Sunday, December 16, 2012 7:33:48 AM
Business Roundtable Fiscal Cliff Proposal Bargains For Concessions On Corporate Rates
Honeywell CEO Dave Cote is a member of the Business Roundtable, a corporate lobbying group that has relaxed its fiscal cliff opposition to higher income tax rates for the wealthy.
(AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, file)
By Ben Hallman
Posted: 12/12/2012 7:26 pm EST
After spending months opposing tax increases for the wealthiest Americans, the Business Roundtable, an influential corporate lobbying group, this week relented, accepting higher rates for the affluent in the name of averting the fiscal cliff.
"We’re advocating for everybody to give a little," said Jim McNerney, who chairs both Boeing and the Roundtable, which represents 160 major companies, during a Wednesday conference call. “This is the voice of pragmatism. That’s what we do for a living. We’re pragmatic people every day."
But that pragmatism appears to come with a healthy dollop of self-interest. Business chieftains have accepted higher rates on income taxes for the wealthy in exchange for something they have long sought -- a break on corporate income taxes. President Barack Obama has signalled that he is open to so-called corporate tax reform as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations, according to The Wall Street Journal [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323339704578173241968322374.html ] -- a position he apparently adopted at the same time the business lobby changed its position on raising taxes on wealthy individuals.
The precise shape of that tax reform is far from certain, and will be hashed out in negotiations well into 2013. But for the Roundtable companies, reform is a euphemism for the preservation of favored perks for major American businesses, according to finance experts.
"This is not something that is going to make the tax code more fair," said Eileen Applebaum, an economist at the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research think tank, of the approach advocated by the corporations.
For some companies, the appeal of corporate tax reform is obvious. The clothing retailer Gap, for example, paid 34.9 percent of its income in federal taxes from 2008 to 2010. A lowering of the federal rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, as the president proposed in February [ http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/The-Presidents-Framework-for-Business-Tax-Reform-02-22-2012.pdf ], would save the company millions of dollars.
Other companies, especially in the oil and gas industry, the financial services sector and the defense industry, appear to be doing quite well already. Over that same period, 2008 to 2010, the aeronautics company Honeywell International, for example, paid an effective federal tax rate of -0.7 percent, according to a report by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy [ http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/ ]. In other words, a company that is hugely reliant on the federal government for contracts was able to claim enough tax credits and route earnings through enough loopholes to avoid paying the government any taxes for three years.
So why would Honeywell, which is also part of the "Fix the Debt" committee that has lobbied for a fair solution to the debt crisis, not stick with the status quo?
Honeywell did not respond directly to this question, but in an email a spokeswoman said the company "adheres to the tax laws of all jurisdictions in which it operates and is subject to ongoing review by tax authorities and is compliant in all respects.”
Tax experts suggested several possible motivations.
The first, and the most obvious, is that these companies want the U.S. to adopt a new system for assessing taxes on income earned in foreign countries. As The Huffington Post reported on Wednesday [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/caterpillar-fiscal-cliff-tax-breaks_n_2280130.html ], that system -- known as the territorial system -- would allow U.S.-based companies to bring home income earned overseas without paying any additional taxes (or very low taxes).
One study [ http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/ceo-campaign-to-fix-the-debt/ ], by the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies, found that 63 companies advocating for a debt deal would stand to save $134 billion in tax payments if Congress approves a switch to the new system.
Current tax policy requires companies to pay the 35 percent U.S. rate, minus whatever tax payments were made overseas. That's not something multinational companies much want to do, so they've used an exemption to the tax code passed by Congress every year since the 1980s to "defer" paying those taxes indefinitely. (Many of the Fix the Debt companies have lobbied to support a permanent extension of this rule, as well).
Honeywell has $8 billion in earnings socked away overseas, and could see potential savings of $2.8 billion if brought back tax-free, according to the report.
Another possible reason why multinational companies are pushing for corporate tax reform: they hope that tax rates will come down enough to trigger a ripple effect that spurs other countries to also lower their rates.
Thirty years ago, the average corporate rate in Western countries was 50 percent. When the U.S. lowered its rate to 35 percent, the other developed countries followed suit. In subsequent years, most other countries lowered the rate again and again -- each time the argument was that doing so would make their country more attractive for multinational investment.
In the United Kingdom, for example, the rate is set to drop [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/05/corporation-tax-rate-cut-autumn-statement ] to 21 percent in 2014.
For companies like Honeywell, that foreign rate is very important. In 2011, Honeywell reported that its effective foreign rate was 28.7 percent. An arms race of ever-lower rates around the globe would benefit the company enormously.
How low does Honeywell think the rates will go? In a CNBC interview earlier this year [ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/31/492740/honeywell-ceo-zero-corporate-tax/ (with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Pfl6_DlF8 , next below, embedded)],
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/business-roundtable-fiscal-cliff-_n_2288683.html [with comments]
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Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Defends Tax Dodge: 'It's Called Capitalism'
By Bonnie Kavoussi
Posted: 12/13/2012 11:01 am EST | Updated: 12/13/2012 3:50 pm EST
Google's chairman says he is "proud" of the way his company avoids paying taxes.
"It's called capitalism," Eric Schmidt told Bloomberg [ http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=webport_news&tkr=ALGT:US,CMG:US,GOOG:US&tkr2=GOOG:US&sid=abGe62AIVPwg ] in a Wednesday article. "We are proudly capitalistic. I'm not confused about this."
"We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways," he said. "I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate."
Bloomberg reported [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-10/google-revenues-sheltered-in-no-tax-bermuda-soar-to-10-billion.html ] on Monday that Google avoided paying $2 billion in global income taxes [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/google-taxes-bermuda_n_2270354.html?1355406166 (about two-thirds of the way down at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=82373629 )] last year by housing profits in Bermuda, which has no corporate income tax. Google already had been paying a 2.4 percent overseas tax rate [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html ] through tax avoidance strategies, according to a 2010 Bloomberg report. Its overall effective tax rate was 22.2 percent in 2009.
Google could not be reached for comment.
Google's effective U.S. tax rate is unclear. Citizens for Tax Justice [ http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/CorporateTaxDodgersReport.pdf ] did not analyze Google in a 2011 study because Google reports most of its profits as foreign, even though that may not be true.
Other big companies have avoided taxes by shifting revenue abroad. Boeing, DuPont, Capital One and General Electric [id.] paid a negative effective U.S. tax rate in 2010, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. Apple paid a total effective tax rate [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html?pagewanted=all ] of just 9.8 percent last year, according to The New York Times.
The U.S. government has been struggling to balance its budget; its annual deficit is projected to be $1.1 trillion [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/cbo-budget-deficit-fiscal-cliff_n_1821504.html ] this year. But taxing companies more is not really on the table. Both the Obama administration and congressional Republicans have proposed cutting the corporate tax rate [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/google-taxes-bermuda_n_2270354.html?1355406166 ].
Google is a member of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group's Tax Policy Committee [ http://svlg.org/policy-areas/tax-policy/tax-policy-links-2 ], which advocates for tax reform [ http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2012/11/28/silicon-valley-leaders-talk-fiscal.html?page=all ]. The group says on its website [ http://svlg.org/policy-areas/tax-policy ] that California should "lower overall tax burdens" and give companies "tax-based incentives."
(Hat tip: the Telegraph [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9739039/Googles-tax-avoidance-is-called-capitalism-says-chairman-Eric-Schmidt.html ].)
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/google-tax-dodge_n_2292077.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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High-End Tax Hikes Would Have 'Negligible' Impact On Growth, Revised CRS Report Says
Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich), the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the revised CRS report showed that high-end tax cuts would not hurt the economy.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
By Michael McAuliff
Posted: 12/13/2012 5:24 pm EST | Updated: 12/14/2012 6:32 am EST
WASHINGTON -- A Congressional Research Service report that was reissued Thursday after Republicans complained about it before the elections still finds little evidence that the Bush-era tax cuts spurred growth or that hiking the top rates would have more than a "negligible" impact on the economy.
The CRS study [ http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/Updated%20CRS%20Report%2012%3A13%3A12.pdf ] did find, however, that the lower tax rates in place since 2001 have had a strong impact on increasing income inequality in America.
"Analysis of such data conducted for this report suggests the reduction in the top tax rates has had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth," the study says. "It is reasonable to assume that a tax rate change limited to a small group of taxpayers at the top of the income distribution would have a negligible effect on economic growth."
The study focused on tax rates and economic growth since World War II. Democrats saw it as a key piece of evidence in their argument that tax rates on the top 2 percent of earners should go back up to Clinton-era levels to help deal with growing debt, deficits and the nearing "fiscal cliff." Republicans have balked, arguing that any tax hikes will hurt jobs and the economy.
"What this report demonstrates is at the core of the debate we're having right now," said Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, adding that it "put a stake in the heart of the Republican argument that small increases in marginal tax rates for wealthy individuals somehow hurt economic growth."
Van Hollen noted that the economy under President Bill Clinton boomed in spite of tax hikes and it slowed under President George W. Bush after the tax cuts.
"What this CRS report does is take away the last little fig leaf that [Republicans] had to justify big tax cuts for very wealthy individuals," Van Hollen said.
"Republicans have simply failed to face up to the reality," said Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. "I hope that this CRS report will add further impetus to the speaker to sit down with Republicans, because when I've talked to a few of them, I don't think they've had this discussion."
Republicans had complained [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/business/questions-raised-on-withdrawal-of-congressional-research-services-report-on-tax-rates.html ] about the study's methodology and said that it was biased because it used phrases such as the "Bush tax cuts" and "tax cuts for the rich."
Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement that the GOP still believes the report has problems, and that it was Democrats who politicized the issue.
"What is disheartening ... is that a simple conversation between congressional staff and CRS about their economic analysis was turned into a political football by Democrats," Ferrier said.
"House Democrats are doing a bizarre victory dance with this report," she added. "Since it concludes that lower statutory tax rates have little to do with economic growth and could increase income inequality, the question to those Democrats is how high do you want to jack up those taxes? Are you suggesting that we could go to pre-Kennedy era tax rates –- 91 percent top marginal tax rate and 52 percent corporate rate -– and it would NOT have an impact? We look forward to seeing that legislation."
While the CRS is the non-partisan research arm of Congress, Ferrier pointed to studies [ http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2811.pdf ] by outside groups [ http://www.nber.org/papers/w12786 ] that she said support [ http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2138698 ] the GOP position.
Democrats, however, offered their ideas on why they thought the GOP quashed the original document.
"Republicans tried to suppress this evidence," Van Hollen said. "They tried to prevent this report from really seeing the light of day because they don't like any evidence that exposes the fiction of their economic theory."
"The CRS report today just provides the final nail in the coffin of a fictional theory," he added.
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/high-end-tax-hikes-crs-report_n_2295737.html [with comments]
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The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 13, 2012
We are not having a debt crisis.
It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the “fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit. In fact, its borrowing costs are near historic lows. And even the confrontation over the debt ceiling that looms a few months from now if we do somehow manage to avoid going over the fiscal cliff isn’t really about debt.
No, what we’re having is a political crisis, born of the fact that one of our two great political parties has reached the end of a 30-year road. The modern Republican Party’s grand, radical agenda lies in ruins — but the party doesn’t know how to deal with that failure, and it retains enough power to do immense damage as it strikes out in frustration.
Before I talk about that reality, a word about the current state of budget “negotiations.”
Why the scare quotes? Because these aren’t normal negotiations in which each side presents specific proposals, and horse-trading proceeds until the two sides converge. By all accounts, Republicans have, so far, offered almost no specifics. They claim that they’re willing to raise $800 billion in revenue by closing loopholes, but they refuse to specify which loopholes they would close; they are demanding large cuts in spending, but the specific cuts they have been willing to lay out wouldn’t come close to delivering the savings they demand.
It’s a very peculiar situation. In effect, Republicans are saying to President Obama, “Come up with something that will make us happy.” He is, understandably, not willing to play that game. And so the talks are stuck.
Why won’t the Republicans get specific? Because they don’t know how. The truth is that, when it comes to spending, they’ve been faking it all along — not just in this election, but for decades. Which brings me to the nature of the current G.O.P. crisis.
Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has fallen increasingly under the influence of radical ideologues, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination of the welfare state — that is, the whole legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. From the beginning, however, these ideologues have had a big problem: The programs they want to kill are very popular. Americans may nod their heads when you attack big government in the abstract, but they strongly support Social Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid. So what’s a radical to do?
The answer, for a long time, has involved two strategies. One is “starve the beast,” the idea of using tax cuts to reduce government revenue, then using the resulting lack of funds to force cuts in popular social programs. Whenever you see some Republican politician piously denouncing federal red ink, always remember that, for decades, the G.O.P. has seen budget deficits as a feature, not a bug.
Arguably more important in conservative thinking, however, was the notion that the G.O.P. could exploit other sources of strength — white resentment, working-class dislike of social change, tough talk on national security — to build overwhelming political dominance, at which point the dismantling of the welfare state could proceed freely. Just eight years ago, Grover Norquist, the antitax activist, looked forward cheerfully to the days when Democrats would be politically neutered: “Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate.”
O.K., you see the problem: Democrats didn’t go along with the program, and refused to give up. Worse, from the Republican point of view, all of their party’s sources of strength have turned into weaknesses. Democratic dominance among Hispanics has overshadowed Republican dominance among southern whites; women’s rights have trumped the politics of abortion and antigay sentiment; and guess who finally did get Osama bin Laden.
And look at where we are now in terms of the welfare state: far from killing it, Republicans now have to watch as Mr. Obama implements the biggest expansion of social insurance since the creation of Medicare.
So Republicans have suffered more than an election defeat, they’ve seen the collapse of a decades-long project. And with their grandiose goals now out of reach, they literally have no idea what they want — hence their inability to make specific demands.
It’s a dangerous situation. The G.O.P. is lost and rudderless, bitter and angry, but it still controls the House and, therefore, retains the ability to do a lot of harm, as it lashes out in the death throes of the conservative dream.
Our best hope is that business interests will use their influence to limit the damage. But the odds are that the next few years will be very, very ugly.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/opinion/krugman-the-gops-existential-crisis.html [with comments]
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Anti-Tax Crusader Grover Norquist Compares Balanced Approach to 'Pink Unicorns'
[Norquist interviewed on PBS NewsHour segment]
Dec. 12, 2012
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec12/norquist_12-12.html [with embedded video and transcript of the segment, and comments]
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Grover Norquist: Obama 'May Decide To Go Blow Up Small Countries' Out Of Boredom
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist believes Republicans will hold President Obama on such a tight fiscal leash that he will have no choice but to launch unnecessary wars against small countries in order to fulfill his desire to spend more money.
Appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning, the Americans for Tax Reform founder made the Wag the Dog-esque prediction while discussing how the GOP will make sure Obama is fiscally restrained during his final four years as president.
"We, the Republicans in the House and Senate, will make [Obama] actually make those spending restraints," Norquist said of the sort of cuts of which he believes Obama's support is only nominal.
"Obama will be on a very short leash, fiscally speaking, over the next four years. He's not gonna have any fun at all," Norquist continued. "He may decide to go blow up small countries he can't pronounce because it won't be any fun to be here because he won't be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcGI8tVfJJM [the complete 12/13/12 Wahington Journal with Norquist as one of two guests at its original source, http://www.c-span.org/Events/Washington-Journal-for-Thursday-December-13/10737436569-1/ ]
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The Meaning of Minority
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: December 12, 2012
America’s white majority just bought itself another year.
According to census figures released Wednesday, 2043 is now the year that whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans. That’s one year later than previous projections.
But one year is nothing in the grand sweep of things. We as a society must begin to consider now what this change will mean for a nation mired in a majority/minority swamp of privilege, expectations, historical benefits and systematic discrimination.
The browning of America is very real and unrelenting. Our task is to find a way to move into this new Ecru Era with as much ease and grace as we can muster.
An April 2011 report from the Metropolitan Policy Program (M.P.P.) at the Brookings Institution found that all but two of the 10 largest metro areas in the country have child populations in which white children are a minority. (Boston and Philadelphia were the exceptions.) Of the remaining eight metro areas, Hispanic children are the largest demographic in six, and blacks are the largest in the other two.
As Hua Hsu [ http://english.vassar.edu/bios/huhsu.html ], a professor at Vassar College, posited in The Atlantic in 2009 [ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/01/the-end-of-white-america/307208/ ]: “What will the new mainstream of America look like, and what ideas or values might it rally around? What will it mean to be white after ‘whiteness’ no longer defines the mainstream? Will anyone mourn the end of white America? Will anyone try to preserve it?”
These are epic questions about a seismic shift in American demography. How should we consider a waning majority when their privilege of numbers gives way to what many other Americans have experienced as the minority plight?
On election night, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly said that [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZZt3jPDvNQ (next below; {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81469114 and preceding and following)]
In September, a white student named Matthew Heimbach at Towson University caused a bit of an uproar when The Baltimore Sun reported that he was “gathering support” to start a white student union on campus. The newspaper pointed out: “His former group, Youth for Western Civilization, had sparked controversy with its public displays against Islam, same-sex marriage and multicultural education. That group disbanded after it lost the support of its faculty sponsor, but Heimbach said he hopes his new organization will promote white identity without disparaging other people.”
(It should be noted that Towson’s campus is in Maryland, one of the states in which the M.P.P. found the white child population to be less than 50 percent, and is on the outskirts of Baltimore, where whites are only 31.5 percent of the population, according to the Census Bureau.)
Now, putting Youth for Western Civilization’s intolerance aside for a moment (if that’s possible), we must ask: when will public displays of white pride become culturally acceptable? Will they forever be freighted with the weight of history — tantamount to gloating about privilege? Or should all racial and cultural pride be viewed more or less the same?
The Sun quoted Heimbach as saying, “It comes a point where we’re not directly involved in what happened centuries ago and our culture just perpetuates the guilt cycle.” He continued, “We want to provide a positive view of white identity.”
Is that offensive? Or fair play in light of where the country is heading?
And what of O’Reilly’s “white establishment”? Power is a precious commodity. It is rarely voluntarily surrendered, particularly by those who believe they have earned it. The task is to expand the franchise without casting some people as givers and others as takers. That is harder than it sounds.
There will most likely be a growing rub between traditional power structures and emerging ones, much of which will be visible along racial lines but also along gender and sexual identity lines. A great deal of that friction boils down to simple economics. As a July 2011 Pew Research Center report [ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/07/26/wealth-gaps-rise-to-record-highs-between-whites-blacks-hispanics/ ] pointed out: “The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households.” Women [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/women-earn-91-cents-for-every-dollar-men-earn--if-you-control-for-life-choices/2012/06/04/gJQAqrHkEV_blog.html ] and gays [ http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2012/04/16/11494/the-gay-and-transgender-wage-gap/ ] also earn less than their male and heterosexual counterparts.
This wealth disparity plays into the national debate about the role of government, appropriate spending levels and rates of taxation.
And on a worrisome note, a recent Associated Press poll showed that since Barack Obama was elected in 2008, prejudice toward blacks has increased. According to the report: “In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.”
Furthermore, The A.P. found: “Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an A.P. survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison.”
The last thing we need is a racial and ethnic backlash in this country. Now is the time to move forward with sensitivity and respect and with a watchful eye on how we behave and what we expect as the traditional American majority becomes just another minority.
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Related
Census Officials, Citing Increasing Diversity, Say U.S. Will Be a ‘Plurality Nation’ (December 13, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/us/us-will-have-no-ethnic-majority-census-finds.html
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© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/opinion/blow-the-meaning-of-minority.html [with comments]
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Pat Robertson: ‘Socialist’ Obama Wants To ‘Cripple,’ ‘Destroy,’ ‘Take Over’ U.S.
by David Badash on December 13, 2012
Pat Robertson [ http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Pat Robertson ] today said [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWCmvyRZkYE (below, as embedded)] President Obama [ http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Barack Obama ] is a “socialist” whose agenda is to cripple, destroy, and take over America, as he’s already done with health care and as he wants to do with the financial services industry.
“The President is an ideologue,” Robertson said today on his CBN 700 Club show. “He wants to redistribute wealth and he wants to grow the size of government. He wants to absorb like an amoeba all the various—he’s already taken over a good part of health care, he wants to take over the financial services, he wants to take over everything and he wants to control it. What do you call that? It’s socialism.
“He wouldn’t admit to being a socialist but that’s what it is,” Robertson continued. “He has an agenda. Now Karl Rove was saying in an op-ed today that what the President is trying to do is set up the Republicans so they fight among themselves and therefore the party goes into disunity in the next election and Obama wins there. I don’t think he thinks that way. I think he thinks ideologically: I must cripple the capitalist class; I must cripple the business owners; I must destroy the free enterprise system in America.”
Robertson didn’t say how or why Obama wants to “cripple” and “destroy” America, and then take it over — it seemingly would make sense to not cripple and destroy something you want to take over, since making something worthless seems, well, worthless — but Robertson has never been known to be logical.
Also, if President Obama wanted to cripple and “destroy the free enterprise system in America,” how does Robertson explain that the stock markets under Obama are up about 70 percent [ http://investing.covestor.com/2012/10/the-stock-market-under-obama ] — one of the best performances in American history, and if the President were trying to “cripple” America, why did he save the auto industry?
Robertson, the 82-year old former televangelist who reportedly has ties to Uganda’s anti-gay movement, had claimed God told him Obama would win.
Sore loser.
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Related:
Pat Robertson On Gay Wedding At West Point: Robert E. Lee ‘Rolling Over’ In His Grave
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pat-robertson-on-gay-wedding-at-west-point-robert-e-lee-rolling-over-in-his-grave/marriage/2012/12/03/55191
Pat Robertson: ‘Miserable’ Atheist Grinches ‘Trying To Steal’ Christmas
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/9-pat-robertson-miserable-atheist-grinches-trying-to-steal-christmas/news/2012/11/19/54178
Gay Marriage Attacker Pat Robertson: Petraeus Affair OK Because ‘He’s A Man’
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/gay-marriage-attacker-pat-robertson-petraeus-affair-ok-because-hes-a-man/politics/2012/11/13/53649
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Copyright © 2012 The New Civil Rights Movement and David Badash
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pat-robertson-socialist-obama-wants-to-cripple-destroy-take-over-u-s/news/2012/12/13/56256 [with comments]
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Tyree Johnson, McDonald's Worker, Still Makes Minimum Wage After 20 Years Of Service
Tyree Johnson, a longtime McDonald's worker who is underemployed and making minimum wage even after 20 years with the company.
By Bonnie Kavoussi
Posted: 12/12/2012 4:25 pm EST | Updated: 12/12/2012 4:43 pm EST
We knew working at McDonald's wasn't the greatest gig in the world, but we didn't know it was this bad.
After 20 years cooking burgers and manning the fryer for the national chain, Tyree Johnson [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-12/mcdonald-s-8-25-man-and-8-75-million-ceo-shows-pay-gap.html ] still makes just the minimum wage, Bloomberg reports. That's $8.25 an hour in 44-year-old Johnson's hometown of Chicago, where he works at two different McDonald's restaurants.
The CEO of McDonald's, Bloomberg points out, made $8.75 million last year.
In an emailed statement, a McDonald's spokesperson pointed out that the majority of the company's restaurants are independently owned. "We value our employees’ well-being and the contributions they make to our restaurants, and thank them for what they do each and every day," wrote Cheryll Ocampo Forsatz.
Johnson is not alone. Other fast-food and retail companies [ http://247wallst.com/2012/11/21/the-12-companies-paying-americans-the-least/ ] offer fairly low wages. Walmart caps annual raises [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/walmarts-internal-compensation-plan_n_2145086.html (at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81593923 )] at 60 cents per hour at most, according to internal documents reviewed by The Huffington Post. Walmart also keeps many of its hourly employees part-time so that it does not have to give them an array of benefits.
Restaurant jobs have been booming [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/food-service-jobs--march-2012_n_1408158.html ], and the service economy [ http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/10/66-americas-growing-underclass/3618/ ] more broadly is growing, but these jobs do not pay well. Food service workers [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/food-service-jobs--march-2012_n_1408158.html ] were paid an average of just $18,130 in 2010, and retail sales jobs [ http://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm ] on average paid $20,990 in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Underemployment still is rampant. 14.4 percent of American workers [ http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm ] were unemployed, marginally attached to the workforce, or working part-time despite wanting to work full-time in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Low wages are hurting the economy, as consumer spending comprises roughly two-thirds of the U.S. economy. A November study by Demos [ http://www.demos.org/publication/retails-hidden-potential-how-raising-wages-would-benefit-workers-industry-and-overall-ec ] found that raising retail workers' wages to $25,000 per year would lift 734,075 people out of poverty and create 100,000 to 132,000 new jobs.
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/tyree-johnson-mcdonalds_n_2286464.html [with comments]
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Walmart Workers At Risk In States Rejecting Obamacare Medicaid Expansion
By Alice Hines
Posted: 12/13/2012 12:18 pm EST | Updated: 12/13/2012 3:59 pm EST
If state governors follow through on plans to oppose the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, one substantial group of low-wage workers appears vulnerable to going without medical coverage: people who work at Walmart.
The world’s largest retailer recently outlined a new policy that will exclude from health coverage newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours per week, as The Huffington Post reported this month [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/01/walmart-health-care-policy-medicaid-obamacare_n_2220152.html (at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=82026097 )]. Experts described that move as an attempt by Walmart to shift the burden of providing health coverage to the government -- specifically, to Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor.
Obamacare includes a dramatic expansion of Medicaid, one that will potentially extend health insurance to as many as 10 million people by 2016 [ http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43472-07-24-2012-CoverageEstimates.pdf ], according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office estimates. It would achieve this by expanding eligibility to include individuals with annual incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty limit -- currently $14,856.
A primary mission behind Obamacare was to ensure that people in low-wage service sector jobs -- which typically do not include health benefits -- would gain some form of medical coverage. But in a landmark ruling this year, the Supreme Court gave states the right to opt out of the Medicaid expansion. Republican governors in Texas, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Maine and South Dakota have subsequently signaled plans to do just that [ http://www.advisory.com/Daily-Briefing/2012/11/09/MedicaidMap ].
Many of these states share two traits: A large number of Walmart jobs, and extremely tight standards for Medicaid eligibility. In Texas, where more than 150,000 people work at Walmart [ http://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/locations#/united-states/texas ], according to the company -- the largest number of any state -- an employed parent who earns more than 26 percent of the federal poverty line, or $4,963 a year for a family of three, is deemed ineligible for Medicaid. Jobless parents must make even less to qualify -- no more than 12 percent of the poverty line. Unless they are disabled, childless adults do not qualify in Texas regardless of their income.
After Walmart’s new policy takes effect in January, many part-time workers who stand to be denied company health benefits would eventually qualify for Medicaid once the Obamacare expansion takes effect in 2014. About half of the roughly 1 million hourly Walmart employees in the United States earn less than $10 an hour, the company has previously disclosed [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/walmarts-internal-compensation-plan_n_2145086.html (at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81593923 )].
But if states now threatening to forgo the Medicaid expansion follow through on those plans, many Walmart employees -- along with others in low-paid, service-sector positions -- run the risk of slipping through the cracks: They are likely to work too few hours to qualify for company benefits, yet earn too much to qualify for Medicaid under their states’ restrictive standards.
In Texas, the absence of the Medicaid expansion combined with Walmart’s new policy could prove “extremely damaging,” to the company's workers, said Vivian Ho, a professor of health economics at Rice University in Houston. “I would hope for a state as large as Texas, Walmart could consider designing a particular policy as a function of what’s going to happen with Medicaid.”
Walmart has yet to publicly declare whether it plans to adjust its health plan in states that forgo the Medicaid expansion. The company declined requests for comment, citing a policy not to respond to questions from HuffPost.
Brittany Clark, who works at a Walmart in Indiana, said she's worried that she could fall through the cracks: Indiana Gov.-elect Mike Pence campaigned on an anti-Obamacare platform [ http://www.mikepence.com/response ] earlier this year, but he has not yet made a definite announcement regarding the Medicaid expansion.
Clark, who was hired on a part-time basis in March, said she earns $7.65 an hour and doesn’t know if she’ll be assigned enough hours per week to ever qualify for Walmart benefits. Even if she becomes eligible, she said, the costs associated with company insurance seem insurmountable. “If I were eligible, I wouldn’t be able to afford it and my rent, bills and baby,” she said, citing what she described as high deductibles.
Clark recently became pregnant, prompting her to enroll in Medicaid to gain prenatal care, but she is uncertain whether she will remain eligible after her baby arrives.
"After my baby is born, I’m looking for a new job," said Clark. "I can’t support myself and my family on odd hours and a $7.65-an-hour pay rate."
While other major retailers have often excluded part-time workers from their health plans, Walmart has in recent years attempted to distinguish itself as a relatively generous provider of coverage. In 2006, while facing public accusations that it short-changed workers, Walmart expanded its benefits [ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/business/24walmart.html?pagewanted=all ] to make it easier for part-time employees to qualify, while also introducing health insurance plans with lower monthly premiums.
Though some critics fault Walmart for allegedly saddling its employees with high deductibles that discourage workers from enrolling, the company’s health care options are more comprehensive than many offered by other national service sector chains.
In 2009, amid deliberations over President Obama’s proposed national health care reform, Walmart again staked out a position that distinguished itself from other retailers: The company endorsed an employer mandate [ http://www.americanprogress.org/press/release/2009/06/30/14392/release-wal-mart-seiu-cap-join-in-support-for-health-reform-including-employer-mandate/ ], a legal requirement that American companies furnish health coverage to employees. That stance put the retail giant on the same side as traditional adversaries like the Service Employees International Union and in direct opposition to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which lobbies for major businesses.
At the time, the Chamber of Commerce accused Walmart [ http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/48937-wal-mart-backs-health-benefits-mandate ] of supporting the mandate as a means of pursuing a self-interested motive: sticking competitors with additional costs of compliance.
A version of the employer mandate became a central component of Obamacare: By 2014, all large employers must offer health insurance to employees working at least 30 hours a week or pay penalties. Given that Walmart already offers coverage to employees who work more than 30 hours a week, the company will likely have an edge over competitors, many of whom now find themselves scrambling to adapt to Obamacare’s mandate.
Some American businesses such as Darden Restaurants -- which owns Red Lobster and Olive Garden -- have threatened to cut employees' hours below 30 hours a week [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/05/darden-restaurants-full-time_n_2246515.html ] rather than absorb the costs of extending health coverage. Some experts construe Walmart’s reduction of benefits for part-time workers as a similar cost-cutting maneuver, shifting the expense of coverage to taxpayers via programs such as Medicaid.
“Businesses are doing what’s in their best interest based on the law, and I don’t fault them for that,” said Ken Janda, the CEO of Community Health Choice, a Houston-based nonprofit that provides managed health plans to low-income families, including Medicaid recipients. “But the implications are that [in states that reject Medicaid] we’re going to have more people uninsured.”
Last year, Walmart altered its health plan to exclude newly hired part-time employees who work fewer than 24 hours per week, telling The New York Times that the policy was an attempt to cope with rising costs [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/business/wal-mart-cuts-some-health-care-benefits.html?pagewanted=all ]. This time, the company is telling employees that the 2013 restrictions on benefits are a direct response to Obamacare.
In an internal informational memo offering answers to frequently asked questions about its new health care policy, Walmart characterizes its decision to eliminate coverage for new hires who work fewer than 30 hours per week as an attempt to adapt to the president’s health care reform.
“We are changing our benefits-eligibility requirements to better align with the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act,” reads the memo, referring to the formal name for Obamacare. The memo was distributed earlier this year via the company’s in-store computer system, according to an employee who received it and who shared a copy with HuffPost on the condition that he not be named. “Requiring associates to meet a minimum number of hours on average to become benefits-eligible will allow us to continue providing quality affordable health care coverage to associates similar to other retailers,” the memo states.
Under the 2013 policy, Walmart reserves the power to eliminate coverage for employees whose average hours fall below their requirements -- something that happens frequently and at store managers’ discretion, according to workers. This policy applies only to part-time workers hired after the middle of January 2011.
Given that more than 37 percent of Walmart’s American workforce [ http://www.walmartstores.com/sites/responsibility-report/2012/pdf/wmt_2012_grr.pdf ] typically leaves the company every year and is replaced by new hires, a majority of the roughly 1 million people who now work at Walmart on an hourly basis could become vulnerable to losing benefits under the new policy.
Four people who have recently worked as salaried managers in Illinois and Iowa told HuffPost that Walmart required their stores to hire only part-time workers, while ensuring full-time workers comprised less than 30 percent of their payrolls.
In Texas, elected officials are concerned about how to respond as Walmart and other businesses pare down eligibility for their medical insurance plans.
“From an economic point of view, the health care law does encourage businesses to get out of the business of providing health insurance,” said John Zerwas, a Republican state representative and an anesthesiologist who opposes Medicaid expansion in Texas. “The federal government should step back and look at how they can remedy this without asking states to shoulder the costs.”
In Texas, the state’s Health and Human Services Commission estimates [ http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/State-sharply-lowers-estimate-of-Medicaid-3703643.php ] that participating in the Medicaid expansion will cost state taxpayers more than $15 billion over a decade. Gov. Rick Perry (R) has vowed to skip the Medicaid expansion, citing such costs. Perry's office directed HuffPost to a press release [ http://governor.state.tx.us/news/press-release/17408/ ] when asked about Medicaid expansion.
Under Obamacare, the federal government would fully finance the Medicaid expansion for the first three years and still pay the vast majority thereafter, with its share dropping gradually to 90 percent by 2022.
Some Texas lawmakers have accused Perry of putting at risk some of the state’s most vulnerable people -- low-wage employees such as those who work at Walmart.
“Walmart has never treated its employees in such a way where they could access affordable health plans based on their wages,” said Garnet Coleman, a Texas state representative who is part of a team of state legislators that worked with the White House on the Affordable Care Act. “This is what the argument for the Act was all about. The law was designed to pick up those folks. But it doesn’t work without the Medicaid expansion.”
Coleman, a Democrat, added that the poorest Texans would be most affected by a failure to expand Medicaid. Those with incomes at the federal poverty limit and up to four times that standard -- a ceiling of $92,200 a year for a family of four in 2012 [ http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/8023-R.pdf ] -- will be able to buy subsidized health plans through so-called insurance exchanges established under Obamacare. But those with incomes below the federal poverty standard -- including some part-time Walmart workers -- will not be eligible for subsidies through the exchanges.
Some doctors in states whose governors are opposing Obamacare worry they will shoulder the burden of poor patients arriving in their hospitals and clinics without health insurance, as private employers trim down their plans.
“It will be pure hell for doctors and hospitals if patients are thrown off the private insurance rolls and don't get Medicaid,” said Eric Fishman, an anesthesiologist at WellStar Kennestone Hospital in Marietta, Ga. Over the course of 15 years in private practice, Fishman said he has frequently provided free care to uninsured workers -- including some who worked for Walmart.
The company “has revenues and profits in the billions of dollars,” Fishman said, “yet they have no problem passing on the cost of medical care for their employees onto the government and onto the backs of physicians and hospitals. Walmart executives and shareholders should be ashamed of themselves.”
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/walmart-obamacare-medicaid_n_2280118.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Texas Cancer Agency Marred By Criminal Probe
By PAUL J. WEBER
12/15/12 02:33 PM ET EST
AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas put up $3 billion in taxpayer money and promised cancer breakthroughs. But a criminal investigation, widespread rebuke from scientists and the resignations of embattled state officials came faster than medical discoveries.
The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas launched in 2009, flaunting the second-biggest trough of cancer research dollars in the country. Nobel laureates eagerly took jobs with the agency and celebrity Lance Armstrong lent visible and then-coveted support. It was an unprecedented state-run battle against a worldwide killer.
Three years later, it's become unhinged by suggestions of politics and personal profit and is on the ropes.
"People expected that we get some good results. Not that we make people rich in private companies doing cancer research," said Cathy Bonner, a cancer survivor who was a close aide to former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, and who helped brainstorm the idea for CPRIT. "I can't imagine anything lower than misuse of research money that's meant to save people's lives."
Embroiled by two lucrative grants approved despite scant review – or none at all, in one case – CPRIT is ending a year of turmoil saying the beleaguered agency is cooperating with separate prosecutor investigations. One is by a public corruption unit that convicted former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on money laundering charges, and is beginning this probe trying to recover key internal emails CPRIT says it cannot retrieve.
The investigations opened last week after CPRIT revealed its latest and most serious blunder: Giving a private biomedical startup, Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, an $11 million award in 2010 without ever scrutinizing the merits of the company's proposal. The discovery came on the heels of the agency funding a $20 million project roundly condemned for not first undergoing an independent scientific review.
On Friday, the federal National Cancer Institute – which confers CPRIT the prominent status of being an approved funding entity – confirmed it was evaluating "recent events" at the state agency.
Amid the escalating troubles, an agency that doled out more than $800 million in three years has practically ground to a halt.
CPRIT's peer-review boards that evaluate research proposals are empty – virtually all members quit in protest, including the chief science officer and the head of the science review council, both Nobel prize winners. They didn't leave quietly: Dr. Phillip Sharp, professor at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said agency leaders "dishonored" the integrity of the independent review process and suggested "suspicions of favoritism" were at hand.
On the other end of treating cancer – putting drug discoveries on the market and in the hands of patients – Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs resigned in November after the irregularities behind Peloton's funding were uncovered. The agency has said Peloton was unaware its proposal bypassed review, and the company has declined comment.
Executive Director Bill Gimson then completed an extraordinary purging of the agency's leadership last week, saying he would step down from the $300,000-a-year job he held since CPRIT formed. His Dec. 10 resignation letter is dated the same day the Texas attorney general's office informed Gimson it was launching a wide inquiry into the agency's operations.
Months of upheaval has become even too much for one public relations superpower. Hill & Knowlton Strategies severed its consulting deal with CPRIT last week, telling the agency in a letter that "the ongoing issues and challenges that have confronted the organization over recent months have greatly exceeded the scope of work outlined in the original contract."
Cancer-fighting groups worry Texas lawmakers will be next to abandon CPRIT.
"The internal dynamics are concerning, and we need to know exactly what's going on," said James Gray, a government relations director for the American Cancer Society. "But the mission and work of CPRIT is vital in saving lives today, and also in the future."
CPRIT was created with a built-in expiration date. Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2007 to launch a $3 billion cancer-fighting effort, but gave the state only a decade to do it. Apart from funding research in university laboratories and infusing private biotech startups with cash – including Peloton – the agency also provides money for hundreds of thousands of preventive screenings, such as for breast cancer, across Texas.
Gov. Rick Perry and other elected leaders are now talking tough about transparency and getting to the bottom of the Peloton grant. The state's key budget-writing committee added a review of the agency to a hearing agenda for Thursday, though there appears to be little appetite among lawmakers to cut off CPRIT.
Prosecutors launched their investigations last week without alleging any criminal misconduct. But their broad scope will include trying to recover internal agency emails surrounding the Peloton grant that Gimson has said are no longer available.
"We've been down that road many times," said Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit.
CPRIT is among fewer than two dozen funding entities in the nation approved by the National Cancer Institute. Aleea Farrakh Khan, an NCI spokeswoman, said the institute has not directly contacted CPRIT during its evaluation and no decisions have been made.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/15/texas-cancer-agency-_n_2307946.html [with comments]
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Domino's Pizza Founder Sues Over Obamacare Contraception Coverage Mandate
12/15/12 01:20 PM ET EST
DETROIT -- The founder of Domino's Pizza is suing the federal government over mandatory contraception coverage in the health care law.
Tom Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic, says contraception isn't health care but a "gravely immoral" practice.
He filed a lawsuit Friday in federal court. It also lists as a plaintiff Domino's Farms, a Michigan office park complex that Monaghan owns.
Monaghan offers health insurance that excludes contraception and abortion for employees. The new federal law requires employers to offer insurance including contraception coverage or risk fines.
Monaghan says the law violates his rights, and is asking a judge to strike down the mandate. There are similar lawsuits pending nationwide.
A message left Saturday for Monaghan's attorney, Richard Thompson, was not immediately returned.
The government says the contraception mandate benefits women.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/15/dominos-contraception_n_2307794.html [with comments]
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Drink Ingredient Gets a Look
Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.
James Edward Bates for The New York Times
A petition on Change.org asks for the removal of brominated vegetable oil from Gatorade.
James Edward Bates for The New York Times
By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: December 12, 2012
Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.
But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.
“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”
She threw the product away and started a petition [ http://www.change.org/petitions/gatorade-don-t-put-flame-retardant-chemicals-in-sports-drinks ] on Change.org, an online petition platform, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/pepsico_inc/index.html ], Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.
Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.
In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.
The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.
Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.
“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.
The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.
Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.
Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.
Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”
The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.
About 10,000 chemicals are allowed to be added to foods, about 3,000 of which have never been reviewed for safety by the F.D.A., according to Pew’s research. Of those, about 1,000 never come before the F.D.A. unless someone has a problem with them; they are declared safe by a company and its handpicked advisers.
“I worked on the industrial and consumer products side of things in the past, and if you take a new chemical and put it into, say, a tennis racket, you have to notify the E.P.A. before you put it in,” Mr. Neltner said, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency. “But if you put it into food and can document it as recognized as safe by someone expert, you don’t have to tell the F.D.A.”
Michael R. Taylor, deputy commissioner for food and veterinary medicine at the agency, said: “From our standpoint, we do need to look at whether this regime established by Congress almost 60 years ago gives us the information we need. It would be desirable for F.D.A. to have more information on products being added to food.”
The F.D.A. is aware of the controversy surrounding brominated vegetable oil. It took the ingredient off its list of substances “generally recognized as safe” in 1970, after the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association revoked its approval of it. The group’s expert panel is the primary body for evaluating the safety of flavoring substances added to food; if it rules something is “generally recognized as safe,” the F.D.A. goes along.
John Halligan, senior adviser and general counsel to the organization, said that during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the expert panel was reviewing many older additives that had been grandfathered into “generally recognized as safe” status when the federal law was changed.
“They came to B.V.O. and there had been some new studies done which weren’t definitive,” he said. “The panel looked at data and said it doesn’t look like we have an adequate database here to conclude this substance is generally recognized as safe, so they revoked its status.”
Subsequently, Patricia El-Hinnawy, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A, wrote in an e-mail, the agency asked the association to do studies on brominated vegetable oil in mice, rats, dogs and pigs. She said that the organization made “several submissions of safety data” to the F.D.A. while those studies were going on, roughly from 1971 to 1974.
“F.D.A. determined that the totality of evidence supported the safe use of B.V.O. in fruit-flavored beverages up to 15 parts per million,” Ms. El-Hinnawy wrote.
That ruling [ http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfCFR/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=180.30 ], made in 1977, was supposed to be interim, pending more studies, but 35 years later it is unchanged. “Any change in the interim status of B.V.O. would require an expenditure of F.D.A.’s limited resources, which is not a public health protection priority for the agency at this time,” Ms. El-Hinnawy wrote.
Meanwhile, no further testing has been done. While most people have limited exposure to brominated vegetable oil, an extensive article [ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=soda-chemical-cloudy-health-history ] about it by Environmental Health News that ran in Scientific American last year found that video gamers and others who binge on sodas and other drinks containing the ingredient experience skin lesions, nerve disorders and memory loss.
Michael F. Jacobson, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said some studies show that B.V.O. collects in fatty tissues, raising questions about what its effect might be during weight loss. Dr. Jacobson, who looked into the research on brominated vegetable oil after being asked about it by The New York Times, concluded, “The testing of B.V.O. is abysmal.”
He said the longest studies of the ingredient he could find covered only four months, while most food additives are usually tested for two years, making it impossible to establish a safe level of consumption.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/business/another-look-at-a-drink-ingredient-brominated-vegetable-oil.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/business/another-look-at-a-drink-ingredient-brominated-vegetable-oil.html?pagewanted=all ]
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Craft Brewers Threatened by Big Beer Brands
Pouring at the 2012 Great American Beer Festival in Colorado, which represents the largest collection of U.S. beers.
Courtesy Brewers Association
[ http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-25/99-facts-about-beer-on-the-wall-dot-dot-dot ]
By Devin Leonard on December 13, 2012
American craft brewers love to talk about how they’re stealing market share from the big beer companies, such as MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD [ http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?ticker=BUD ]). In the first half of the year, craft beer sales rose [ http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/media/press-releases/show?title=brewers-association-reports-2012-mid-year-growth-for-u-s-craft-brewers ] 14 percent, in dollar terms, according to the trade group Brewers Association. Their larger competitors can only dream of such gains in the U.S.
Craft brewers, however, are increasingly worried about how the world’s two largest beer companies are attempting to counter their growth by making beers that appear to be craft products—like MillerCoors’s Blue Moon and AB InBev’s Shock Top—with no indication on their labels that they’re produced by large multinational corporations.
Today the craft brewing industry called out the big guys in an op-ed piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the hometown newspaper of AB InBev’s North American division. It was written by Charlie Papazian and Bob Pease, the president and chief operating officer, respectively, of the Brewers Association, and Dan Kopman, co-founder of Schlafly Beer, a small independent brewer in St. Louis.
Here’s what they had to say [ http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/craft-or-crafty-consumers-deserve-to-know-the-truth/article_e34ce949-d34a-5b0f-ba92-9e6db5a3ed99.html ]:
Noting the expansion of the craft brewers’ niche and also that many beer drinkers are turning away from the mass-produced light lagers that they are historically known for, the large brewers started producing their own craft-like beers. However, they don’t label these faux-craft beers as products of AB InBev and MillerCoors. So if you are drinking a Blue Moon Belgian Wheat Beer, you are not told it is an SABMiller product. If you crack open a Shock Top, you are not told this brand is 100 percent owned by AB InBev. The large brewers also have bought or own 100 percent of smaller breweries like Goose Island, Leinenkugel and Henry Weinhard. They own significant equity stakes in Red Hook, Widmer and Kona breweries. They sell these beers through their strong distribution channels, but market these faux-craft beers as if they were from independent, locally owned craft breweries.
In an interview, Kopman told Bloomberg Businessweek that all brewers should label their products so consumers aren’t mislead about a beer’s origin. “We definitely need to discuss this as an industry,” he said. “We need to have an agreed-upon standard for transparency where you are a multinational or an independent.”
This craft industry’s increasing aggressiveness comes at a sensitive time for AB InBev. The Belgium-based company that bought Anheuser-Busch in 2008 is now seeking the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice to complete the purchase [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/ab-inbev-seals-20-billion-modelo-purchase-to-gain-corona-owner.html ] of Grupo Modelo (GMODELOC [ http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?ticker=GMODELOC:MM ]). The last thing it needs is the small American brewers complaining that it’s trying to undermine their growth. That doesn’t seem to have escaped the craft industry either.
*
Related
Video
60 Tasty Seconds With the 'Best Beer in the World'
http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2012-11-27/60-tasty-seconds-with-the-best-beer-in-the-world
The Plot to Destroy America's Beer
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-25/the-plot-to-destroy-americas-beer
Graphic
99 Facts About Beer On the Wall...
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-25/99-facts-about-beer-on-the-wall-dot-dot-dot [above]
Business Loans and Hand-Holding, Beer Optional
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-24/business-loans-and-hand-holding-beer-optional
A Craft Beer Brand's Winning Recipe? Outsourcing
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-20/a-craft-beer-brands-winning-recipe-outsourcing
A Top Beer Sommelier Assesses Obama's Home-Brew Recipe
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-04/a-top-beer-sommelier-assesses-obamas-homebrew-recipe
Video
French Brewers Brace as New Beer Levies Loom
http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2012-12-05/french-brewers-brace-as-new-beer-levies-loom
*
©2012 Bloomberg L.P.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-13/craft-brewers-threatened-by-big-beer-brands [with comments]
===
How Maps Helped Republicans Keep an Edge in the House
Graphic
Parties Redraw the House Vote
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/12/us/politics/redistricting-graphic.html
By GRIFF PALMER and MICHAEL COOPER
Published: December 14, 2012
Wisconsinites leaned Democratic when they went to the polls last month, voting to re-elect President Obama, choosing Tammy Baldwin to be their new United States senator and casting more total votes for Democrats than Republicans in races for Congress and the State Legislature.
But thanks in part to the way that Republicans drew the new Congressional and legislative districts for this year’s elections, Republicans will still outnumber Democrats in Wisconsin’s new Congressional delegation five to three — and control both houses of the Legislature.
Pennsylvanians also voted to re-elect Mr. Obama, elected Democrats to several statewide offices and cast about 83,000 more votes for Democratic Congressional candidates than for Republicans. But new maps drawn by Republicans — including for the Seventh District outside Philadelphia, a Rorschach-test inkblot of a district [ http://www.meehanforcongress.com/the-new-7th-congressional-district ] snaking through five counties that helped Representative Patrick Meehan win re-election by adding Republican voters — helped ensure that Republicans will have a 13-to-5 majority in the Congressional delegation that the state will send to Washington next month.
Republican-drawn lines also helped Republicans win lopsided majorities in other swing states Mr. Obama won: Democratic Congressional candidates won nearly half the votes in Virginia but only 27 percent of its seats, and 48 percent of the vote in Ohio but only a quarter of its seats.
Last month’s Congressional elections were the first to be held in new districts that were drawn across the country after the once-a-decade process of redistricting, when many state officials, charged with redrawing their district maps to account for population shifts, indulge in carefully calculated partisan cartography aimed at giving their party an edge.
Republicans had the upper hand: thanks to the gains they made in 2010 state-level elections, Republicans controlled the redistricting process in states with 40 percent of the seats in the House, Democrats controlled it in states with 10 percent of the seats, and the rest of the seats were drawn by courts, states with divided governments or commissions.
In the nation as a whole, Democratic candidates for Congress won 1.1 million more votes than Republicans, according to a tally [ http://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjYj9mXEIO_QdHZCbzJocGtxYkR6OTdZbzZwRUFvS3c#gid=O ] of the popular vote kept by David Wasserman, the House editor of The Cook Political Report. But Republicans maintained their control of the House — making this one of a handful of elections in the last century where the party that won the popular vote for Congress did not win control of the House.
Redistricting may sound esoteric, but it can have an impact on governing at the state and federal levels. It may have played a role in Michigan’s decision to pass anti-union legislation this week, a month after Mr. Obama won the state by nine points. Michigan Republicans drew the maps in the last two cycles, and even though Republicans lost some seats last month they were able to keep their majority with 54 percent of the seats in the state’s House of Representatives, while getting just 45 percent of the popular vote. And since redistricting gives many members of Congress less competitive, more politically homogeneous districts, it is often cited [ http://crespin.myweb.uga.edu/878.pdf ] as one of the factors exacerbating political polarization — a tension can be seen in the current fiscal debate [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/us/politics/in-talks-house-majority-weighs-loyalty-to-voters.html ].
The latest round of redistricting is not the only reason Republicans lost the popular vote but won a majority of House seats, several political scientists and analysts said. Incumbency is a powerful weapon, they noted, and Republicans went into the election with a big majority in the House. A new election process in California pitted some Democrats [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/us/politics/democrats-duke-it-out-in-the-san-fernando-valley.html ] against one another in the general election.
And a number of political scientists pointed to what Jowei Chen, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Michigan, and Jonathan Rodden, a professor of political science at Stanford University, call “unintentional gerrymandering” in a forthcoming paper [ http://www-personal.umich.edu/˜jowei/florida.pdf ] — the natural geographic patterns that lead many Democrats to choose to live in dense, urban areas with very high concentrations of Democrats, effectively packing themselves into fewer districts.
“Now, more than ever in history, Democrats are clustered in a small number of these urban districts,” Professor Chen said in an interview.
But it is undeniable that redistricting played a role as well. The new lines helped Republicans maintain their control of the House, largely because they were able to add more Republican voters to districts where Republicans won close races in 2010.
Michael P. McDonald, an associate professor of public affairs at George Mason University who has served as a consultant on redistricting for both parties, said there was a reason both parties fight so hard for the power to draw the maps — noting that they were not going to all that trouble “just to draw neutral plans.”
Democrats also drew gerrymandered lines in states where they controlled the process, but had less of an impact over all because they had control in fewer states, said Keesha Gaskins, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, which has been studying the impact of redistricting.
In Illinois, where Democrats drew the maps, Republican Congressional candidates won 45 percent of the popular vote but only a third of the House seats. And in Maryland, Republicans won 35 percent of the votes but just 13 percent of the seats.
An analysis [ http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/redistricting_and_congressional_control_following_the_2012_election/ ] by the Brennan Center found that the new lines that took effect this year may have changed which party won in at least 25 House districts this year, and that they helped Republicans win a net gain of six more seats than they would have won under the old maps.
One particularly striking finding in their analysis highlights the power that comes with drawing the maps. In states where Republicans controlled the process, it found, their candidates won roughly 53 percent of the vote — and 72 percent of the seats. And in the states where Democrats controlled the process, their candidates won about 56 percent of the vote and 71 percent of the seats.
An analysis by The New York Times of states where courts, commissions or divided governments drew the maps found a much smaller disparity between the share of the popular vote and the number of seats won in Congress. In those states, the analysis found, Democrats won slightly more than half the vote and 56 percent of the seats, while Republicans won 46 percent of the vote and 44 percent of the seats.
A flavor of the politics behind the process in Ohio can be found in the exhibits [ http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/pdf_viewer/pdf_viewer.aspx?pdf=700708.pdf ] of a lawsuit that challenged the new districts for state lawmakers. Ohio Republicans — who attended a training session on redistricting with a PowerPoint slide that counseled “Keep it secret, keep it safe” — ran their redistricting operation from a room at a DoubleTree Hotel in Columbus that staff members sometimes called “the bunker” in e-mails. The e-mails show that the Republicans drawing the maps paid close attention to the percentage of the vote Republicans got in past elections in each district.
Ohio’s Republican-friendly districts for state lawmakers were upheld last month by the Supreme Court of Ohio, which ruled in a 4-to-3 decision that the state’s Constitution does “not explicitly require political neutrality, or for that matter, politically competitive districts or representational fairness, in the apportionment board’s creation of state legislative districts” as long as the other legal requirements are met.
Dr. McDonald, of George Mason University, said redistricting could have ramifications for the country, because as members of Congress are drawn into less-competitive districts, they may have less incentive to compromise. “They’re safe in their districts in the House of Representatives,” he said.
*
Related
Times Topic: Redistricting and Reapportionment
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/reapportionment/index.html
*
Democracy Tested
Articles in this series will examine challenges to the American promise that all citizens have an equal voice in how they are governed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/sunday-review/the-vanishing-electoral-battleground.html
*
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/politics/redistricting-helped-republicans-hold-onto-congress.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/politics/redistricting-helped-republicans-hold-onto-congress.html?pagewanted=all ]
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GOP gerrymandering delivers disproportionate representation
December 12, 2012
Rachel Maddow shows how Republican legislatures have manipulated state voting districts to ensure disproportionate Republican election victories with the potential to secure a White House win.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50182647#50182647 [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtAOEDRZaus ; theme continues with the three additional segments next below] [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/12/15874459-links-for-the-1212-trms (with comments)]
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Could redrawn maps boost Republican to White House?
The Rachel Maddow Show
December 12, 2012
Steve Kornacki, co-host of MSNBC's "THE CYCLE" and a senior writer for Salon.com, talks with Rachel Maddow about the effectiveness of Republicans gerrymandering and the potential impact on the presidential race should states decide to change their electoral vote allotment to be based on those manipulated district maps.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50182699#50182699 [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/12/15874459-links-for-the-1212-trms (with comments)]
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Holder takes first steps toward repairing elections
The Rachel Maddow Show
December 12, 2012
Rachel Maddow describes Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board as a model of non-partisan bureaucratic fairness - so of course it's under attack by state Republicans, further emphasizing the necessity of a national election standard, free from local political manipulations.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50182945#50182945 [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/12/15874459-links-for-the-1212-trms (with comments)]
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'A uniform pattern of registration and voting'
The Rachel Maddow Show
December 12, 2012
Rachel Maddow shares footage of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 17, 1960 calling for national uniform voting standards to ensure election fairness.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50182721#50182721 [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/12/15874459-links-for-the-1212-trms (with comments)]
===
Conservatism riddled with scams
December 10, 2012
Rachel Maddow reviews the many ways the conservative movement is rife with scammers who are more interested in making a buck off the fear and paranoia of conservative media audiences than they are in crafting a cogent political arguments.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50153939#50153939 [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxs9xuD86u8 , also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eckGyDIeEFQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b191lFS87rA ; theme continues with the additional segment next below] [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/10/15831063-links-for-the-1210-trms (no comments yet)]
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Conservatism a racket without a cause?
The Rachel Maddow Show
December 10, 2012
Frank Rich, writer-at-large for New York Magazine, talks with Rachel Maddow about how the many scammers and hucksters within the conservative movement not only undermine the movement itself but likely subvert the political goals of the Republican Party.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50153982#50153982 [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/10/15831063-links-for-the-1210-trms (no comments yet)]
===
In Ignorance We Trust
By TIMOTHY EGAN
December 13, 2012, 8:15 pm
A packet of letters arrived the other day from the honors English class at St. Lawrence School in Brasher Falls, N.Y. Snail mail, from high school sophomores? Yes, and honest, witty and insightful snail mail at that. They had been forced to read a book of mine.
“Personally, I don’t like reading about history or learning about it,” wrote one student, setting the tone for the rest of the class.
“The Dust Bowl? Really?” So began another missive. “When we heard we were reading your book…heads dropped. Let me rephrase that, heads fell to the floor and rolled down the hallway.”
You get the drift: history is a brain freeze. And, writers of history, well, there’s a special place with the already-chewed gum in nerd camp for them. But as I read through the letters I was cheered. Some of the last survivors of the American Dust Bowl were high school sophomores when they were hit with the nation’s worst prolonged environmental disaster. In that 1930s story of gritty resilience, the Brasher Falls kids of 2012 found a fresh way to look at their own lives and this planet.
History is always utilitarian, and often entertaining. It stirs the blood of any lover of the past to see Steven Spielberg’s majestic “Lincoln” — at its core, a drama about politicians with ZZ Top beards writing legislation — crush the usual soulless, computer-generated distractions at the box office.
But history, the formal teaching and telling of it, has never been more troubled. Two forces, one driven by bottom-line educators answering to corporate demands to phase out the liberal arts, the other coming from the circular firing squad of academics who loathe popular histories, have done much to marginalize our shared narratives.
David McCullough, the snowy-headed author and occasional national scold, says we are raising a generation of Americans who are historically illiterate. He cites Harry Truman’s line that the only new thing in the world is the history you don’t know. And today, in part by design, there’s a lot of know-nothingness throughout the land. Only 12 percent of high school seniors are “at or above proficient” in American history, which, of course, doesn’t mean they’re stupid.
For knuckleheaded refinement look to the state of Florida, a breeder of bad ideas from its dangerous gun laws to its deliberate attempts to make it hard for citizens to vote. Gov. Rick Scott’s task force on higher education is now suggesting that college students with business-friendly majors pay less tuition than those in traditional liberal arts fields.
“You know, we don’t need a lot of anthropologists [ http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/rick-scott-liberal-arts-majors-drop-dead-anthropology ] in this state,” the governor said in October. “I want to spend our dollars giving people science, technology, engineering and math degrees. That’s what our kids need to focus all their time and attention on.”
Notice he said “all.” If the governor, who’s been trying to run Florida like a corporation, had applied the skills of the liberal arts, his approval rating might be higher than 38 percent. Any anthropologist could tell Scott how he misread human behavior in the Sunshine State.
It’s fine to encourage society to crank out more engineers, computer technicians and health care specialists. We need them. But do we really want to discourage people from trying to understand where they came from? The Florida proposals would enshrine the unexamined life.
This is but one byproduct of the rage among educators to use math and science like a stick against history, literature, art or philosophy.
And yet, as McCullough has said, the keepers of academic gates in these fields are their own worst enemies. Too many history books are boring, badly written and jargon-weighted with politically correct nonsense. There are certainly exceptions among the authors — the witty Patricia Limerick at the University of Colorado, for example, or the prolific Douglas Brinkley at Rice. And I defy anyone to read Robert K. Massie’s “Catherine the Great” (enlightened German teenager takes over Russia) or Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts” (Nazis, oozing evil in diplomatic circles) and not come away moved.
But in the great void between readable histories and snooze-fest treatises have stepped demagogues with agendas, from Glenn Beck and his paranoid writings on the perils of progressivism, to Oliver Stone and his highly selective retelling of the 20th century.
One of my best friends in college ripped through chemistry, engineering and advanced calculus courses. And then, degree in hand, he felt strangely uncompleted. On his own, and for a full year, he read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Fitzgerald and Civil War histories. He spent the next 30 years at Boeing. No doubt, he was one of the few mechanical engineers who not only was aware of Faulkner’s immortal line — “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” — but also understood what it meant.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/egan-in-ignorance-we-trust/ [with comments]
===
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Honeywell CEO Dave Cote is a member of the Business Roundtable, a corporate lobbying group that has relaxed its fiscal cliff opposition to higher income tax rates for the wealthy.
(AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, file)
By Ben Hallman
Posted: 12/12/2012 7:26 pm EST
After spending months opposing tax increases for the wealthiest Americans, the Business Roundtable, an influential corporate lobbying group, this week relented, accepting higher rates for the affluent in the name of averting the fiscal cliff.
"We’re advocating for everybody to give a little," said Jim McNerney, who chairs both Boeing and the Roundtable, which represents 160 major companies, during a Wednesday conference call. “This is the voice of pragmatism. That’s what we do for a living. We’re pragmatic people every day."
But that pragmatism appears to come with a healthy dollop of self-interest. Business chieftains have accepted higher rates on income taxes for the wealthy in exchange for something they have long sought -- a break on corporate income taxes. President Barack Obama has signalled that he is open to so-called corporate tax reform as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations, according to The Wall Street Journal [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323339704578173241968322374.html ] -- a position he apparently adopted at the same time the business lobby changed its position on raising taxes on wealthy individuals.
The precise shape of that tax reform is far from certain, and will be hashed out in negotiations well into 2013. But for the Roundtable companies, reform is a euphemism for the preservation of favored perks for major American businesses, according to finance experts.
"This is not something that is going to make the tax code more fair," said Eileen Applebaum, an economist at the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research think tank, of the approach advocated by the corporations.
For some companies, the appeal of corporate tax reform is obvious. The clothing retailer Gap, for example, paid 34.9 percent of its income in federal taxes from 2008 to 2010. A lowering of the federal rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, as the president proposed in February [ http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/The-Presidents-Framework-for-Business-Tax-Reform-02-22-2012.pdf ], would save the company millions of dollars.
Other companies, especially in the oil and gas industry, the financial services sector and the defense industry, appear to be doing quite well already. Over that same period, 2008 to 2010, the aeronautics company Honeywell International, for example, paid an effective federal tax rate of -0.7 percent, according to a report by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy [ http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/ ]. In other words, a company that is hugely reliant on the federal government for contracts was able to claim enough tax credits and route earnings through enough loopholes to avoid paying the government any taxes for three years.
So why would Honeywell, which is also part of the "Fix the Debt" committee that has lobbied for a fair solution to the debt crisis, not stick with the status quo?
Honeywell did not respond directly to this question, but in an email a spokeswoman said the company "adheres to the tax laws of all jurisdictions in which it operates and is subject to ongoing review by tax authorities and is compliant in all respects.”
Tax experts suggested several possible motivations.
The first, and the most obvious, is that these companies want the U.S. to adopt a new system for assessing taxes on income earned in foreign countries. As The Huffington Post reported on Wednesday [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/caterpillar-fiscal-cliff-tax-breaks_n_2280130.html ], that system -- known as the territorial system -- would allow U.S.-based companies to bring home income earned overseas without paying any additional taxes (or very low taxes).
One study [ http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/ceo-campaign-to-fix-the-debt/ ], by the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies, found that 63 companies advocating for a debt deal would stand to save $134 billion in tax payments if Congress approves a switch to the new system.
Current tax policy requires companies to pay the 35 percent U.S. rate, minus whatever tax payments were made overseas. That's not something multinational companies much want to do, so they've used an exemption to the tax code passed by Congress every year since the 1980s to "defer" paying those taxes indefinitely. (Many of the Fix the Debt companies have lobbied to support a permanent extension of this rule, as well).
Honeywell has $8 billion in earnings socked away overseas, and could see potential savings of $2.8 billion if brought back tax-free, according to the report.
Another possible reason why multinational companies are pushing for corporate tax reform: they hope that tax rates will come down enough to trigger a ripple effect that spurs other countries to also lower their rates.
Thirty years ago, the average corporate rate in Western countries was 50 percent. When the U.S. lowered its rate to 35 percent, the other developed countries followed suit. In subsequent years, most other countries lowered the rate again and again -- each time the argument was that doing so would make their country more attractive for multinational investment.
In the United Kingdom, for example, the rate is set to drop [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/05/corporation-tax-rate-cut-autumn-statement ] to 21 percent in 2014.
For companies like Honeywell, that foreign rate is very important. In 2011, Honeywell reported that its effective foreign rate was 28.7 percent. An arms race of ever-lower rates around the globe would benefit the company enormously.
How low does Honeywell think the rates will go? In a CNBC interview earlier this year [ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/31/492740/honeywell-ceo-zero-corporate-tax/ (with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Pfl6_DlF8 , next below, embedded)],
Honeywell chief executive Dave Cote told Andrew Ross Sorkin he believes the U.S. corporate rate should be zero. He then acknowledged that from a "fairness perspective," such a low rate wouldn't work.
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/business-roundtable-fiscal-cliff-_n_2288683.html [with comments]
===
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Defends Tax Dodge: 'It's Called Capitalism'
By Bonnie Kavoussi
Posted: 12/13/2012 11:01 am EST | Updated: 12/13/2012 3:50 pm EST
Google's chairman says he is "proud" of the way his company avoids paying taxes.
"It's called capitalism," Eric Schmidt told Bloomberg [ http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=webport_news&tkr=ALGT:US,CMG:US,GOOG:US&tkr2=GOOG:US&sid=abGe62AIVPwg ] in a Wednesday article. "We are proudly capitalistic. I'm not confused about this."
"We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways," he said. "I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate."
Bloomberg reported [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-10/google-revenues-sheltered-in-no-tax-bermuda-soar-to-10-billion.html ] on Monday that Google avoided paying $2 billion in global income taxes [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/google-taxes-bermuda_n_2270354.html?1355406166 (about two-thirds of the way down at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=82373629 )] last year by housing profits in Bermuda, which has no corporate income tax. Google already had been paying a 2.4 percent overseas tax rate [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html ] through tax avoidance strategies, according to a 2010 Bloomberg report. Its overall effective tax rate was 22.2 percent in 2009.
Google could not be reached for comment.
Google's effective U.S. tax rate is unclear. Citizens for Tax Justice [ http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/CorporateTaxDodgersReport.pdf ] did not analyze Google in a 2011 study because Google reports most of its profits as foreign, even though that may not be true.
Other big companies have avoided taxes by shifting revenue abroad. Boeing, DuPont, Capital One and General Electric [id.] paid a negative effective U.S. tax rate in 2010, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. Apple paid a total effective tax rate [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html?pagewanted=all ] of just 9.8 percent last year, according to The New York Times.
The U.S. government has been struggling to balance its budget; its annual deficit is projected to be $1.1 trillion [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/cbo-budget-deficit-fiscal-cliff_n_1821504.html ] this year. But taxing companies more is not really on the table. Both the Obama administration and congressional Republicans have proposed cutting the corporate tax rate [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/google-taxes-bermuda_n_2270354.html?1355406166 ].
Google is a member of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group's Tax Policy Committee [ http://svlg.org/policy-areas/tax-policy/tax-policy-links-2 ], which advocates for tax reform [ http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2012/11/28/silicon-valley-leaders-talk-fiscal.html?page=all ]. The group says on its website [ http://svlg.org/policy-areas/tax-policy ] that California should "lower overall tax burdens" and give companies "tax-based incentives."
(Hat tip: the Telegraph [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9739039/Googles-tax-avoidance-is-called-capitalism-says-chairman-Eric-Schmidt.html ].)
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/google-tax-dodge_n_2292077.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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High-End Tax Hikes Would Have 'Negligible' Impact On Growth, Revised CRS Report Says
Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich), the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the revised CRS report showed that high-end tax cuts would not hurt the economy.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
By Michael McAuliff
Posted: 12/13/2012 5:24 pm EST | Updated: 12/14/2012 6:32 am EST
WASHINGTON -- A Congressional Research Service report that was reissued Thursday after Republicans complained about it before the elections still finds little evidence that the Bush-era tax cuts spurred growth or that hiking the top rates would have more than a "negligible" impact on the economy.
The CRS study [ http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/Updated%20CRS%20Report%2012%3A13%3A12.pdf ] did find, however, that the lower tax rates in place since 2001 have had a strong impact on increasing income inequality in America.
"Analysis of such data conducted for this report suggests the reduction in the top tax rates has had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth," the study says. "It is reasonable to assume that a tax rate change limited to a small group of taxpayers at the top of the income distribution would have a negligible effect on economic growth."
The study focused on tax rates and economic growth since World War II. Democrats saw it as a key piece of evidence in their argument that tax rates on the top 2 percent of earners should go back up to Clinton-era levels to help deal with growing debt, deficits and the nearing "fiscal cliff." Republicans have balked, arguing that any tax hikes will hurt jobs and the economy.
"What this report demonstrates is at the core of the debate we're having right now," said Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, adding that it "put a stake in the heart of the Republican argument that small increases in marginal tax rates for wealthy individuals somehow hurt economic growth."
Van Hollen noted that the economy under President Bill Clinton boomed in spite of tax hikes and it slowed under President George W. Bush after the tax cuts.
"What this CRS report does is take away the last little fig leaf that [Republicans] had to justify big tax cuts for very wealthy individuals," Van Hollen said.
"Republicans have simply failed to face up to the reality," said Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. "I hope that this CRS report will add further impetus to the speaker to sit down with Republicans, because when I've talked to a few of them, I don't think they've had this discussion."
Republicans had complained [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/business/questions-raised-on-withdrawal-of-congressional-research-services-report-on-tax-rates.html ] about the study's methodology and said that it was biased because it used phrases such as the "Bush tax cuts" and "tax cuts for the rich."
Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement that the GOP still believes the report has problems, and that it was Democrats who politicized the issue.
"What is disheartening ... is that a simple conversation between congressional staff and CRS about their economic analysis was turned into a political football by Democrats," Ferrier said.
"House Democrats are doing a bizarre victory dance with this report," she added. "Since it concludes that lower statutory tax rates have little to do with economic growth and could increase income inequality, the question to those Democrats is how high do you want to jack up those taxes? Are you suggesting that we could go to pre-Kennedy era tax rates –- 91 percent top marginal tax rate and 52 percent corporate rate -– and it would NOT have an impact? We look forward to seeing that legislation."
While the CRS is the non-partisan research arm of Congress, Ferrier pointed to studies [ http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2811.pdf ] by outside groups [ http://www.nber.org/papers/w12786 ] that she said support [ http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2138698 ] the GOP position.
Democrats, however, offered their ideas on why they thought the GOP quashed the original document.
"Republicans tried to suppress this evidence," Van Hollen said. "They tried to prevent this report from really seeing the light of day because they don't like any evidence that exposes the fiction of their economic theory."
"The CRS report today just provides the final nail in the coffin of a fictional theory," he added.
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/high-end-tax-hikes-crs-report_n_2295737.html [with comments]
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The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 13, 2012
We are not having a debt crisis.
It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the “fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit. In fact, its borrowing costs are near historic lows. And even the confrontation over the debt ceiling that looms a few months from now if we do somehow manage to avoid going over the fiscal cliff isn’t really about debt.
No, what we’re having is a political crisis, born of the fact that one of our two great political parties has reached the end of a 30-year road. The modern Republican Party’s grand, radical agenda lies in ruins — but the party doesn’t know how to deal with that failure, and it retains enough power to do immense damage as it strikes out in frustration.
Before I talk about that reality, a word about the current state of budget “negotiations.”
Why the scare quotes? Because these aren’t normal negotiations in which each side presents specific proposals, and horse-trading proceeds until the two sides converge. By all accounts, Republicans have, so far, offered almost no specifics. They claim that they’re willing to raise $800 billion in revenue by closing loopholes, but they refuse to specify which loopholes they would close; they are demanding large cuts in spending, but the specific cuts they have been willing to lay out wouldn’t come close to delivering the savings they demand.
It’s a very peculiar situation. In effect, Republicans are saying to President Obama, “Come up with something that will make us happy.” He is, understandably, not willing to play that game. And so the talks are stuck.
Why won’t the Republicans get specific? Because they don’t know how. The truth is that, when it comes to spending, they’ve been faking it all along — not just in this election, but for decades. Which brings me to the nature of the current G.O.P. crisis.
Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has fallen increasingly under the influence of radical ideologues, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination of the welfare state — that is, the whole legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. From the beginning, however, these ideologues have had a big problem: The programs they want to kill are very popular. Americans may nod their heads when you attack big government in the abstract, but they strongly support Social Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid. So what’s a radical to do?
The answer, for a long time, has involved two strategies. One is “starve the beast,” the idea of using tax cuts to reduce government revenue, then using the resulting lack of funds to force cuts in popular social programs. Whenever you see some Republican politician piously denouncing federal red ink, always remember that, for decades, the G.O.P. has seen budget deficits as a feature, not a bug.
Arguably more important in conservative thinking, however, was the notion that the G.O.P. could exploit other sources of strength — white resentment, working-class dislike of social change, tough talk on national security — to build overwhelming political dominance, at which point the dismantling of the welfare state could proceed freely. Just eight years ago, Grover Norquist, the antitax activist, looked forward cheerfully to the days when Democrats would be politically neutered: “Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate.”
O.K., you see the problem: Democrats didn’t go along with the program, and refused to give up. Worse, from the Republican point of view, all of their party’s sources of strength have turned into weaknesses. Democratic dominance among Hispanics has overshadowed Republican dominance among southern whites; women’s rights have trumped the politics of abortion and antigay sentiment; and guess who finally did get Osama bin Laden.
And look at where we are now in terms of the welfare state: far from killing it, Republicans now have to watch as Mr. Obama implements the biggest expansion of social insurance since the creation of Medicare.
So Republicans have suffered more than an election defeat, they’ve seen the collapse of a decades-long project. And with their grandiose goals now out of reach, they literally have no idea what they want — hence their inability to make specific demands.
It’s a dangerous situation. The G.O.P. is lost and rudderless, bitter and angry, but it still controls the House and, therefore, retains the ability to do a lot of harm, as it lashes out in the death throes of the conservative dream.
Our best hope is that business interests will use their influence to limit the damage. But the odds are that the next few years will be very, very ugly.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/opinion/krugman-the-gops-existential-crisis.html [with comments]
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Anti-Tax Crusader Grover Norquist Compares Balanced Approach to 'Pink Unicorns'
[Norquist interviewed on PBS NewsHour segment]
Dec. 12, 2012
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec12/norquist_12-12.html [with embedded video and transcript of the segment, and comments]
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Grover Norquist: Obama 'May Decide To Go Blow Up Small Countries' Out Of Boredom
Published on Dec 13, 2012
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist believes Republicans will hold President Obama on such a tight fiscal leash that he will have no choice but to launch unnecessary wars against small countries in order to fulfill his desire to spend more money.
Appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning, the Americans for Tax Reform founder made the Wag the Dog-esque prediction while discussing how the GOP will make sure Obama is fiscally restrained during his final four years as president.
"We, the Republicans in the House and Senate, will make [Obama] actually make those spending restraints," Norquist said of the sort of cuts of which he believes Obama's support is only nominal.
"Obama will be on a very short leash, fiscally speaking, over the next four years. He's not gonna have any fun at all," Norquist continued. "He may decide to go blow up small countries he can't pronounce because it won't be any fun to be here because he won't be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcGI8tVfJJM [the complete 12/13/12 Wahington Journal with Norquist as one of two guests at its original source, http://www.c-span.org/Events/Washington-Journal-for-Thursday-December-13/10737436569-1/ ]
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The Meaning of Minority
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: December 12, 2012
America’s white majority just bought itself another year.
According to census figures released Wednesday, 2043 is now the year that whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans. That’s one year later than previous projections.
But one year is nothing in the grand sweep of things. We as a society must begin to consider now what this change will mean for a nation mired in a majority/minority swamp of privilege, expectations, historical benefits and systematic discrimination.
The browning of America is very real and unrelenting. Our task is to find a way to move into this new Ecru Era with as much ease and grace as we can muster.
An April 2011 report from the Metropolitan Policy Program (M.P.P.) at the Brookings Institution found that all but two of the 10 largest metro areas in the country have child populations in which white children are a minority. (Boston and Philadelphia were the exceptions.) Of the remaining eight metro areas, Hispanic children are the largest demographic in six, and blacks are the largest in the other two.
As Hua Hsu [ http://english.vassar.edu/bios/huhsu.html ], a professor at Vassar College, posited in The Atlantic in 2009 [ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/01/the-end-of-white-america/307208/ ]: “What will the new mainstream of America look like, and what ideas or values might it rally around? What will it mean to be white after ‘whiteness’ no longer defines the mainstream? Will anyone mourn the end of white America? Will anyone try to preserve it?”
These are epic questions about a seismic shift in American demography. How should we consider a waning majority when their privilege of numbers gives way to what many other Americans have experienced as the minority plight?
On election night, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly said that [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZZt3jPDvNQ (next below; {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81469114 and preceding and following)]
“the white establishment is now the minority.” The question is whether this should be a reason for lamentation or celebration. Or neither.
In September, a white student named Matthew Heimbach at Towson University caused a bit of an uproar when The Baltimore Sun reported that he was “gathering support” to start a white student union on campus. The newspaper pointed out: “His former group, Youth for Western Civilization, had sparked controversy with its public displays against Islam, same-sex marriage and multicultural education. That group disbanded after it lost the support of its faculty sponsor, but Heimbach said he hopes his new organization will promote white identity without disparaging other people.”
(It should be noted that Towson’s campus is in Maryland, one of the states in which the M.P.P. found the white child population to be less than 50 percent, and is on the outskirts of Baltimore, where whites are only 31.5 percent of the population, according to the Census Bureau.)
Now, putting Youth for Western Civilization’s intolerance aside for a moment (if that’s possible), we must ask: when will public displays of white pride become culturally acceptable? Will they forever be freighted with the weight of history — tantamount to gloating about privilege? Or should all racial and cultural pride be viewed more or less the same?
The Sun quoted Heimbach as saying, “It comes a point where we’re not directly involved in what happened centuries ago and our culture just perpetuates the guilt cycle.” He continued, “We want to provide a positive view of white identity.”
Is that offensive? Or fair play in light of where the country is heading?
And what of O’Reilly’s “white establishment”? Power is a precious commodity. It is rarely voluntarily surrendered, particularly by those who believe they have earned it. The task is to expand the franchise without casting some people as givers and others as takers. That is harder than it sounds.
There will most likely be a growing rub between traditional power structures and emerging ones, much of which will be visible along racial lines but also along gender and sexual identity lines. A great deal of that friction boils down to simple economics. As a July 2011 Pew Research Center report [ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/07/26/wealth-gaps-rise-to-record-highs-between-whites-blacks-hispanics/ ] pointed out: “The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households.” Women [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/women-earn-91-cents-for-every-dollar-men-earn--if-you-control-for-life-choices/2012/06/04/gJQAqrHkEV_blog.html ] and gays [ http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2012/04/16/11494/the-gay-and-transgender-wage-gap/ ] also earn less than their male and heterosexual counterparts.
This wealth disparity plays into the national debate about the role of government, appropriate spending levels and rates of taxation.
And on a worrisome note, a recent Associated Press poll showed that since Barack Obama was elected in 2008, prejudice toward blacks has increased. According to the report: “In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.”
Furthermore, The A.P. found: “Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an A.P. survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison.”
The last thing we need is a racial and ethnic backlash in this country. Now is the time to move forward with sensitivity and respect and with a watchful eye on how we behave and what we expect as the traditional American majority becomes just another minority.
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Related
Census Officials, Citing Increasing Diversity, Say U.S. Will Be a ‘Plurality Nation’ (December 13, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/us/us-will-have-no-ethnic-majority-census-finds.html
*
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/opinion/blow-the-meaning-of-minority.html [with comments]
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Pat Robertson: ‘Socialist’ Obama Wants To ‘Cripple,’ ‘Destroy,’ ‘Take Over’ U.S.
by David Badash on December 13, 2012
Pat Robertson [ http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Pat Robertson ] today said [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWCmvyRZkYE (below, as embedded)] President Obama [ http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Barack Obama ] is a “socialist” whose agenda is to cripple, destroy, and take over America, as he’s already done with health care and as he wants to do with the financial services industry.
“The President is an ideologue,” Robertson said today on his CBN 700 Club show. “He wants to redistribute wealth and he wants to grow the size of government. He wants to absorb like an amoeba all the various—he’s already taken over a good part of health care, he wants to take over the financial services, he wants to take over everything and he wants to control it. What do you call that? It’s socialism.
“He wouldn’t admit to being a socialist but that’s what it is,” Robertson continued. “He has an agenda. Now Karl Rove was saying in an op-ed today that what the President is trying to do is set up the Republicans so they fight among themselves and therefore the party goes into disunity in the next election and Obama wins there. I don’t think he thinks that way. I think he thinks ideologically: I must cripple the capitalist class; I must cripple the business owners; I must destroy the free enterprise system in America.”
Robertson didn’t say how or why Obama wants to “cripple” and “destroy” America, and then take it over — it seemingly would make sense to not cripple and destroy something you want to take over, since making something worthless seems, well, worthless — but Robertson has never been known to be logical.
Also, if President Obama wanted to cripple and “destroy the free enterprise system in America,” how does Robertson explain that the stock markets under Obama are up about 70 percent [ http://investing.covestor.com/2012/10/the-stock-market-under-obama ] — one of the best performances in American history, and if the President were trying to “cripple” America, why did he save the auto industry?
Robertson, the 82-year old former televangelist who reportedly has ties to Uganda’s anti-gay movement, had claimed God told him Obama would win.
Sore loser.
Hat-tip: Right Wing Watch [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-obama-secret-socialist ]
*
Related:
Pat Robertson On Gay Wedding At West Point: Robert E. Lee ‘Rolling Over’ In His Grave
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pat-robertson-on-gay-wedding-at-west-point-robert-e-lee-rolling-over-in-his-grave/marriage/2012/12/03/55191
Pat Robertson: ‘Miserable’ Atheist Grinches ‘Trying To Steal’ Christmas
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/9-pat-robertson-miserable-atheist-grinches-trying-to-steal-christmas/news/2012/11/19/54178
Gay Marriage Attacker Pat Robertson: Petraeus Affair OK Because ‘He’s A Man’
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/gay-marriage-attacker-pat-robertson-petraeus-affair-ok-because-hes-a-man/politics/2012/11/13/53649
*
Copyright © 2012 The New Civil Rights Movement and David Badash
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pat-robertson-socialist-obama-wants-to-cripple-destroy-take-over-u-s/news/2012/12/13/56256 [with comments]
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Tyree Johnson, McDonald's Worker, Still Makes Minimum Wage After 20 Years Of Service
Tyree Johnson, a longtime McDonald's worker who is underemployed and making minimum wage even after 20 years with the company.
By Bonnie Kavoussi
Posted: 12/12/2012 4:25 pm EST | Updated: 12/12/2012 4:43 pm EST
We knew working at McDonald's wasn't the greatest gig in the world, but we didn't know it was this bad.
After 20 years cooking burgers and manning the fryer for the national chain, Tyree Johnson [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-12/mcdonald-s-8-25-man-and-8-75-million-ceo-shows-pay-gap.html ] still makes just the minimum wage, Bloomberg reports. That's $8.25 an hour in 44-year-old Johnson's hometown of Chicago, where he works at two different McDonald's restaurants.
The CEO of McDonald's, Bloomberg points out, made $8.75 million last year.
In an emailed statement, a McDonald's spokesperson pointed out that the majority of the company's restaurants are independently owned. "We value our employees’ well-being and the contributions they make to our restaurants, and thank them for what they do each and every day," wrote Cheryll Ocampo Forsatz.
Johnson is not alone. Other fast-food and retail companies [ http://247wallst.com/2012/11/21/the-12-companies-paying-americans-the-least/ ] offer fairly low wages. Walmart caps annual raises [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/walmarts-internal-compensation-plan_n_2145086.html (at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81593923 )] at 60 cents per hour at most, according to internal documents reviewed by The Huffington Post. Walmart also keeps many of its hourly employees part-time so that it does not have to give them an array of benefits.
Restaurant jobs have been booming [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/food-service-jobs--march-2012_n_1408158.html ], and the service economy [ http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/10/66-americas-growing-underclass/3618/ ] more broadly is growing, but these jobs do not pay well. Food service workers [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/food-service-jobs--march-2012_n_1408158.html ] were paid an average of just $18,130 in 2010, and retail sales jobs [ http://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm ] on average paid $20,990 in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Underemployment still is rampant. 14.4 percent of American workers [ http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm ] were unemployed, marginally attached to the workforce, or working part-time despite wanting to work full-time in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Low wages are hurting the economy, as consumer spending comprises roughly two-thirds of the U.S. economy. A November study by Demos [ http://www.demos.org/publication/retails-hidden-potential-how-raising-wages-would-benefit-workers-industry-and-overall-ec ] found that raising retail workers' wages to $25,000 per year would lift 734,075 people out of poverty and create 100,000 to 132,000 new jobs.
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/tyree-johnson-mcdonalds_n_2286464.html [with comments]
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Walmart Workers At Risk In States Rejecting Obamacare Medicaid Expansion
By Alice Hines
Posted: 12/13/2012 12:18 pm EST | Updated: 12/13/2012 3:59 pm EST
If state governors follow through on plans to oppose the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, one substantial group of low-wage workers appears vulnerable to going without medical coverage: people who work at Walmart.
The world’s largest retailer recently outlined a new policy that will exclude from health coverage newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours per week, as The Huffington Post reported this month [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/01/walmart-health-care-policy-medicaid-obamacare_n_2220152.html (at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=82026097 )]. Experts described that move as an attempt by Walmart to shift the burden of providing health coverage to the government -- specifically, to Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor.
Obamacare includes a dramatic expansion of Medicaid, one that will potentially extend health insurance to as many as 10 million people by 2016 [ http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43472-07-24-2012-CoverageEstimates.pdf ], according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office estimates. It would achieve this by expanding eligibility to include individuals with annual incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty limit -- currently $14,856.
A primary mission behind Obamacare was to ensure that people in low-wage service sector jobs -- which typically do not include health benefits -- would gain some form of medical coverage. But in a landmark ruling this year, the Supreme Court gave states the right to opt out of the Medicaid expansion. Republican governors in Texas, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Maine and South Dakota have subsequently signaled plans to do just that [ http://www.advisory.com/Daily-Briefing/2012/11/09/MedicaidMap ].
Many of these states share two traits: A large number of Walmart jobs, and extremely tight standards for Medicaid eligibility. In Texas, where more than 150,000 people work at Walmart [ http://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/locations#/united-states/texas ], according to the company -- the largest number of any state -- an employed parent who earns more than 26 percent of the federal poverty line, or $4,963 a year for a family of three, is deemed ineligible for Medicaid. Jobless parents must make even less to qualify -- no more than 12 percent of the poverty line. Unless they are disabled, childless adults do not qualify in Texas regardless of their income.
After Walmart’s new policy takes effect in January, many part-time workers who stand to be denied company health benefits would eventually qualify for Medicaid once the Obamacare expansion takes effect in 2014. About half of the roughly 1 million hourly Walmart employees in the United States earn less than $10 an hour, the company has previously disclosed [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/walmarts-internal-compensation-plan_n_2145086.html (at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81593923 )].
But if states now threatening to forgo the Medicaid expansion follow through on those plans, many Walmart employees -- along with others in low-paid, service-sector positions -- run the risk of slipping through the cracks: They are likely to work too few hours to qualify for company benefits, yet earn too much to qualify for Medicaid under their states’ restrictive standards.
In Texas, the absence of the Medicaid expansion combined with Walmart’s new policy could prove “extremely damaging,” to the company's workers, said Vivian Ho, a professor of health economics at Rice University in Houston. “I would hope for a state as large as Texas, Walmart could consider designing a particular policy as a function of what’s going to happen with Medicaid.”
Walmart has yet to publicly declare whether it plans to adjust its health plan in states that forgo the Medicaid expansion. The company declined requests for comment, citing a policy not to respond to questions from HuffPost.
Brittany Clark, who works at a Walmart in Indiana, said she's worried that she could fall through the cracks: Indiana Gov.-elect Mike Pence campaigned on an anti-Obamacare platform [ http://www.mikepence.com/response ] earlier this year, but he has not yet made a definite announcement regarding the Medicaid expansion.
Clark, who was hired on a part-time basis in March, said she earns $7.65 an hour and doesn’t know if she’ll be assigned enough hours per week to ever qualify for Walmart benefits. Even if she becomes eligible, she said, the costs associated with company insurance seem insurmountable. “If I were eligible, I wouldn’t be able to afford it and my rent, bills and baby,” she said, citing what she described as high deductibles.
Clark recently became pregnant, prompting her to enroll in Medicaid to gain prenatal care, but she is uncertain whether she will remain eligible after her baby arrives.
"After my baby is born, I’m looking for a new job," said Clark. "I can’t support myself and my family on odd hours and a $7.65-an-hour pay rate."
While other major retailers have often excluded part-time workers from their health plans, Walmart has in recent years attempted to distinguish itself as a relatively generous provider of coverage. In 2006, while facing public accusations that it short-changed workers, Walmart expanded its benefits [ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/business/24walmart.html?pagewanted=all ] to make it easier for part-time employees to qualify, while also introducing health insurance plans with lower monthly premiums.
Though some critics fault Walmart for allegedly saddling its employees with high deductibles that discourage workers from enrolling, the company’s health care options are more comprehensive than many offered by other national service sector chains.
In 2009, amid deliberations over President Obama’s proposed national health care reform, Walmart again staked out a position that distinguished itself from other retailers: The company endorsed an employer mandate [ http://www.americanprogress.org/press/release/2009/06/30/14392/release-wal-mart-seiu-cap-join-in-support-for-health-reform-including-employer-mandate/ ], a legal requirement that American companies furnish health coverage to employees. That stance put the retail giant on the same side as traditional adversaries like the Service Employees International Union and in direct opposition to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which lobbies for major businesses.
At the time, the Chamber of Commerce accused Walmart [ http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/48937-wal-mart-backs-health-benefits-mandate ] of supporting the mandate as a means of pursuing a self-interested motive: sticking competitors with additional costs of compliance.
A version of the employer mandate became a central component of Obamacare: By 2014, all large employers must offer health insurance to employees working at least 30 hours a week or pay penalties. Given that Walmart already offers coverage to employees who work more than 30 hours a week, the company will likely have an edge over competitors, many of whom now find themselves scrambling to adapt to Obamacare’s mandate.
Some American businesses such as Darden Restaurants -- which owns Red Lobster and Olive Garden -- have threatened to cut employees' hours below 30 hours a week [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/05/darden-restaurants-full-time_n_2246515.html ] rather than absorb the costs of extending health coverage. Some experts construe Walmart’s reduction of benefits for part-time workers as a similar cost-cutting maneuver, shifting the expense of coverage to taxpayers via programs such as Medicaid.
“Businesses are doing what’s in their best interest based on the law, and I don’t fault them for that,” said Ken Janda, the CEO of Community Health Choice, a Houston-based nonprofit that provides managed health plans to low-income families, including Medicaid recipients. “But the implications are that [in states that reject Medicaid] we’re going to have more people uninsured.”
Last year, Walmart altered its health plan to exclude newly hired part-time employees who work fewer than 24 hours per week, telling The New York Times that the policy was an attempt to cope with rising costs [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/business/wal-mart-cuts-some-health-care-benefits.html?pagewanted=all ]. This time, the company is telling employees that the 2013 restrictions on benefits are a direct response to Obamacare.
In an internal informational memo offering answers to frequently asked questions about its new health care policy, Walmart characterizes its decision to eliminate coverage for new hires who work fewer than 30 hours per week as an attempt to adapt to the president’s health care reform.
“We are changing our benefits-eligibility requirements to better align with the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act,” reads the memo, referring to the formal name for Obamacare. The memo was distributed earlier this year via the company’s in-store computer system, according to an employee who received it and who shared a copy with HuffPost on the condition that he not be named. “Requiring associates to meet a minimum number of hours on average to become benefits-eligible will allow us to continue providing quality affordable health care coverage to associates similar to other retailers,” the memo states.
Under the 2013 policy, Walmart reserves the power to eliminate coverage for employees whose average hours fall below their requirements -- something that happens frequently and at store managers’ discretion, according to workers. This policy applies only to part-time workers hired after the middle of January 2011.
Given that more than 37 percent of Walmart’s American workforce [ http://www.walmartstores.com/sites/responsibility-report/2012/pdf/wmt_2012_grr.pdf ] typically leaves the company every year and is replaced by new hires, a majority of the roughly 1 million people who now work at Walmart on an hourly basis could become vulnerable to losing benefits under the new policy.
Four people who have recently worked as salaried managers in Illinois and Iowa told HuffPost that Walmart required their stores to hire only part-time workers, while ensuring full-time workers comprised less than 30 percent of their payrolls.
In Texas, elected officials are concerned about how to respond as Walmart and other businesses pare down eligibility for their medical insurance plans.
“From an economic point of view, the health care law does encourage businesses to get out of the business of providing health insurance,” said John Zerwas, a Republican state representative and an anesthesiologist who opposes Medicaid expansion in Texas. “The federal government should step back and look at how they can remedy this without asking states to shoulder the costs.”
In Texas, the state’s Health and Human Services Commission estimates [ http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/State-sharply-lowers-estimate-of-Medicaid-3703643.php ] that participating in the Medicaid expansion will cost state taxpayers more than $15 billion over a decade. Gov. Rick Perry (R) has vowed to skip the Medicaid expansion, citing such costs. Perry's office directed HuffPost to a press release [ http://governor.state.tx.us/news/press-release/17408/ ] when asked about Medicaid expansion.
Under Obamacare, the federal government would fully finance the Medicaid expansion for the first three years and still pay the vast majority thereafter, with its share dropping gradually to 90 percent by 2022.
Some Texas lawmakers have accused Perry of putting at risk some of the state’s most vulnerable people -- low-wage employees such as those who work at Walmart.
“Walmart has never treated its employees in such a way where they could access affordable health plans based on their wages,” said Garnet Coleman, a Texas state representative who is part of a team of state legislators that worked with the White House on the Affordable Care Act. “This is what the argument for the Act was all about. The law was designed to pick up those folks. But it doesn’t work without the Medicaid expansion.”
Coleman, a Democrat, added that the poorest Texans would be most affected by a failure to expand Medicaid. Those with incomes at the federal poverty limit and up to four times that standard -- a ceiling of $92,200 a year for a family of four in 2012 [ http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/8023-R.pdf ] -- will be able to buy subsidized health plans through so-called insurance exchanges established under Obamacare. But those with incomes below the federal poverty standard -- including some part-time Walmart workers -- will not be eligible for subsidies through the exchanges.
Some doctors in states whose governors are opposing Obamacare worry they will shoulder the burden of poor patients arriving in their hospitals and clinics without health insurance, as private employers trim down their plans.
“It will be pure hell for doctors and hospitals if patients are thrown off the private insurance rolls and don't get Medicaid,” said Eric Fishman, an anesthesiologist at WellStar Kennestone Hospital in Marietta, Ga. Over the course of 15 years in private practice, Fishman said he has frequently provided free care to uninsured workers -- including some who worked for Walmart.
The company “has revenues and profits in the billions of dollars,” Fishman said, “yet they have no problem passing on the cost of medical care for their employees onto the government and onto the backs of physicians and hospitals. Walmart executives and shareholders should be ashamed of themselves.”
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/walmart-obamacare-medicaid_n_2280118.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Texas Cancer Agency Marred By Criminal Probe
By PAUL J. WEBER
12/15/12 02:33 PM ET EST
AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas put up $3 billion in taxpayer money and promised cancer breakthroughs. But a criminal investigation, widespread rebuke from scientists and the resignations of embattled state officials came faster than medical discoveries.
The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas launched in 2009, flaunting the second-biggest trough of cancer research dollars in the country. Nobel laureates eagerly took jobs with the agency and celebrity Lance Armstrong lent visible and then-coveted support. It was an unprecedented state-run battle against a worldwide killer.
Three years later, it's become unhinged by suggestions of politics and personal profit and is on the ropes.
"People expected that we get some good results. Not that we make people rich in private companies doing cancer research," said Cathy Bonner, a cancer survivor who was a close aide to former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, and who helped brainstorm the idea for CPRIT. "I can't imagine anything lower than misuse of research money that's meant to save people's lives."
Embroiled by two lucrative grants approved despite scant review – or none at all, in one case – CPRIT is ending a year of turmoil saying the beleaguered agency is cooperating with separate prosecutor investigations. One is by a public corruption unit that convicted former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on money laundering charges, and is beginning this probe trying to recover key internal emails CPRIT says it cannot retrieve.
The investigations opened last week after CPRIT revealed its latest and most serious blunder: Giving a private biomedical startup, Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, an $11 million award in 2010 without ever scrutinizing the merits of the company's proposal. The discovery came on the heels of the agency funding a $20 million project roundly condemned for not first undergoing an independent scientific review.
On Friday, the federal National Cancer Institute – which confers CPRIT the prominent status of being an approved funding entity – confirmed it was evaluating "recent events" at the state agency.
Amid the escalating troubles, an agency that doled out more than $800 million in three years has practically ground to a halt.
CPRIT's peer-review boards that evaluate research proposals are empty – virtually all members quit in protest, including the chief science officer and the head of the science review council, both Nobel prize winners. They didn't leave quietly: Dr. Phillip Sharp, professor at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said agency leaders "dishonored" the integrity of the independent review process and suggested "suspicions of favoritism" were at hand.
On the other end of treating cancer – putting drug discoveries on the market and in the hands of patients – Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs resigned in November after the irregularities behind Peloton's funding were uncovered. The agency has said Peloton was unaware its proposal bypassed review, and the company has declined comment.
Executive Director Bill Gimson then completed an extraordinary purging of the agency's leadership last week, saying he would step down from the $300,000-a-year job he held since CPRIT formed. His Dec. 10 resignation letter is dated the same day the Texas attorney general's office informed Gimson it was launching a wide inquiry into the agency's operations.
Months of upheaval has become even too much for one public relations superpower. Hill & Knowlton Strategies severed its consulting deal with CPRIT last week, telling the agency in a letter that "the ongoing issues and challenges that have confronted the organization over recent months have greatly exceeded the scope of work outlined in the original contract."
Cancer-fighting groups worry Texas lawmakers will be next to abandon CPRIT.
"The internal dynamics are concerning, and we need to know exactly what's going on," said James Gray, a government relations director for the American Cancer Society. "But the mission and work of CPRIT is vital in saving lives today, and also in the future."
CPRIT was created with a built-in expiration date. Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2007 to launch a $3 billion cancer-fighting effort, but gave the state only a decade to do it. Apart from funding research in university laboratories and infusing private biotech startups with cash – including Peloton – the agency also provides money for hundreds of thousands of preventive screenings, such as for breast cancer, across Texas.
Gov. Rick Perry and other elected leaders are now talking tough about transparency and getting to the bottom of the Peloton grant. The state's key budget-writing committee added a review of the agency to a hearing agenda for Thursday, though there appears to be little appetite among lawmakers to cut off CPRIT.
Prosecutors launched their investigations last week without alleging any criminal misconduct. But their broad scope will include trying to recover internal agency emails surrounding the Peloton grant that Gimson has said are no longer available.
"We've been down that road many times," said Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit.
CPRIT is among fewer than two dozen funding entities in the nation approved by the National Cancer Institute. Aleea Farrakh Khan, an NCI spokeswoman, said the institute has not directly contacted CPRIT during its evaluation and no decisions have been made.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/15/texas-cancer-agency-_n_2307946.html [with comments]
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Domino's Pizza Founder Sues Over Obamacare Contraception Coverage Mandate
12/15/12 01:20 PM ET EST
DETROIT -- The founder of Domino's Pizza is suing the federal government over mandatory contraception coverage in the health care law.
Tom Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic, says contraception isn't health care but a "gravely immoral" practice.
He filed a lawsuit Friday in federal court. It also lists as a plaintiff Domino's Farms, a Michigan office park complex that Monaghan owns.
Monaghan offers health insurance that excludes contraception and abortion for employees. The new federal law requires employers to offer insurance including contraception coverage or risk fines.
Monaghan says the law violates his rights, and is asking a judge to strike down the mandate. There are similar lawsuits pending nationwide.
A message left Saturday for Monaghan's attorney, Richard Thompson, was not immediately returned.
The government says the contraception mandate benefits women.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/15/dominos-contraception_n_2307794.html [with comments]
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Drink Ingredient Gets a Look
Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.
James Edward Bates for The New York Times
A petition on Change.org asks for the removal of brominated vegetable oil from Gatorade.
James Edward Bates for The New York Times
By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: December 12, 2012
Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.
But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.
“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”
She threw the product away and started a petition [ http://www.change.org/petitions/gatorade-don-t-put-flame-retardant-chemicals-in-sports-drinks ] on Change.org, an online petition platform, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/pepsico_inc/index.html ], Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.
Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.
In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.
The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.
Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.
“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.
The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.
Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.
Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.
Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”
The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.
About 10,000 chemicals are allowed to be added to foods, about 3,000 of which have never been reviewed for safety by the F.D.A., according to Pew’s research. Of those, about 1,000 never come before the F.D.A. unless someone has a problem with them; they are declared safe by a company and its handpicked advisers.
“I worked on the industrial and consumer products side of things in the past, and if you take a new chemical and put it into, say, a tennis racket, you have to notify the E.P.A. before you put it in,” Mr. Neltner said, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency. “But if you put it into food and can document it as recognized as safe by someone expert, you don’t have to tell the F.D.A.”
Michael R. Taylor, deputy commissioner for food and veterinary medicine at the agency, said: “From our standpoint, we do need to look at whether this regime established by Congress almost 60 years ago gives us the information we need. It would be desirable for F.D.A. to have more information on products being added to food.”
The F.D.A. is aware of the controversy surrounding brominated vegetable oil. It took the ingredient off its list of substances “generally recognized as safe” in 1970, after the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association revoked its approval of it. The group’s expert panel is the primary body for evaluating the safety of flavoring substances added to food; if it rules something is “generally recognized as safe,” the F.D.A. goes along.
John Halligan, senior adviser and general counsel to the organization, said that during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the expert panel was reviewing many older additives that had been grandfathered into “generally recognized as safe” status when the federal law was changed.
“They came to B.V.O. and there had been some new studies done which weren’t definitive,” he said. “The panel looked at data and said it doesn’t look like we have an adequate database here to conclude this substance is generally recognized as safe, so they revoked its status.”
Subsequently, Patricia El-Hinnawy, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A, wrote in an e-mail, the agency asked the association to do studies on brominated vegetable oil in mice, rats, dogs and pigs. She said that the organization made “several submissions of safety data” to the F.D.A. while those studies were going on, roughly from 1971 to 1974.
“F.D.A. determined that the totality of evidence supported the safe use of B.V.O. in fruit-flavored beverages up to 15 parts per million,” Ms. El-Hinnawy wrote.
That ruling [ http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfCFR/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=180.30 ], made in 1977, was supposed to be interim, pending more studies, but 35 years later it is unchanged. “Any change in the interim status of B.V.O. would require an expenditure of F.D.A.’s limited resources, which is not a public health protection priority for the agency at this time,” Ms. El-Hinnawy wrote.
Meanwhile, no further testing has been done. While most people have limited exposure to brominated vegetable oil, an extensive article [ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=soda-chemical-cloudy-health-history ] about it by Environmental Health News that ran in Scientific American last year found that video gamers and others who binge on sodas and other drinks containing the ingredient experience skin lesions, nerve disorders and memory loss.
Michael F. Jacobson, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said some studies show that B.V.O. collects in fatty tissues, raising questions about what its effect might be during weight loss. Dr. Jacobson, who looked into the research on brominated vegetable oil after being asked about it by The New York Times, concluded, “The testing of B.V.O. is abysmal.”
He said the longest studies of the ingredient he could find covered only four months, while most food additives are usually tested for two years, making it impossible to establish a safe level of consumption.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/business/another-look-at-a-drink-ingredient-brominated-vegetable-oil.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/business/another-look-at-a-drink-ingredient-brominated-vegetable-oil.html?pagewanted=all ]
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Craft Brewers Threatened by Big Beer Brands
Pouring at the 2012 Great American Beer Festival in Colorado, which represents the largest collection of U.S. beers.
Courtesy Brewers Association
[ http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-25/99-facts-about-beer-on-the-wall-dot-dot-dot ]
By Devin Leonard on December 13, 2012
American craft brewers love to talk about how they’re stealing market share from the big beer companies, such as MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD [ http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?ticker=BUD ]). In the first half of the year, craft beer sales rose [ http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/media/press-releases/show?title=brewers-association-reports-2012-mid-year-growth-for-u-s-craft-brewers ] 14 percent, in dollar terms, according to the trade group Brewers Association. Their larger competitors can only dream of such gains in the U.S.
Craft brewers, however, are increasingly worried about how the world’s two largest beer companies are attempting to counter their growth by making beers that appear to be craft products—like MillerCoors’s Blue Moon and AB InBev’s Shock Top—with no indication on their labels that they’re produced by large multinational corporations.
Today the craft brewing industry called out the big guys in an op-ed piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the hometown newspaper of AB InBev’s North American division. It was written by Charlie Papazian and Bob Pease, the president and chief operating officer, respectively, of the Brewers Association, and Dan Kopman, co-founder of Schlafly Beer, a small independent brewer in St. Louis.
Here’s what they had to say [ http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/craft-or-crafty-consumers-deserve-to-know-the-truth/article_e34ce949-d34a-5b0f-ba92-9e6db5a3ed99.html ]:
Noting the expansion of the craft brewers’ niche and also that many beer drinkers are turning away from the mass-produced light lagers that they are historically known for, the large brewers started producing their own craft-like beers. However, they don’t label these faux-craft beers as products of AB InBev and MillerCoors. So if you are drinking a Blue Moon Belgian Wheat Beer, you are not told it is an SABMiller product. If you crack open a Shock Top, you are not told this brand is 100 percent owned by AB InBev. The large brewers also have bought or own 100 percent of smaller breweries like Goose Island, Leinenkugel and Henry Weinhard. They own significant equity stakes in Red Hook, Widmer and Kona breweries. They sell these beers through their strong distribution channels, but market these faux-craft beers as if they were from independent, locally owned craft breweries.
In an interview, Kopman told Bloomberg Businessweek that all brewers should label their products so consumers aren’t mislead about a beer’s origin. “We definitely need to discuss this as an industry,” he said. “We need to have an agreed-upon standard for transparency where you are a multinational or an independent.”
This craft industry’s increasing aggressiveness comes at a sensitive time for AB InBev. The Belgium-based company that bought Anheuser-Busch in 2008 is now seeking the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice to complete the purchase [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/ab-inbev-seals-20-billion-modelo-purchase-to-gain-corona-owner.html ] of Grupo Modelo (GMODELOC [ http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?ticker=GMODELOC:MM ]). The last thing it needs is the small American brewers complaining that it’s trying to undermine their growth. That doesn’t seem to have escaped the craft industry either.
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60 Tasty Seconds With the 'Best Beer in the World'
http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2012-11-27/60-tasty-seconds-with-the-best-beer-in-the-world
The Plot to Destroy America's Beer
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-25/the-plot-to-destroy-americas-beer
Graphic
99 Facts About Beer On the Wall...
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-25/99-facts-about-beer-on-the-wall-dot-dot-dot [above]
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http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-24/business-loans-and-hand-holding-beer-optional
A Craft Beer Brand's Winning Recipe? Outsourcing
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-20/a-craft-beer-brands-winning-recipe-outsourcing
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http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-04/a-top-beer-sommelier-assesses-obamas-homebrew-recipe
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French Brewers Brace as New Beer Levies Loom
http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2012-12-05/french-brewers-brace-as-new-beer-levies-loom
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©2012 Bloomberg L.P.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-13/craft-brewers-threatened-by-big-beer-brands [with comments]
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How Maps Helped Republicans Keep an Edge in the House
Graphic
Parties Redraw the House Vote
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/12/us/politics/redistricting-graphic.html
By GRIFF PALMER and MICHAEL COOPER
Published: December 14, 2012
Wisconsinites leaned Democratic when they went to the polls last month, voting to re-elect President Obama, choosing Tammy Baldwin to be their new United States senator and casting more total votes for Democrats than Republicans in races for Congress and the State Legislature.
But thanks in part to the way that Republicans drew the new Congressional and legislative districts for this year’s elections, Republicans will still outnumber Democrats in Wisconsin’s new Congressional delegation five to three — and control both houses of the Legislature.
Pennsylvanians also voted to re-elect Mr. Obama, elected Democrats to several statewide offices and cast about 83,000 more votes for Democratic Congressional candidates than for Republicans. But new maps drawn by Republicans — including for the Seventh District outside Philadelphia, a Rorschach-test inkblot of a district [ http://www.meehanforcongress.com/the-new-7th-congressional-district ] snaking through five counties that helped Representative Patrick Meehan win re-election by adding Republican voters — helped ensure that Republicans will have a 13-to-5 majority in the Congressional delegation that the state will send to Washington next month.
Republican-drawn lines also helped Republicans win lopsided majorities in other swing states Mr. Obama won: Democratic Congressional candidates won nearly half the votes in Virginia but only 27 percent of its seats, and 48 percent of the vote in Ohio but only a quarter of its seats.
Last month’s Congressional elections were the first to be held in new districts that were drawn across the country after the once-a-decade process of redistricting, when many state officials, charged with redrawing their district maps to account for population shifts, indulge in carefully calculated partisan cartography aimed at giving their party an edge.
Republicans had the upper hand: thanks to the gains they made in 2010 state-level elections, Republicans controlled the redistricting process in states with 40 percent of the seats in the House, Democrats controlled it in states with 10 percent of the seats, and the rest of the seats were drawn by courts, states with divided governments or commissions.
In the nation as a whole, Democratic candidates for Congress won 1.1 million more votes than Republicans, according to a tally [ http://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjYj9mXEIO_QdHZCbzJocGtxYkR6OTdZbzZwRUFvS3c#gid=O ] of the popular vote kept by David Wasserman, the House editor of The Cook Political Report. But Republicans maintained their control of the House — making this one of a handful of elections in the last century where the party that won the popular vote for Congress did not win control of the House.
Redistricting may sound esoteric, but it can have an impact on governing at the state and federal levels. It may have played a role in Michigan’s decision to pass anti-union legislation this week, a month after Mr. Obama won the state by nine points. Michigan Republicans drew the maps in the last two cycles, and even though Republicans lost some seats last month they were able to keep their majority with 54 percent of the seats in the state’s House of Representatives, while getting just 45 percent of the popular vote. And since redistricting gives many members of Congress less competitive, more politically homogeneous districts, it is often cited [ http://crespin.myweb.uga.edu/878.pdf ] as one of the factors exacerbating political polarization — a tension can be seen in the current fiscal debate [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/us/politics/in-talks-house-majority-weighs-loyalty-to-voters.html ].
The latest round of redistricting is not the only reason Republicans lost the popular vote but won a majority of House seats, several political scientists and analysts said. Incumbency is a powerful weapon, they noted, and Republicans went into the election with a big majority in the House. A new election process in California pitted some Democrats [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/us/politics/democrats-duke-it-out-in-the-san-fernando-valley.html ] against one another in the general election.
And a number of political scientists pointed to what Jowei Chen, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Michigan, and Jonathan Rodden, a professor of political science at Stanford University, call “unintentional gerrymandering” in a forthcoming paper [ http://www-personal.umich.edu/˜jowei/florida.pdf ] — the natural geographic patterns that lead many Democrats to choose to live in dense, urban areas with very high concentrations of Democrats, effectively packing themselves into fewer districts.
“Now, more than ever in history, Democrats are clustered in a small number of these urban districts,” Professor Chen said in an interview.
But it is undeniable that redistricting played a role as well. The new lines helped Republicans maintain their control of the House, largely because they were able to add more Republican voters to districts where Republicans won close races in 2010.
Michael P. McDonald, an associate professor of public affairs at George Mason University who has served as a consultant on redistricting for both parties, said there was a reason both parties fight so hard for the power to draw the maps — noting that they were not going to all that trouble “just to draw neutral plans.”
Democrats also drew gerrymandered lines in states where they controlled the process, but had less of an impact over all because they had control in fewer states, said Keesha Gaskins, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, which has been studying the impact of redistricting.
In Illinois, where Democrats drew the maps, Republican Congressional candidates won 45 percent of the popular vote but only a third of the House seats. And in Maryland, Republicans won 35 percent of the votes but just 13 percent of the seats.
An analysis [ http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/redistricting_and_congressional_control_following_the_2012_election/ ] by the Brennan Center found that the new lines that took effect this year may have changed which party won in at least 25 House districts this year, and that they helped Republicans win a net gain of six more seats than they would have won under the old maps.
One particularly striking finding in their analysis highlights the power that comes with drawing the maps. In states where Republicans controlled the process, it found, their candidates won roughly 53 percent of the vote — and 72 percent of the seats. And in the states where Democrats controlled the process, their candidates won about 56 percent of the vote and 71 percent of the seats.
An analysis by The New York Times of states where courts, commissions or divided governments drew the maps found a much smaller disparity between the share of the popular vote and the number of seats won in Congress. In those states, the analysis found, Democrats won slightly more than half the vote and 56 percent of the seats, while Republicans won 46 percent of the vote and 44 percent of the seats.
A flavor of the politics behind the process in Ohio can be found in the exhibits [ http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/pdf_viewer/pdf_viewer.aspx?pdf=700708.pdf ] of a lawsuit that challenged the new districts for state lawmakers. Ohio Republicans — who attended a training session on redistricting with a PowerPoint slide that counseled “Keep it secret, keep it safe” — ran their redistricting operation from a room at a DoubleTree Hotel in Columbus that staff members sometimes called “the bunker” in e-mails. The e-mails show that the Republicans drawing the maps paid close attention to the percentage of the vote Republicans got in past elections in each district.
Ohio’s Republican-friendly districts for state lawmakers were upheld last month by the Supreme Court of Ohio, which ruled in a 4-to-3 decision that the state’s Constitution does “not explicitly require political neutrality, or for that matter, politically competitive districts or representational fairness, in the apportionment board’s creation of state legislative districts” as long as the other legal requirements are met.
Dr. McDonald, of George Mason University, said redistricting could have ramifications for the country, because as members of Congress are drawn into less-competitive districts, they may have less incentive to compromise. “They’re safe in their districts in the House of Representatives,” he said.
*
Related
Times Topic: Redistricting and Reapportionment
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/reapportionment/index.html
*
Democracy Tested
Articles in this series will examine challenges to the American promise that all citizens have an equal voice in how they are governed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/sunday-review/the-vanishing-electoral-battleground.html
*
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/politics/redistricting-helped-republicans-hold-onto-congress.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/politics/redistricting-helped-republicans-hold-onto-congress.html?pagewanted=all ]
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GOP gerrymandering delivers disproportionate representation
The Rachel Maddow Show
December 12, 2012
Rachel Maddow shows how Republican legislatures have manipulated state voting districts to ensure disproportionate Republican election victories with the potential to secure a White House win.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50182647#50182647 [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtAOEDRZaus ; theme continues with the three additional segments next below] [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/12/15874459-links-for-the-1212-trms (with comments)]
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Could redrawn maps boost Republican to White House?
The Rachel Maddow Show
December 12, 2012
Steve Kornacki, co-host of MSNBC's "THE CYCLE" and a senior writer for Salon.com, talks with Rachel Maddow about the effectiveness of Republicans gerrymandering and the potential impact on the presidential race should states decide to change their electoral vote allotment to be based on those manipulated district maps.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50182699#50182699 [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/12/15874459-links-for-the-1212-trms (with comments)]
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Holder takes first steps toward repairing elections
The Rachel Maddow Show
December 12, 2012
Rachel Maddow describes Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board as a model of non-partisan bureaucratic fairness - so of course it's under attack by state Republicans, further emphasizing the necessity of a national election standard, free from local political manipulations.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50182945#50182945 [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/12/15874459-links-for-the-1212-trms (with comments)]
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'A uniform pattern of registration and voting'
The Rachel Maddow Show
December 12, 2012
Rachel Maddow shares footage of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 17, 1960 calling for national uniform voting standards to ensure election fairness.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50182721#50182721 [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/12/15874459-links-for-the-1212-trms (with comments)]
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Conservatism riddled with scams
The Rachel Maddow Show
December 10, 2012
Rachel Maddow reviews the many ways the conservative movement is rife with scammers who are more interested in making a buck off the fear and paranoia of conservative media audiences than they are in crafting a cogent political arguments.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50153939#50153939 [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxs9xuD86u8 , also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eckGyDIeEFQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b191lFS87rA ; theme continues with the additional segment next below] [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/10/15831063-links-for-the-1210-trms (no comments yet)]
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Conservatism a racket without a cause?
The Rachel Maddow Show
December 10, 2012
Frank Rich, writer-at-large for New York Magazine, talks with Rachel Maddow about how the many scammers and hucksters within the conservative movement not only undermine the movement itself but likely subvert the political goals of the Republican Party.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50153982#50153982 [show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/10/15831063-links-for-the-1210-trms (no comments yet)]
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In Ignorance We Trust
By TIMOTHY EGAN
December 13, 2012, 8:15 pm
A packet of letters arrived the other day from the honors English class at St. Lawrence School in Brasher Falls, N.Y. Snail mail, from high school sophomores? Yes, and honest, witty and insightful snail mail at that. They had been forced to read a book of mine.
“Personally, I don’t like reading about history or learning about it,” wrote one student, setting the tone for the rest of the class.
“The Dust Bowl? Really?” So began another missive. “When we heard we were reading your book…heads dropped. Let me rephrase that, heads fell to the floor and rolled down the hallway.”
You get the drift: history is a brain freeze. And, writers of history, well, there’s a special place with the already-chewed gum in nerd camp for them. But as I read through the letters I was cheered. Some of the last survivors of the American Dust Bowl were high school sophomores when they were hit with the nation’s worst prolonged environmental disaster. In that 1930s story of gritty resilience, the Brasher Falls kids of 2012 found a fresh way to look at their own lives and this planet.
History is always utilitarian, and often entertaining. It stirs the blood of any lover of the past to see Steven Spielberg’s majestic “Lincoln” — at its core, a drama about politicians with ZZ Top beards writing legislation — crush the usual soulless, computer-generated distractions at the box office.
But history, the formal teaching and telling of it, has never been more troubled. Two forces, one driven by bottom-line educators answering to corporate demands to phase out the liberal arts, the other coming from the circular firing squad of academics who loathe popular histories, have done much to marginalize our shared narratives.
David McCullough, the snowy-headed author and occasional national scold, says we are raising a generation of Americans who are historically illiterate. He cites Harry Truman’s line that the only new thing in the world is the history you don’t know. And today, in part by design, there’s a lot of know-nothingness throughout the land. Only 12 percent of high school seniors are “at or above proficient” in American history, which, of course, doesn’t mean they’re stupid.
For knuckleheaded refinement look to the state of Florida, a breeder of bad ideas from its dangerous gun laws to its deliberate attempts to make it hard for citizens to vote. Gov. Rick Scott’s task force on higher education is now suggesting that college students with business-friendly majors pay less tuition than those in traditional liberal arts fields.
“You know, we don’t need a lot of anthropologists [ http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/rick-scott-liberal-arts-majors-drop-dead-anthropology ] in this state,” the governor said in October. “I want to spend our dollars giving people science, technology, engineering and math degrees. That’s what our kids need to focus all their time and attention on.”
Notice he said “all.” If the governor, who’s been trying to run Florida like a corporation, had applied the skills of the liberal arts, his approval rating might be higher than 38 percent. Any anthropologist could tell Scott how he misread human behavior in the Sunshine State.
It’s fine to encourage society to crank out more engineers, computer technicians and health care specialists. We need them. But do we really want to discourage people from trying to understand where they came from? The Florida proposals would enshrine the unexamined life.
This is but one byproduct of the rage among educators to use math and science like a stick against history, literature, art or philosophy.
And yet, as McCullough has said, the keepers of academic gates in these fields are their own worst enemies. Too many history books are boring, badly written and jargon-weighted with politically correct nonsense. There are certainly exceptions among the authors — the witty Patricia Limerick at the University of Colorado, for example, or the prolific Douglas Brinkley at Rice. And I defy anyone to read Robert K. Massie’s “Catherine the Great” (enlightened German teenager takes over Russia) or Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts” (Nazis, oozing evil in diplomatic circles) and not come away moved.
But in the great void between readable histories and snooze-fest treatises have stepped demagogues with agendas, from Glenn Beck and his paranoid writings on the perils of progressivism, to Oliver Stone and his highly selective retelling of the 20th century.
One of my best friends in college ripped through chemistry, engineering and advanced calculus courses. And then, degree in hand, he felt strangely uncompleted. On his own, and for a full year, he read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Fitzgerald and Civil War histories. He spent the next 30 years at Boeing. No doubt, he was one of the few mechanical engineers who not only was aware of Faulkner’s immortal line — “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” — but also understood what it meant.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/egan-in-ignorance-we-trust/ [with comments]
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
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