Can Clean Energy Help Economic Recovery?

Bill Ritter, former Colorado Governor argues well but surprisingly enough the Clean Energy Investor does not. This debate is the epitome of why support for clean energy has been weak for the last 20 years.

Only now under Obama is there momentum gaining.

Both sides of this debate discuss the clean energy variable in the US economic recovery as it relates to GDP, some monolithic figure without considering the distribution of wealth within GDP in a clean energy economy versus one powered almost exclusively by OIL.

Clean energy will support the rise of individual and small business wealth as opposed to the giant monopolistic mega energy companies BP, Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobile, etc. Clean energy will support local community driven spending rather than concentrated wealth of a few individuals and companies far away from our neighborhoods.

Clipped from www.npr.org

Can Clean Energy Drive The Economic Recovery?

President Obama and other leaders have called for investment in cleaner energy sources as a way to create jobs and spur U.S. economic recovery.

But critics argue that alternative energy generally costs more than traditional fossil fuels and that demand for energy overall has fallen during the recession, making the energy sector an odd choice for stimulating a recovery.

The Intelligence Squared U.S. debate series recently pitted two teams of experts against each other over the motion "Clean Energy Can Drive America's Economic Recovery." They argued two against two in an Oxford-style debate. Read more at www.npr.org

 

GOP Believes Corps Shouldnt Pay Tax EVER

The immediate flashpoint is a proposed settlement between state attorneys general and the mortgage servicing industry. That settlement is a “shakedown,” says Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. The money banks would be required to allot to mortgage modification would be “extorted,” declares The Wall Street Journal. And the bankers themselves warn that any action against them would place economic recovery at risk.

Clipped from www.nytimes.com

Another Inside Job

Count me among those who were glad to see the documentary “Inside Job” win an Oscar. The film reminded us that the financial crisis of 2008, whose aftereffects are still blighting the lives of millions of Americans, didn’t just happen — it was made possible by bad behavior on the part of bankers, regulators and, yes, economists.

What the film didn’t point out, however, is that the crisis has spawned a whole new set of abuses, many of them illegal as well as immoral. And leading political figures are, at long last, showing some outrage. Unfortunately, this outrage is directed, not at banking abuses, but at those trying to hold banks accountable for these abuses. Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

Reducing the Deficit w/ Fortune 400

URL:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/opinion/14mon3.html?_r=1

 

 

Its about time.

Stop subsidies that dont create us jobs

This is just wrong. Green energy sector or not, theres no way we should be providing subsidies to US companies that move jobs to china

Clipped from www.renewableenergyworld.com

Can States Keep Clean Energy Jobs at Home?

In contrast, Ontario’s clean energy program is well on its way to 5,000 megawatts of new renewable energy production and supporting over 40,000 new jobs.  Over 20 new manufacturing plants have been announced.  The keystone of this program is a ‘buy local’ rule that requires wind and solar power projects who want the province’s attractive power payments to be constructed with at least 60 percent of their materials ‘made in Ontario.’  Ontarians are getting cleaner electricity and significant economic development for their clean energy commitment. Read more at www.renewableenergyworld.com

 

Economic Class and voting behavior

URL:  http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/economic_class_and_vot...

 

 

Very interesting

Middle Class all Republicans?

Clearly this is misguided. If the middle class were Republicans wouldnt they vote to protect the middle class? Cause what Republicans have been doing to this country is handing it over to the super wealthy and mega corporations.

Not democrats. We wimp out of standing up for our values of education, tolerance, progress, secularism, peace over war, local communities vs global offshore conglomerations sucking off the government subsidies

Clipped from answers.yahoo.com

Resolved Question: Does the middle class vote Democratic and upper class vote Republican?

Low class and high class vote democrat. Middle class vote republican.

Democrats want everyone that isn't poor to give their money away to the poor and republicans want to work hard for their money. Thus, you have the rich democrats, who can afford to give handouts to the poor and the poor democrats, who take the handouts from the rich. The republicans are the middle class, who are working hard, struggling and cannot afford to just "give away" their hard earned money. Read more at answers.yahoo.com

 

Obama Missing Great Opportunity ..again?

Wasnt this a missed opportunity to clarify oil and banking efforts to dissuade the necessary transition to renewable energy? Oil speculators (gamblers) are bidding up the price, oil companies make better profits amd the public is afraid to deal with the real long term issue - time to get off fossil fuels.

Instead my favorite President of all times is defending our plans to step up domestic production...

I really hope that Obama has the audacity to fight big banks, big oil, corporate welfare, guns, military spending, and ending drug prohibition in his 2nd term.

Clipped from thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com

1:37 p.m. | Updated President Obama on Friday rejected criticism from Republicans that his administration was blocking domestic oil production and said his government was prepared to encourage new drilling in the face of rising gas prices.

Obama Rejects Republican Criticism on Energy

See more at thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com

 

Reagan Got It WRONG! @chrislhayes

The TeaParty, Libertarians, and the GOP are CORRECT: the US Government is TOO big. But they dont admit WHY. Each expansion of the Federal government has been either to provide oversight of corporations and to correct the mayhem they have created.

The right is fighting the WRONG institution.

Government isn't the problem. Flagrant violation of human rights and tax laws by Corporations ARE THE PROBLEM. Corporate Welfare. Corporate Tyranny.

This drives our military to buy more for less value and expands our military budget.
It drives our government to pass more and more regulation to try and deal with sneaky companies that skirt the law to avoid paying taxes.

Large corporations seek tax exemptions at home and shuffle their profits overseas.

Meanwhile big CEOs make 100-400 times the average wage of their employees and the US middle class gets hollowed out.

Creating more institutions within the government to provide oversight of the banking industry wont do any good if campaign finance reform and lobbying are not dealt with ASAP.

Clipped from www.pbs.org

The Obama administration wants to create two regulatory agencies: one to keep tabs on potential threats to the financial system -- such as the problems Brooksley Born flagged in the derivatives market in the late 1990s -- and one to protect consumers from abusive practices by the financial services industry. In Congress, both agencies have been the subject of intense scrutiny as regulators spar over who should have which powers and Wall Street lobbyists fight to protect profits.

The Financial Services Oversight Council will "facilitate coordination of financial regulatory policy and resolution of disputes and identify emerging risks in financial markets." The council will replace the President's Working Group on Financial Markets. It will report to Congress, and its members will include representatives from the eight principal federal financial regulatory agencies.

A consolidated regulatory hub to protect consumers

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), as envisioned by the administration, will have wide-reaching power to regulate not only banks and mortgage companies but also financial services previously outside the purview of federal regulation, such as payday loans, personal investment services, credit reporting agencies and stored-value cards.

It would have the power to levy substantial fines -- up to $10,000 per day for some offenses -- and to prosecute financial services providers who break the rules the CFPA creates. The CFPA would be tasked with writing disclosures in standard, clear language that make financial transactions, such as mortgages, easier to understand. The creation of the CFPA will consolidate regulatory powers currently spread among several agencies. Read more at www.pbs.org

 

Origin of the Fed - Deal with TBTF

http://www.billmeridian.com/articles-files/fed-new.htm

 

 

Why did the group seek such a remote location to formulate a new monetary bill for the country? The reason lies in the events surrounding the Panic of 1907. Demand for monetary reform soared following the Panic. The average citizen was very opposed to the big city banking interests, which they felt caused financial upheavals through their manipulations.

Potheads & TeaParty Should Buzz on This

Taking a $70B cut out of the deficit should interest the Teaparty. If only the potheads could get organized.

Remember that hemp could also generate a lot of small business opportunities and tax revenues vis a vis hemp oil, clothing, biomass, biofuels, plastics, etc.

Clipped from www.cato.org

The Tea Party and the Drug War

by Jeffrey A. Miron

Voter dissatisfaction with Republicans and Democrats is at historic levels, and the tea-party movement is hoping to play kingmaker in the November elections. The country's current breed of discontent is ideal for the tea parties, because economic concerns are foremost, allowing the movement to sidestep the divisions between its libertarian and conservative wings.

If the party is true to its principles — fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets — it must side with the libertarians. Read more at www.cato.org

 

Profit from Landfill Waste

URL:  http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2011/...

 

 

Down and Dirty: Generating Profit from Landfill Waste
Humans generate tons – billions of tons – of waste each year. At over 2.1 billion tons of municipal waste annually, the world has a significant waste problem. Most of this waste is transported to landfills, where it sits, decays, and releases a suite of environmental pollutants. But there is a better way to control and reuse this waste –converting it into energy.

Locked inside the 2.1 billion tons of municipal waste that we generate each year is approximately 24.5 quadrillion Btu of energy – enough heat to meet about 10% of global annual electricity consumption. Not surprisingly, many nations including Europe, Canada, and parts of Asia, have been adding to or gearing up waste to energy operations for over a decade.

Drug Prohibition Not Fiscally Responsibl

drug prohibition is not remotely consistent with fiscal responsibility. This policy costs the public purse around $70 billion per year, according to my estimates, yet no evidence suggests that prohibition reduces drug use to a significant degree.

Clipped from www.cato.org

The Tea Party and the Drug War

by Jeffrey A. Miron

Voter dissatisfaction with Republicans and Democrats is at historic levels, and the tea-party movement is hoping to play kingmaker in the November elections. The country's current breed of discontent is ideal for the tea parties, because economic concerns are foremost, allowing the movement to sidestep the divisions between its libertarian and conservative wings.

As the elections near, however, voters will want to know where the party stands not just on the economy but on social issues. A perfect illustration is drug policy, where conservatives advocate continued prohibition but libertarians argue for legalization. Which way should the tea party lean when this issue arises?

Fiscal responsibility means limiting government expenditures to programs that can be convincingly said to generate benefits in excess of their costs. This does not rule out programs with large expenditures, or ones whose benefits are difficult to quantify; national defense is guilty on both counts, yet few believe that substantial military expenditure is necessarily irresponsible. Read more at www.cato.org

 

Give GOP Liberty & they'll support Pot

legalization can appeal to conservatives, especially if the arguments emphasize freedom, personal responsibility, and the Constitution, along with up-front clarity about the goal: legal production and use of marijuana for adults, whatever their motivations.

Clipped from www.cato.org

Why Did California Vote Down Legal Pot?

by Jeffrey A. Miron

California voters have just rejected Proposition 19, the ballot initiative that would have legalized marijuana under state law. Where did Prop 19 go wrong?

Prop 19 failed in part because many proponents emphasized the wrong arguments for legalization. Many advocates promised major benefits to California's budget because of reduced expenditure on marijuana prohibition and increased revenue from marijuana taxation. Other supporters claimed that Mexican drug violence would fall substantially. Read more at www.cato.org

 

Drug Decriminalization in Mexico and US #FastandFurious #DrugWar

This is a good plan. Prohibition clearly did not succeed and the US and Mexican War on Drugs is not succeeding either. Legalize it. Tax it and stop enforcement. This will free up so much money for the state and federal governments of Mexico and the US. It will also reduce the overcrowded prison burden, and lower government spending - because that costs money too.

Clipped from www.cato.org

RT: [eksit101] Is the #ENDTHEFED victories the October surprise? Just all seems fishy. #NWO #RESTORETHEREPUBLIC http://t.co/UXpSahotsE f...
— #New World Order (@nwohashtag) October 1, 2013

Mexico's Failed Drug War

by Jorge Castañeda

What is going on with Mexico's drug war? Why are we in our current mess, and what are the possibilities of getting out of it in any reasonable time frame?

We are in this mess today, as opposed to over the last 40 or 50 years, because when the current president, Felipe Calderón, took office over three years ago, he felt that he had no choice but to declare a full-fledged, no-holds-barred war on drugs. He declared this war after a three-month transition period, which was very rocky because of the controversy surrounding the elections. And he declared this war because he had the impression that it was as if a patient had come to him and said, "I have a stomachache." Thinking it was a problem of appendicitis, he opened the patient up and found that the entire abdominal cavity was invaded by cancer. He had no option other than to go in with everything he had to fix it. This was the country Calderón said he found. He had to declare a war on drugs because the drug cartels had reached a level of power, wealth, violence, and penetration of the state that made the situation untenable. Read more at www.cato.org

End Drug Prohibition-Increase Revenues

...The report also estimates that drug legalization would yield tax revenue of $46.7 billion annually, assuming legal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco.

Clipped from www.cato.org

The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition

by Jeffrey A. Miron and Katherine Waldock

Jeffrey A. Miron is a senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Professor Miron earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chaired the economics department at Boston University prior to joining the Harvard faculty. Katherine Waldock is a doctoral candidate at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

State and federal governments in the United States face massive looming fiscal deficits. One policy change that can reduce deficits is ending the drug war. Legalization means reduced expenditure on enforcement and an increase in tax revenue from legalized sales.

This report estimates that legalizing drugs would save roughly $41.3 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. Of these savings, $25.7 billion would accrue to state and local governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the federal government.

See more at www.cato.org

 

Prohibition: Impact on TAX Revenues!

Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending. It led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition.

Clipped from www.cato.org

Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure

by Mark Thornton

National prohibition of alcohol (1920-33)--the "noble experiment"--was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. The results of that experiment clearly indicate that it was a miserable failure on all counts. The evidence affirms sound economic theory, which predicts that prohibition of mutually beneficial exchanges is doomed to failure.

The lessons of Prohibition remain important today. They apply not only to the debate over the war on drugs but also to the mounting efforts to drastically reduce access to alcohol and tobacco and to such issues as censorship and bans on insider trading, abortion, and gambling.[1] Read more at www.cato.org

 

Prohibition: Alcohol Then, Marijuana Now

Prohibition represented a conflict between urban and rural values emerging in the United States. Given the mass influx of immigrants to the urban dwellings of the United States, many individuals within the prohibition movement associated the crime and morally corrupt behavior of the cities of America with their large immigrant populations. In a backlash to the new emerging realities of the American demographic, many prohibitionists subscribed to the doctrine of “nativism” in which they endorsed the notion that America was made great as a result of its white Anglo-Saxon ancestry. This fostered xenophobic sentiments towards urban immigrant communities who typically argued in favor of abolishing prohibition.[15] Additionally, these nativist sentiments were a part of a larger process of Americanization taking place during the same time period.[16]

In the 1916 presidential election, both Democratic incumbent Woodrow Wilson and Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes ignored the Prohibition issue, as was the case with both parties' political platforms. Democrats and Republicans had strong wet and dry factions, and the election was expected to be close, with neither candidate wanting to alienate any part of his political base.

In January 1917, the 65th Congress convened, in which the dries outnumbered the wets by 140 to 64 in the Democratic Party and 138 to 62 among Republicans. With America's declaration of war against Germany in April, German-Americans—a major force against prohibition—were widely discredited and their protests subsequently ignored. In addition, a new justification for prohibition arose: prohibiting the production of alcoholic beverages would allow more resources—especially the grain that would otherwise be used to make alcohol—to be devoted to the war effort. While "war prohibition" was a spark for the movement,[17] by the time Prohibition was enacted, the war was over.

Clipped from en.wikipedia.org

Prohibition in the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prohibition in the United States, also known as The Noble Experiment, was the period from 1920 to 1933, during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol were banned nationally[1] as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The United States Senate proposed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917. Having been approved by 36 states, the 18th Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and effected on January 17, 1920.[2] Some state legislatures had already enacted statewide prohibition prior to the ratification of the 18th Amendment.

The "Volstead Act", the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, passed through Congress over President Woodrow Wilson's veto on October 28, 1919, and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor, as well as penalties for producing it.[3] Though the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, the federal government did little to enforce it. By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs.[4] Read more at en.wikipedia.org

 

NPR Under Fire By Right Wing

This is just WRONG! FOX is way right, MSNBC leans left but leaves out anything that looks bad for large corporations like its parent GE and NPR has been the last bastion of centrist information, untainted by the large megacorporations that control the media in this country.

NPR needs to be left alone.

Clipped from www.npr.org

NPR CEO Vivian Schiller Resigns Categories: News Media, National News

NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller has resigned, NPR just announced.

This follows yesterday's news that then-NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller (no relation) was videotapped slamming conservatives and questioning whether NPR needs federal funding during a lunch with men posing as members of a Muslim organization (they were working with political activist James O'Keefe on a "sting.")

See more at www.npr.org

 

Eliminate TBTF, Support Local Banks

Couldn't tax subsidies for renewable energy be subject to banking with local players?

TeaParty Backed By Billionaires

URL:  http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/billionaire-...

 

 

Let me get this straight:

TeaParty wants smaller government so they back billionaires for elected seats, and take money from the Billionaire Koch brothers to fund their efforts.

Meanwhile, governments are starved for revenues because their tax base shrank as US corporate profits are at an all time high...

Republican leaders supported Mr. Scott’s primary opponent, Bill McCollum, and poured money into negative advertising that portrayed Mr. Scott as untrustworthy and fraudulent. Mr. Scott resigned in 1997 as the head of Columbia/HCA, the nation’s largest hospital chain, amid an F.B.I. investigation. That inquiry eventually led to $1.7 billion in criminal and civil penalties for Medicare fraud