Tag Archives: obama

Trump team wants details on the State Department’s climate efforts. That can’t be good.

by PrincessAbg Posted on December 20, 2016

The administration announced Tuesday that President Obama will use a provision in the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to halt new offshore drilling in parts of federally owned Arctic and Atlantic waters — forever. While previous presidents have used that act to protect parts of the ocean, this is the first time it’s been exercised to enact a permanent ban on drilling. Canada will also indefinitely ban future drilling in its Arctic territory, the country said in the joint announcement.

The announcement came four weeks shy of Obama’s White House departure. President-elect Trump, a climate change denier, has vowed to undo many of Obama’s executive orders as well as dismantle the Clean Power Plan, open more federal lands to drilling, and withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.

But by using an existing act instead of issuing an executive order, Obama made the reversal of this drilling ban more difficult for his successor.

“We know now, more clearly than ever, that a Trump presidency will mean more fossil fuel corruption and less governmental protection for people and the planet, so decisions like these are crucial,” said Greenpeace spokesperson Travis Nichols. “President Obama should do this and more to stop any new fossil fuel infrastructure that would lock in the worst effects of climate change.”

This story has been updated. 

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Trump team wants details on the State Department’s climate efforts. That can’t be good.

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Obama put a permanent kibosh on offshore drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic.

by StefanieCallaway Posted on December 20, 2016

The administration announced Tuesday that President Obama will use a provision in the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to halt new offshore drilling in parts of federally owned Arctic and Atlantic waters — forever. While previous presidents have used that act to protect parts of the ocean, this is the first time it’s been exercised to enact a permanent ban on drilling. Canada will also indefinitely ban future drilling in its Arctic territory, the country said in the joint announcement.

The announcement came four weeks shy of Obama’s White House departure. President-elect Trump, a climate change denier, has vowed to undo many of Obama’s executive orders as well as dismantle the Clean Power Plan, open more federal lands to drilling, and withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.

But by using an existing act instead of issuing an executive order, Obama made the reversal of this drilling ban more difficult for his successor.

“We know now, more clearly than ever, that a Trump presidency will mean more fossil fuel corruption and less governmental protection for people and the planet, so decisions like these are crucial,” said Greenpeace spokesperson Travis Nichols. “President Obama should do this and more to stop any new fossil fuel infrastructure that would lock in the worst effects of climate change.”

This story has been updated. 

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Obama put a permanent kibosh on offshore drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic.

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Saving for Retirement Is a Struggle—Unless You’re a CEO

by GayleClaypool Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama has called runaway income inequality the “defining issue of our time.” The disparity between exploding corporate profits and stagnating paychecks fueled Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and continues to grow. Currently, the United States has a wider gap between the very rich and everyone else than at any time since the late 1920s. And according to a new study from the Institute for Policy Studies, that spells disaster for Americans trying to save enough to retire.

The study, titled “A Tale of Two Retirements,” found that in 2015 just 100 CEOs had retirement funds worth $4.7 billion—equivalent to the entire retirement savings of the least wealthy 41 percent of American families, or 116 million people. That figure is even more staggering when broken down by race: Those 100 execs’ retirement funds are worth as much as the entire retirement savings of the bottom 44 percent of white working-class families, the bottom 59 percent of African American families, and the bottom 75 percent of Latino families.

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Look at it another way. Those 100 CEOs have nest eggs large enough to generate a retirement check of more than $250,000 per month for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, the average American fortunate enough to have a 401(k) plan has socked away only enough to receive a monthly check of just $101. And those are the lucky ones: 37 percent of all US households have no retirement savings at all. Neither do 51 percent of African American families and 66 percent of Latino families. Things are also particularly bleak for millennials, as Americans younger than 40 have saved 7 percent less for retirement than similarly aged boomers.

The hollowing out of workers’ retirement benefits punishes female retirees, in particular: Median incomes for women 65 and older are 45 percent lower than men’s. And since women live longer than men, on average, they must stretch their retirement savings even further.

So who are these rapacious retirees? Many of them head companies that have been cutting back on worker pensions and retirement funds for years. John Hammergen, the CEO of the pharmaceutical giant McKesson, holds nearly $150 million in retirement assets. Shortly after joining the company in 1996, he closed its pension fund to all new employees. Yet Hammergen found enough money to set up a retirement account that has furnished him with assets worth more than $20,000 for every day he’s spent at the company’s helm.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon already had $67.8 million stashed in an untaxed, deferred compensation account in 2015, despite having only held his post since 2014. His predecessor, Michael Duke, retired with more than $140 million in deferred compensation. In contrast, fewer than two-thirds of Walmart’s 1.5 million employees have a company-sponsored retirement account. Those who do have an average balance of less than $24,000, enough for a monthly retirement check of $131—not even 0.04 percent of what McMillon can expect to take home every month.

Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, has more than $92 million in retirement assets. Between 1987 and 2011, the company contributed not one penny to employee pension plans, counting on rising stock prices to offset its expected contribution. After the economy crashed in 2008, Immelt froze pensions and closed them to new participants. The company has only funded 67 percent of its outstanding pension obligation to workers and its pension deficit has grown by $5 billion since 2011. During the same time, Immelt’s company-sponsored retirement assets have swelled from $53 million to $92 million.

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So how has this happened? Simply, the tax rules are structured in favor of massive executive retirement packages. Ordinary workers face strict limits on how much pre-tax income they invested in tax-deferred plans like 401(k)s. (The current limit is $18,000.) CEOs may participate in regular employee plans, but they also get Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans, which Fortune 500 companies set up with unlimited tax-deferred compensation. Since more than half of executive compensation is tied to stock price, CEOs have direct incentives to cut back on worker retirement benefits to pad their balance sheets. The money saved by those cost-cutting measures goes straight back into executives’ pockets, often tax-free: Corporations may deduct unlimited amounts of executive compensation from their federal taxes so long as it’s “performance based.”

Much of this is the result of Reagan-era policies that worked to prioritize corporate profits and undo the power of unions. Under Reagan, companies began to adopt 401(k)s over pensions, shifting investment risk from employers to workers, as these plans required workers to deduct savings from their paychecks with no guarantee of future benefits. Companies have also reduced retirement benefits by converting workers’ pension assets to cash balance plans, freezing retirement plans, closing retirement plans to new hires, or terminating retirement plans altogether.

Might this get better under President-elect Donald Trump, whose economic message seemingly resonated with white-working class voters? Don’t count on it. If Trump and congressional Republicans cut the top marginal tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent, Fortune 500 CEOs would stand to save $195 million when they withdraw cash from their tax-deferred retirement accounts, according to IPS.

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Saving for Retirement Is a Struggle—Unless You’re a CEO

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Trump Promised to Kill Billionaires’ Favorite Tax Loophole. Of Course His Economic Adviser Loves It.

by EthanRiggs Posted on December 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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In an economic policy speech at the Detroit Economic Club in August 2016, Donald Trump repeated a promise he’d made many times on the campaign trail: “The rich will pay their fair share.” He went on to explain that his reform “will eliminate the carried interest deduction and other special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors, and for people like me, but unfair to American workers.”

Trump’s promises to reform taxes to aid regular Americans undoubtedly helped him win in November. But earlier this month, he announced the appointment of the members of his President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of 16 business leaders who will advise him on government policy regarding economic growth and jobs. The head of that group is billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and CEO of the Blackstone investment juggernaut. In 2016, he was ranked the 113th richest person in the world, and Blackstone, in which he holds a roughly 20 percent stake, is one of the largest private equity management firms in America. He also happens to be one of the biggest proponents of the carried-interest deduction that helps create and enrich billionaires—the very loophole Trump vowed to close during his campaign.

The carried-interest deduction works like this: People who manage the investments of others—usually private equity bosses—are often paid with a cut of the investment profits. Under the loophole, they are taxed on those earnings as if they were capital gains, not personal income, which has a much higher rate. Sometimes referred to as the “billionaire’s loophole,” Alec MacGillis for The New Yorker wrote, it “has helped private equity become one of the most lucrative sectors of the financial industry.”

As a private equity heavyweight, Blackstone has been a main beneficiary of the carried-interest deduction. In March 2007, Blackstone earned $4 billion for its managers when it went public. The initial public offering caused a public uproar because it was largely based on the favorable tax treatment of carried interest. A few months later, Schwarzman placed a call to Leo Hindery, a fellow private equity fund manager, the night before Hindery was set to testify before Congress about closing the carried-interest tax loophole. According to Hindery, Schwarzman called him “a traitor.”

Schwarzman later solidified his stance as a staunch proponent of the tax deduction in July 2010, when he compared the Obama administration’s efforts to close the loophole—Obama’s 2010 budget proposal called for changing the carried-interest tax deduction—to the Third Reich. “It’s a war,” Schwarzman said at the board meeting of an unnamed charity. “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” Schwarzman was widely criticized for the comments, including by Vice President Joe Biden.

Then in August 2011, billionaire investor Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he called for closing the carried-interest deduction, noting that thanks to the loophole, his tax rate that year had been lower than that of any of his office employees. Schwarzman went on CNBC to counter Buffett’s argument, saying he was paying a combined federal and state tax rate of 53 percent. “I’m not feeling undertaxed,” he said. (The Times pointed out that Schwarzman likely hadn’t received much carried-interest-eligible income that year, since many of the investments managed by his company were still recovering from the financial crisis.) In response to a question about Trump’s promise to close the carried-interest loophole last September, Schwarzman implied that he’d be okay with it—only as part of a general move toward a flat tax, a move that would also disproportionately benefit the uber-rich.

Schwarzman has also long been a generous Republican donor, donating more than $790,000 in the 2016 cycle to down-ballot races and PACs dedicated to maintaining a GOP legislative majority. (He did not donate to the Trump campaign.) But now, he and his compatriots will certainly have Trump’s ear: Their first meeting is set to happen at the White House in February—just weeks into the first term of President Trump.

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Trump Promised to Kill Billionaires’ Favorite Tax Loophole. Of Course His Economic Adviser Loves It.

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Donald Trump Is Puzzled About All This Russia Hacking Stuff

by alipaschke Posted on December 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has a question:

Hmmm. That’s a chin scratcher for sure. Why didn’t anyone bring this up before the election? Like, say, in the first debate:

Or the second debate:

Or the third debate:

Or from 17 agencies of the US intelligence community:

Or from the mainstream media, like, say, the New York Times:

U.S. Says Russia Directed Hacks to Influence Elections

The Obama administration on Friday formally accused the Russian government of stealing and disclosing emails from the Democratic National Committee and a range of other institutions and prominent individuals….In a statement from the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., and the Department of Homeland Security, the government said the leaked emails that have appeared on a variety of websites “are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

Yep. It’s a real chin scratcher. How is it that no one brought this up before the election?

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Donald Trump Is Puzzled About All This Russia Hacking Stuff

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PizzaGate Shooter Read Alex Jones. Here Are Some Other Fans Who Perpetrated Violent Acts.

by obiectedecult4 Posted on December 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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When Edgar Maddison Welch stepped into the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria Sunday armed with an AR-15, he told police he was there to rescue children from a child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief, John Podesta. Fortunately, when he found no such children, Welch surrendered to the police without shooting anything but a locked door, and no one was injured. But that particular fake-news conspiracy theory, which began on 4chan shortly before the election, was widely promoted by Alex Jones, the controversial radio host and founder of Infowars, his conspiratorial website that often publishes fake news. Jones and Infowars also heavily promoted the candidacy of President-elect Donald Trump, who has appeared on Jones’s internet TV show and promoted some of his site’s content. At the end of an interview with Jones in 2015, Trump told him, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”

Welch was also a fan: He “liked” both Jones and Infowars on his Facebook page, and he told the New York Times after he was arrested that he also listened to Jones’ radio show. “He’s a bit eccentric,” Welch said. “He touches on some issues that are viable but goes off the deep end on some things.” He also told the Times that the 9/11 terror attacks called for further investigation—a common refrain from Jones. And while Welch joins more than 2 million people who “like” Jones and Infowars, he also is part of a much smaller number of Jones’ fans who have committed acts of violence in the pursuit of a kooky political theory given currency by Jones. Among other things, Jones believes the US government was behind the 9/11 terror attacks. He has called the mass shooting of children at Sandy Hook elementary school “a giant hoax“; believes the government has set up hundreds of FEMA concentration camps and is deploying juice boxes to “encourage homosexuality with chemicals so that people don’t have children.” A number of high-profile shooters are known to have had a fondness for Jones’ work and some of his favorite conspiracy theories. At least three were active commenters on Infowars. That’s not to say Jones caused the violence or even encouraged it. (He did not respond to requests for comment.) But the shooters do appear to share similar tastes in political news and opinions.

Here are some of them:

Richard Poplawski: In 2009, the ex-Marine killed three Pittsburg police officers who responded to a call about a domestic dispute with his mother. He had baited the police, meeting them wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying an AK-47. He opened fire as soon as he opened the door to the officers. In the months leading up to the attack, Poplawski had ranted online about the growing police state and the coming collapse of the economy. Before the shooting, he also promised to ramp up his activism and talked of revolutionaries. He claimed to have cased post-Super Bowl parties after the Pittsburgh Steelers won, to “survey police behavior in an unrestful environment.” Poplawski was a believer of conspiracy theories, especially those involving FEMA camps, and a reader of anti-Semitic websites such as Stormfront. But he also frequented Infowars, where he was a commenter. In a research report on Poplawski, the Anti-Defamation League wrote:

One of Poplawski’s favorite places for such conspiracy theories was the Web site of the right-wing conspiracy radio talk show host Alex Jones. Poplawski visited the site, Infowars, frequently, shared links to it with others, and sometimes even posted to it. One of his frustrations with the site, though, was that it didn’t focus enough on the nefarious roles played by Jews in all these conspiracies. “For being such huge players in the endgame,” he observed in a March 29, 2009 posting to Infowars, “too many ‘infowarriors’ are surprisingly unfamiliar with the Zionists.” Another time he was more hopeful, noting that “racial awareness is on the rise among the young white population.”

Jones took issue with the ADL report and news stories linking him to Poplawski. He has said Poplawski came to his site to comment specifically because he disagreed with Jones, and he denied having any responsibility for the shooting. He told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that “If anybody should be blamed for this it’s the Marines—they’re the ones who trained him to kill.” Poplawski is now on death row awaiting execution.

Oscar Ortega: In 2011, the Idaho Falls man traveled to Washington, apparently in the hopes of assassinating President Barack Obama, whom he believed was the anti-Christ. He shot a semi-automatic weapon at the White House from the window of his car and was arrested. In trying to explain Ortega’s behavior, a friend told the New York Times that Ortega had watched The Obama Deception: The Mask Comes Off, a film Jones wrote and produced. It claims Obama is helping create a “New World Order” and turning the US into Nazi Germany, using FEMA camps, among other tools. He pleaded guilty to terrorism and weapons charges and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Infowars suggested that the media was simply trying to “link anti-government opinion” with the shooting in order to chill political free speech.

Byron Williams: After being stopped for speeding in 2010, this former bank robber engaged in a 12-minute shootout with police on the Oakland freeway in California. Two officers were injured but no one was killed. Williams claimed he was on his way to start a right-wing revolution by killing people at the ACLU and the liberal Tides Foundation in San Francisco. In an interview with Media Matters after the shootout, he cited Jones as an influence on his political thinking. In 2014, as a repeat offender, Williams was sentenced to more than 400 years in prison for premeditated attempted murder of a police officer and weapons charges. Jones pushed back on stories linking him to Williams, telling Media Matters, “This goes to a classic lie that has been retreaded that this fellow follows Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. This is a classic guilt by association tactic,” Jones said. “It is just more of an attempt to imply that anyone who criticizes corruption is contributing to an atmosphere that will cause another Oklahoma City bombing.”

Tamerlan Tsarnaev: Along with his brother Dzhokhar, the Chechen immigrant orchestrated the Boston marathon bombings in 2013, setting off pressure cooker bombs that killed three people and injured more than 260 others. They also killed an MIT police officer and a Boston cop, who died of his injuries a year after the shooting took place. Tsarnaev was known to read a host of extremist materials, including jihadi websites and an English-language publication put out by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. But he was also hostile to the American government and interested in conspiracy theories. One of his relatives told the Associated Press that before the bombings, he “took an interest” in Infowars. (Jones has said the Boston marathon bombing was a plot hatched by the FBI.) Tsarnaev was killed during the post-bombing manhunt after his brother Dzhokhar drove over him in an SUV while trying to escape the police.

Jerad and Amanda Miller: The married couple went on a 2014 shooting spree in Las Vegas that started with an ambush of two police officers in an attempt to start an anti-government revolution; they were kicked out of the one they thought was starting at Cliven Bundy’s ranch during anti-government protests there. Jerad Miller said the Bundys booted them off the ranch because he was a felon illegally carrying a gun, but Ammon Bundy said they were asked to leave because they were “too radical.” The spree left five people dead, including the shooters. Both Jerad and Amanda were regular commenters on Infowars, where Jerad once speculated about when it would be appropriate to kill police officers. Jerad and Amanda embraced the site’s conspiracy theories about government mind-control, “chemtrails” and the notion that the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks. As he did after the Comet Ping Pong incident, Jones dismissed the Las Vegas killings as a “false flag” operation, this one set up by the Obama administration to blame the shootings on right-wing extremists.

Jared Loughner: In 2011, the mentally disturbed young man killed six people, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl. He shot and injured 13 others, seriously wounding Rep. Gabby Giffords, his original target, who’d been speaking at a Tucson event. Loughner had espoused anti-government views about the New World Order and conspiracy theories about the US government being responsible for the 9/11 attacks, echoing Jones. After the shooting, one of Loughner’s friend’s told Good Morning America that Zeitgeist, a trio of conspiracy films about the international monetary system that borrowed heavily from Jones’ work, had “a profound impact on Jared Loughner’s mindset and how he views the world that he lives in.” Loughner was also apparently influenced in his thinking about the government by the Loose Change, a cult classic among people who believe 9/11 was an inside job. Jones was its executive producer. Loughner is now serving life in prison.

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PizzaGate Shooter Read Alex Jones. Here Are Some Other Fans Who Perpetrated Violent Acts.

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Quote of the Day: Trump Is Blowing Off Intel Briefings Because "I’m, Like, a Smart Person"

by DortheaWofford Posted on December 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump doesn’t believe all this nonsense about Russia interfering with the election to help him out. I guess we all expected that. But then there’s this:

He also indicated that as president, he would not take the daily intelligence briefing that President Obama and his predecessors have received. Mr. Trump, who has received the briefing sparingly as president-elect, said that it was often repetitive and that he would take it “when I need it.” He said his vice president, Mike Pence, would receive the daily briefing.

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person,” he said. “I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.”

Hoo boy. A few years ago we learned that President Obama only attended 44 percent of his daily briefings. (He read the material on his own the rest of the time.) Conservatives were up in arms. Marc Thiessen complained that Obama was “consciously placing other priorities ahead of national security.” John Sununu called the daily brief “the most important half-hour of the day for a president who has to protect the security of the United States.” The Daily Caller snarked that Obama “has spent more time golfing than he has spent listening to daily intelligence briefings.” Breitbart called the news “alarming.” Dick Cheney was insulted: “If President Obama were participating in his intelligence briefings on a regular basis then perhaps he would understand why people are so offended at his efforts to take sole credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.”

Now Trump is saying he’s never going to take the briefing because “I’m, like, a smart person.” I await the conservative response with bated breath.

POSTSCRIPT: This is hardly the most important part of this story, but I’m curious. If Trump has only received two or three intelligence briefs so far, how does he know that they’re “often repetitive”?

Originally posted here:  

Quote of the Day: Trump Is Blowing Off Intel Briefings Because "I’m, Like, a Smart Person"

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Trump Still Blowing Off Intelligence Briefings

by RodrigoMota Posted on December 9, 2016

Mother Jones

A few years ago, conservatives raised an alarm over the fact that President Obama didn’t receive an in-person intelligence briefing every day. Sometimes, it turned out, he met with the briefer, but other times he just read the briefing material. This was deemed a major threat to national security.

So how about Donald Trump?

President-elect Donald Trump is receiving an average of one presidential intelligence briefing a week, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter, far fewer than most of his recent predecessors….Trump has asked for at least one briefing, and possibly more, from intelligence agencies on specific subjects, one of the officials said. The source declined to identify what subjects interested the president-elect, but said that so far they have not included Russia or Iran.

My guess is that Trump (a) thinks he already knows everything he needs to know, and (b) is afraid the briefings might force him to acknowledge things he doesn’t want to believe. In any case, he’s going to be president pretty shortly, and surely Republicans are deeply concerned about his apparent lack of interest in the intelligence community’s reports.

Right?

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Trump Still Blowing Off Intelligence Briefings

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Conway: It’s Cool for Trump to Be Apprentice Executive Producer Because Obama Golfed

by TabithaBoose Posted on December 9, 2016

Mother Jones

On Wednesday afternoon, Variety published a scoop: President-elect Donald Trump will stay on as executive producer of Celebrity Apprentice on NBC, the hit franchise he created with reality TV mogul Mark Burnett from MGM. The show returns to air on January 2—hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Trumps spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed the president-elect “has a big stake in the show.” Trump won’t be involved in actually producing the show, but his fee per episode is likely to be in the low five figures, according to Variety. According to the Hollywood Reporter, this fee will be paid by MGM Television, the studio responsible for the production—not by NBC.

All this is raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest. As the Huffington Post explained:

Trump’s role is rife with potential entanglements. While his paycheck will come from MGM, the program airs on NBC, a major broadcast network with an influential news division (which employs reporters Trump has personally attacked). It’s also the same network that airs Saturday Night Live, a show Trump has criticized on numerous occasions for its unflattering depiction of him. And NBC is owned by Comcast, a corporation that was recently slapped with a hefty fine by the Federal Communications Commission—an entity that will soon be under Trump’s control.

Today, Trump adviser and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway appeared on CNN’s New Day to defend the decision. According to Conway, whatever Trump does in his “spare time” is up to him, much in the way that Obama liked to play golf. “Were we so concerned about the hours and hours and hours spent on the golf course of the current president?” Conway said. “I mean presidents have a right to do things in their spare time, in their leisure time.” Watch the entire exchange above.

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Conway: It’s Cool for Trump to Be Apprentice Executive Producer Because Obama Golfed

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Swamp Watch – 7 December 2016

by AlfredBlackston Posted on December 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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We have another cabinet choice: Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt will lead the EPA. Pruitt is pretty much what you’d expect: he’s a climate change skeptic and has led the charge against pretty much every Obama initiative to protect the environment. And he’s from Oklahoma, so it’s hardly surprising that he’s pretty cozy with the fossil fuel industry.

In a controversial decision, the judges here at blog headquarters have named Pruitt the first Trump nominee who’s neither part of the swamp nor rich, crazy, or scary. Pruitt is a state official, so he’s not part of the DC swamp. And his climate skepticism and hatred of all environmental rules is pretty mainstream for Republicans. That’s scary, of course, but the title is reserved for those who are scary far beyond just being folks that liberals don’t like.

This prompts a question: if you could wave a magic wand and dump either Steve Bannon or Michael Flynn from Trump’s staff, which would you choose? I’d choose Flynn.

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Swamp Watch – 7 December 2016

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Swamp Watch – 7 December 2016