Tag Archives: americans

Fuels America Highlights How the Oil Industry Rigs the Tax Code

by Posted on June 3, 2014

back

Fuels America Highlights How the Oil Industry Rigs the Tax Code

Posted 3 June 2014 in

National

The Fuels America coalition launched a significant, targeted digital advertising campaign to highlight over a century of sweetheart tax breaks for oil companies at working Americans’ expense.

The ads are running around The Woodlands, Texas, where oil companies are holding their annual forum to discuss industry strategies around taxes – a celebratory day for an industry that takes billions in subsidies out of taxpayers’ pockets to repurchase their own stocks and pay their CEOs tens of millions of dollars.

The advertisements, which warn viewers not to “let Big Oil rig the tax code,” links to a page on the Oil Rigged webpage that highlights the over $470 billion that’s been injected into oil industry coffers at Americans’ expense, just so oil companies can turn around and rig the system to block competition from America’s homegrown renewable fuels.

“While the oil industry enjoys a gusher of income from a rigged tax code, you pay more at the pump – and Big Oil enjoys outsized profits,” says the Oil Rigged page. “Don’t let Big Oil keep rigging the tax system against homegrown renewable fuels – which save money at the pump, burn cleaner, and create jobs at home.”

While the oil industry reaped $93 billion in profits last year and continued dodging the tax burden the rest of us have to shoulder, renewable fuels generate $14.5 billion in tax revenue every year.

Fuels America News & Stories

Fuels
View the original here:  

Fuels America Highlights How the Oil Industry Rigs the Tax Code

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fuels America Highlights How the Oil Industry Rigs the Tax Code

POLL: Tea Party Members Really, Really Don’t Trust Scientists

by ChristiWhitford Posted on May 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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

It’s one of the biggest trends in US politics over the last decade: A growing left-right split over the validity of scientific information. This “science gap” is apparent most of all on the issue of climate change, but the problem is much broader, encompassing topics ranging from evolution to the safety and effectiveness of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases.

Yet even those of us who know how politicized science has become may be surprised by some new polling data out of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. There, survey researcher Lawrence Hamilton has run a new analysis of 568 New Hampshire residents, asking them a variety of questions including the following: “Would you say that you trust, don’t trust, or are unsure about scientists as a source of information about environmental issues?” Hamilton then broke down the responses by party, separating out members of the tea party from more mainstream Republicans. And look at the result:

Lawrence Hamilton, 2014.

This is pretty striking: The first three political groups—Democrats, independents, and non-tea party Republicans—all trust scientists on the environment. But then you come to tea party members, and suddenly, distrust in scientists soars. The numbers are stark: 60 percent of traditional Republicans trust scientists on the environment, versus only 28 percent of tea partiers.

Hamilton says he’s surprised by the strength of these results. “I didn’t realize it would be at the level of division that it was,” says Hamilton. He adds that while Republicans and tea partiers in New Hampshire aren’t precisely the same in all respects as they are elsewhere in America, “in general, New Hampshire is not drastically unrepresentative.” When it comes to tea partiers and more traditional Republicans on the national level, Hamilton says that he “would expect similar gaps to show up.”

So what’s going on with this plummeting trust in scientists on the ideological right? The main factor, Hamilton thinks, is that the highly polarized climate issue is leading climate deniers to break up with scientists in general. “Climate change is sort of bleeding over into a lower trust in science across a range of issues,” says Hamilton. That means the consequences are not limited to the climate issue. “The critiques of climate science work by often arguing that science is corrupt, and then that spills over to other kinds of science,” Hamilton observes. Prior research has found that watching Fox News, in particular, leads to a declining trust in climate scientists.

The new data on trust in science comprise just one part of Hamilton’s new report. The study also looked at partisan gaps on a number of other scientific issues, and compared the size of those gaps with those that exist on non-scientific issues. And again, the result was pretty surprising: In New Hampshire, there is a bigger partisan divide over climate change and whether environmental scientists are trustworthy than there is over abortion and the death penalty. Note that in this analysis, unlike in the earlier figure, Republican responses include both those of traditional Republicans and those of tea partiers. It is the latter who are driving much of the partisan gap on issues like trust in science:

Lawrence Hamilton, 2014

Last week, we got some of the scariest news about global warming yet: We may have already helped set in motion an irreversible destabilization of the West Antarctic ice sheet, thus locking in 10 or more feet of sea level rise over the coming centuries. It’s the kind of news that ought to serve as a wake up call for all Americans, causing them to stop and say: Enough. We’ve got to do something here.

But as these data make clear, when it comes to science, there’s no such thing as “all Americans” any more. There are highly polarized camps, divided over the very validity of the information.

Taken from: 

POLL: Tea Party Members Really, Really Don’t Trust Scientists

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on POLL: Tea Party Members Really, Really Don’t Trust Scientists

Obamacare Saves Lives, But That’s Not Really Its Big Benefit

by TGEGreggjbxsfx Posted on May 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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

Ed Kilgore points me to a recent piece by Harold Pollack that takes a look at the recent study of Romneycare in Massachusetts and tries to extrapolate what it means about Obamacare:

The Massachusetts estimates imply that the ACA will prevent something in the neighborhood of 24,096 deaths every year (simply: 20 million divided by 830). That’s more than twice the number of Americans killed in gun homicides. It’s considerably more than the number of Americans who die from HIV/AIDS.

The Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon rightly notes that these mortality reductions won’t come cheap. My own faux-precise back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the cost per averted death is about $3.3 million. That seems like a lot of money—and it is. Yet it actually compares favorably in cost-effectiveness with other widely accepted medical, public health, product safety and workplace interventions….And of course this $3.3 million only captures the impact of health reform on reducing mortality rates. It doesn’t count so many other important health, financial and personal benefits of health coverage, from regular preventative care to peace of mind.

I’d very strongly emphasize that last sentence. The effect of Obamacare on mortality is always going to be contentious. The Massachusetts study might be wrong. Medicaid might be less effective than private insurance. And there’s no telling how long these medical interventions delay death. Six months? Six years? More?

But nobody should hang too much on these results. Obviously, preventing death is important, but it’s by no means the primary value of health insurance, especially in the non-elderly population. The primary value is (a) financial and (b) the ability to get routine health care that improves your life even if it doesn’t prolong it. Knee surgery. Hip replacements. Antidepressant prescriptions. Pain management. Diabetes control. And on and on. The vast majority of the non-elderly rarely receive life-saving health care. But so what? Even if health insurance had zero impact on mortality, we’d still want it. It provides us with medical care that makes life more livable and it prevents us from living with the constant fear that we’re one expensive treatment away from bankruptcy. That’s the real benefit of Obamacare. Obsessing about mortality misses the point.

Continue reading: 

Obamacare Saves Lives, But That’s Not Really Its Big Benefit

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obamacare Saves Lives, But That’s Not Really Its Big Benefit

Quote of the Day: Billionaires Insist that Billionaire-Friendly Policies Don’t Actually Benefit Billionaires

by KimParishg Posted on May 9, 2014

Mother Jones

Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-fueled super-PAC, is doubling down this year after its failure to move the needle much in 2012. Politico’s Kenneth Vogel got hold of an internal strategy memo that outlines what they think went wrong in the last election:

To remedy the messaging disadvantage, AFP developed “a sophisticated new media message-testing strategy to target specific demographics in specific locations we need to move on our issues,” according to the memo….“If the presidential election told us anything, it’s that Americans place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak,” reads the AFP memo….“We consistently see that Americans in general are concerned that free-market policy — and its advocates — benefit the rich and powerful more than the most vulnerable of society….We must correct this misconception.”

And what better way to correct this misconception than to collect hundreds of millions of dollars from America’s crankiest right-wing billionaires in order to fund the election of people dedicated to slashing every possible program that protects the weak and takes care of those in need? It’s hard to understand why America’s poor and working class are so obstinately misguided about what America’s moneyed class really wants.

See original:  

Quote of the Day: Billionaires Insist that Billionaire-Friendly Policies Don’t Actually Benefit Billionaires

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Quote of the Day: Billionaires Insist that Billionaire-Friendly Policies Don’t Actually Benefit Billionaires

CNN to America: Where Do You Think the Plane Is?

by BobbyePeoples Posted on May 7, 2014

Mother Jones

According to a new CNN poll, 9 percent of Americans believe “space aliens, time travelers, or beings from another dimension” are responsible for the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370.

According to a 2012 National Geographic survey, 36 percent of Americans believe that aliens have already visited Earth.

If you are one of the 27 percent of Americans who believe that aliens have visited Earth but aren’t responsible for the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370, please let me know. I’d love to pick your brain.

Bonus: The new CNN poll asks respondents where they think the plane is. Fifty-one percent of Americans believe the plane is in the Indian Ocean around where the search teams are looking, but 46 percent of Americans think it’s “somewhere else.” None of the people polled could possibly have any idea where the plane is. The question is itself ridiculous, but maybe more ridiculous is the idea that almost half of America thinks the experts are wrong. “The search teams say it’s in that one bit of the Indian Ocean, but I think it’s in Canada. Or Hawaii. Or Scotland. Or the moon. Or Benghazi. Why? I’ve just got a feeling.”

Forty-six percent of Americans are living in a world of pure imagination.

Jump to original:

CNN to America: Where Do You Think the Plane Is?

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on CNN to America: Where Do You Think the Plane Is?

13 Conservatives Who Think Benghazi Is Obama’s Watergate

by EmiliaKeaton Posted on May 6, 2014

Mother Jones

Last week, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) subpoenaed Secretary of State John Kerry to testify about Benghazi, and House Speaker John Boehner created a select committee to mount yet another investigation of the 2012 attack on the US facility in Libya. It’s the latest effort by House Republicans to squeeze a scandal out of the tragedy. While the GOP’s relentless Benghazi crusade continues, there has been an outpouring of rhetorical excesses, with some conservatives going as far as likening the Obama administration’s response to the attack to the Nixon administration’s Watergate scandal.

Appearing Sunday on CNN, Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporter who joined with Bob Woodward to break the Watergate story, said there’s no comparison: “This is not Watergate, or anything resembling Watergate. Watergate was a massive criminal conspiracy led by a criminal president of the United States for almost the whole of his administration. We’re talking total apples and oranges here.” He added, “This is about an ideological scorched-earth politics that prevails in Washington.”â&#128;&#139;

Frank Rich at New York magazine wrote last year that Republicans are pushing the Watergate analogy because they believe Benghazi could be a “gateway both to the president’s impeachment and to a GOP victory over Hillary in 2016.” But they’re running into a problem, Rich noted, namely that “no one to the left of Sean Hannity seriously believes that the Obama White House was trying to cover up a terrorist attack.” The Huffington Post observes that Benghazi is hardly the first Obama administration affair that has driven Republicans to reference Watergate. They’ve wielded this analogy to decry Fast and Furious, the Solyndra controversy, the so-called IRS scandal, and the Department of Homeland Security’s handling of Freedom of Information Act requests. And Republicans have dredged up the Watergate metaphor repeatedly since 2012.

Here are 13 conservatives who have compared Benghazi to Watergate, in chronological order:

1. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.): “I think this is an issue—Benghazi-gate is the right term for this. This is very, very serious, probably more serious than Watergate.” —Fox News, October 1, 2012â&#128;&#139;

2. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.):

3. Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh: “What we’re watching here today is the equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein helping Nixon cover up Watergate. The mainstream media is Woodward and Bernstein. Watergate is Benghazi.â&#128;&#139;” The Rush Limbaugh Show, October 24, 2012

â&#128;&#139;4. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): “You know what, somebody the other day said to me that this is as bad as Watergate. Well, nobody died in Watergate. But this is either a massive cover-up or an incompetence that is not acceptable service to the American people.” —CBS’s Face the Nation, October 28, 2012â&#128;&#139;

5. Fox News contributor Bill O’Reilly: “Richard Nixon denied he had anything to do with a low-level political break-in. If the press had not been aggressive, Nixon would have gotten away with it. And certainly the break-in at the Watergate Hotel was not nearly as important as failing to define a terrorist attack that killed four Americans. President Obama…should have given us the facts weeks ago. He chose not to.” —Fox News, November 15, 2012â&#128;&#139;

6. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa): “I believe that it’s a lot bigger than Watergate, and if you link Watergate and Iran-Contra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you’re going to get in the zone where Benghazi is.” —The Washington Times, December 12, 2012â&#128;&#139;

7. Former Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee: “This is not minor. It wasn’t minor when Richard Nixon lied to the American people and worked with those in his administration to cover up what really happened in Watergate. But, I remind you—as bad as Watergate was, because it broke the trust between the president and the people, no one died. This is more serious because four Americans did in fact die.” —The Mike Huckabee Show, May 6, 2013

8. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): “I want to keep pushing because the bond that has been broken between those who serve us in harm’s way and the government they serve is huge—and to me every bit as damaging as Watergate.” —The Mike Huckabee Show, May 6, 2013

9. Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas):

10. Former Nixon adviser Pat Buchanan: “The break in at Watergate was a stupid burglary, political burglary, nobody got killed. This is a horrible atrocity. Killing an American ambassador; killing another diplomat; two Navy SEALs; destroying and burning that compound. Driving us out of a part of a country we have liberated. But you are right, the real thing here is the cover-up.” —Fox News, May 9, 2013â&#128;&#139;

11. Rep. Louie Gohmert, (R-Texas): “This administration is engaged in a Watergate-style cover-up, and once we get to the bottom, people in this administration need to know once they’ve been part of doing this kind of cover-up, they just need to know that people went to prison for participating in the cover-up.” —WND Radio, August 3, 2013â&#128;&#139;

12. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.): “I will say this to my dying day, I know people don’t realize it now, but that’s going to go down in history as the greatest cover-up. And I’m talking about compared to the Pentagon Papers, Iran-Contra, Watergate, and the rest of them. This was a cover-up in order for people right before the election to think that there was no longer a problem with terrorism in the Middle East.” —KFAQ, February 3, 2014

13. Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer: “The email is to me the equivalent of what was discovered with the Nixon tapes.” —Fox News, May 1, 2014

Originally from:  

13 Conservatives Who Think Benghazi Is Obama’s Watergate

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Sterling, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 13 Conservatives Who Think Benghazi Is Obama’s Watergate

April Had the Lowest Jobless Rate Since Obama Took Office

by SherylTrumper Posted on May 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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

The economy added 288,000 jobs in April, according to new data released Friday by the Labor Department. The unemployment rate plummeted from 6.7 percent to 6.3 percent—which is the lowest jobless rate since President Barack Obama took office at the start of the great recession.

Economists had forecasted April jobs gains of 218,000 and an unemployment rate of 6.6 percent.

The number of unemployed people dropped by 733,000 people, and the total number of Americans who are either unemployed, have given up looking for work, or are working part-time because they can’t find full-time work fell from 12.7 percent to 12.3 percent last month. The jobs report brought more good news. Employment gains for February and March were revised upwards by a total of 36,000. Part of the healthy gain was due to warmer weather, which boosted seasonal employment.

Now for the not-so-good news. Another reason the unemployment rate fell is because April saw a decline in the workforce participation rate, which is the number of Americans who are working or looking for work. That number fell by 806,000 last month. The decrease in the labor force was partly due to the fact that Republicans refused to renew federal unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. Jobless Americans are required to prove they are actively searching for work in order to continue receiving unemployment insurance; once there’s less of a motivation to search, many give up looking.

The construction and retail sectors saw the largest increase in employment, with jobs gains of 32,000 and 35,000, respectively. Professional and business services added 75,000 jobs. And the economy took on a total of 15,000 government jobs.

Good or bad, you can take most of this information with a grain of salt, if you want. As Neil Irwin explained Thursday in the New York Times, businesses, journalists, and stock traders place way too much weight on the monthly jobs numbers, given the “statistical noise” in each report. In order to determine how many people are employed in the US, for example, the Labor Department conducts a huge monthly survey of 144,000 employers who employ about a third of all non-farm workers. Sampling errors are inherent in these surveys, Irwin explains, because the results are not representative of all the nation’s employers. And each monthly jobs report is released before all the survey data is in, so researchers have to fill in gaps with estimates that may later end up being wrong. “Even when the economy is moving in a clear direction,” Irwin writes, “the noise in month-to-month changes can be big enough to obscure any trend.”

If you want longer-term trends that you can bank on, here are a few. We’ve had roughly zero net job growth over the past seven years, because gains in employment have been offset by population growth. The unemployment rate is still above the historical average for this stage of an economic recovery, Annie Lowrey noted in the New York Times Friday. And the black unemployment rate is stuck at more than double the white jobless rate.

Jump to original – 

April Had the Lowest Jobless Rate Since Obama Took Office

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Sterling, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on April Had the Lowest Jobless Rate Since Obama Took Office

Listen to a Secret Tape of FBI Agents Interviewing—and Threatening—a Potential Informant

by Mamie2869mu Posted on May 1, 2014

Mother Jones

On Thursday, Mother Jones broke the story of Naji Mansour, an American living abroad who refused to become a government informant—and saw his life, and his family’s, turned upside-down. After he rebuffed the government’s advances, Mansour was banned from returning to his family’s home in Kenya, locked up for 37 days in a squalid prison in South Sudan, and eventually found himself living in Khartoum, where two FBI agents he had met before, Mike Jones and Peter Smith (pseudonyms we created at the FBI’s request), tried again to win his trust. Mansour recorded the conversation, which you can listen to above; a full transcript follows below.

MJ: Mike Jones, an FBI agent

NM: Naji Mansour, an American living abroad

PS: Peter Smith, a second FBI agent

Continue Reading »

Read this article: 

Listen to a Secret Tape of FBI Agents Interviewing—and Threatening—a Potential Informant

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Safer, Sterling, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Listen to a Secret Tape of FBI Agents Interviewing—and Threatening—a Potential Informant

Anger at the Plutocracy Isn’t Strong Enough to Make a Big Difference in November

by Veta68O Posted on April 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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

Greg Sargent writes today that the Democratic strategy of going after the Koch brothers isn’t about the Kochs per se, but “a gamble on what swing voters think has happened to the economy, and on the reasons struggling Americans think they aren’t getting ahead”:

Dems are making an argument about what has happened to the economy, and which party actually has a plan to do something about it. Today’s NBC/WSJ poll finds support for the general idea that the economy is not distributing gains fairly and is rigged against ordinary Americans….The Democratic case is that the all-Obamacare-all-the-time message is merely meant to mask the GOP’s lack of any actual affirmative economic agenda, and even reveals the GOP’s priorities remain to roll back any efforts by Dems to ameliorate economic insecurity.

….I don’t know if the Dem strategy will work.

I think Sargent’s skepticism is warranted. The problem is that the NBC/WSJ poll he mentions doesn’t find an awful lot of evidence for seething anger. Here are the basic results:

Those are not really huge margins. The first question in particular is one they’ve been asking for two decades, and 55-39 is a very typical result, especially during times of economic weakness.

Given this, and given the extreme difficulty of a party in power taking advantage of economic discontent, will the Democratic strategy of bludgeoning Republicans over their plutocratic leanings work? I doubt it. Specific agenda items like a higher minimum wage, health care success stories, and universal pre-K seem more likely to work. At the margins, a bit of Koch bashing and a few high-profile Wall Street indictments might help a bit too, but only as an added fillip.

Oh, and a nice, short, decisive war against some minor global bad guy would also do wonders. In October, maybe.

See the original article here: 

Anger at the Plutocracy Isn’t Strong Enough to Make a Big Difference in November

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Anger at the Plutocracy Isn’t Strong Enough to Make a Big Difference in November

Magic Johnson on Donald Sterling: "He Shouldn’t Have a Team Anymore"

by RamonitaPalladi Posted on April 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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

The Laker great and LA icon didn’t mince words when asked about Donald Sterling’s alleged racist comments on ABC:

There’s no place in our society for it, and there’s no place in our league. We all get along. We all play with different races of people when you’re in sports. That’s what makes sports so beautiful. He’s put his own team in a tough situation. So I believe that once Commissioner Silver…does all his due diligence, gets all the information gathered, he’s got to come down hard. He shouldn’t own a team anymore. And he should stand up and say, ‘I don’t want to own a team anymore.’ Especially when you have African Americans renting his apartments, coming to the games, playing for him, coaching for him. This is bad for everybody. This is bad for America.

(…)

He’s got to give up the team. If he doesn’t like African Americans and you’re in a league that is over 75% African Americans…When you’ve got the president of the United States saying that this is bad. You’ve got fans around the country—different races of people—saying it’s bad, it is time for him to exit.

Magic is the best.

Originally posted here – 

Magic Johnson on Donald Sterling: "He Shouldn’t Have a Team Anymore"

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Sterling, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Magic Johnson on Donald Sterling: "He Shouldn’t Have a Team Anymore"