOAA:

For the Chesapeake Bay, USGS estimates 36,600 metric tons of nutrients entered the estuary from the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers between January and May, which is 30 percent below the average loads estimated from 1990 to 2013.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Food

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Read this article:

Dead zone could break records in Gulf this year

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dead zone could break records in Gulf this year

Today’s Austerity Smackdown: US vs. UK

by ansonsten Posted on May 14, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This chart is making the rounds today, so I might as well join in the fun. It shows how well the U.S. economy has recovered from the recession compared to Great Britain. The Tory approach in Great Britain has famously been based on austerity measures, and it sure doesn’t seem to be working all that well. Karl Smith provides the caveats:

The UK has an infamous productivity puzzle, that has allowed it to add jobs even as GDP stalls. The UK is more closely tied to the crumbling Eurozone economy. The UK has seen its energy resources dwindle while the US has seen them explode. The United States has seen a good deal more austerity than its President would have liked.

All true, and these things point in different directions. That said, austerity doesn’t seem to be working in Britain and it’s not working in the rest of Europe either. So why are Republicans so hellbent on emulating them?

Original source:

Today’s Austerity Smackdown: US vs. UK

Posted in Brita, FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Today’s Austerity Smackdown: US vs. UK

Most Protestant pastors don’t think climate change is real

by ansonsten Posted on April 22, 2013

Most Protestant pastors don’t think climate change is real

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Say, God, who do you think is turning the weather weird?

A majority of Protestant pastors in the U.S. fail to grasp the scientific fact that humans are turning the weather weird. But, hey, at least they recycle!

Asked whether they “believe global warming is real and man made,” only 43 percent of Protestant pastors said “yes” during a a recent survey by LifeWay Research, an arm of a company that sells Bibles, church supplies, and the like. That was up from 36 percent in 2010 but less than the 47 percent who said “yes” in 2008.

Unsurprisingly, Democratic pastors are far more likely to understand human-induced climate change than Republican ones. But in an odd twist, the older pastors are more likely to get climate change than their younger colleagues. Way to be, church seniors.

From a summary of the survey findings:

Pastors identifying as Democrats are the most likely to strongly agree (76 percent) in the validity of man-made global warming, followed by Independents (20 percent). Just 7 percent of Republican pastors strongly agree. Conversely, Republican pastors are the most likely to strongly disagree (49 percent), followed by Independents (35 percent) and Democrats (5 percent).

“Pastor opinions on global warming reflect their own political beliefs,” said Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research. “The pendulum of public and pastor opinions on man-made global warming is swinging back toward agreement but still lacks a majority.” …

The survey also reveals pastors age 65 or older put more stock in the validity of global warming over their younger counterparts. This group is more likely (32 percent) than pastors age 45-54 (20 percent) and 18-44 (19 percent) to strongly agree with the statement: “I believe global warming is real and man made.”

While there’s confusion among these leaders about who is actually influencing the weather, at least most of them are into recycling. Again from the research summary:

Recycling programs … [are] well established among churches. More than 60 percent of Protestant pastors say their church has an active recycling program in place at their church building while a third (34 percent) do not.

“More churches are proactively recycling and reducing carbon emissions in urban areas,” McConnell said. “While this may reflect being attentive to local community needs, it also may simply be a reflection of municipal regulations or the economic pressure on utility bills. Either way, it seems to be good news that churches are caring more about the environment and acting accordingly.”

Hurrah for recycling, but boo for climate ignorance. Could we respectfully suggest that you get your information about climate change from scientists rather than your pastor?

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

,

Living

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

See more here:  

Most Protestant pastors don’t think climate change is real

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Most Protestant pastors don’t think climate change is real

Political Science Meets Politics, Gets Butt Kicked

by ansonsten Posted on March 21, 2013

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Yesterday, the Senate passed an amendment that eliminates the NSF’s $13 million budget for political science research. That’s “13,” as in thirteen, and million with an “M.”

Why? Who knows. Sen. Tom Coburn has been on an anti-political science kick for years for no real discernible reason. “Theories on political behavior,” he said a few years ago, “are best left to CNN, pollsters, pundits, historians, candidates, political parties, and the voters, rather than being funded out of taxpayers’ wallets.” That makes no sense, but that’s his reason, and it’s no surprise that he’s continued his jihad. What is a surprise is that he managed to get a bunch of Democrats to tag along with him on this go-around.

I don’t get it. What’s their motivation? The amount of money is trivial even by demagogue standards (“That’s four cents each and every year from every man, woman, and child in the country!”), and Democrats don’t share Coburn’s generalized know-nothing opposition to expanding the frontiers of human knowledge. So why did they go along? Some kind of logrolling deal? Fear of constituent wrath over continued funding of election surveys? What’s the deal? I thought everyone had pretty much agreed to vote down all the amendments to the continuing resolution and get on with other business.

Politico has nothing on this. I’m disappointed. I want the dirt. There’s got to be a story here of some kind.

Mother Jones
Excerpt from – 

Political Science Meets Politics, Gets Butt Kicked

Posted in alo, FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Political Science Meets Politics, Gets Butt Kicked

Oil industry ad campaign: ‘Give us tax breaks or everybody gets hurt’

by ansonsten Posted on March 15, 2013

Oil industry ad campaign: ‘Give us tax breaks or everybody gets hurt’

By John Upton

YoutubeA message from your friendly neighborhood petro-giant.

“I think taxing the oil and gas industry does nothing but harm the country.”

And with that doublespeak, doublespoken by some actor, the American Petroleum Institute opens one of two new television ads it is about to begin screening around Washington, D.C. The advertisements are shot to make it look like ordinary folk are worried that higher taxes on the country’s energy giants would hurt their ordinary families.

The planned advertising blitz is part of a desperate and dishonest bid by the energy sector to cling to its billions in annual tax breaks. President Barack Obama and other Democrats want to strip some of those tax breaks away from oil and gas companies, which are among the most profitable, price-gouging, Earth-destroying, and environmentally irresponsible companies operating today.

The way the institute’s actors read their lines while staring into the camera, you’d be forgiven for mistaking these thieving energy companies for married suburban couples sitting around their fireplaces with their 2.3 kids playing Monopoly and saying prayers.

“It is not a tax on the energy industry,” some other actor says. “It’s a tax on families.”

From The Hill:

With the proposed Senate and House budgets released this week and President Obama’s coming next month, API Executive Vice President Marty Durbin said the industry must remind policymakers that “punitive tax schemes kill jobs and decrease revenues to the federal government over the long term.” …

Durbin reiterated API’s willingness to discuss the tax breaks in the context of broad tax reform. He didn’t elaborate on any concessions the industry might make.

Durbin said he felt Capitol Hill sentiment was swinging in the oil-and-gas industry’s favor, noting fewer legislative proposals to nix the tax provisions were making the rounds.

Lies about how terrible it would be for energy companies to pay higher taxes will soon be coming from more directions. From Fuel Fix:

API isn’t the only group joining the fray. The National Taxpayers Union on Wednesday launched a separate radio and print advertising campaign that also argues against raising taxes on the oil and gas industry.

One NTU print ad warns that “singling out America’s energy industry (won’t) solve the budget crisis” and highlights the section 199 domestic manufacturing deduction, which applies broadly to American businesses, even though recent proposals aim to repeal it just for oil companies.

National Taxpayers Union Executive Vice President Pete Sepp criticized “punitive tax increases on politically convenient targets like the energy industry.”

“Pursuing stale old plans for discriminatory tax hikes on oil and gas would be a big step backward for many kinds of fiscal reforms, which is why NTU is speaking out so early and emphatically,” Sepp said.

Watch the Orwellian grotesqueness for yourself. Then rinse out your brain with bleach:

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

Read more:

Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Source:

Oil industry ad campaign: ‘Give us tax breaks or everybody gets hurt’

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Oil industry ad campaign: ‘Give us tax breaks or everybody gets hurt’