Tag Archives: government

Obama Ratchets Up Sanctions on Russia

by Sheeritwern Posted on March 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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

From the New York Times:

President Obama on Thursday announced he would expand sanctions against Russia, targeting individuals who support the government and a bank with ties to these associates, delivering on his warning earlier this week that it would ratchet up costs on Russia if it moved to annex the breakaway province of Crimea.

….Mr. Obama also said he had signed a new executive order that would allow him to impose sanctions Russian industrial sectors, presumably including its energy exports — a step that would dramatically tighten the economic pressure on Russia.

I expect we’ll quickly get a pro forma response about how weak and vacillating this is from Bill Kristol, John McCain, and Charles Krauthammer. I can’t quite get straight precisely what they want, but whatever it is, it’s something higher on the belligerence scale than whatever the appeaser-in-chief is offering up.

Continue at source:

Obama Ratchets Up Sanctions on Russia

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obama Ratchets Up Sanctions on Russia

Chart of the Day: China’s Debt Bubble Continues to Swell

by CeliaHdack Posted on March 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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

Via Paul Krugman, Atif Mian and Amir Sufi give us the chart below today to chew over. It shows China’s declining trade surplus over the past decade, which authorities have effectively offset by a dramatic increase in private credit in order to boost domestic demand. The authors explain how this happened:

China got a break starting 2003….The rest of the world — and in particular the United States — was willing to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars every year to purchase Chinese goods (among other things)….The result was reduced pressure on domestic debt creation, and domestic debt went down from 125% of GDP in 2003 to almost 100% of GDP in 2008.

….The continued borrowing by western countries was not sustainable and by 2008 global demand for Chinese goods collapsed….How could China create new demand for its productive capacity? The answer once again came in the form of a rapid rise in domestic private debt. The Chinese state-owned banks with explicit prodding from the government opened their spigots. The country has seen an explosive growth in domestic private debt since 2008.

Is this sustainable? Probably not. It’s yet another reason to be concerned about the continued fragility of the global economy. We’re probably not strong enough to withstand a major shock from China.

Link:

Chart of the Day: China’s Debt Bubble Continues to Swell

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chart of the Day: China’s Debt Bubble Continues to Swell

Marco Rubio Wants to Save the Internet From Foreigners

by ErnestoCTL Posted on March 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Sen. Marco Rubio, still engaged in his campaign to reconnect with his tea party roots after blowing it on immigration reform, announced today that he plans to introduce a bill that would “prevent a ‘takeover’ of the Internet by the United Nations or another government regime.” Steve Benen is puzzled:

To be sure, there are foreign governments that censor their citizens’ access to online content, but it’s not at all clear why Rubio sees this as a domestic threat here in the U.S. As best as I can tell, there is no effort to empower the United Nations or anyone else to regulate the Internet on a global scale. Such a policy would certainly be scary, and would require opposition, but at present, it’s also non-existent.

For the most part, Rubio is probably just glomming onto a random bit of jingoism that he thinks will rile up his base. Still, there’s actually a kernel of substance to this. Right now, the US Department of Commerce exercises ultimate control over the DNS root zone, and ICANN, a nonprofit that administers the DNS naming system, does so under contract to the Commerce Department. And while ICANN has a global governance structure, it’s based in Los Angeles and has historically had a heavy American management presence.

But that could change. Last year, in response to some of Edward Snowden’s spying revelations, ICANN’s board of directors issued a statement that called for “accelerating the globalization of ICANN and IANA functions, towards an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing.” Last month the European Commission joined in, releasing a statement that lamented a “continued loss of confidence in the Internet and its current governance” and proposing new governance that would “identify how to globalise the IANA functions” and “establish a clear timeline for the globalisation of ICANN.” A week later, rumors surfaced that ICANN might try to move its headquarters to Geneva.

Now, this kind of squabbling has gone on forever, and the politics behind these statements is usually pretty murky. There’s no telling if it will ever amount to anything, and in any case it certainly has nothing to do with UN control over the internet. Nonetheless, other countries have long chafed under effective American control of the internet’s plumbing, and the Snowden leaks have given new momentum to calls for that control to end. It’s possible that this is what Rubio is thinking of.

Original link: 

Marco Rubio Wants to Save the Internet From Foreigners

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Marco Rubio Wants to Save the Internet From Foreigners

The British Economy Is Not a Poster Child for Austerity

by CarmeloUBYX Posted on March 12, 2014

Mother Jones

Keith Humphreys notes that economic growth over the past year has been similar in Britain and the United States even though the two countries adopted very different responses to the Great Recession:

But don’t expect the similar levels of growth in the two countries to shake many people’s faith in their economic views. Most of the “slim government” crowd will argue that Britain didn’t cut enough (or that the U.S. growth isn’t real) and that’s why the U.K. hasn’t left the U.S. in the dust. Most increased government spending supporters will see proof that the stimulus wasn’t big enough (or that the U.K. growth isn’t real) because if it had been U.S. growth would be dwarfing that of the sceptred isle.

Many people seem to have stable preferences about whether they want government bigger or smaller. They will point to current economic conditions as the reason for why their preferences should prevail, but their preferences do not change when those putatively justifying economic conditions fade away. Neither are most people fazed when the government spending policies they support (as well as those that they oppose) deliver different results than they expected. Motivated reason is such a force in this particular policy area that rather than arguing over what current economic conditions particularly require, debaters are probably better off cutting to the chase and arguing directly about the real issue: Disagreement about how big or small we want the government to be.

I don’t think this is fair. If you want to compare Britain and the US, you have to look at their entire growth trajectory since the start of the recession. The chart on the right is taken from OECD numbers, so it’s an apples-to-apples comparison. And really, there is no comparison. As of 2012 (the most recent figures available from the OECD) Britain’s GDP was still 3 percent below its 2007 level. By contrast, US GDP was 4 percent above its 2007 level.

We can argue all day long about what caused this divergence, but I think the raw data is fairly unequivocal. Whatever the reason, the US economy really did suffer less and recover more robustly than the British economy.

Read this article:

The British Economy Is Not a Poster Child for Austerity

Posted in Brita, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Oster, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The British Economy Is Not a Poster Child for Austerity

Feds will help honeybees find food

by DrusillaBowles Posted on February 26, 2014

Feds will help honeybees find food

By

Judi

The U.S. government estimates that honeybees provide $15 billion worth of pollination services to America’s farms every year. So it’s throwing $3 million at them in the Midwest, announcing a new effort to help farmers and ranchers grow plants that furnish bees with healthier diets.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it will use the funds “to promote conservation practices that will provide honey bees with nutritious pollen and nectar while providing benefits to the environment.” The pollen and nectar will come from such sources as cover crops and high-quality pastures.

It’s another little step by the government to boost hives’ chances of survival. Forcing bees to subsist on the pollen and nectar of crops alone can leave them sickly.

“It’s a win for the livestock guys, and it’s a win for the managed honeybee population,” USDA official Jason Weller told Al Jazeera. “And it’s a win then for orchardists and other specialty crop producers across the nation because then you’re going to have a healthier, more robust bee population that then goes out and helps pollinate important crops.”

The funding should help provide some protection from colony collapse to beekeepers in Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

What the bees also desperately need, of course, are stricter regulations governing the use of neonic pesticides, like those in Europe. But the feds aren’t so anxious to offer that kind of help.


Source
Agriculture Secretary Announces $3 Million for a New Program to Improve Pollinator Health, USDA
Feds announce plan to help feed honeybees amid die-offs, Al Jazeera

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

,

Politics

Link – 

Feds will help honeybees find food

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Feds will help honeybees find food

Has Venezuela Turned Into a War Zone?

by merinenty Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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

Student protesters have filled the streets of many Venezuelan cities for the last two weeks to express their dissatisfaction with the socialist government, the deteriorating economy, and the violence that plagues the country. In the past few days the situation has worsened, as crackdowns from the National Guard and attacks from paramilitary groups have left at least six people dead so far.

Who are the protesters? Venezuela’s opposition party is unified by the desire to end the reign of “chavismo,” the socialist system devised by Hugo Chávez, and continued, albeit less handily, by his successor, Nicolás Maduro. The emergent leader of the protests is Leopoldo López, a Harvard-educated descendent of Simón Bolívar, and the former mayor of a Caracas municipality. He turned himself over to government forces after Maduro publicly demanded his arrest; López has called for more protests from prison. Also prominent in the opposition is María Corina Machado, a congresswoman in the National Assembly.

The protests started in the western border city of San Cristóbal, where students took to the streets on February 2 to express discontent with rampant crime. The forceful reaction of the authorities prompted other students in other cities to protest in solidarity. The protesters are largely from the middle class.

Maduro’s leadership has proved ineffective, and the economic policies he inherited from Chávez, including the nationalization of many industries, have wreaked havoc on the Venezuelan economy; these days, people are struggling to find the bare necessities. The scarcity index has reached an astonishing 28 percent, meaning that toilet paper, flour, and other basics simply might not be in stock. Maduro has threatened to raise gas prices, which were kept artificially low for 15 years because increasing them is politically disastrous. Inflation has more than doubled in the past year. Finally, the insanely high homicide rate, 39 deaths per 100,000 people in 2013, has many Venezuelans fed up with the status quo.

How is the government responding? Maduro, who narrowly beat opposition candidate Henrique Capriles in the election after Chávez’s March 2013 death, has swiftly cracked down on broadcast media coverage of the protests. The Colombian channel NTN24, which was covering the violence in the streets, has been taken off the air. Maduro expelled the CNN team today by revoking their press credentials.

Reports of paramilitary groups (known as colectivos), riding around on motorcycles and terrorizing protesters and civilians “tend to be exaggerated,” said David Smilde, a University of Georgia sociologist and senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America who returned from Venezuela yesterday. Though it is surely happening (with low quality video evidence to back it up), “that phenomenon appeals to the middle class’s worst nightmare of having these armed poor people on motorcycles.”

“The bigger problem,” Smilde continued, “is actually the government troops. The National Guard is the one that is doing the most violence, shooting on protesters and buildings. They tend to be very unprofessional. They don’t think in terms of civilian policing, so they will often fire on people who are fleeing. These are people who are 20 to 22 years old and oftentimes they end up being violent. I don’t think it’s necessarily state policy to repress voters. But the state could definitely make it clearer that there should be no violence.”

In a dramatic video, armed men reportedly from SEBIN, the Venezuelan intelligence agency, stormed the opposition party HQ. Reports have also surfaced of detainees being beaten, and the Human Rights Watch has called for the international community to condemn the violence against protesters and journalists.

How serious is the crisis? While some residents of Venezuela’s biggest cities, like Caracas, San Cristóbal, Mérida, Valencia, and Maracaibo decry the “war zone” in the streets, for many in Venezuela, life continues as normal. “From the outside it always looks like the whole country’s in flames, but of course life goes on and most things are up and running,” Smilde said.

However, San Cristóbal appears to be headed toward more dramatic confrontation. The Andean college town of 650,000, situated near the border with Colombia, has been heavily barricaded by opposition protesters. The government has cut off internet service to the city. Government paratroopers are on the way. And the opposition isn’t backing down, said Juan Nagel, editor of the blog Caracas Chronicles.

What’s going to happen next? So far it seems like the protests have not achieved support from the poor, who long have identified as chavistas. As Capriles, still the opposition’s biggest name, told The Economist, “For the protests to be successful, they must include the poor.”

Capriles has urged protesters to gather tomorrow en masse, and march peacefully. From prison, López passed a note to his wife, calling for more protests, a message that rapidly spread through social networks. “Tomorrow will tell what the future’s going to be,” Smilde said. If the turnout is huge and violence breaks out, Venezuela may be headed for prolonged unrest. If not, he said, things may “fizzle out.”

Leopoldo López Miguel Gutierrez/EFE/ZUMA

Boris Vergara/Xinhua/ZUMA

Boris Vergara/Xinhua/ZUMA

Boris Vergara/Xinhua/ZUMA

Nicolás Maduro Venezuela’s Presidency/Xinhua/ZUMA

Source: 

Has Venezuela Turned Into a War Zone?

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Has Venezuela Turned Into a War Zone?

It’s Not Just Those Emails. Here’s The Secret Investigation That Should Worry Scott Walker.

by JerrellLarcombe Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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

This week, the media got the chance to pore over more than 27,000 pages of previously unreleased emails and other documents gathered during a three-year secret investigation of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s staff when he was executive of Milwaukee County. That secret probe—what Wisconsin law enforcement calls a “John Doe” investigation—resulted in charges against three former aides to Walker, a major campaign donor, and a Walker appointee. The John Doe probe figured prominently in Democrats’ attacks on Walker during his June 2012 recall election that the governor handily won. Walker himself never faced any charges.

The recently released emails shed new light on the activities of Walker and his aides. Walker had insisted that staffers in his county executive office had been prohibited from doing political work on county time, yet these records show the opposite was true. The future governor and his underlings set up a private WiFi network to communicate with staff on his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, and county staffers used private laptops so that their campaign-related work wouldn’t appear on their county computers. The emails also show the degree to which Walker’s staff (whose salaries were funded by taxpayers) worked to get him elected governor while on the county clock. As Mary Bottari of PRWatch notes, Kelly Rindfleisch, a former Walker aide who was convicted of campaigning on county time, sent and received a whopping 3,486 emails from representatives of Friends of Scott Walker, most during normal work hours. (Walker, through his spokesman, declined to comment about the emails.)

State and national Democrats want the public to see these emails as part of a Chris Christie-style scandal. But there’s a big difference: This case is closed—and it has been since March 2013. So while the emails may result in some unflattering stories and uncomfortable questions for Walker, especially if he later runs for president, there’s nothing serious (read: legal) to worry Walker. Christie, on the other hand, faces two active probes of Bridgegate and related matters—one mounted by a legislative committee, the other by a US attorney—that could drag on for months, if not years.

But there is an investigation that should keep Walker up at night: a second John Doe investigation reportedly focused on his 2012 recall campaign. (After Walker targeted public-sector unions following his 2010 election as governor, labor and its allies launched a petition drive to throw Walker out of office via recall election.) John Doe probes are conducted in secret so the public can’t know all the details, but leaked documents suggest investigators are looking at possible illegal coordination between Walker’s recall campaign and independent groups that spent millions of dollars to keep him in office. Here’s how the progressive Center for Media and Democracy wrote about the investigation recently:

The John Doe probe began in August of 2012 and is examining possible “illegal campaign coordination between (name redacted), a campaign committee, and certain special interest groups,” according to an unsealed filing in the case. Sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the redacted committee is the Walker campaign, Friends of Scott Walker. Campaign filings show that Walker spent $86,000 on legal fees in the second half of 2013.

A John Doe is similar to a grand jury investigation, but in front of a judge rather than a jury, and is conducted under strict secrecy orders. Wisconsin’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeals unsealed some documents last week as it rejected a challenge to the probe filed by three of the unnamed “special interest groups” that had received subpoenas in the investigation and issued a ruling allowing the investigation to move forward.

The special interest groups under investigation include Wisconsin Club for Growth, which is led by a top Walker advisor and friend, R.J. Johnson, and which spent at least $9.1 million on “issue ads” supporting Walker and legislative Republicans during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections. Another group is Citizens for a Strong America, which was entirely funded by Wisconsin Club for Growth in 2011 and 2012 and acted as a conduit for funding other groups that spent on election issue ads; CSA’s president is John Connors, who previously worked for David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity and is part of the leadership at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity (publishers of Watchdog.org and Wisconsin Reporter). Other groups reportedly receiving subpoenas include AFP, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and the Republican Governors Association.

Unlike the first John Doe probe, this newer one seems to have Walker’s political operation in its sights. This ought to have Walker and his aides far more concerned than some old emails from his Milwaukee County days.

Original post:

It’s Not Just Those Emails. Here’s The Secret Investigation That Should Worry Scott Walker.

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It’s Not Just Those Emails. Here’s The Secret Investigation That Should Worry Scott Walker.

9 Years on the No-Fly List Because an FBI Agent "Checked the Wrong Box"

by KathieNordstrom Posted on February 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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

Over the years, I’ve written about a number of people who have been put on the no-fly list and prevented from entering the country for no apparent reason. Or, at any rate, for no reason the government cares to share with its victims. One of them is a Malaysian Ph.D. student named Rahinah Ibrahim, who was detained at San Francisco International Airport in 2005; eventually allowed to fly home; and then put on the no-fly list and never allowed back in the country. Why? As usual, no one is willing to say.

But this week we got a bit of a hint. Over at Glenn Greenwald’s new venture, The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain reports on the latest developments:

Last week, a federal judge publicly revealed the government’s explanation for Ibrahim’s long ordeal: an FBI agent had “checked the wrong box,” resulting in her falling under suspicion as a terrorist. Even when the government found and corrected the error years later, they still refused to allow Ibrahim to return to the country or learn on what grounds she had been banned in the first place.

Eric Holder, in his April declaration, restated his own new state secrets policy, that “the Department will not defend an invocation of the privilege in order to: (i) conceal violations of the law, inefficiency, or administrative error; (ii) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency of the United States Government”.

Then he did exactly what he had said he wouldn’t do.

Is there more to this? Maybe. The government, needless to say, isn’t talking. But it sure looks as if Ibrahim became a target for investigation; an FBI agent then filled out a form wrong; she was later cleared of any suspicion; but the mistake lived on forever and now no one wants to admit it. Do you feel safer now?

Original link: 

9 Years on the No-Fly List Because an FBI Agent "Checked the Wrong Box"

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Safer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 9 Years on the No-Fly List Because an FBI Agent "Checked the Wrong Box"

Boehner Struggles to Find 18 Republicans Who Don’t Want to Nuke the Economy

by LeticiaManna Posted on February 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) admitted defeat Tuesday morning. His chamber needs to pass a bill raising the debt ceiling by the end of the day Wednesday. House Democrats head to a retreat in Maryland on Thursday and Congress is on vacation next week for President’s Day, leaving few working days before the February 27 deadline issued by the Treasury Department. Boehner and his Republican colleagues had debated various asks they might attach to a bill raising the government’s borrowing limit—approving the Keystone Pipeline, repealing parts of Obamacare, and restoring a cut to military pensions were all considered—but by Tuesday it had become clear that the GOP couldn’t find a consensus. Boehner conceded that reality at a press conference. He’ll now have to rely on Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to, yet again, deliver the majority of the Democratic caucus to save his hide.

The only trouble? Boehner isn’t even sure if he’ll be able to eek out the bare minimum of necessary votes from his own caucus, a mere 18 votes if every Democrat approves of the clean debt ceiling raise. “If you don’t have 218, you don’t have anything,” he said. “We’re going to have to find them.”

Voting to raise the debt ceiling should be a no-brainer. The consequences of letting the government default would be catastrophic. In December, 169 House Republicans voted on the Ryan-Murray budget. To then turn around and vote against the government’s ability to pay the bills for that budget appears illogical, until you consider the pressure conservative groups will exert on any Republican who raising the debt ceiling. The Senate Conservatives Fund—a group pushing tea party challengers in primaries—quickly denounced Boehner Tuesday, calling for a coup to replace him as speaker. Heritage Action plans to hold an approving vote against Republicans in their scorecard.

Boehner won’t have much time to win over his wary colleagues. The House is scheduled to vote on the clean debt ceiling increase Tuesday night so that lawmakers can flee town before a winter storm hits Washington late Wednesday.

Read article here: 

Boehner Struggles to Find 18 Republicans Who Don’t Want to Nuke the Economy

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Boehner Struggles to Find 18 Republicans Who Don’t Want to Nuke the Economy

Step right up, Big Coal, for America’s Big Coal Giveaway

by WalkerMcIntyre Posted on February 5, 2014

Step right up, Big Coal, for America’s Big Coal Giveaway

By

Shutterstock

It’s bad enough that the federal government leases out public lands to private companies to be torn up and mined for coal. Even worse is that the feds are ripping off taxpayers in the process, leasing the coal tracts at way-below-market prices, through a totally inept program, according to a new federal study.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has leased 107 coal-laden tracts of land to mining companies since 1990, recently generating about $1 billion a year for federal coffers. Coal mining on federal land accounts for two-fifths of the 1 billion tons of coal mined every year in the U.S. Less coal is being burned in the U.S. these days, but it still produces about 40 percent of the nation’s electricity. Meanwhile, coal exports are growing.

Auctions for the coal-tract leases attract few bidders, and a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office is the latest reminder that the feds are selling the public short by accepting lowball offers.

Of the 107 coal-tract leases, 96 were sold to the only bidder — often to a company that was already mining for coal nearby:

GAO

The government is under no obligation to accept the lowball bids, but it appears to be doing so anyway because of systemic failures within BLM to properly estimate fair market value. The GAO found that some bureau offices failed to follow procedures, seek independent advice, or consider future market conditions when estimating market value. And when the bureau sold America’s assets at fire-sale prices, it “did not consistently document the rationale for accepting bids that were initially below the fair market value,” according to the report.

“Taxpayers are likely losing out so that coal companies can reap a windfall,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who asked the GAO to conduct the study. Markey’s office estimates that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars may have been lost to coal companies through these bargain leases.

Following publication of the GAO report on Tuesday, Markey and environmentalists called on the federal government to suspend new coal leases until it can be sure it will get fair prices for them.

Of course, it would be even better for the U.S. to stop coal mining on federal land entirely — something that President Obama might consider were he to take his own rhetoric about climate change seriously.

On that note, here’s how Rolling Stone describes the administration’s muddled coal policy in a must-read article titled “How the U.S. Exports Global Warming”:

With the freefall in domestic [coal] demand, industry giants like Peabody are desperate to turn American coal into a global export — targeting booming Asian economies that are powering their growth with dirty fuel. China now consumes nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined, and its demand is projected to grow by nearly 40 percent by the end of the decade. “China’s demand,” according to William Durbin, head of global markets for the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, “will almost single-handedly propel the growth of coal.”

Since Obama took office, American coal exports are up more than 50 percent. … [T]he administration opened up more than 300 million tons of coal in the Powder River Basin to bidding by the coal companies last year. The coal is on government land; it belongs to the public. Yet the leasing practices of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are so flawed that one independent study estimates that taxpayers have been fleeced of $30 billion over the past three decades. In the past, that stealth subsidy to Big Coal at least helped create cheap power for American homes and businesses. Today, the administration has put American taxpayers in the position of subsidizing coal destined to fuel the growth of our nation’s fiercest, and carbon-filthiest, economic rival.

In an era of climatic craziness and growing clean energy capacity, the last thing Americans should be subsidizing is coal mining.


Source
BLM Could Enhance Appraisal Process, More Explicitly Consider Coal Exports, and Provide More Public Information, GAO
How the U.S. Exports Global Warming, Rolling Stone

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: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Link:  

Step right up, Big Coal, for America’s Big Coal Giveaway

Posted in Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Step right up, Big Coal, for America’s Big Coal Giveaway