Obama and Taxes

It has become increasingly clear that the Republican leaders have a very low opinion of the average voter’s intelligence. They call for offshore and ANWR oil drilling when they know very well that such drilling would do nothing to lower the cost of fuel. Now, in a group of advertisements for John McCain, they are pressing the argument that Barack Obama, if elected president, would raise taxes on everybody. Their commercials try to scare the public by claiming that such taxes would mean disaster for the average household. Just as with the claims about oil drilling, they know that their claims are false, but they go on lying to the public anyway.

Barack Obama is not going to raise taxes on middle or lower income Americans. On the contrary, he wants to provide a tax credit to all Americans who earn less than $250,000 per year. The credit would be $500 for individuals and $1000 for families. The only people whose taxes would rise under Obama would be people earning over $250,000 per year. For these people, Obama would let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 and would raise taxes on capital gains and dividends.

There are several other things that Obama would do to help the low and middle income taxpayers. He would create a new 10 percent universal mortgage interest credit that could be used by people who do not itemize their tax deductions. The current mortgage interest deduction excludes nearly two-thirds of Americans who do not itemize their taxes. Obama would ensure that anyone with a mortgage, not just the well-off, could take advantage of this tax incentive for home ownership. This credit would benefit an additional 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year.

Obama would eliminate income taxes for senior citizens earning less than $50,000 per year.

Obama would simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans could do their taxes in less than 5 minutes

Obama would eliminate special interest loopholes and tax breaks for corporations and other businesses and crack down on international tax havens. Obama said that we have over $1 trillion worth of loopholes in the corporate tax code. According to a report released recently by the Government Accountability Office, two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005. Obama would rectify that and require corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. Moreover, he would stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas and he would save tax breaks for companies that keep jobs right here in America.

Obama would end American involvement in the dirty war in Iraq. The war is costing us $144 billion a year, and well over $600 billion so far. That money could be used to help balance the budget and pay for better health care and benefits for war veterans.

Unlike Obama, McCain wants to make the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy permanent. An analysis of both campaigns’ proposals by the Washington-based, nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that for people with annual incomes above $603,000, Obama would raise taxes by more than $115,000 a year, while McCain would cut them by $45,000.

McCain has shown that he would rather tax middle-class Americans than wealthy oil companies. He opposes taxing the gigantic windfall profits currently being earned by the oil companies. Such taxes would constitute an incentive for the oil companies to invest in alternative energy projects, refinery expansion, promotion of energy efficiency, and conservation.

The centerpiece of McCain’s tax plan is two huge tax cuts for Ameri­can corporations. As president, McCain would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 per­cent to 25 percent and allow corporations to immediately deduct all of their invest­ments in equipment and technology. According to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reducing the corporate tax rate alone would deliver a $3.8 billion tax cut to the five largest American oil companies. Apparently McCain does not feel that the immense profits being earned by oil companies are sufficient. He wants to hand them another $3.8 billion a year.

The old Republican lie about “tax-and-spend-Democrats” never dies. After eight years in which the Republicans took our country from a budget surplus to the largest deficits in history, after eight years of monstrous pork-engorged and earmark-stuffed budgets by greedy Republican congresses, it ill behooves the Republicans to accuse Barack Obama of being a tax-and-spend Democrat.

John McCain and John Edwards

Republicans have had a gleeful time talking about the infidelities of John Edwards, former Democratic candidate for president. One recent writer in the Gazette proclaimed that Edwards’ philandering was part of a picture “which ought to be viewed as evidence that something is desperately wrong.” In other words, John Edwards’ infidelity is one sign of the disintegration of our society.

I have a great big question to ask. If John Edwards’ infidelity is a sign of the decadence of our society, what about the philandering of John McCain? What is the difference between John Edwards and John McCain? Why is Edwards getting all the publicity? He is no longer a factor in the election. Despite his political irrelevance, the media, especially the Republican Broadcasting Company (Fox News), continues to harp on Edwards’ affair with another woman. But John McCain, whose story is central to today’s news, seems to be getting a free pass.

Let’s go back a little. Before his tour of duty in Vietnam, McCain married a model from Philadelphia, Carol Shepp. While he was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese, she was in an auto wreck. Her car skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. She was thrown through her car's windshield and left seriously injured. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries. She refused to let them tell her husband about her injuries.

When Carol was discharged from the hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons were forced to cut away large sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter. Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But by the time John McCain came home from Vietnam and learned for the first time about her injuries, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

After his return from Vietnam, and while still married to Carol, McCain was promoted to Executive Officer and later to Squadron Commander. In these roles he used his authority to arrange frequent flights that allowed him to carouse with subordinates and engage in extra-marital affairs. Such behavior was a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice rules against adultery and fraternization with subordinates.

In 1979, at a military reception in Honolulu, McCain met Cindy Hensley, an attractive 25-year-old woman from a very wealthy and politically-connected Arizona family. Cindy's father founded the nation's third-largest Anheuser-Busch distributor. Cindy was 18 years younger than McCain’s wife, Carol.

McCain described their first meeting: "She was lovely, intelligent and charming, 17 years my junior but poised and confident. I monopolized her attention the entire time, taking care to prevent anyone else from intruding on our conversation. When it came time to leave the party, I persuaded her to join me for drinks at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. (He didn’t mention that he was married to Carol). By the evening's end, I was in love." He then began an affair with Cindy.

He dumped his crippled wife. He filed for divorce from Carol in 1980, stating in court records that the marriage was "irretrievably broken." A month after the divorce, he married Cindy Hensley—his current wife.

Republicans have traditionally occupied the holier-than-thou pedestal of sanctity while accusing Democrats of being the agents of Satan. I have written about the hypocrisy of men like Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston, and Bob Barr concealing their own betrayals while crying out for the blood of Bill Clinton during Clinton’s impeachment.

Why is it that John Edwards is portrayed as a complete cad while nothing is said about the behavior of John McCain? One hears that some of the women who voted for Hillary Clinton are switching to McCain. Perhaps these women would like to consider McCain’s behavior toward his first wife.

I do not condemn these men for their peccadilloes. The drive to spread one’s seed is the oldest instinct in man. If John Edwards’ infidelity is a sign of a decadent society, than our society has been decadent since societies began.

The sin that is more deserving of condemnation is the sanctimonious hypocrisy of modern-day Republicans. In the “Inferno,” Dante consigned hypocrites to the next to lowest circle of Hell, the Eighth. The Republicans had better hope that Dante’s great epic poem is not prophetic.

Dick Cheney

At the start of the Bush-Cheney Administration, former Vice President Dan Quayle visited Dick Chaney and tried to explain what it was like being Veep. He said: “Dick, you know, you're going to be doing a lot of this international traveling, you're going to be doing all this political fundraising . . . you'll be going to the funerals. " Cheney "got that little smile," Quayle said, and replied: "I have a different understanding with the President."

The power wielded by Dick Cheney, and his malevolent influence on the policies of the Bush White House, can be traced to the insecurities and incompetence of George W. Bush. Although the Constitution decrees no particular authority for the Vice President, Bush ceded wide power to Cheney at the outset, and Cheney has expanded on that power ever since.

Cheney is one of the chief government officials responsible for the Iraqi War. He manipulated the intelligence process to invent a threat by Iraq of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Cheney’s chief of staff, I Lewis Libby, repeatedly pressured CIA analysts to report that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda.

Among a host of false pre-war statements, Cheney claimed that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attack, stating that it was “pretty well confirmed” that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials. Cheney also claimed that Saddam was “in fact reconstituting his nuclear program” and that if the U.S. invaded Iraq, American troops would be “greeted as liberators.”

When Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson contradicted the President’s assertion that Saddam Hussein has purchased nuclear materials in Africa, Cheney, in order to discredit Wilson, coordinated the revelation in the press that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover C.I.A. agent. Cheney then allowed his lieutenant, Libby, to take the blame for the disclosure.

Cheney overruled advice from White House political staffers and lawyers, and withheld crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

After 9/11 Cheney influenced the President to begin illegal interceptions of communications to and from the United States. Such interceptions without warrants had been forbidden by federal law since 1978. Cheney insisted that they were justified under his greatly expanded theory of the President’s war powers.

Cheney was behind the creation of military commissions to try captured al Qaeda and Taliban fighters without the benefits of due process. The commissions were later struck-down by the Supreme Court. It is estimated that as many as one-third of the detainees at Guantanamo prison had no affiliation with al Qaeda or the Taliban and were innocent of any actions against the United States. These innocent captives would have had no chance of vindication under the Cheney commissions.

Cheney was directly responsible for the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Graib. Convinced that the “war on terror” required “robust interrogations” of captured suspects, Cheney pressed the Bush Administration to carve-out exceptions to the Geneva Conventions. It was Cheney who chaired the meetings in the White House where various methods of “enhanced interrogation,” including water-boarding, were approved.

Cheney made himself the dominant voice on taxes and spending. He is one of the main architects of the Bush tax cuts. Although some in the Administration wanted the tax cuts to benefit the general public, Cheney was successful in having the cuts benefit primarily the wealthiest Americans.

Cheney saw it as his role to reverse years of environmental protection and rules which hamper industry. He has constantly stepped-in to prevent enforcement of laws which protect the environment and endangered species. As a result of his rough tactics, the first Administrator of the EPA under Bush, Christine Todd Whitman, resigned.

Chaney has always been opposed to governmental action to prevent global warming, and even now is one of the few remaining people who oppose governmental action to lower the emission of greenhouse gases.

American democracy is a messy business, with three branches of government checking and balancing one another, and a constitution which guarantees our citizens a host of rights. There are some Americans who oppose all of the best symbols of our advancing civilization, such as constitutional rights, the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, International Law, and the World Court. They believe that such things make a people soft. Such a person is Dick Cheney. Such thinking is barbarism.

Stephen L. Johnson, Stooge of Corporate Polluters

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 to protect human health and the environment. It employs 17,000 people, and has more than a dozen labs. Its staff is highly educated and technically trained; more than half are engineers, scientists, and policy analysts. The Administrator of the EPA is appointed by the President. The current administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, is a stooge of America’s corporate polluters.

According to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island: “Administrator Johnson suggests a man who has every intention of driving his agency onto the rocks, of undermining and despoiling it, of leaving America’s environment and America’s people without an honest advocate in their federal government.”

Four senators, including Whitehouse, Boxer of California, Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Lautenberg of New Jersey, have called upon Johnson to resign. They claim that he has not only favored polluters, but has violated the law and committed perjury before Congress.

On December 19, 2007, Administrator Johnson denied a request by California for a waiver of the Clean Air Act so that it could impose a set of standards on motor vehicle emissions that were stricter than the federal standards. This was the first time in over 50 instances that the EPA had ever denied outright a California waiver request. In sworn testimony before Congress, Johnson testified that he based his decision on California’s failure to meet criteria required under the Clean Air Act. He swore that the decision was “mine and mine alone.”

According to the senators, it was a lie. It was perjury.

Former Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett later testified that Mr. Johnson had in fact determined that California met the Clean Air Act criteria necessary for approval of the waiver and had communicated to the Bush Administration that he intended to grant the waiver. After White House officials told him that such a waiver was contrary to the President’s policy, Johnson reversed course and denied the waiver.

The senators accused Johnson of inaugurating a reign of terror, attempting to intimidate scientists and employees of the EPA, and instituting a pro-polluter policy.

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report detailing the increasing politicization of the EPA. Of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists surveyed, 889 of them — 60 percent — “said they had personally experienced at least one instance of political interference in their work over the last five years.”

Scientists had been directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from EPA scientific documents, misrepresent scientific issues, and omit important scientific findings.

Hundreds of scientists reported being unable to openly express concerns about the EPA’s work without fear of retaliation. The highest rate of political interference (84%) was found among scientists who conduct risk assessments that could lead to strengthening regulations.

Among Johnson’s acts of misfeasance: he departed from the consistent recommendations of agency scientists, public health officials, and the agency’s own scientific advisory committees, and instead set an ozone standard that favored polluters.

He had EPA's top environmental regulator in the Midwest fired over her efforts to force Dow Chemical to clean up chemical spills.

In defiance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. E.P.A., he dismissed findings by his own agency that greenhouse gases pollute our air and threaten the public; he refused to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

He willingly allowed his advisory panels to be infiltrated by the very industries they are meant to regulate and control.

He removed a prominent toxicologist from a scientific review board investigating chemicals used in common plastic goods because the industry didn’t like an opinion she had stated years before regarding the dangers associated with those chemicals.

At the behest of President Bush, he overruled scientific recommendations on smog standards.

He repeatedly refused to appear before congressional committees or to produce materials requested by Congress.

Senator Whitehouse and others have accused Mr. Johnson of a long list of other misdeeds. He has turned the EPA from an agency that protects the environment into an agency that protects corporate polluters; in effect, an environmental pollution agency. He has blocked stronger regulations and prevented enforcement of the environmental laws now on the books.

You would think that prevention of pollution would be a nonpartisan issue. Isn’t everybody against pollution? Apparently not. The industries that pollute, contaminate, and poison our environment are violently opposed to efforts to strengthen and enforce the anti-pollution laws. Bush and his den of scoundrels, including Johnson, totally support the industries, not the American people.

Untapped Oil

Why don’t the oil companies drill for more oil in the places where they already hold leases? According to oil-industry sources, of the millions of offshore acres for which the industry has thousands of leases, approximately 75% have not been drilled and are not producing oil. It is estimated that if all these existing areas were being drilled, U.S. oil production could be boosted by almost 5 million barrels a day--which would relieve our dependence on foreign oil. So why open up more areas to drilling? Why not drill in the places where the oil companies are allowed to?

The answer is, duh, money. The oil companies want to have the right to drill in millions of additional offshore acres, and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), but they have no intention of immediately drilling in those areas. They haven’t even started drilling in the areas where they are allowed to. Right now, with the high price of oil, they would rather just buy oil from other countries and resell it to the American public at a premium. After all, under the current system they are making colossal profits.

Few people realize how expensive it is to drill for offshore oil. It can cost from $500 million to $1 billion dollars to build an offshore rig. Before drilling can even begin, years of exploration is required. Building offshore rigs and platforms, drilling the wells, transporting the oil from oil platforms to shore, and building the roads, pipelines, pumping stations, refineries, and other things required takes many years and enormous amounts of money. At the present time, the oil companies don’t have the huge amount of equipment necessary to carry out a large amount of additional drilling. It would take them over ten years to begin drilling in new areas like the continental shelf or ANWR. They would rather pocket the massive profits they are now making than plow that money into offshore oil rigs.

The oil companies are also worried about the economics of the volatile oil market. What if they went ahead and spent billions to erect the platforms and drill in the new places, or even the places where they currently have leases, and then the price of oil plunged? It has already showed signs of going down.

So if they don’t want to drill now, why do they want the government to open-up the outer banks to more offshore drilling? Why do they want to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to violent depredation and despoilment?

I can understand why the Republicans in Congress are screaming loudly to open-up the new areas to drilling. They don’t give a hoot about the energy crisis, the environment, or price of gas. Faced with a slowing economy, an unpopular president, his miserable war, and ethics embarrassments (like the indictment of Ted Stevens, their leader in the fight to open-up ANWR), they are clinging to a political lifeline-- drilling for oil. They have gotten together and analyzed the mood of the public. They have probably held a big meeting and passed-out talking points for the coming election. They have officially made drilling for oil the central issue in their campaigns.

The public thinks that there is a problem with short supply of oil and that if we open-up new areas to drilling the price of gas will go down. You and I know it won’t, but the average Joe doesn’t know that.

The oil companies are pressuring Congress for the right to drill in the additional offshore and ANWR areas because they want to stockpile millions of acres of land for the future. It is a land grab. They want to take advantage of the current panic. Someday in the distant future, when they are finished with the equipment they are currently using, or the oil in their current leases begins to diminish, and they are able to get additional tax breaks from a friendly Administration, they will try drilling in the other areas where they have leases. If they can get Congress to agree, they will also drill in the additional offshore areas and in ANWR; but not now.

I also think that there is another motivation. The oil company executives have made billions in the recent markets, but they have visions of gold. They look at the fabulous modern palaces being built by wealthy Arab sheiks and emirs, and think how nice life would be if they held the rights to the largest remaining oil reserves in the world.