“I'm a universal patriot...my country is the world.” ― Charlotte Brontë
BAKER-SHULTZ CARBON TAX GROUP SAY IT WOULD BEAT PARIS TARGET: The
carbon tax plan pushed by Republicans like James Baker, George Schultz and
Christine Todd Whitman would exceed the 26-28 percent pollution reductions
promised by the Obama administration under the Paris agreement. The proposal,
first released by the Climate Leadership Council in February 2017, would start a tax at $40
per ton of carbon dioxide and increase it over time, with the revenues being
returned to Americans via a "carbon dividend." The group's new analysis claims it would curb
overall U.S. emissions 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, solidly beyond the
Paris targets. The analysis also incorporates a Resources for the Future study from June that projected a $43/ton tax starting in 2021
could achieve 41 to 47 percent reductions by 2035, depending on the tax's
growth rate.
The CLC also conducted some polling showing majority support for
such a carbon tax, but don't expect Congress to jump to action anytime soon.
"We've always known this was going to be a longer-term play," CLC
Senior Vice President Greg Bertelsen told ME. "This is a major piece of
legislation that we're promoting and like any major piece of legislation, that
takes time to develop, time to educate lawmakers on it and it takes time to
build the coalition of support." The current administration isn't likely
to be receptive to a carbon tax either. Baker personally pushed the tax plan
last year with top White House officials, who of course are focused on
developing a plan to subsidize coal-fired power plants. [POLITICO's Morning Energy, September 10, 2018]
MESSAGE NOT RECEIVED: GOP lawmakers can't be happy with blasé poll numbers on their tax cuts, no matter what they say ahead of November's midterm elections. In the latest installment of such results, voters by a 2-to-1 margin have come to believe the cuts benefit "large corporations and rich Americans" over "middle class families," according to a survey commissioned by the Republican National Committee that Bloomberg News got its hands on. That's far from the reaction Republicans were hoping for on their chief policy achievement since President Donald Trump took office. Self-identified independent voters were big naysayers - by a 36-point margin they agreed that large corporations and rich Americans benefit more, a belief held by an even larger share of Democrats in the poll. Republican voters said by a 38-point margin that the middle-class benefits more. The RNC-commissioned report credited consistent Democratic attacks for driving concerns about cuts to social safety net programs to pay for wealthy and corporate tax breaks.
"Voters are evenly divided on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," it said. "But, we've lost the messaging battle on the issue." That conclusion prompted some crowing from the other side. "Yes. Yes, you have," said a spokesman for the group Not One Penny, Ryan Thomas. "The American people see this law for what it is: a scam."
Striking a similar note: Other data bolsters the internal GOP poll. A survey by ScottRasmussen.com and the Job Creators Network, a group that backed the tax cuts, found that 42 percent of Americans estimate their savings from the tax cuts at less than $500. The Ways and Means Committee has estimated the typical family of four will save almost $1,200 per year, the survey takers noted in a release accompanying the results. On a true/false question asking whether Congress cut taxes for most Americans, 64 percent said true and the balance said false. Job Creators Network Foundation President Elaine Parker said multiple factors could be leading to these conclusions, such as workers not seeing their paychecks because of direct deposit so they don't notice their savings, for example. "Whatever the case, it's clear that Republicans need to do a better job of educating their constituents on the benefits of the tax cuts," she said in a statement. [POLITICO's Morning Tax, September 21, 2018]
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| NATURE & OUTDOORS |
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| EDUCATION |
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| GLOBAL |
This is a global problem
For the past 40 years in this country, our great middle class — once the envy of the world — has been disappearing. All over America, people are working two or three jobs, scared to death about the futures of their children, while almost all new income goes to a small number of people at the top.
But this is not a uniquely American phenomenon.
All over the world, people are seeing that same tendency. Today, in the global economy, the top 1 percent owns more than the bottom 99 percent, and a handful of billionaires own more than the bottom half of people around the world — that’s 3.7 billion people.
That is the reality. People in our own country, and around the world, are angry, and they feel that nobody is listening to their pain.
And one of the results of that reality is that in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle East, in Asia and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who exploit people’s fears, prejudices and grievances to achieve and hold on to power.
And while these regimes may differ in some respects, they share key attributes: hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and a belief that government should benefit their own selfish financial interests.
These leaders are also deeply connected to a network of multi-billionaire oligarchs, motivated by greed and power, who see the world as their economic plaything.
This trend certainly did not begin with Trump, but there’s no question that authoritarian leaders around the world have drawn inspiration from the fact that the leader of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy seems to delight in shattering democratic norms.
Other authoritarian states are much farther along this kleptocratic process. In Russia, it is impossible to tell where the decisions of government end and the interests of Vladimir Putin and his circle of oligarchs begin. They operate as one unit. Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, there is no debate about separation because the natural resources of the state, valued at trillions of dollars, belong to the Saudi royal family. In Hungary, far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán is openly allied with Putin in Russia. In China, an inner circle led by Xi Jinping has steadily consolidated power, clamping down on domestic political freedom while it aggressively promotes a version of authoritarian capitalism abroad.
So the question is: Where do we go from here?
To effectively oppose right-wing authoritarianism, we cannot simply go back to the failed status quo of the last several decades. In order to fight this trend, we need to strengthen the global coalition of progressive democrats.
While authoritarians promote division and hatred, we will promote unity, inclusion, and an agenda based on economic, social, racial, and environmental justice.
Governments of the world must come together to end the absurdity of rich and multinational corporations stashing over $21 trillion in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and then demanding that their respective governments impose an austerity agenda on their working families.
It is not acceptable that the fossil fuel industry continues to make huge profits while their carbon emissions destroy the planet for our children and grandchildren.
It is not acceptable that a handful of multinational media giants, owned by a small number of billionaires, largely control the flow of information on the planet.
It is not acceptable that trade policies that benefit large multinational corporations and encourage a race to the bottom hurt working people throughout the world as they are written out of public view.
It is not acceptable that, with the Cold War long behind us, countries around the world spend over $1 trillion a year on weapons of destruction, while millions of children die of easily treatable diseases.
In order to effectively combat the rise of the international authoritarian axis, we need an international progressive movement that mobilizes behind a vision of shared prosperity, security and dignity for all people and that addresses the massive global inequality that exists, not only in wealth but in political power as well.
Such a movement must be willing to think creatively and boldly about the world that we would like to see.
We must take the opportunity to reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity, an order that recognizes that every person on this planet shares a common humanity, that we all want our children to grow up healthy, to have a good education, have decent jobs, drink clean water, breathe clean air and live in peace.
Our job is to reach out to those in every corner of the world who share these values and who are fighting for a better world.
In a time of exploding wealth and technology, we have the potential to create a decent life for all people. Our job is to build on our common humanity and do everything that we can to oppose all of the forces, whether unaccountable government power or unaccountable corporate power, who try to divide us up and set us against each other.
We know that those forces work together across borders. We must do the same.
Thank you for reading.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders [September 24, 2018]
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