Big Oil is all about Big Handouts

Corporate socialism is alive and well. Isn't it interesting to see the Republicans do their best to provide a very small safety net to help average Americans who are unemployed yet so willingly go along with massive handouts to Big Oil? Politicians are always so quick to pull out the rug on those most in need yet the richest of the rich are always being supported with handouts that dwarf the social safety net. How does this possibly pass the smell test? Big Oil is the most profitable industry on the planet yet they still need help? Let them make their own money on their own dime instead of freeloading from everyone else.

According to the most recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, released in 2005, capital investments like oil field leases and drilling equipment are taxed at an effective rate of 9 percent, significantly lower than the overall rate of 25 percent for businesses in general and lower than virtually any other industry.

And for many small and midsize oil companies, the tax on capital investments is so low that it is more than eliminated by var-ious credits. These companies’ returns on those investments are often higher after taxes than before.

“The flow of revenues to oil companies is like the gusher at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico: heavy and constant,” said Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, who has worked alongside the Obama administration on a bill that would cut $20 billion in oil industry tax breaks over the next decade. “There is no reason for these corporations to shortchange the American taxpayer.”

Oil industry officials say that the tax breaks, which average about $4 billion a year according to various government reports, are a bargain for taxpayers. By helping producers weather market fluctuations and invest in technology, tax incentives are supporting an industry that the officials say provides 9.2 million jobs.

Only this industry or possibly Big Finance could see $4 billion as "a bargain." Read the rest of this post...

Obama administration plus BP block media access in Gulf

This goes against everything the government previously said about "uninhibited media access." Arresting media and fining them $40,000 is beyond crazy and not what we should expect in an open society. If the Bush administration did this everyone on the left would be screaming, rightly so. How is it that it's possible to embed the media in the military during invasions yet it's not possible to have open access on US soil?

It's increasingly frustrating that the Obama administration mirrors its policies on the Bush administration. Tell me again why we ought to vote for this? It's no wonder there is such an enormous enthusiasm gap when problems like this emerge. If we wanted Republican policies we'd simply vote for Republicans. Read the rest of this post...

Declaring Independence. It's worth a read.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

The rest is after the break.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Read the rest of this post...

You're a Grand Old Flag

Read the rest of this post...

More on Michael Hastings, Gen. McChrystal and … Lara Logan?

As a follow-up to John's earlier post about Anonymous Sources and the Michael Hastings / Rolling Stones / Stanley McChrystal story, I'd like to lend this perspective.

Lara Logan, a war reporter working for CBS (who has had her own difficult moments; see below) has also criticized Hastings — for violating the magic "unspoken agreement" between reporters and sprinkly doughnut recipients. As in, not honoring the code of "don't repeat what you heard, he's our lunch" that separates you the voter from the actual truth of your world.

So here comes Matt Taibbi, newly married, with boots on. Yes, he works for Rolling Stone; no, he's not Hastings' friend. And apparently, he's not Logan's friend either — at least not now (my emphasis):

I thought I'd seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to save their sources from their own idiocy. But now we get CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan slamming our own Michael Hastings on CNN's "Reliable Sources" program, agreeing that the Rolling Stone reporter violated an "unspoken agreement" that journalists are not supposed to "embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter."

. . . True, the Pentagon does have perhaps the single largest public relations apparatus on earth – spending $4.7 billion on P.R. in 2009 alone and employing 27,000 people, a staff nearly as large as the 30,000-person State Department – but is that really enough to ensure positive coverage in a society armed with a constitutionally-guaranteed free press?

And true, most of the major TV outlets are completely in the bag for the Pentagon, with two of them (NBC/GE and Logan's own CBS, until recently owned by Westinghouse, one of the world's largest nuclear weapons manufacturers) having operated for years as leaders in both the broadcast media and weapons-making businesses.

. . . But when I read this diatribe from Logan, I felt like I'd known Hastings my whole life. Because brother, I have been there, when some would-be "reputable" journalist who's just been severely ass-whipped by a relative no-name freelancer on an enormous story fights back by going on television and, without any evidence at all, accusing the guy who beat him of cheating. That's happened to me so often, I've come to expect it. If there's a lower form of life on the planet earth than a "reputable" journalist protecting his territory, I haven't seen it.

As to this whole "unspoken agreement" business: the reason Lara Logan thinks this is because she's like pretty much every other "reputable" journalist in this country, in that she suffers from a profound confusion about who she's supposed to be working for. I know this from my years covering presidential campaigns, where the same dynamic applies. Hey, assholes: you do not work for the people you're covering!

As I mentioned, Lara Logan's had her own brush with the "law". In 2008 she criticized the Iraq war on Leno, and as a result the Pentagon's fastball pitcher seems to have thrown at her head in a classic brush-back move. If so, it looks like she learned her lesson. Implicated in two ginned-up sex scandals, and now, with a family and kid to raise . . . jeez, these stories almost write themselves. Who needs fiction?

Of course, she may be sincere . . . but I'm not sure that would be a feature in this case. Click through — it may jog a (visual) memory or two.

Gaius Read the rest of this post...

Mandela invites Ghana soccer team to help raise their spirits

If the US was going to lose to anyone in the World Cup, I wanted it to be to Ghana. I was really rooting for at least one African team to make it through a few rounds. The entire continent of Africa was pulling for them as well. When they lost the other day to Uruguay in the quarter finals, it was a tough loss after fighting to hard throughout the tournament. Like the class act that he has always been, Mandela invited the team over to cheer them up. If meeting the legend in person can't cheer you up, you might be dead. Read the rest of this post...

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

Happy Independence Day.

The wisest choice for Sunday shows this morning is NBC because "Meet the Press" is preempted. So, watch Wimbledon instead. Because, otherwise, there is an amazingly painful array of guests on the other shows. Seriously painful: crankier by-the-minute McCain (ABC), Lindsey "I ain't gay, sorry" Graham (CBS), duplicitous Lieberman (FOX) and that whack job Jim DeMint (FOX).

It's a holiday weekend. It's not worth suffering through that grouping of guests.

The full lineup is here. Read the rest of this post...

Beach Boys - God only knows

One of the great songs from one of the great albums.

So who watched the World Cup yesterday? We missed the first match and were stunned to see Brazil lose so badly. Wow, this German team is amazing. Fortunately we were able to watch Spain-Paraguay and that was a really enjoyable match. The Spanish team plays a truly beautiful game with precision passing and great flow. They reminded me of the French team of '98 who could control the ball so elegantly. Paraguay held on though and their goal keeper kept them in the game. I'd like to see Uraguay-Spain in the finals but getting past Germany is going to be a real struggle. Read the rest of this post...

UK government departments asked for plans to cut budgets by 40%

The dismantling of the state is in high gear. The Tories are sounding more like the Teabaggers with each passing day. Naturally - like Palin said for the US recently - defense budgets are somehow different and will hardly be scratched. This has something to do with the actual budget and economy but ultimately it has much more to do with the Tories burning desire to trash the modern system and take the country back 100 years. They're nastier and more brutal by the day, but with a posh accent and a smile or two. BBC:

The Treasury has told most government departments to prepare "illustrative plans" to cut spending by 40% - as well as the expected 25% - within the month.

Education and defence have been given some protection, and must produce plans to cut 10% and 20%. International aid and health budgets are being protected.

The full 40% plans are unlikely to be implemented but will inform future decisions on cuts, the BBC understands.

Read the rest of this post...