Carbon Taxes Are Even Better than You Think

Executive summary

The Carbon Washington carbon tax proposal is revenue neutral, with about 70% of the carbon tax revenue going to reduce the state sales tax by a full percentage point and the remaining revenue divided between reductions in manufacturing taxes and funding for the Working Families Rebate, a state-level bump-up of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit.

Household impacts will vary by household (see the carbon tax swap calculator for detailed estimates) but in aggregate the carbon tax and the sales tax reduction will roughly offset each other for each income quintile, with most households paying a few hundred dollars a year more for fossil fuels and a few hundred dollars a year less for everything else. The dominant impact on social justice will therefore come from the Working Families Rebate, which at 25% of the federal EITC will provide up to $1500 a year for 400,000 low- and middle-income working families in Washington State.

Thanks to the sales tax reduction and the Working Families Rebate, passing the Carbon Washington revenue-neutral carbon tax proposal will be the biggest improvement to the progressivity of the Washington State tax system since the 1977 ballot measure that exempted groceries from the sales tax.

 

Introduction

There are three ways that climate policy affects social justice. The first, not surprisingly, is as climate policy: everyone seems to agree that global warming will hit the poor harder than the rich, so there is a social justice benefit to reducing carbon emissions. A carbon tax is a great way to do this, as described in my previous posts: “Carbon taxes are better than you think (Part I: Transportation)” and “Carbon taxes are even better than you think (Part II: Electricity)”.

By reducing fossil fuel consumption, a carbon tax will also provide co-benefits by reducing emissions of local air pollutants like particulate matter and sulfur dioxide; these co-benefits will be especially valuable for the low-income communities and communities of color who are disproportionately affected by local air pollution hot spots. These co-benefits are the second way that climate policy affects social justice.

The third way that climate policy affects social justice is as fiscal policy. This is especially easy to see in the case of Carbon Washington’s carbon tax swap, a revenue-neutral approach that uses carbon tax revenues to reduce the state sales tax, fund the Working Families Rebate, and effectively eliminate the B&O business tax for manufacturing.

Tax Swap Poster(mini)

Before diving into the policy, however, let’s provide an overview of state and local tax systems.

 

State and local tax systems

The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has a terrific website that describes the state and local tax systems in all fifty states, including a graphical depiction of the percentage of income that different income groups pay in state and local taxes. This depiction includes the bottom four income quintiles (the lowest 20%, the second-lowest 20%, the middle 20%, and the fourth 20%) and a division of the top income quintile into three subgroups, ending with the richest 1%.

The next four graphs show the ITEP results for Oregon, Idaho, California, and Washington State. The first three all have fairly flat tax systems, meaning that households across the income spectrum pay about the same percentage of their income in state and local taxes.

OR

ID

CA

WA

Washington State has the dubious distinction of having the most regressive state and local tax system in the nation, but the ITEP graphs for Tennessee and Florida look fairly similar. What all three states have in common is a heavy reliance on sales taxes and the absence of a state income tax.

This combination almost inevitably produces a regressive state and local tax structure. Without an income tax, the share of income that high earners pay in taxes is likely to remain relatively low because they allocate relatively more of their income to savings, services, out-of-state spending, and other areas that are not subject to sales taxes in their home jurisdiction. It follows that a carbon tax—which is more like a sales tax than an income tax—is unlikely to alter the fundamental structure of the Washington State tax system.

It is, however, possible to use carbon tax revenues to reduce the tax burden on the lowest income households in Washington State, and this is what the Carbon Washington policy does by reducing the state sales tax and funding the Working Families Rebate.

 

Carbon taxes and sales tax reductions roughly offset each other

The first way our policy addresses financial impacts on low-income households (and more generally on households and businesses across the state) is by reducing the state sales tax. Cutting the state sales tax by a full point reduces the burden of sales taxes by 10-15 percent, depending on how you count it. (The state sales tax is currently 6.5 percent, but local sales taxes bring the current total up towards 10 percent in many areas of the state. If you focus on the state rate, a reduction to 5.5 percent is a savings of 15.4 percent; if you focus on the total state-plus-local rate, the percentage reduction depends on the specific local rate, but a reduction from the Seattle total of 9.5 percent to 8.5 percent is a savings of 10.5 percent.)

Sales taxes are of course regressive—lower-income households pay more as a percentage of their income because they spend more of their income on items that are subject to sales tax—so reducing the sales tax is a good way to make a carbon tax swap more progressive. (Whether or not carbon taxes are themselves regressive is a matter of some debate among economists, with one of the key questions being whether you should focus on current income or on lifetime income; see here for some details.)

To a first approximation, the household impact of the carbon tax and the sales tax reduction offset each other: most households will pay a few hundred dollars a year more for fossil fuels and a few hundred dollars a year less for everything else. The exact details will of course vary from household to household (see the carbon tax swap calculator to evaluate the impacts on your household) but for aggregate results we can use the Consumer Expenditure Survey and data from the EIA (natural gas prices, retail gasoline prices, home heating oil prices, and electricity prices) to estimate that carbon tax payments for various income quintiles are roughly in line with the sales tax savings estimated from the carbon tax swap calculator: about $100 a year for the lowest income quintile, about $200 a year for the second-lowest income quintile, and about $250, $300, and $450 a year, respectively, for the higher income quintiles.

salesTaxEstimate copy

Source: Based on the 2002 Tax Structure Study Report.

 

Assuming that the carbon tax and the sales tax reduction offset each other, we can focus on the Working Families Rebate. Stated simply, the conclusion of our analysis is this: Passing the Carbon Washington revenue-neutral carbon tax proposal will be the biggest improvement to the progressivity of the Washington State tax system since the 1977 ballot measure that exempted groceries from the sales tax. (See pp18-21 of the state’s Tax Reference Manual 2010 for a history of tax changes in the state.)

 

The Working Families Rebate

The largest anti-poverty program in the United States is the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. The federal EITC is a refundable tax credit that benefits low-income working households by providing a percentage match of earned income up to a certain level. (See figure below, and note that “refundable” means that households receive a check if their tax due is less than the amount of the credit.) The EITC provides a maximum credit of $496 for households without children, $3,305 for households with 1 child, $5,460 for households with 2 children, and $6,143 for households with 3 or more children.

eitcGraph

Source: Tax Policy Center.

 

Twenty-five states (and New York City and Washington, DC) provide local bump-ups of the federal EITC; for example, low-income households in Kansas receive from the state government a refundable state income tax credit equal to 17% of their federal EITC. The bump-up rates range from 3.5% of the federal EITC to 50% of the federal EITC.

Washington State has no income tax, but in 2008 the state government created a “sales tax exemption” for working families that equals 10% of the federal EITC. This Working Families Tax Exemption—a.k.a. Working Families Rebate—currently exists in state law as RCW 82.08.0206, but it has never been funded. (For even more details see the great work of the Washington Budget & Policy Center, but note that they’re assuming a bump-up of 10 percent of the federal EITC, while our policy provides a bump-up of 15 percent in year 1 and 25 percent thereafter.)

A 25% Working Families Rebate provides up to $1500 a year for 400,000 working families in Washington State. The impact is greatest for households with children and least for households without children and (obviously) households without earned income. The following graphics show that the Working Families Rebate has a significant impact on the state and local tax structure in Washington State for many (albeit not all) low-income households. (The red numbers in parentheses show the tax savings for a household with the average income for each ITEP income quintile.)

WA-married-1

WA-single-1

WA-married-2

WA-single-2

WA-married-3

WA-single-3

The graphics show that a 25% Working Families Rebate would have a tremendous impact on low-income households with children. In fact, funding the Working Families Rebate at a 25% level would provide the greatest improvement to the progressivity of the Washington State tax system since the sales tax exemption on groceries was passed at the ballot in 1977.

We can use the Consumer Expenditure Survey for a more in-depth comparison of the Working Families Rebate and the sales tax exemption on groceries. Households in the lowest income quintile spend an average of $2500 on groceries, so a 9.5% sales tax exemption amounts to $240 per household, or about $120 million for the approximately 520,000 households in this income quintile in Washington State. Households in the second-lowest income quintile spend an average of $3200 on groceries, so a 9.5% sales tax exemption amounts to $300 per household, or about $150 million for the approximately 520,000 households in this income quintile in Washington State. Total savings for households in the lowest two income quintiles therefore total $270 million a year.

Our 25% Working Families Rebate totals about $200 million a year, which is comparable to (albeit somewhat lower than) the total for the sales tax exemption for groceries.

One major difference is that the sales tax exemption for groceries was not revenue-neutral: it reduced state General Fund revenues. The carbon tax swap is intended to be revenue-neutral, with the carbon tax revenues offsetting the sales tax reduction, the Working Families Rebate, and the reduction in business taxes for manufacturing.

Another major difference is that the sales tax exemption for groceries is likely to provide roughly equal benefits to all households in a given income quintile. In contrast, the Working Families Rebate concentrates benefits on households with earned income and on households with children. (According to the Census Bureau, about 55% of people in poverty are in households with children.) The minimum Working Families Rebate is $100 a year, so qualifying households with children will receive a Working Families Rebate of between $100 and $1500. In contrast, qualifying households without children will receive a much smaller Working Families Rebate—the maximum is only $125—and of course households do not qualify for the Working Families Rebate if they don’t have earned income or otherwise don’t qualify for the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. These households will receive sales tax reductions that are likely to offset their carbon tax liabilities, and they will benefit from the climate policy impacts of the Carbon Washington proposal, but the main fiscal policy benefits will accrue to households with children.

Originally posted at CarbonWA

Private college declares bankruptcy, its students can't

Democracy for America emailed this:

On Monday, 16,000 students at Corinthian Colleges learned that their school had closed its doors for good — and declared bankruptcy. Single mothers, veterans, and other students suddenly found themselves facing thousands of dollars in debt with no degree or job to show for it.

This was not by accident, but by cruel design. As the biggest for-profit college in the country, Corinthian has spent years promoting falsified data to promise high quality jobs and convince students to take out massive levels of student loan debt, despite the limited value of a Corinthian degree. Corinthian funneled this public student loan money to hire the best lobbyists in Washington, including Karl Rove’s Crossroads G.P.S., to stay one step ahead of state and federal investigations into their crimes.

With Corinthian’s decision to declare bankruptcy, they get to wipe the slate clean on their debts — but their students can’t do the same, as federal law doesn’t allow student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy. As a result, more than 16,000 students are saddled with millions of dollars in student loans and the government expects these students to pay up. Or else.

Congress has given the Department of Education the authority to discharge student loan debt in situations of this kind. But Education Secretary Arne Duncan isn’t taking action. He wants these unlucky borrowers to repay the loans. It’s unfair and unjust. These borrowers need our help. Let’s demand the Department of Education do the right thing — and discharge their debt.

Join Democracy for America and Student Debt Crisis: Tell the Department of Education to discharge the debt that is crushing the future of these Corinthian students.

Corinthian students are fighting back. They’ve banded together to form the Corinthian 100, an activist group that is demanding the government release them from having to pay loans to a college that no longer exists.

They’re not alone. Thirteen Senators, including Elizabeth Warren, signed a letter to the Department of Education calling for for-profit regulations to be reviewed and for the Corinthian students’ debt to be discharged.

The Department of Education met with representatives from Corinthian 100. They slapped Corinthian Colleges with thousands of dollars in fines. But the government still refuses to free these students from their debts. Despite years of corruption perpetrated by Corinthian, the Department of Education thinks that Corinthian students should simply transfer to other crumbling for-profit colleges. It’s important to note that the Department is steering students towards schools like Devry and the Art Institutes, despite sweeping campus closures in recent weeks.

These students are victims of a greedy and unscrupulous for-profit industry. They deserve relief from their debts. Will you stand with them?

It’s time to end the cycle of deception and corruption from for-profit colleges. Tell the Department of Education: Enforce tougher regulations and free the victims of Corinthian from their debts.

Thanks to the support of Americans like you, and progressive leaders like Senator Elizabeth Warren, we have new momentum in the fight to make college debt-free and save American families from the crushing burden of student debt. Fighting back on behalf of the Corinthian students will not only help stop for-profit colleges from continuing to prey upon hard working Americans seeking a better life, but will go a long way towards fixing the entire system.

– Natalia

Natalia Abrams, Executive Director
Student Debt Crisis

Income Inequality in King County (and America)

InspireSeattle invites YOU to join us at our Social Forum: Saturday, May 30th at 6:30PM.

Main discussion topic for this evening: Income Inequality in King County (and America)

Much has been written and said of the widening income inequality in America. But even with the press coverage the issue has been receiving recently, most Americans still don’t realize how extraordinarily unequal our country has become since the 1970s. These misconceptions are captured in this 6 minute video on Wealth Inequality in America:

This distressing trend unfortunately exists in King County as well. And the impacts extend beyond income inequality itself – race, income, neighborhood are each major predictors of whether we graduate from high school, become incarcerated, how healthy we are, and even how long we will live. Given the national and international factors leading to income inequality, is there anything we can do about it locally?

King County is working to address this through their Equity and Social Justice work (see the “King County Equity and Social Justice Annual Report”, which is found on this website http://www.kingcounty.gov/equity (on right of the page)). The county is committed to implementing our equity and social justice agenda to work toward fairness and opportunity for all and to remove barriers that limit the ability of some to fulfill their potential. Our economy and quality of life depends on the ability of everyone to contribute.

Solutions that build equity and opportunity rely on us all getting involved. Come join us for this interactive discussion on inequality and equity, and how we all can participate in a more fair and just community.

Please join us for this important discussion!

Guest Speaker:  Carrie Cihak:

Carrie S. Cihak is Chief of Policy in the King County Executive’s Office. She develops solutions for issues that are complex, controversial, cross-agency, or of particular concern to King County Executive Dow Constantine. Carrie leads a team of advisors known informally as the “policy pod” to guide implementation of the goals of the King County Strategic Plan. She comes to the Executive Office after eight years as a senior-level policy and budget analyst for the County Council. Carrie is trained as a PH.D-level economist and worked on international trade and finance for President Clinton’s Council of Economic Adviser.

Additional Info on Forum:

Earlier this week, King County Executive Dow Constantine delivered his annual State of the County address, in which he highlighted the threat income inequality poses for our region. He also announced a proposal called Best Starts for Kids that would put every child in King County on a path toward lifelong success and the ability to contribute their fullest to our region. Best Starts for Kids would fund prevention and early intervention strategies based on the latest brain science with a property tax levy costing the average homeowner about $1 per week. You can view or read his State of the County address and learn more about Best Starts for Kids here: http://1.usa.gov/1bRrqTr.

About InspireSeattle:

InspireSeattle is a progressive network of Seattle-area people sharing ideas and supporting action. InspireSeattle’s vision is to create connection throughout our community and better community through activism. InspireSeattle’s mission is to provide a fun, supportive gathering for people who care deeply about our community, our country and our planet. We embrace progressive policies that improve our society and protect our environment. We discuss current issues, share ideas and activism efforts while striving to inspire additional action. Subscribe (or unsubscribe) to InspireSeattle by visiting www.inspireseattle.org/contact.html.

When: May 30th at 6:30PM. Please try to be on time!!!

Where: Candy’s place
1140 Alki Ave SW, #505, Seattle, WA 98116
206-938-7508 (tel) 206-661-5657 (cell)
candacesullivan@comcast.net (e-mail)

Google map: http://goo.gl/maps/cF5ky

Directions: From West Seattle Bridge:

Once on the bridge move to the right. . [Avoid exits to Harbor Island and Delridge Way]

Stay in the right of the 3 lanes. There will be an exit sign to Admiral & Avalon/Harbor. (Admiral will go straight up the hill.) Move to the right lane for the Avalon/Harbor exit. It will be down an incline. When the lane ends, go right on to Harbor.

Pass Salty’s restaurant (I’m .7 miles from Salty’s). Pass a pier with the water taxi landing. You will begin to turn around a point. There will be vertical parking on the right, a mid-rise condo on the left, some cottages on the left, and then a dark brick mid-rise condo on the left. That is me – 1140 Alki – the Duwamish Head condominium. I’m in #505 on the fifth floor.

Kitty corner across the street a few yards further on the right is the Luna Park bulkhead, also known as Anchor Park. It is a small park that extends into the Bay.

Caution: Alki begins very near our condo. It is easy to get confused by the numbering on Harbor, similar to ours but no 1140.

The entrance is up some stairs. There is a phone at the door. Locate Sullivan. Ring me and I will buzz you in. [If you need handicapped access, you will need to call me so that I can let you in the rear door.

Format

It’s a potluck: so please help out and bring something to eat and to drink!

6:30 to 7:45: Social time! Eat, drink, relax, and catch up with some other local progressives

Formal discussion and guest speakers, 7:45 to 9:30

Other Announcements – got any?

Rules of Engagement!

1. So that everyone has a chance to participate, please keep your comments short

2. Raise one’s hand to ask a question in lieu of shouting out

3. Respect the points of views of others

How President Obama and his supporters damaged the Democratic Party

Finally, near the end of his presidency, President Obama is displaying the sort of fighting spirit that we needed early on.

Unfortunately, Obama is directing his wrath at Elizabeth Warren and other progressives.

Just two years after the end of disastrous and corrupt presidency of George W. Bush, Democrats were dealt a shellacking in the midterm elections of 2010.   In 2014 control of both houses of Congress was handed over to extremist Republicans.

What went wrong?

A hint about the cause is the following.

In recent days President Obama is openly attacking progressives in the Democratic Party over their opposition to the fast-tracking of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.  This trade deal — which would allow international corporations to sue the US to obtain compensation for lost future profits due to regulations and laws — is opposed by organized labor, by environmentalists, by progressives, and, in fact, by most Democrats in Congress.  The President is depending on the support of Republicans to pass this deal.

President Obama has denied that the trade deal is secret, but in fact it is secret.   The public cannot view it, though Wikileaks leaked a chapter, and there are tight restrictions on how members of Congress can view it. As Politico reports, “If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door.”

Margot E. Kaminski wrote in this New York Times op-ed:

[T]he draft text is classified by the United States government. Even if current negotiations over the trade agreement end with no deal, the draft chapter will still remain classified for four years as national security information. The initial version of an agreement projected by the government to affect millions of Americans will remain a secret until long after meaningful public debate is possible.

Even the most starry-eyed supporter of President Obama must now be having second thoughts about the policy choices and political smarts of the leader of the Democratic Party.

 

The myth that Obama was forced to compromise

Defenders of the President will claim that, all along, he was forced to compromise because of the unrelenting opposition of Republicans and conservative Democrats.

It is true that conservatives and their well-heeled supporters launched a massive propaganda campaign against the President and the Democrats; and  Republicans in Congress opposed, often unanimously, virtually every policy proposal coming from the Democrats. As a consequence, many Democratic bills died in the Senate, due to filibusters, and bills that did pass Congress, such as the Affordable Care Act, were badly compromised.

But a clear-eyed analysis of the evidence, summarized below, shows that in many cases President Obama actively and repeatedly chose to pursue policies that favored corporations and the military over the People.  He repeatedly compromised early and unnecessarily. He actively selected corporate Democrats to design the Affordable Care Act and many other bills. He filled regulatory agencies with industry-friendly hacks.  He supported centrist Democratic candidates over progressive candidates. He urged regulators to pass industry-friendly rulings.  He prosecuted whistle blowers and let war criminals and Wall Street thugs off the hook.

In the elections in 2010, 2012, and 2014, Democratic candidates were burdened with defending, or ignoring, a poorly designed monstrosity of a health care bill that failed to rein in costs, that pleased nobody, and that was, at best, a small improvement over the existing health care framework.   To a large extent, ACA was a gift to the insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital industries.  The bungled launch of the national ACA website further reinforced GOP talking points about the inefficiency and haplessness of government.  The ACA pandered to anti-choice politicians, by making it illegal for ACA-related health care plans to cover elective abortions. And organized Labor disliked the ACA because it removed incentives for joining unions and made union members subsidize insurance companies. (See Brendan Williams book Compromised: The Affordable Care Act and the Politics of Defeat for a detailed exposé of the Obama administration’s failings in the area of health care reform.)

In short, the President’s centrism, his failure to lead, his quickness to compromise, his failure to prosecute criminality in the Bush administration and on Wall Street,  and his unwillingness to decisively break with conservative policies and framing confused  and alienated supporters and voters, and allowed our opponents to portray the Democrats as servants of the rich and the powerful.

You needn’t take my word for it. The President himself said, “My policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies … back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican.”

Obama moves right, Dems follow

In short, Obama is a terrible Democrat, just as George W. Bush is a terrible Republican.

Why can’t our political system deliver quality candidates?

I was once an ardent Obama supporter

Before I enumerate the the ways in which Obama betrayed Democratic principles, I want to point out that I am no radical leftist.  In 2008 I donated hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours to the campaign of candidate Barack Obama. When he won on Nov. 4, 2008, I texted “Happy day!” to my brother.

Within a year I had sorely regretted my support for Obama. I wrote articles, submitted resolutions, and advocated for accountability, to save the Democratic Party from looming catastrophe.

How President Obama betrayed Democrats

President Obama violated Democratic ideals and aided Republicans by:

  1. Escalating and widening the disastrous, corrupt war in Afghanistan, causing attacks on civilians, cover-ups, and further hardship and casualties for our troops (bin Laden is dead, and al Qaeda is elsewhere — why are we even there?).
  2. Secretly sending special forces to 75 countries — see this article.
  3. Expanding drone attacks, causing many civilian deaths.
  4. Supporting neo-Nazis in the civil war in the Ukraine and surrounding Russia with NATO forces.
  5. Authorizing assassination without trial, even of US citizens.
  6. Increasing total defense spending to nearly a trillion dollars a year.
  7. Authorizing an attack on Libya without prior authorization from Congress, in violation of the War Powers Act.
  8. Twice delaying the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and continuing the use of private mercenaries.
  9. Continuing overseas rendition, torture, the Guantanamo prison, and domestic spying;
  10. Choosing as his health care proposal a plan designed by the Heritage Institute; it enriches insurance companies and fails to contain a public option, not to mention single-payer.
  11. Choosing conservative Democrat Max Baucus, his advisor Jim Messina, and the other members of the Gang of Six to design the Senate’s health care compromise; Baucus had brokered the passage of George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts and 2003 Medicare prescription drug plan, and had spent the better part of the Bush presidency cutting deals with Republicans and infuriating fellow Democrats. Other transgressions included voting for the war in Iraq, the energy bill, the bankruptcy bill and to confirm Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. (source).  Jim Messina later became a chief campaign strategist for David Cameron and the UK Tories; see Former Obama Campaign Manager Led Austerity-Loving Tories to Victory.
  12. Extending President Bush’s unjust bailouts of the banks and Wall Street.
  13. Failing to prosecute criminality in the banking industry (see Eric Holder: The Reason Robert Rubin Isn’t Behind Bars).
  14. Proposing a budget deal more regressive than Pres. Reagan’s (see evidence).
  15. Opposing a bill that would have imposed windfall taxes on Wall Street bonuses.
  16. Surrounding himself with military, legal, policy, and economic advisers held-over from the Bush Administration and from the right wing of the Democratic Party.
  17. Allowing the Affordable Care Act to contain anti-labor provisions (“Union health trusts will actually have to pay a temporary tax to subsidize private insurance companies selling individual coverage on the exchanges.” [source], and “It is no exaggeration to imagine the ACA having the effect of destroying unions, by destroying the incentive to be in them [Compromised: The Affordable Care Act and the Politics of Defeat]).
  18. Allowing many of the architects of the Affordable Care Act to obtain employment with health industry corporations after leaving government service (source: Compromised, ibid).
  19. Allowing the FBI, under the direction of Bush hold-over Robert Mueller, to spy on domestic peace activists and to raid their homes, as reported here and here.
  20. Cutting back-room deals with Big Pharma and Big Insurance that eliminated a public option, prevented re-importation of medicines, and benefited the corrupt and inefficient health industry, in violation of his campaign promise (see also this).
  21. Repeatedly firing progressive staff members, including Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod, based on distorted right-wing smear campaigns, without giving the accused a chance to defend themselves.
  22. Allowing anti-choice provisions to be included in health care reform, despite his campaign pledge to “make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as president”.
  23. Threatening war with Iran (though more recently his has been a voice of moderation).
  24. Disallowing single-payer advocates a seat at the negotiating table (unclear whether Obama himself made this decision) and reneging on his promise to support a public option.
  25. Supporting assassination of an American citizen residing overseas; see Glenn Greenwald’s analysis.
  26. Failing to support the Employee Free Choice Act, despite union support during his election and his promise to “to fight for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act”.
  27. Proposing to open sensitive coastal areas to offshore oil drilling.
  28. Favoring $50 billion in government subsidies for nuclear power but not for green energy.
  29. Announcing in November, 2010 a two-year freeze on federal workers’ wages. “This action — negligible in its effect on the federal deficit — affixed the presidential seal of approval to the strategy of handing workers the bill — and the blame — for the economic havoc caused by Wall Street fraud, corporate tax relief and war” (souce).
  30. Expanding the definition of terror to include domestic nonviolent civil disobedience, see this article.
  31. Working with Republicans in the Deficit Commission to gut Social Security, relying on false claims of pending insolvency, and ignoring the option of eliminating the income cap on social security taxes (see this and this and the editorial Whacking the Old Folks from the June 7, 2010 issue of The Nation).
  32. Supporting corporatist, conservative Democrat Blanche Lincoln against progressive challenger Bill Halter in the Arkansas Senate race; see Biden Sends Fundraising E-Mail For Blanche Lincoln.
  33. Failing to push for meaningful action about climate change at the Copenhagen conference.
  34. Appointing pesticide pusher Islam Siddiqui as chief agricultural negotiator in the office of the US trade representative.
  35. Supporting the court martial of Bradley Manning, who leaked the “Collateral Murder video” and documents about the war in Afgahnistan; see also this.
  36. Pushing for strong enforcement of federal marijuana statutes US vows marijuana enforcement regardless of California vote, Medical Marijuana Industry Is Unnerved by U.S. Crackdown (“Medical marijuana advocates accuse the Obama administration of going back on earlier promises not to go after groups abiding by local laws.”); see also this article and this article. “The president campaigned on the promise that he’d stop federal raids on medical marijuana operations that were in compliance with state laws, a vow that Attorney General Eric Holder repeated after the election. But then the Obama administration raided more than 100 dispensaries in its first three years and is now poised to outpace the Bush administration’s crackdown record.” (source)
  37. Overseeing the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, despite his June 2008 statement: “I strongly favor diversity of ownership of outlets and protection against the excessive concentration of power in the hands of any one corporation, interest or small group. I strongly believe that all citizens should be able to receive information from the broadest range of sources. I feel that media consolidation during the Bush administration has had the effect of eliminating a lot of the diversity of information sources available to persons who have to rely on more traditional information sources, such as radio and television broadcasts and newspapers.”
  38. Prosecuting whistle-blower Thomas Drake, who exposed fraud, corruption, and illegal surveillance in the NSA “Trailblazer” program; “Even neo-conservative secrecy advocate Gabe Schoenfeld, whose far-flung idea it was to use the Espionage Act to prosecute leakers, calls Obama’s conduct ‘draconian.'” (See The New Yorker’s Damning Dissection of “Leak” Prosecution of Thomas Drake);
    See Obama’s Crackdown on Whistleblowers.
  39. Nominating George Beck as US Attorney in Alabama (see Obama Proposes a Wretched Nominee for Controversial U.S. Attorney Post).
  40. Approving the use of taxpayer funds for religious schools (Solicitor general surprises justices in religious schools case)
  41. Compromising with Republicans on extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich; Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said this about the estate tax provision included in the tax cut compromise: “We had the president — George W. Bush — we couldn’t get it done then and we’re getting it done here.”
  42. Choosing JP Morgan banker Bill Daley as chief of staff, despite Daley’s approval by the Chamber of Commerce, “Daley publicly pushed the line that Obama and the Democrats overreached with healthcare reform; opposed the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency….[and] kvetched about the electoral plight of centrist Democrats in a December 2009 Washington Post op-ed.” (source)
  43. Failing to support Wisconsin workers whose collective bargaining rights were taken away by Governor Walker, the Koch brothers, and Republican legislators. This despite his earlier promises to support workers. See Shoes for President Obama.
  44. Failing to prosecute Bush-era crimes, thereby aiding Republicans and allowing them to hide the truth about their policies from the American people (“…the incredible lengths to which Obama has gone in his crusade to fully protect Bush, Cheney, and their co-conspirators, an effort that has included making threats to England should it be so uncouth as to reveal any evidence of wrongdoing”, from An Honest Look at Obama’s First Year); see also Obama, Press Ignore GOPer Use of DOJ to Cheat Voters, Taxpayers; WikiLeaks has now revealed that Obama worked behind the scenes to prevent the Spanish judge from prosecuting Bush &ammp; Cheney for war crimes; ‘”The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers” .
  45. Compromising early and unnecessarily on raising the debt ceiling. “President Obama initially tried to strike a ‘Grand Bargain’ with Republicans over taxes and spending. To do so, he not only chose not to make an issue of G.O.P. extortion, he offered extraordinary concessions on Democratic priorities: an increase in the age of Medicare eligibility, sharp spending cuts and only small revenue increases. As The Times’s Nate Silver pointed out, Mr. Obama effectively staked out a position that was not only far to the right of the average voter’s preferences, it was if anything a bit to the right of the average Republican voter’s preferences.” (Paul Krugman); “It is now beyond dispute that President Obama not only favours, but is the leading force in Washington pushing for, serious benefit cuts to both social security and Medicare.” (Glenn Greenwald);
  46. Suspending a federal scientist for publishing a paper about the effect of climate change on Arctic wildlife (see Federal polar bear scientist back on the job).
  47. Blocking investigation of foreclosure fraud; see Why is the Obama Administration Trying to Block Investigation of Foreclosure Fraud? and this.
  48. Backing down on strengthening Bush-era smog standards, despite EPA director Lisa Jackson’s statement that the current standards are “not legally defensible given the scientific evidence on the record” of dangers to human health” (source). In rejecting the stronger standards, Obama repeated Republican talking points by citing “the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty” — despite “the EPA’s own studies show that a tighter standard could have created $17 billion in economic benefits” (source; see also here).
  49. Supporting free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, despite the opposition of many Democrats and despite the approval of most Republicans (Trade Deals Wed Obama to Republicans as Democrats Vow to Oppose).
  50. Allowing a contractor working for pipeline developer TransCandada to conduct the environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline (source).
  51. “Siding with insurers rather than patients, the Obama administration also changed the rules to prevent patients from appealing contractual disputes, such as a particular service or medication is covered in a policy.” (source).
  52. Deciding not to investigate possible police brutality in the crackdown on Occupy Oakland; see Despite Iraq Vet’s Cracked Skull, DoJ Sees No Evil in Occupy Crackdown.
  53. Pressuring state attorney generals to accept a deal with Wall Street companies that, in the view of many, largely exonerates the criminals on Wall Street (see See Glenn Greenwald at about 54:00).
  54. Trying, but failing, to extend the occupation of Iraq (see (Ibid, 57:00)).
  55. Illegally defunding WikiLeaks, without due process (see (Ibid, 59:00)).
  56. Overseeing the coordinated crackdown on Occupy protesters (Ibid, 59:00).
  57. Restricting access to the morning after pill (see Health Secretary blocks wider access to morning-after pill).
  58. Being “just as zealous as George Bush in stripping away environmental, health and safety protection at the behest of industry” (source).
  59. Naming former Wall Street defense lawyer Mary Jo White to be the Chair of one of the Securities and Exchange Commission (petition).
  60. Nominating Jerome Powell to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. “Powel served as the undersecretary for finance under the president George H. W. Bush and was a partner of The Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group is a massive private equity firm and one of the largest defense contractors in the world” (source).
  61. Failing to pursue prosecution of big banks for robo-signing (see Insight: Top Justice officials connected to mortgage banks).
  62. Negotiating a free trade agreement, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership: “TPP has been under negotiation for three years and, unlike in past trade negotiations, Congress has been denied access by the executive branch to the draft agreement text. The few TPP texts that have leaked suggest that TPP would not only replicate the job – offshoring investor protections of NAFTA but expand on them while also undermining Buy American procurement policy, imported food safety rules and medicine price containment policies” (source); see also this.
  63. Agreeing to a “fiscal cliff” deal  on New Year’s Day, 2013 that made permanent 82% of the Bush tax cuts. The deal  lowers tax rates for incomes up to $400,000/$450,000 instead of $200,000/$250,000. (Rep. Adam Smith said that the compromise made in return for an agreement by Republicans on a two month delay before sequestration kicks in).
  64. Giving Shell Oil approval to drill beneath the Arctic Ocean off Alaska and blocking global action in Copenhagen and Durban (RootsAction). “The Obama administration on Monday gave conditional approval to allow Shell to start drilling for oil off the Alaskan coast this summer, a major victory for the petroleum industry and a devastating blow to environmentalists.” — source: New York Times.
  65. Selecting John Brennan as the nominee to head the CIA; see As Brennan Tapped for CIA, Case of Somali Detainees Highlights Obama’s Embrace of Secret Renditions.
  66. Loosening media ownership rules; see Obama Administration Seeks to Strengthen Rupert Murdoch.
  67. Nominating Jack Lew for Treasury Secretary (see Failure of Epic Proportions”: Treasury Nominee Jack Lew’s Pro-Bank, Austerity, Deregulation Legacy).
  68. Nominating Ernest Minz for secretary of energy; see Energy Nominee Ernest Moniz Criticized for Backing Fracking & Nuclear Power; Ties to BP, GE, Saudis;`:w
  69. Appealing a federal judge’s ruling that lifted age restrictions on the morning-after pill (see Women’s health groups slam Obama administration’s decision to appeal morning-after pill ruling).
  70. Nominating Tom Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry, to run the FCC (see Uh-Oh: AT&T and Comcast Are Ecstatic About the FCC’s New Chairman).
  71. Nominating former Obama fundraiser Penny Pritzker for Commerce secretary, despite her family’s history anti-unionism and shady, subprime business dealings (see also this; as Brendan Williams wrote, “Upon President Obama nominating billionaie, union-fighting hotel heiress Penny Pritzker as commerce secretary, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote that it ‘[t]urns out the wealthy didn’t lose the 2012 election; rather, the Republican rich lost to the Democratic rich.'”).
  72. Personally intervening to stop Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, from pardoning Abdulelah Haider Shaye, “a Yemni jounralist who in 2009 revealed a US airstrike that killed fourteen women and twenty-one children” (source: The Nation, March 25, 2013, p. 3).
  73. Nominating Jason Furman for Chief of the Council of Economic Advisers; the American Enterprise Institute says of Furman: “He has written on the importance of fiscal discipline, the need to undertake entitlement reform sooner rather than later, the role of international trade in improving living standards, and the benefits of Wal-Mart in boosting living standards for low-income Americans.” (source: Jason Furman would serve with distinction as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers).
  74. Calling for extradition of whistle blower Edward Snowden.
  75. Signing “into law the $633 billion defense authorization bill despite provisions that block any attempt to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and try detainees on US soil” (source).
  76. Choosing Larry Summers as front-runner to head the Federal Reserve, despite Summers’ ties to the worst Wall Street abuses (Congressional Dems forced Obama to nominate Janet Yellen instead).
  77. Weakening public education: “A feature of the Obama presidency has been his campaign against the American public school system, eating way at the foundations of elementary education.” (source).
  78. Nomimating Ted Mitchell, a supporter of privatization of education, to become Under Secretary of the Department of Education (“an alarming sign that the administration is favoring greater privatization of public education”.(
  79. Appointing conservative judges to the federal courts (“According to a February analysis by the Alliance for Justice, a coalition of environmental, consumer, civil rights, and women’s groups, 70 percent of Obama’s judicial nominees are former corporate attorneys. ” Obama’s Judicial Nominees: Liberals Are Upset With Them, Too).
  80. Threatening to jail veteran New York Times reporter James Risen if he doesn’t reveal a confidential source; a recent report by the Committee to Protect Journalists shows that the Obama administration’s efforts to prosecute leaks and control information are the most aggressive since the Nixon era.
  81. Nominating Antonio Weiss, a former Wall Street investment banker, as Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance; as reported here, Weiss helped Burger King merge with a Canadian company to avoid paying its fair share of U.S. taxes.
  82. Nominating anti-abortion legislator Michael Boggs to be a federal district court judge.
  83. Running HAMP (the Home Affordability Modification Program) in a way that benefited bankers, not homeowners, contrary to earlier agreements. David Dayen in American Prospect, winter 2015, writes, “HAMP cannot be justified by the usual Obama-era logic, that it represented the best possible outcome in a captured Washington with Republican obstruction and supermajority hurdles…. It was entirely a product of the administration’s economic team, working with the financial industry…”.
  84. Supporting high-stakes testing that weakens public education and unions.
  85. Working with Republicans in Congress to pass the TPP against the opposition of labor, environmentalists, and most Democrats (Obama vows to help pro-trade Democrats fight off the left wing).
  86. Comparing progressives such as Elizabeth Warren to Sarah Palin because of the progressives’ opposition to the TPP trade deal (Obama goes after Warren: ‘She’s absolutely wrong’ on trade and Obama’s war with Elizabeth Warren is heating up).  As The Other 98% said of this, “When President Obama campaigned for office, he promised to reverse NAFTA on dozens of occasions. Now, he’s using his recent popularity to attack his own party from the headquarters of a sweatshop corporation [Nike in Oregeon]. If only Obama worked as hard preventing people from losing their homes or jailing banksters…”
  87. Distorting the truth about the secrecy of the TPP.  Obama said: “When I keep on hearing people repeating this notion that it’s ‘secret,’ I gotta say, it’s dishonest, And it’s concerning when I see friends of mine resorting to these kinds of tactics.” In fact, the text of deal is not open to public and is viewable by members of Congress only with heavy restrictions.
  88. Supporting charter schools, which are destructive of public education and the interests of teachers; see As Obama Admin Seeks More Funding for Charter Schools, Questions Raised over Billions Already Spent.
  89. Blocking adoption of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Review Conference’s consensus statement. See Obama Administration Sabotages Nuclear Nonproliferation Conference.
  90. Failing to put expansion of Social Security on the agenda of the White House Conference on Aging (July 13, 2015), despite support of almost all Senate Democrats and 116 out of 188 House Democrats (source).

Why do grassroot Dems put up with it?

Because they fear they might empower the Republicans; because they’re uniformed; because they believe the nice-sounding rhetoric coming from corporate Dems; and because it’s almost impossible to convince Democrats to oppose a sitting Democratic president. I was accused of aiding the racist wingnuts and birthers who attack Obama from the right. It pains me to no end when Obama supporters hold onto their delusion that the President is a friend of the people.

Why Politics Sucks

Additional documentation

Closing tax loopholes could do a lot of good

Our state’s public structures and services are the oil of our economic engine. From roads to bridges, preschool to college, veterans’ benefits to senior services and protections for our air and drinking water, we’re all better off when we invest in strong communities.

But there’s a big red warning light on our dashboard: Low Oil. Washington state tax resources will fall $4.5 billion short of the amount needed to adequately fund schools, health care, child care, and other important investments in the next two years, according to projections from the state Economic and Revenue Forecast Committee.

Hundreds of special corporate tax giveaways now riddle Washington’s tax code. We’re losing billions we could be investing for the common good. Meanwhile, the taxes that remain fall much harder on the little guy, while leaving the wealthy alone: the bottom 20 percent pay 17 percent of their income in state and local taxes, the middle 20 percent pays 10 percent, and the top 1 percent pays a mere 2.8 percent.

It’s tempting to look for a single “silver bullet” — like wholesale tax reform — but given the political barriers, perhaps a more successful (albeit slower) approach is to use “silver BB’s,” that is, take concrete steps toward small solutions that add up to something bigger.

For example: there are more than 30,000 students in Washington’s K-12 schools who are homeless. (That’s the equivalent of all the kids in the Everett, Lake Stevens and Burlington-Edison schools, combined.) Imagine how hard it is for these children to get to school, stay in school and earn good grades. Every child should have the doors of opportunity and advancement wide open in front of them — but fewer than half of homeless kids graduate from high school in four years, and almost three times as many drop out compared to kids with homes.

Local legislators have written a bill that will make it easier for homeless families to find and keep stable housing and keep their kids in the same school all year long. Reps. June Robinson, D- Everett; Ruth Kagi, D-Shoreline; Luis Moscoso, D-Mountlake Terrace; and Lillian Ortiz-Self, D-Mukilteo, are sponsoring HB 1682. It replicates an innovative and successful project at Tacoma’s McCarver Elementary School where students and their families live in nearby public housing.

At McCarver, participating families receive a rent subsidy that decreases to zero over five years. Parents agree to participate in McCarver’s PTA, and they get assistance with job training and their own education. In 2006, the turnover rate for the whole school was almost double the number of students at the school (170 percent); kids starting McCarver moved out of school in the middle of the year, and new kids moved into school, and then some of those kids left school as well. For the homeless kids in the housing program, this rate has plummeted to below 10 percent. Their parents are earning more income. The proportion of kids reading at grade level has increased from 35 percent to over 60 percent.

We can begin replicating McCarver’s success across the state, which is what HB 1682 would do. It would cost about $10 million a year to develop similar programs in 15 school districts. But the money has to come from somewhere.

Fortunately, there’s a book that shows us exactly where to find it. The state Department of Revenue’s Tax Exemption Study notes 640 tax exemptions. Inside you’ll find any number of loopholes that the Legislature could close to fund HB 1682. Here’s one: Banks headquartered here that provide international banking services, as well as international banks with offices in our state, pay no taxes on income they receive from these financial transactions. It costs our state an estimated $16 million a year in lost tax revenue.

Closing just that one loophole would make it possible to dedicate the public resources to needed for HB 1682, funding education and housing projects in school districts around the state to open the door to a home and educational opportunity for homeless kids.

Let’s call on our legislators to work for the powerless and homeless, even if, or maybe especially at the cost of a powerful banking lobby. It can be the first of many “silver BBs” aimed at securing the public revenue we need for education, health care, and economic opportunity and security for all.

Originally published at the Everett Herald

Apparent anti-semitic headline on TheMarketBusiness, recommended by google

On April 25, the news aggregation site news.google.com included among its top headlines a link and summary to an article from TheMarketBusiness.com with the following headline.

To Meet Jew Donors, Ted Cruz heads to Vegas

Here’s an image of the article as it appeared on April 25 at TheMarketBusiness.com, 2015 at 8:10AM PST:

Antisemitic headline mom TheMarketBusiness.com

The first paragraph is largely ungrammatical:

Ted Cruz, The Texas Firebrand didn’t stand out in the previous poll about the presidential election in 2016, but since he was approached by some Jewish giant donor [sic], his name began to be taken into account. He will meet some Jewish donors in the next meeting in [sic] Semi Jewish [sic] Republican Coalition meeting. With him, there are several other Republican candidates are [sic] Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Mike Pence. The meeting was attended by a group of “low candidates”, as well as members of the above is group of candidates of the lowest in the polls, because top candidates like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker will not participate in the meeting.

Here’s an image of part of  news.google.com page:

Antisemitic headline in news.google.com

Notice that the headline there is slightly different and also ungrammatical: “To Meet jews Donors…”

I realize that google can’t be held responsible for the content of every article their news aggregator links to, but you’d hope the programmers at google can tune their algorithms in the future to exclude such substandard content.

Can conservatives manage what baboons can do?

Robert Sapolsky — MacArthur fellow and professor of biology, neuroscience, and neurosurgery at Stanford University — pursued decades long research into baboon societies. He found that most baboon troops were dominated by aggressive alpha males who abused other members of the troop, had pick of the females, and enjoyed good health and low levels of stress hormones. The submissive members of the troop endured much abuse, had high stress hormone levels, and had poor indicators of health. Baboon

Sapolsky admitted, “I don’t really like baboons…They’re these scheming Machiavellian backstabbing bastards.”

Then tragedy befell the troop that he was studying: the members started eating garbage from a human settlement. Some of the meat they consumer was contaminated with tuberculosis. Half the males in the troop died. Significantly, the ones who died weren’t the submissive ones. The ones who died were the dominant ones. Thereafter the troop’s social system changed. They became much less aggressive and much more nurturing. They groomed each other and became more laid back.

The takeaway message from this research is that if baboons can learn to cooperate, then so can humans. An aggressive market system that embodies a cutthroat survival-of-the-fittest ethos is not in any way a necessary — or healthy — way to organize human societies. It’s destructive to the well-being of the majority of humans, causing unnecessary stress. Indeed, there is a slew of research recently about how cooperation, and not just competition, contribute to the survival and thriving of groups.

For more details see “No Time for Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture” or watch the video below.