SUBSIDIES 2 loopholes
12/17 age of trump, see main
NO MERRI
SEE PVTIZE GOOD SOCIALIZE BAD
420 broadened to include an (de)regs that put $ to corps eg CAFE stall
SEE CORRUPT 3 INAUG BALLROOM ~ ENDANGERMENT, UP SUBSIDY
see fossil fuel subsidies COAL 2 26!
see covid bailout bills grift, crony capitalism
SEE AMAZON BEZOS
320 bak
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Tools
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/top-100-parents
https://www.openthebooks.com/
hmmn
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ref 2 brennan Fossil Fuel Industry Donors See Major Returns in Trump’s Policies
owen b
fossil fuel interests donated heavily to President Trump’s 2024 reelection bid. Months after his victory, oil and gas moguls have continued to pump money into his political coffers. Now, as promised by Trump during the campaign, his administration is embracing their policy agenda and governing in a way that is netting the industry billions.
Part of
Corruption in America**
More on
Trump asked oil and gas executives in 2024 to raise $1 billion for his campaign and told them he’d grant their policy wish list if he won. The investment, he said, would be a “deal” given the taxes and regulation they would avoid under his presidency. He also offered to help fast-track fossil fuel industry mergers and acquisitions if he won.
The industry responded by spending lavishly to elect Trump, giving at least $75 million to his campaign and affiliated PACs, thereby making them a top corporate backer of his reelection bid and a crucial source of funding.
Several oil tycoons gave millions on their own and hosted fundraisers with Trump and his associates. Some oil and gas executives who hadn’t given Trump money during previous cycles made major donations after attending fundraisers where he pledged to start acting on the industry’s policy priorities as soon as he retook the White House.
That’s just the spending we know about. The 2024 election saw record levels of “dark money” spending, where wealthy interests keep their role secret by funneling money through groups that do not disclose their donors. The fossil fuel industry has a history of deploying dark money tactics, and any such spending in 2024 would inherently be obscured.
Even after Trump’s victory in 2024, oil and gas interests have continued to pour money into his political operation. They gave $11.8 million to his inauguration fund, and even though Trump cannot run for a third term, his main super PAC has raked in millions more from the industry since he took office — including $25 million from oil producer Energy Transfer Partners and its CEO, Kelcy Warren.
As promised, Trump is rewarding the industry by adopting its policy agenda as his own. His signature legislative package — which one executive deemed “positive for us across all of our top priorities” — gives oil and gas firms $18 billion in tax incentives while rolling back incentives for clean energy alternatives. He’s placed fossil fuel allies in charge of the agencies that oversee the industry and fast-tracked drilling projects on public lands. In just his first 100 days back in office, Trump took at least 145 actions to undo environmental rules — more than he reversed during his entire first term as president. Before Trump even reentered the White House, the industry was reportedly pre-drafting executive orders for him to issue.
The profits are already rolling in for the industry. Take Warren and Energy Transfer Partners. Trump ended a Biden-era pause on liquefied natural gas exports and cleared the way for Energy Transfer Partners (which extracts liquefied natural gas) to extend a major project. Warren’s personal wealth grew nearly 10 percent after the administration greenlit the project as Energy Transfer Partners reported a boost in profits.
There’s also Occidental Petroleum, which donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, and whose CEO cohosted a major fundraiser for Trump in May 2024. Occidental is especially well positioned to see boosted profits from the sprawling array of favorable subsidies and tax incentives in his signature bill, passed into law this summer.
Now the Trump administration is taking its biggest swing yet for fossil fuel interests: repealing the “endangerment finding,” the federal government’s formal acknowledgement that global warming from greenhouse gases, produced by burning fossil fuels, endangers the public. The finding gives the government legal authority to set clean air rules, and it’s long been the subject of the fossil fuel lobby’s ire, surviving more than 100 challenges in court. Revoking the finding would erase scores of clean air rules that the industry opposes.
The fossil fuel industry is reaping major returns on its investment in the Trump administration. But what about the costs? Extreme weather events such as flooding, wildfires, and severe storms — which overwhelming scientific consensus has concluded are driven by global warming from fossil fuel usage — are becoming increasingly common, inflicting billions of dollars of damage on American communities and costing thousands of people their lives and livelihoods each year. Life-threatening summer heat affected more than 255 million Americans this year alone. It does not appear that these concerns are having any major impact on government policy, and instead, the administration fired hundreds of scientists tasked with tracking these issues.
Trump is far from the first president to use the office in ways that reward wealthy donors. Decades of harmful Supreme Court decisions, decaying anticorruption and campaign finance guardrails, and inadequate enforcement of existing rules around money in politics have enabled an unprecedented concentration of wealth and political power. So while Trump’s embrace of the fossil fuel industry’s agenda isn’t breaking entirely new ground, it offers yet another stark example of how wealthy interests are shaping policies that affect the lives of all Americans.
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an 4 26
Although Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took criticism from some mainstream media pundits after she helped rally public opinion against the construction of Amazon’s HQ2 in Long Island City, new data revealed this week has seemingly vindicated her skepticism of the project.
Virginia Business reported on Thursday that a filing submitted to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership this week showed that Amazon created no jobs at its HQ2 in Arlington County last year, and thus “will not seek a state payment” under the state’s workforce grant incentives.
Last year, reported Virginia Business, Amazon requested more than $6.4 million through the grant program for adding just under 293 jobs in 2024.
“The hiring slowdown follows earlier signs that Amazon’s HQ2 buildout has fallen short of initial expectations,” Virginia Business explained. “The company originally projected it would create 10,000 jobs by 2024, but hiring totals fell well short of that mark. The company currently has nearly 8,500 employees who work out of HQ2.”
In 2018, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) joined with local activists to oppose the construction of HQ2 in Long Island City, and they pointed to the billions of dollars in tax incentives offered by New York City and New York state as an example of wasteful corporate welfare being given to one of the world’s richest companies.
Amazon canceled its plans to build HQ2 in New York in February 2019, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to take a victory lap.
“Anything is possible,” the then-freshman congresswoman wrote in a social media post. “Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers and their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world.”
Amazon would subsequently move construction of HQ2 to Virginia after being offered hundreds of millions in potential tax incentives, but it delayed construction of the facility in 2023, which again led Ocasio-Cortez to declare vindication.
“When I opposed this Amazon project coming to New York because it was a scam of public funds, the whole power establishment came after us,” she wrote. “Billboards went up in Times Square denouncing me. Powerful pols promised revenge. Op-eds and CEOs insulted my intelligence. In the end, we were right.”
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OMFG 2 26 12TH DN
UCS AND --- SUED TO SHUT DN BS COMM BUT STILL LOST ON EPA REGS
9:31
President Trump accepted the Washington
9:33
Coal Club's inaugural award on
9:36
Wednesday, declaring him the quote
9:38
undisputed champion of beautiful, clean
9:42
coal, unquote.
9:44
Trump accepted the award, a statue of a
9:47
coal miner from Peabody Energy President
9:49
and CEO Jim Gretch during a White House
9:52
event where Trump announced he directed
9:54
the Pentagon to purchase electricity
9:56
from coal fired plants and said he'd
9:59
asked the energy department to provide
10:01
$175 million in federal funds for
10:05
upgrades at several US coal plants.
10:09
I've saved 74 coal power plants from
10:13
crushing restrictions and closures that
10:16
would have been forced to shut down in
10:18
the very immediate future. And today,
10:20
I'm proud to announce that the Tennessee
10:22
Valley Authority is taking action to
10:24
save two major coal plants in Tennessee.
10:27
Tennessee Valley Authority. In response,
10:30
the Natural Resources Defense Council
10:33
wrote, quote, "While Americans are
10:35
demanding clean, affordable energy, the
10:38
Trump administration's using our tax
10:40
dollars to prop up the nation's
10:42
dirtiest, least efficient power plants.
10:45
It's no wonder fossil fuel lobbyists are
10:48
handing Trump an award today." unquote.
10:51
---
SW 9 25
Time to Wake Up 301: The Four Phases of Climate Denial - YouTube
...FREE-TO-POLLUTE BUSINESS MODEL. THE VALUE TO FOSSIL FUEL INTERESTS OF THAT SUBSIDY, FROM
8:30
BEING ALLOWED TO POLLUTE FOR FREE, HAS BEEN CALCULATED BY THE
8:36
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND AT NORTH OF $600 BILLION EVERY
8:45
YEAR. EVERY SINGLE YEAR, 600-PLUS
8:50
BILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF FREE POLLUTION THAT WE ALL PAY FOR IN VARIOUS WAYS.
8:58
HONEST CALCULATIONS OF WHAT'S CALLED THE SOCIAL COST OF CARBON POLLUTION DIFFER A BIT, BUT
9:06
THEY'RE ALL IN THE HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
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===
NUKE OHIO BRIBERY SCANDALL AND Rather than close plants that are not profitable or barely profitable, plant owners have chosen to seek government subsidies.
Illinois passed the Future Energy Jobs Act in 2016, one of the measures cited in the U.S. attorney's recent filing as being tainted by corruption. The law provided subsidies for two nuclear power plants and included a major expansion of the state's support for renewable energy and energy efficiency. The nuclear plants are owned by Exelon, which is ComEd's parent company.
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ymail 3 25
So now that Congress is writing spending bills — with lots of harsh cuts to important programs like Medicaid — the fossil fuel industry is looking for a return on its investment:
- The fossil fuel industry is pressuring Congress to increase fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters
- The industry is pushing for Congress to prop up fossil fuel projects far into the future — decades longer than they’d otherwise be financially viable
- And the industry is trying to preserve and even expand century-old tax loopholes so polluters can continue to profit at our expense
In total, the fossil fuel industry is pushing for giveaways that are estimated to cost the American people more than $170 billion over the next decade while increasing climate emissions and fossil fuel extraction.
...
public citizen
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surota lever 11 24
Kill The Worst Corporate Welfare
Through tax-exempt municipal bonds, the federal government has spent billions subsidizing the cost of professional sports stadiums, despite almost no evidence that these subsidies significantly boost local economies or job creation. DOGE can recommend preventing such bonds from being used to finance stadium construction.
Through the U.S. Agriculture Department, the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on farm subsidies. As the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently noted, these subsidies not only disproportionately benefit the largest and wealthiest farms, they also support commodities for processed foods at the heart of the country’s chronic disease crisis. They can be significantly reformed or limited.
Through special tax breaks, the federal government massively subsidizes the fossil fuel industry, which distorts the energy market as cleaner energy becomes cost-competitive and fortifies an industry responsible for an increasingly expensive climate crisis.
These and so many other corporate welfare programs often waste money that could be used to make other efficiency measures — like tax code simplification — budget neutral.
===
https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/bernie-sanders
bezos spacex bailout
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an 11 23
to be honest, I didn't really care whether the Arizona Diamondbacks or the Texas Rangers won the World Series. Once my two favorite teams—the Dodgers and the Red Sox—were eliminated, I didn’t have a stake in the outcome of the World Series. I just wanted to watch to see first-rate baseball and see interesting games, and the Diamondbacks and Rangers didn't disappoint.
Most of the 30 MLB teams are owned by billionaires. But the owners of the Rangers and the Diamondbacks are particularly disgusting. Ken Kendrick, who owns the Diamondbacks, and Ray Davis—whose Rangers won the World Series in Game 5 on Wednesday night with a 5-0 shutout win—are both billionaires with a history of providing financial support for Republican candidates and right-wing causes.
:{:{According to Forbes magazine, Davis has a personal net worth of $2.9 billion. Before getting into the baseball business, Davis was CEO of two fossil fuel corporations—Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) and Energy Transfer Equity (ETE}:). ETP is a natural gas distributor and pipeline company. Davis stepped down as CEO in 2007 but still owns 2.4% of the company. In 2017, despite protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, Energy Transfer finished building the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline.
The corporation operates over 125,000 miles of pipeline that move approximately 30% of America's oil and natural gas. Davis and a group of investors bought the Texas Rangers for about $600 million in 2010; it's now worth $1.5 billion. Since 2021, Davis has donated at least $225,000 to Texans for Greg Abbott, the state's right-wing Republican governor, according to state campaign finance records. He's also donated to other Republican candidates.}:
In 2003, the Chicago Cubs hosted the first Pride game to celebrate their LGBTQ fans. Since then, all but one of the 30 Major League teams have hosted an annual Pride Day or Pride Night event. The Texas Rangers are the only team without a Pride Night.
Ken Kendrick is only worth $1 billion, according to Forbes, but he's a much bigger donor to politicians and right-wing causes than Davis. He and his wife Randy have made large donations to conservative groups connected with the Koch brothers. According to FEC filings, he has donated to many Republican election deniers, including Arizona U.S. Congressman Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs as well as to conspiracy-theory nutjob Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
Kendrick founded a software company called Data Technology which merged in 1979 with another company called Datatel. General Motors bought the company in 1988 for $511 million, giving Kendrick a big boost in his personal wealth. He made more money by investing early in Woodforest National Bank, which now has more than $1.7 billion in assets. Woodforest National Bank is Walmart’s largest retail partner. Kendrick became part-owner of the Diamondbacks with the team's inception in 1995 and has been the managing general partner (the major owner) since 2004.
Kendrick is one of those Republicans who decry "big government," but he's perfectly happy receiving government subsidies for his business from Arizona taxpayers. The Diamondbacks built Bank One Ballpark (later renamed Chase Field), the first retractable roof stadium in MLB with a grass field, in 1995 with the help of $253 million dollars in public financing through an increase in sales tax in Maricopa County. This happened during a huge county budget deficit and lack of funding for other services. The County Supervisors approved the tax increase without asking for voters' approval. In 2016, Kendrick decided that the stadium needed about $65 million worth of repairs, and estimated that it would need a total of $187 million of upkeep costs over the final 12 years of its lease with Maricopa County. And of course, they wanted the taxpayers to pay for it. County officials refused. One of them, Andy Kunasek, described the Diamondbacks as “parasitic enterprise.” When the County wouldn't provide Kendrick with the subsidy, he sued the County in an attempt to get out of the Diamondback's lease, which expires in 2027. Kendrick has hinted that if the County doesn't pay for those improvements, he'd consider moving to the team and building another stadium.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, Kenrick is also a union-buster. In 2020, when the 30 major league owners locked the players out for three months (essentially, an owners' strike), Kendrick was one of the four most reactionary owners who voted against signing a new collective bargaining agreement with the players union.
So it was a win for the Rangers last night, and congrats to all the players. However, no matter which way this series may have gone, it would have been one right-wing billionaire or another holding the trophy in the end.
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see boy billionaire space race
subsidy military contractor? musk and thiel also mil/intel contractors?!
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/bezos-space/
no lnx twt
'Inappropriate giveaway of galactic proportions': Outrage over $10 billion taxpayer gift to Bezos space obsession
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos/Twitter
Brett Wilkins and Common Dreams November 18, 2021
Progressives on Wednesday slammed what they called a proposed $10 billion handout to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—the world's first multi-centibillionaire—in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act as a "giveaway of galactic proportions" in the face of growing wealth inequality and the inability of U.S. lawmakers to pass a sweeping social and climate spending package.
According to Defense News, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to merge the $250 billion U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 (USICA)—aimed largely at countering the rise of China—with next year's NDAA, which would authorize up to $778 billion in military spending. That's $37 billion more than former President Donald Trump's final defense budget and $25 billion more than requested by President Joe Biden.The NDAA includes a $10 billion subsidy to Bezos' Blue Origin space exploration company.
"Providing Jeff Bezos with $10 billion of taxpayer money would be an inappropriate giveaway of galactic proportions," Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), said in a statement Wednesday.
"Jeff Bezos shouldn't receive taxpayer subsidies for his personal projects—period,"he continued. "In at least two recent years, one of the richest people on the planet paid no income tax; yet he then demands billions in taxpayer funds for a project that's already been awarded to another company. This is the height of hubris."
"Rather than waste $10 billion on a redundant space contract for Bezos, that money could be used to adequately fund Social Security Disability, Medicare and Medicaid, and the food stamps that many of his own employees at Amazon and elsewhere have to rely on to make ends meet," Appelbaum said.
"Jeff Bezos's business model includes feasting on public subsidies—and the U.S. Senate must not acquiesce to his demands," he added. "Furthermore, until Jeff Bezos changes the way his employees are mistreated and dehumanized at Amazon and elsewhere, no elected official should support the passage of subsidies for him or any of his projects."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has condemned the NDAA for containing $52 billion in "corporate welfare" for Big Tech. Explaining why he would vote against the NDAA, Sanders said Tuesday that "combining these two pieces of legislation would push the price tag of the defense bill to over $1 trillion—with very little scrutiny."
"Meanwhile," he added, "the Senate has spent month after month discussing the Build Back Better Act and whether we can afford to protect the children, the elderly, the sick, the poor, and the future of our planet. As a nation, we need to get our priorities right."
https://yyy.theguardian.com/business/**2020/jan/**08/oil-companies-climate-crisis-pr-spending
no lnx nice gfx brulle
How the oil industry has spent billions to control the climate change conversation
‘From my perspective every indication of this evidence is once that closet door gets blown open, the skeletons are going to come tumbling out,’ said Geoffrey Supran.
Activists say Democratic climate proposals won’t be able to pass until lawmakers put a stop to oil companies trying to rebrand themselves
Emily Holden in Washington
Wed 8 Jan 2020
America’s oil companies are trying to rebrand themselves as part of the solution to the climate crisis, launching a campaign to counter top Democrats’ proposals to rapidly cut pollution from the power plants and cars that run on the industry’s petroleum and natural gas.
They say natural gas – a fossil fuel that emits heat-trapping carbon dioxide – is helping to slow climate disruption by providing an alternative to coal.
How vested interests tried to turn the world against climate science
Read more]
“We’re taking our message of energy progress to every corner of the country to show just what’s at stake in Washington and in state capitols around the country,” said Mike Sommers, CEO of the oil trade group the American Petroleum Institute (API), on a press call announcing the plan.
The campaign is part of a strategy in which the oil industry has funneled billions of dollars into its defense, threatening to outpace climate action advocates, say frustrated environmental activists who are increasingly calling on Democrats in Congress to take a tougher line on the sector.
:{
}:
But Sommers depicted a dark future if a presidential candidate who wants to ban fracking for natural gas wins the 2020 election: millions of jobs lost, hundreds of billions of dollars more for household energy costs and a global recession.
However, opponents of the industry say the only path to significant US climate action is through legislation and that lawmakers won’t be able to legislate unless they reveal how the industry has controlled the public dialogue around climate change and put a stop to its misdeeds.
Geoffrey Supran, a research associate who studies global warming politics at Harvard University, is urging House committees to demand more information from oil companies about their influence over public policy.Supran said obtaining corporate documents is “one of the most important actions Congress could take to address the climate crisis”.
“The reality is that as much as we know about fossil fuel interests’ denial and delay, we’ve really found those skeletons in the closet just by looking through a tiny keyhole – everything we know is based on just a few hundred documents scrounged from various sources,” Supran said. “From my perspective every indication of this evidence is once that closet door gets blown open, the skeletons are going to come tumbling out.”
Walking through Washington’s national airport this holiday season, travelers saw a type of advertisement that is becoming more mainstream – it pops up on social media, in commercial breaks for streaming video services, in newspapers and on the radio.A friendly-looking older woman in a hard hat beams at the camera. “Thanks to natural gas, the US is leading the way in reducing emissions,” the sign reads.
The ad campaign, called We’re On It, is sponsored by API – which represents the oil companies that have contributed significantly to the climate crisis.
While it’s true that US climate pollution is declining in large part because of the switch from coal to natural gas, scientists say far more drastic action is needed to slow climate change. And forecasts show natural gas threatening continued progress.
As the American public has become more aware of the climate crisis, oil companies have fought back.
:{
}:
Over roughly the last three decades, five major US oil companies have spent a total of at least $3.6bn on advertisements – not counting their investments in public relations programs like sponsored beach clean-ups, or their influence through trade associations, dark money groups and campaign donations.
Activists gather with signs outside the American Petroleum Institute during the global climate action week in Washington DC, on 23 September 2019.]
Advertising spending has increased as politicians have paid more attention to climate change and API’s campaign comes as progressive candidates bidding for the White House, such as the US senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, propose to ban fracking – a drilling method that has unlocked huge supplies of natural gas and driven down the cost of the fuel.
Any renewed investigation from Congress could reveal more about how the industry has tried to sway public opinion.
Investigative reporting has already shown that Exxon has known since at least the 1960s that its products were causing global warming. But Exxon has fought back, saying it is the victim of “a coordinated campaign perpetuated by activist groups with the aim of stigmatizing ExxonMobil”.
Exxon touts itself instead as an answer to the climate crisis. The top advertisement on Exxon’s YouTube page touts research on making biofuels from algae in order to cut climate pollution, but the technique is currently prohibitively expensive, and the research represents a tiny portion of Exxon’s budget.
In response to questions from the Guardian, an Exxon spokesman, Casey Norton, said Exxon is “committed to doing our part”.
“The world faces a dual challenge: meeting growing demand for energy while also reducing environmental impacts, including the risks of climate change,” Norton said.
Norton maintains that “all forms of energy are needed”, including natural gas and renewables, although scientists have concluded humans will have to stop using fossil fuels entirely to stem the crisis.
In the call with reporters, API’s CEO took a similar stance. He acknowledged the industry has a responsibility to help slow emissions that are causing rising temperatures, but he said the demand for affordable energy is growing and American fossil fuel companies will meet it.
Pressed to commit to any significant goal to curb emissions, Sommers said API could back some bipartisan legislation to incentivize technology that would capture carbon dioxide so that it cannot enter the atmosphere.[big pilot subsidized clean coal boondoggle just concert to anga]
“That’s legislation that’s supported by far-right Republicans and far-left Democrats, but it’s some place in the middle where we think we can meet and we can work together on this key priority,” Sommers said.
Critics of the oil industry say the Democrat-led House should be aggressive in seeking to counter the industry’s narrative. Some want Democrats to call executives into hearings and subpoena internal records about their influence campaigns – one of the most powerful tools available to Congress.
But that hasn’t happened. Instead of going directly for the oil companies, House committees have instead been holding dozens of hearings and introducing legislation about ways to cut pollution and help people affected by the climate crisis.
“Our oversight staff decided that OK, rather than kind of punching an industry that’s already pretty down in the public image, there are plenty of other things they also needed and wanted to pursue, so subpoenaing big oil just didn’t really rise to the top of the heap,” the staffer said.
Supran, who works with Harvard climate politics expert Naomi Oreskes, says they have a collection of information that could help Democrats determine which questions to ask and which documents to demand.
“Historical record points to a number of individuals, documents, and questions that could help Congress get to the bottom of how the fossil fuel regime misled America,” Supran said.
The other route – which Democrats are already pursuing – is state lawsuits against companies. But those challenges could take much longer and aren’t guaranteed to succeed.
Robert Brulle, a visiting professor of environmental sociology at Brown University who co-authored the research tallying oil spending on ads, said the findings are just the tip of the iceberg. Brulle has previously found that more than $2bn was spent lobbying Congress on climate legislation between 2000 and 2016.
He says lawmakers should investigate the oil industry the way the former congressman Henry Waxman took on tobacco companies in the 1990s.
“I think what we’ll find is that the fossil fuel campaigns are going to dwarf what the tobacco industry did. It’s an order of magnitude larger,” Brulle said.
Some accuse Democrats of fearing a backlash from the oil industry – which still donates to Democratic campaigns. They say moderate Democrats might be trying to stay civil with major companies because it will be easier to pass climate legislation with their support.
But it’s hard to imagine the industry backing substantial action that would limit oil production and use – which scientists say is required to avoid catastrophe.
I think what we’ll find is that the fossil fuel campaigns are going to dwarf what the tobacco industry did
Robert Brulle
So far, congressional efforts have only scratched the surface of the sector’s influence. In October, the oversight committee reviewed evidence of how much Exxon has known about the climate crisis and for how long. The Democrat-only climate committee in the Senate also held a hearing on dark money and climate change. The Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse urged his colleagues in the House to use their majority to get tougher with oil companies – subpoenaing their records if necessary.
“When we catch the fossil fuel industry spending money in these campaigns, we’re only seeing a sliver of the total operation,” Whitehouse said in a more recent interview with the Guardian. “I think it’s hard to counter their message effectively because remember – they have a $600bn annual subsidy that they’re defending, according to the [International Monetary Fund].
“The idea that some other entity, particularly some struggling charitable organization, is going to be able to go toe-to-toe in spending and outspend them is not really feasible.”
Despite fossil fuel companies massive spending, they have continued to lose public support. Elected officials just haven’t followed the shift.
:{
}:
A majority – 60% of Americans – want to “dramatically reduce” fossil fuel use in 10 or 20 years, according to Gallup. And between 2013 and 2019, the percentage of people who wanted to emphasize oil production has dropped from 46% to 28%.
“If you take climate change seriously, then you have to think about what your path is to getting a serious climate bill,” Whitehouse said. “And the path to a serious climate bill requires disabling the fossil fuel industry’s obstruction apparatus that has been the thing that has prevented that from happening.”
https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/clean-coal/
no lnx
A hilarious euphemism': US probe underway over 'clean coal' moniker that actually increases pollution
Kenny Stancil and Common Dreams March 15, 2021
Following the emergence of evidence that power plants using a chemically treated coal—purportedly designed to reduce smog—generated more smokestack pollution not less, the Government Accountability Office has reportedly launched a congressional probe of the "refined coal" tax credit program that yields at least $1 billion per year for U.S. corporations.
:{
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With the multibillion-dollar fossil fuel subsidy set to expire at the end of 2021, the outcome of the GAO investigation could influence whether federal lawmakers vote to renew it, Reuters reported Monday.
:{
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According to Reuters, Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) called for the probe in 2019 after the news outlet's December 2018 reporting "revealed that many power plants burning the fuel, which supporters call 'clean coal,' pumped out more pollution than previously."
:{
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A subsequent analysis conducted by the nonprofit group Resources for the Future showed that "power plants using refined coal were not cutting mercury, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur dioxide pollution to levels required by the tax credit program."
twt
As Reuters reported:
Over the past decade, a who's who of American companies have reaped at least several billion dollars in benefits from investing in refined coal operations.
:{
}:
Just last year, some 150 million tons of refined coal was burned in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Producers get a tax credit of $7.30 for each ton burned.
:{
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Beneficiaries include global insurance brokerage Arthur J. Gallagher & Co, Detroit utility DTE Energy Co, Boston-based Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co Inc, pharmaceutical giant Mylan NV and Waste Management Inc, according to disclosures reviewed by Reuters.
The Internal Revenue Service, which oversees the tax credit program, allows the companies to qualify by testing relatively small amounts of refined coal in a laboratory once a year, in lieu of real-world emissions measurements at power plants, the Reuters Special Report found.
Many wealthy beneficiaries of the "clean coal" boondoggle are hoping that Congress will vote to extend the tax credit.
Doug Howell, the chief financial officer of Arthur J. Gallagher, is one of them. His insurance firm, as Reuters noted, "has stockpiled about $1.5 billion in tax credits from investing in refined coal activities. Of that amount, about $1 billion remain to be used in future years to offset federal tax liabilities, according to the company's financial reports."
"We hope that there are some proposed legislative changes that would—that possibly could make the extension happen," he told a conference call with analysts and investors in late January.
==
motherfrackers: not only got covid bailout but changed rules to pay down their DEBT
https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2020/05/11/oil-and-gas-companies-asked-then-received-changes-to-fed-coronavirus-stimulus-program/
oil and gas companies asked, then received changes to Fed coronavirus stimulus program
Help with refinancing debt could help shale companies in PA
- Reid Frazier
- mAY 11, 2020
Oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania could benefit from a change to a Federal Reserve stimulus program aimed at helping businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.
Critics have attacked the changes, calling them a “stealth bailout” for heavily indebted oil and gas companies.
The changes were made in late April to the Fed’s Main Street Lending program, part of the $2 trillion coronavirus :{relief bill:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:400"):}: passed by Congress in March. The :{$600 billion loan program:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:400"):}: is intended to help small- and medium-sized businesses that were in good financial shape before the pandemic struck.
When the Fed rolled out the program, it prohibited companies from using the loans to pay off debts.
Oil and gas companies and their advocates asked the central bank to loosen up those guidelines. One of their biggest asks: They wanted to be allowed to use the loans to pay off other debts, too.
The Fed’s final guidelines gave those companies their wish — companies could use the loans to pay off some types of debt. And the maximum loan size increased from $150 million to $200 million.
Oil-state Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota praised the changes.
“It’s another arrow in the quiver” to help the oil industry in his state, Cramer said in a :{video statement:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:400"):}:.
Environmentalists questioned whether the government should be throwing a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry — one of the country’s biggest sources of greenhouse gases. Emissions must be cut dramatically, scientists say, if the world is to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Others saw the Federal Reserve — an independent institution that is supposed to stay outside politics — giving preferential treatment to a powerful industry with substantial ties to the Trump administration.
“This is an oil bailout for a specific set of companies,” said Graham Steele, the director of the Corporations and Society Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Steele, a former aide to Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, said the program is risky because climate change risks making these companies’ assets — oil and gas reserves — “:{stranded assets:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:” in the future, if governments tax carbon to avert runaway climate change.
He said the loans are also risky because many of the companies were doing poorly before the pandemic.
“(The Fed) had structured the program in a way so as not to lose taxpayers’ money. And now members of Congress and industry have lobbied them. And under that pressure, they have buckled. They have changed the program to help out a specific industry,” Steele said.
The Federal Reserve says changes to the program weren’t made with the oil industry in mind, and that other industries could benefit. Business groups like theU.S. Chamber of Commerce also lobbied for the changes.
But observers see the Fed’s revisions to its lending guidelines as a clear win for oil and gas companies.
David Livingston with Eurasia group, a risk management firm, said the changes are especially good for oil and gas companies because of the high amount of debt some have accumulated.
He said they’ve had to borrow because revenues from oil and gas alone have not been enough for them to cover their costs.
“They were sort of running on a treadmill and the entire shale enterprise was increasing its production month over month, year over year over year, in large part, thanks to the continued provision of relatively low cost capital,” Livingston said.
The idea behind the strategy was that prices for oil and gas would eventually rise and they’d be able to pay off their debts. But the opposite has happened, at least for oil. It :{plummeted into the negative range:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:400"):}: in April, though prices are recovering.
The loans could also help natural gas companies that operate in Pennsylvania.
A group of GOP senators from Pennsylvania and other Appalachian states :{wrote:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: in favor of the changes in April.
“Many producers will have debts come due before this health crisis is expected to subside,” the letter stated. “These companies would have been able to pay their debt obligations out of normal cash flows if not for the virus.”
Jeffrey Ventura, CEO of gas driller :{Range Resources:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:400"):}:, also lobbied the Fed to loosen its guidelines. A company spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
The CEO of the :{Independent Petroleum Assocation of America:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:400"):}: :{wrote:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:400"):}: Fed Chair Jerome Powell in April that loosening the loan guidelines would “limit the number of defaults” in the industry.
“Oil and natural gas producers are not looking for a government handout; they are seeking a bridge to help survive this economic disruption,” the letter stated.
It’s unclear which companies would take advantage of the program. Spokesmen for CNX Resources and Cabot, two of Pennsylvania’s leading drillers, both said their companies would not apply for the loans. EQT and Range Resources did not respond to requests for comment.
The crash in oil prices may have actually helped some of these companies by inflating the price of natural gas.
Since oil wells also produce natural gas, when oil production slows, less natural gas comes onto the market, and the price for natural gas goes up. Gas futures for January 2021 are trading above $3 per million British Thermal Units, well above the current $1.84 price.
Still, some of these companies are holding debts they accumulated from leasing millions of acres of land during the fracking boom that began around 2008.
“For years, shale was all about grabbing land,” said Bill Holland, who covers the natural gas industry for S&P Global Market Intelligence. “So these companies spent big to lease big, big tracts of land in western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, in the Utica and Marcellus shales — the land grab. And that debt is still on their books.”
One company that could benefit from the Fed’s new loan program is Chesapeake Energy, which has a big debt payment coming due this year. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
But Holland said it’s unclear whether Chesapeake could qualify for the loan. News outlets are reporting the company, saddled with over $9 billion in debt, :{is getting ready to file:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:400"):}: for bankruptcy.
==
omg
superspreaders who beleive in small gov't take covis bailout $?!
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trumps-religious-right-backers-get-millions-in-covid%e2%80%8b-19-relief/
Conservative evangelical churches and advocacy groups led by vocal boosters of President Donald Trump have received millions of dollars in coronavirus relief funds, marking a new milestone in the religious right’s long campaign to take a wrecking ball to the wall separating church and state.
The Paycheck Protection Program included in coronavirus relief legislation was designed to help small businesses and other organizations stay afloat and keep people working during the pandemic. Religious-right leaders worked with their allies in Congress and the Trump administration to make sure that churches would be able to receive direct government funding to support clergy salaries and other operational expenses. The program is administered by the Small Business Administration, which waived normal requirements that participants in its loan program abide by nondiscrimination standards.
On June 22, the SBA hosted a “Recovery & Resilience for Faith Based Communities tele-townhall” for leaders of churches and religious nonprofits to urge them to participate in the program by applying before the June 30 deadline—and to lavish praise on Trump for supporting the program. The call was promoted by the White House and religious-right figures like Gary Bauer.
Paula White, who oversees the Trump administration’s faith-based outreach from her perch at the White House, began the call by praying for the president. “Put a hedge and wall of fire around him that no weapon formed against him would be able to prosper,” White prayed.
White praised Trump and his administration’s extensively, saying, “it has always been his heart to make sure that houses of worship and people of faith have been protected.” She continued:
You heard that from way back, he was saying, ‘We’re going to put Merry back in Christmas,’ or talking about the Johnson Amendment. But he’s done so much to accomplish that. Things with religious freedom, like removing restrictions on grants. The PPP is one way that we begin to see this. There are so many others, but there are departments everywhere that have grants, and for years and decades, they’ve had restrictions that people of faith have had very, very difficult time. Well, our president made sure to remove those restrictions on grants, ensuring faith-based has equal access to capital, equal access to grant money.
White’s own City of Destiny church got between $150,000 and $350,000 in PPP funds, according to SBA records.
To overcome the skepticism some conservative Christian leaders might have about getting directly involved with the federal government, officials invited several prominent religious-right leaders to praise the program. While PPP funds could be a lifeline to smaller congregations and nonprofits, it turns out that staying afloat has not been a problem for some megachurches that had online worship and fundraising abilities. Instead, some of those megachurches have used money freed up by paycheck protection to expand their influence in their local communities.
Jentezen Franklin, a member of Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board, is pastor of the multi-campus Free Chapel megachurch, based in Gainesville, Georgia. Franklin was effusive on the SBA call, marveling that his church received a “tremendous amount of money” within three weeks of applying for it. Data released by the SBA Monday make it clearer how “tremendous” that amount was—in the $1 million to $2 million range. With payroll covered by government funds and the ability to “catch up online,” Franklin said his church distributed $340,000 to small churches in his community.
Franklin has urged evangelicals to help reelect Trump or be prepared to face tragic consequences. Trump publicly announced that he was watching Franklin’s worship service on March 15, which Trump had declared a national day of prayer.
Samuel Rodriguez, a pastor who prayed at Trump’s inauguration and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said PPP money was “like manna in the desert of this pandemic.” Rodiguez said the church was “made for this hour,” adding that “for this administration to recognize the church and the faith community as essential is a game changer.”
Rodriguez’s New Season Church in Sacramento, California, received between $150,000 and $350,000. He said the money has helped his own church not just survive but help other churches and expand community outreach. Rodriguez, who recently denounced the Democratic Party as “hostile to our Christian worldview,” called the program a “powerful resource” and a “blessing.”
“This is Uncle Sam helping us do the will of our heavenly father,” Rodriguez said. “So the PPP enabled us to cover payroll for our staff that is right now praying for interceding for the needs of our community, not just physical, spiritual, but in mental and emotional needs, literally saving lives.”
Also on the SBA call was another member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and longtime opponent of reproductive choice and LGBTQ equality. Dobson said that his organization, the James Dobson Family Institute, “has literally been kept solvent this spring and summer by the Paycheck Protection Plan.” Dobson said that thanks to the money his organization had received, adding, “We have not asked for a cent from anybody in six months.”
Other Trump-supporting leaders and organizations have done quite well. Here’s a sampling, drawn from our own research and other reporting on the SBA records:
- First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, led by Trump cheerleaderRobert Jeffress, was among the megachurches listed as having received between $2 million and $5 million. Another was Guillermo Maldonado’s King Jesus International Ministry, which hosted an Evangelicals for Trump campaign launch last year.
- The American Center for Law and Justice, part of the lucrative legal empire of Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow and his family, got between $1 million and $2 million.
- The anti-LGBTQ advocates at Liberty Counsel received between $350,000 and $1 million.
- End Times pastor Jim Bakker’s Morningside Church got between $350,000 and $1 million.
- Televangelist Rick Joyner’s Morningstar Church got between $350,000 and $1 million.
Initially, the idea of tax dollars directly supporting clergy and church operations was defended as an extraordinary response to the unique situation caused by the pandemic. But on a phone call organized by Paula White’s One Voice Prayer Movement in May,former Rep. Randy Forbes of Virginia, founder of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, celebrated that “precedents for religious freedom” that are being set during the pandemic—specifically the unprecedented use of federal tax dollars to directly fund clergy and churches—“are going to endure long after this coronavirus has gone.”
Marcus Harris, director of faith and community initiatives in the office of Entrepreneurial Development at the SBA, told people in the call, “One thing I’m able to say in my role as the faith-based leader here at SBA is that I know for many of you this is your first interaction with SBA, but we do not want this to be your last,” a sentiment that was repeated by SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza.
Tags: Donald TrumpJames DobsonJentezen FranklinJim BakkerPaula WhiteRick JoynerRobert JeffressSamuel RodriguezChurch-StateCoronavirusElection 2020Trump AdministrationAmerican Center for Law and JusticeFirst Baptist Church DallasLiberty CounselTrump Administration
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/giant-real-estate-companies-are-receiving-covid-19-relief-funds-that-werent-meant-for-them-thanks-to-loophole-in-governments-emergency-spending-program/
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520
aha:
lip service from rt, entrepreneur hero and all, but amazon bookseller no sales tax; corps get most covid bill $, must be tight w/ bank to get;
along w/ educ said to be the great way to move up/ meritocracy , but up against walmart, outsource factory, walmart is front end for china imports
no big corp loopholes subsidy like amazon warehouses new rich prime customers
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/pathological-trump-slaps-wind-and-solar-industry-with-50-million-in-old-rent-bills-while-pushing-big-oil-bailouts/
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guk --> desmog 5/20
...fossil fuel companies have taken at least $50 million in taxpayer money they probably won’t have to pay back,according to a review of coronavirus aid meant for struggling small businesses by the investigative research group Documented and the Guardian.
A total of $28 million is going to three coal mining companies, all with ties to Trump officials, bolstering a dying American industry and a fuel that scientists insist world leaders must shift away from to avoid the worst of the climate crisis.
The other $22 million is being paid out to oil and gas services and equipment providers and other firms that work with drillers and coal miners.
Melinda Pierce, the legislative director for the Sierra Club, said: “The federal money Congress appropriated should be going to help small businesses and frontline workers struggling as a result of the pandemic, not the corporate polluters whose struggles are a result of failing business practices and existed long before COVID-19 entered the public lexicon.”
More than 40 Democratic lawmakers have argued that fossil fuel companies should not get any assistance under the coronavirus aid package.
Some Democrats have also warned the forgivable loans being made under Congress’ Paycheck Protection Program could be a transparency disaster.
Banks and lending institutions are distributing the money, so the government says it cannot track recipients in real time. The loans revealed have been made public only through news reports and securities filings by publicly traded companies, although the Federal Reserve has committed to issuing monthly reports.
So far, it’s clear the program is not working as intended. The funds are aimed at helping small businesses to keep paying their employees and covering other recurring expenses during the economic downturn. But they have been exploited by large companies forced to return the money amid a public outcry, including the Los Angeles Lakers, Shake Shack, and Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
The industry aid comes as the Trump administration is reportedly considering a broader bailout for oil and gas corporations, which were already under pressure before the coronavirus and have watched oil prices nosedive because of a global price war and low demand for gasoline. The U.S. government could make loans to oil and gas companies, essentially making taxpayers investors in the industry.
The Federal Reserve on Thursday also announced changes to its lending rules that could help indebted petroleum firms.
“The idea that oil workers are getting a paycheck is great,” said Jamie Henn, a spokesman for the Stop the Money Pipeline campaign who co-founded the environment group 350.org. “The worry is that the money’s going to the top and not going to filter down.”
The $50 million already paid to fossil fuel companies is a small fraction of the the $2.1 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, known as the Cares Act. But the total assistance to the industry is likely much larger than can currently be tallied and will continue to grow.
Environmental advocates and oversight experts tracking the funds say it’s impossible to count how much of the money will assist fossil fuels, including because some firms provide services across multiple industries.
“All of this is voluntary disclosures by the companies,” said Jesse Coleman, a senior researcher with Documented. “No matter what, it’s going to be an incomplete picture of what’s going on.”
Coleman said in many cases the fossil fuel companies getting aid have made bad investments and “now they’re going to come crawling hat in hand and say: look at what the coronavirus did to us.”
Among the coronavirus aid recipients is Hallador Coal, an Indiana-based coal mining company that hired Donald Trump’s former environment chief Scott Pruitt as a lobbyist. The company’s former government relations director now works at the energy department. Hallador is taking $10 million to fund two months of payroll and other expenses.
Coal mining company Rhino Resources, which was formerly run by Trump’s Mine Safety and Health Administration head, David Zatezalo, is receiving $10 million.
Coal firm Ramaco Resources, whose CEO, Randy Atkins, is on the energy department’s National Coal Council, is getting $8.4 million.
The U.S. coal industry has been in steep decline, driven out of the market by cheap natural gas and environmental concerns. Trump campaigned on putting coal miners back to work, and his agencies have unsuccessfully explored ways to bail out coal companies, which are seeing their lowest employment levels in modern history. The Trump administration has also rescinded nearly all of the environment and climate protections the fossil fuel industry has opposed.
Fossil fuel companies can also take advantage of tax benefits under the coronavirus legislation, including deferring payment of social security and medicare taxes.
The Missouri-based Peabody Energy coal company has said it will speed up collecting an alternative minimum tax refund of $24 million to 2020 and defer $18 million of owed taxes.
U.S. taxpayers already subsidize the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20 billion a year, according to conservative estimates.
The Center for International Environmental Law has accused the oil, gas, and plastics industries of “exploiting the crisis by aggressively lobbying for massive bailouts and special privileges in a desperate attempt to revive an oil and gas industry already in decline.”
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis argues that federal lending to the oil and gas sector would be “a complete waste of money,” because it wouldn’t fix the industry’s underlying financial problems.
Oil industry lobbyists have pushed for changes at the Federal Reserve to let companies with large amounts of debt use its Main Street Lending Program and borrow to pay off existing loans.
In an April 15 letter to the Federal Reserve, the oil trade group the Independent Petroleum Association of America asked for the new provisions, saying “oil and natural gas producers are not looking for a government handout; they are seeking a bridge to help survive this economic disruption.”
Environmental advocates say the move would disproportionately benefit small and mid-sized oil and gas companies, such as Occidental Petroleum, which has nearly $80 billion in liabilities on its balance sheet.
Graham Steele, who directs the corporations and society initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, called the situation the “classic disaster scenario where an opportunistic administration and industry is taking advantage of a crisis.”
“And by the way, these are industries driving climate change. It’s both a bad financial proposition of the Fed and for taxpayers and a bad situation for the planet.”
4/27/20
aha sys fail insanity: no brainer to stop subsidizing ?! banks keep loaning $ to frack tho NEVER MADE A PROFIT?! NOW GOV'T BAILOUT HAMM ETP KELCY; EXXON AND CHEVRON LOOKING TO BANKRUPT SMALL INDEP [THAT DJT CLAIMS TO CARE ABOUT] BUY UP ASSETS CHEAP METHANEWHICH ARE FRYING THE PLANET; MEANWHILE COVIS DEMOS FAIL OF LIBTARD, WE HAVE WINDOW GND, WAY CHEAPER THEN CLEAN UP COVID MESS WHICH HIT US B/C WE TAKE OUT HABITAT AND EAT WILD ANIMALS
icn 420
super-Polluting Methane Emissions Twice Federal Estimates in Permian Basin, Study Finds
BY: PHIL MCKENNA
The methane is a byproduct of fracking for oil, often burned off at well heads or emitted into the atmosphere instead of being captured for use as fuel.
covid bail bill
cf antonia juhaz bakken bailout? oil -40$ bakken, 200b$ debt; in 2008 oil 150$, many poor cty could not afford, helped trigger Gt Recession?
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https://www.ecowatch.com/big-oil-bailout-2645732416.html
Jessica Corbett
As calls for a People's Bailout in response to the coronavirus pandemic continue to grow across the United States, a new analysis warns that the country's Big Oil companies "stand to reap yet another billion dollar bailout" thanks to the Federal Reserve's plans to buy up to $750 billion in corporate debt.
The analysis (pdf), released Wednesday by the advocacy groupFriends of the Earth (FOE), explains that this expected bailout for polluters relates to a controversial $500 billion corporate slush fund included in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that Congress passed in March....
Trump administration on Tuesday reached a deal with major airlines to give $25 billion in relief to help the crippled industry. 420 ew
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/the-wealthy-real-estate-investor-keeping-a-philadelphia-hospital-closed-during-pandemic-stands-to-receive-huge-tax-savings-from-coronavirus-stimulus/
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420 just bewildering
in environmental news, construction on the Keystone XL pipeline is set to resume. Officials in Alberta, Canada, said they would hand over more than $1 billion to TC Energy — formerly known as TransCanada — so that construction can continue, even though it risks putting construction workers and residents on the pipeline’s path — many of them from indigenous communities— at heightened risk for contracting the coronavirus. South Dakota and several other states recently passed new laws criminalizing protests against pipelines.
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CAFE smash crisis
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trump-to-announce-his-most-disastrous-environmental-policy-so-far/
no lnx
Trump to announce his most disastrous environmental policy so far
Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams March 31, 2020
As the nation grapples with the coronavirus outbreak crisis, the Trump administration intends to further threaten public health and advance its attacks on environmental regulations with a new rule neutering Obama-era vehicle mileage standards, according to multiple news reports Monday.
The administration is expected to announce the new rule Tuesday.
The Obama administration in 2012 ordered automakers to have a 5% annual increase in fuel efficiency for model years beginning in 2021‚ a standard that would bring the equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The Trump administration will significantly weaken that standard and instead require a 1.5% annual increase, putting the 2025 at 40 mpg.
“Of all the bad things President Trump has done to the environment, this is the worst,” said Dan Becker, director of Safe Climate Campaign.
“Amid a spiraling health crisis and economic turmoil, Trump is recklessly driving us over a climate cliff,” Becker added.
As Bloomberg reported,
The final regulation’s release will conclude a years-long effort to dismantle the ambitious standards, which supporters have called the most effective policy ever enacted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.
The expected regulatory change drew criticism from climate experts who said it spells bad news for consumers and the planet alike.
“This is an enormous license for car companies to lock in and profit from decades more pollution from SUVs,” meteorologist and journalist Eric Holthaus said on Twitter Monday. “This rule change alone is expected to result in a billion tons of needless CO2.”
Ken Kimmell, president of Union of Concerned Scientists, concurred.
:{
}:
“This new rule leaves the country worse off. In the near term, it’s a massive transfer of tens of billions of dollars from drivers to oil companies, as consumers will spend more on gasoline due to less efficient cars. It also cedes American leadership in vehicle manufacturing, putting the automakers at risk in a global market. In the long term, it’s even worse—a deliberate decision to steer us at high speed toward a more dangerous climate,” said Kimmell.
“To add insult to injury, the Trump administration has barely even attempted to justify this new rule, basing its decision on flimsy or outright false arguments,” he continued. “The stated rationale defies common sense, science, and the public interest. This new rule will face a difficult test in the federal courts, which should have no patience for this kind of shoddy reasoning.”
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/14/815039722/trump-steps-in-to-help-oil-industry-facing-its-own-coronavirus-crisis
he tried to play it like shrewd bottom feed strat but actually bailout to frakkers?
npr 3/14?
...Oil prices bounced back a bit after President Trump said the Department of Energy would buy crude for the nation's strategic petroleum reserve.
"We're going to fill it right to the top," Trump said Friday in a wide-ranging news conference at the White House. He said it will save taxpayers "billions and billions of dollars" while helping an industry that's been reeling.
While oil prices increased nearly 5% after Friday's announcement, that was just a fraction of the amount they lost earlier in the week.
In South Texas, Rudy Martinez immediately experienced the effects of the past week's collapse in crude oil prices.
"I actually have a little man camp and these guys are on the way out because they lost contracts," says Martinez, who has eight rooms he rents to out-of-town oilfield workers in Karnes City, Texas.
"The workers get their per-diem and I charge them $100 a person [per week]. Actually I'd like to charge them a little more than that, but now that it's tapered off, it's hard to charge them that because they can't pay it," he says.
This is one small example of what declining oil prices mean for the rural communities that depend on the oil business. And there's a lot at stake for the U.S., the world's largest producer of crude oil.Back when the oil business was really booming in Karnes City, Martinez says he could charge up to $2000 a week per person.
Oil prices had been falling out of fears the coronavirus epidemic threatened world economic growth. Demand was also down as large gatherings were canceled and people started staying home to avoid getting sick.
Then prices plunged after Saudi Arabia and Russia failed to agree on production cuts and instead entered a price war last Sunday. In a stunning reversal, Saudi Arabia said it would actually boost oil production and offer a massive discount for its customers.
U.S. oil companies, especially smaller ones, are now looking to make deep cuts. Industry analysts warn of possible bankruptcies, especially if oil remains where it's fallen to, in the $30 per barrel range. Companies operating in Texas's Eagle Ford Shale need prices between $40 to $60 a barrel to remain profitable....
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/heres-why-the-coronavirus-crisis-is-an-opportunity-to-overcome-oligarchy-robert-reich/
no lnx
Here’s why the coronavirus crisis is an opportunity to overcome oligarchy: Robert Reich
Written by Robert Reich / Robert Reich's Blog March 29, 2020
The coronavirus has starkly revealed what most of us already knew: The concentration of wealth in America has created a a health care system in which the wealthy can buy care others can’t.
It’s also created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency, and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail.
Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate indifference, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life.
The system is rigged. But we can fix it.
Today, the great divide in American politics isn’t between right and left. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none.
Forget politics as you’ve come to see it — as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The real divide is between democracy and oligarchy.
The market has been organized to serve the wealthy. Since 1980, the percentage of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent.
The three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. Big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American. Wealth and power have become one and the same.
As the oligarchs tighten their hold over our system, they have lambasted efforts to rein in their greed as “socialism”, which, to them, means getting something for doing nothing.
But “getting something for doing nothing” seems to better describe the handouts being given to large corporations and their CEOs.
General Motors, for example, has received $600 million in federal contracts and $500 million in tax breaks since Donald Trump took office. Much of this “corporate welfare” has gone to executives, including CEO Mary Barra, who raked in almost $22 million in compensation in 2018 alone. GM employees, on the other hand, have faced over 14,000 layoffs and the closing of three assembly plants and two component factories.
And now, in the midst of a pandemic, big corporations are getting $500 billion from taxpayers.
Our system, it turns out, does practice one form of socialism — socialism for the rich. Everyone else is subject to harsh capitalism.
Socialism for the rich means people at the top are not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many, means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control, and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.
Among those who are particularly complicit in rigging the system are the CEOs of America’s corporate behemoths.
Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose net worth is $1.4 billion. He comes as close as anyone to embodying the American system as it functions today.
Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.”
He brags about the corporate philanthropy of his bank, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to his company’s net income, which in 2018 was $30.7 billion — roughly one hundred times the size of his company’s investment program for America’s poor cities.
Much of JP Morgan’s income gain in 2018 came from savings from the giant Republican tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 — a tax cut that Dimon intensively lobbied Congress for.
Dimon doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his self-image as “patriot first” and his role as CEO of America’s largest bank. He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.
Perhaps he should read my new book.
To understand how the system has been hijacked, we must understand how it went from being accountable to all stakeholders — not just stockholders but also workers, consumers, and citizens in the communities where companies are headquartered and do business — to intensely shareholder-focused capitalism.
In the post-WWII era, American capitalism assumed that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. CEOs of that era saw themselves as “corporate statesmen” responsible for the common good.
But by the 1980s, shareholder capitalism (which focuses on maximizing profits) replaced stakeholder capitalism. That was largely due to the corporate raiders — ultra-rich investors who hollowed-out once-thriving companies and left workers to fend for themselves.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, targeted major companies like Texaco and Nabisco by acquiring enough shares of their stock to force major changes that increased their stock value — such as suppressing wages, fighting unions, laying off workers, abandoning communities for cheaper labor elsewhere, and taking on debt — and then selling his shares for a fat profit. In 1985, after winning control of Trans World Airlines, he loaded the airline with more than $500 million in debt, stripped it of its assets, and pocketed nearly $500 million in profits.
As a result of the hostile takeovers mounted by Icahn and other raiders, a wholly different understanding about the purpose of the corporation emerged.
Even the threat of hostile takeovers forced CEOs to fall in line by maximizing shareholder profits over all else. The corporate statesmen of previous decades became the corporate butchers of the 1980s and 1990s, whose nearly exclusive focus was to “cut out the fat” and make their companies “lean and mean.”
As power increased for the wealthy and large corporations at the top, it shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.4 percent of them are.
The wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to raise profits and share prices by cutting payroll costs and crushing unions, which led to a redistribution of income and wealth from workers to the richest 1 percent. Corporations have fired workers who try to organize and have mounted campaigns against union votes. All the while, corporations have been relocating to states with few labor protections and so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken workers’ ability to join unions.
Power is a zero-sum game. People gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.
The oligarchy has triumphed because no one has paid attention to the system as a whole — to the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from strong unions to giant corporations with few labor protections, and from regulated to unchecked finance.
As power has shifted to large corporations, workers have been left to fend for themselves. Most Americans developed 3 key coping mechanisms to keep afloat.
The first mechanism was women entering the paid workforce. Starting in the late 1970s, women went into paid work in record numbers, in large part to prop up family incomes, as the wages of male workers stagnated or declined.
Then, by the late 1990s, even two incomes wasn’t enough to keep many families above water, causing them to turn to the next coping mechanism: working longer hours. By the mid-2000s a growing number of people took on two or three jobs, often demanding 50 hours or more per week.
Once the second coping mechanism was exhausted, workers turned to their last option: drawing down savings and borrowing to the hilt. The only way Americans could keep consuming was to go deeper into debt. By 2007, household debt had exploded, with the typical American household owing 138 percent of its after-tax income. Home mortgage debt soared as housing values continued to rise. Consumers refinanced their homes with even larger mortgages and used their homes as collateral for additional loans.
This last coping mechanism came to an abrupt end in 2008 when the debt bubbles burst, causing the financial crisis. Only then did Americans begin to realize what had happened to them, and to the system as a whole. That’s when our politics began to turn ugly.
So what do we do about it? The answer is found in politics and rooted in power.
The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy.
This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything America must do.
The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition. Lucky for them, Trump is a pro at pitting native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, white people against people of color. His goal is cynicism, disruption, and division. Trump and the oligarchy behind him have been able to rig the system and then whip around to complain loudly that the system is rigged.
But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable.
As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again.
In order for real change to occur — in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves — the locus of power in the system will have to change.
The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.
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covid
4 trillion? mnu
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/economist-paul-krugman-mitch-mcconnell-is-trying-to-create-a-corporate-slush-fund-and-democrats-should-just-say-no/
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NB DESMOG TRACKING IMPENDING BANKRUPTCY? KEPT AFLOAT BY BANKS?
aha ish // disaster cap'l, never waste a crisis to dustoff wishlist
Will an oil tycoon who donated $500,000 to support Trump’s re-election get bailed out by his administration?
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/will-an-oil-tycoon-who-donated-500000-to-support-trumps-re-election-get-bailed-out-by-his-administration
no lnx
Will an oil tycoon who donated $500,000 to support Trump’s re-election get bailed out by his administration?
Written by Igor Derysh / Salon March 12, 2020
With oil prices plunging during the coronavirus outbreak, the Trump administration is weighing a federal bailout for oil and natural gas companies, according to a new report.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly touted a fracking boom under his administration, but oil and gas companies have seen profits drop amid an oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.
“Alarmed” by the prospect that some of these companies, many of which are already in debt, [see desmog]could go out of business, White House officials have pushed for a federal bailout in the form of low-interest government loans, The Washington Post reported.
Among those pushing for the bailout is Harold Hamm, a billionaire Trump adviser who owns Continental Resources, an energy company which lost half of its market value Monday.
Hamm told The Post that although he had not made “direct” contact with the president, he advised the administration to consider “any action that the administration might take to protect and preserve American interests at this time from being unfairly disadvantaged.”
Hamm has given more than $500,000 to support Trump’s re-election effort since 2017, the government watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington noted.
Some Trump advisers told The Post that the administration was eyeing “targeted assistance” for the companies. Though under consideration, another official warned that “political blowback over the idea may eventually lead campaign advisers and others in [the] administration to talk Trump out of it.”
Chris Rupkey, the chief economist at MUFG Union Bank, told the outlet that he expects significant political backlash.
“It’s difficult when governments selectively target individual industries,” he said. “And there’s going to be pushback on it, because it’s political and may be tied to the administration’s contacts and the people it knows.”
Cornell University professor Robert Hockett, who has advised Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on economic policy, added that it was ridiculous to look out for big fracking companies while millions need relief.
“We are in the midst of a crisis where people are literally having to skip work and may miss paychecks or face medical debt,” he said. “The idea you would look to help out shale companies now is like something out of a satire or a bad movie. It’s absurd.”
Trump also said that he was looking at bailing out airlines, cruise lines and the hospitality industryTuesday, as they reel from the impact of COVID-19, the disease spread by the novel coronavirus. But the bailout proposals have received public pushback from Republicans.
“They can take care of themselves,” Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., told The Washington Examiner. “Why do you overreact just when there’s a little pain? That doesn’t make sense.”
Nick Loris, an economist at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, said such a bailout “would not sit well” with fiscal conservatives.
“Not only would it potentially put taxpayers on the hook for future potential losses and bankruptcies, it would distort the risk-taking process that is so critical in making these investments,” he told the outlet. “We’ve seen the resiliency in the industry before, and I believe we’ll see it again.”
However, Alex Doukas, the lead analyst for advocacy group Oil Change International, predicted that Trump’s big-money donors would heavily pressure the administration to ignore the criticism.
“With oil prices in free fall, expect oil companies to turn to their age-old tactic of bullying governments for even more subsidies on top of the hundreds of billions they benefit from annually,” Doukas said. “Instead of more handouts to polluters, governments should make big investments in high-quality green jobs that will put people to work and ultimately end our dependence on the volatile fossil fuels that create climate chaos.”
Journalist David Cay Johnson described the lobbying effort as “corporate socialists” seeking “welfare from the Trump administration.”
“Bailing out the oil industry won’t help the workers who have to choose between their health and their paychecks. It won’t help the people who could go into medical debt from COVID-19,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., tweeted. “We need paid family leave and Medicare expanded to every American.”
“The American people are worried about missing paychecks, affording coronavirus tests, & being able to afford healthcare period. But [Trump] wants to bail out the oil industry?” Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., added. “Leave it to Trump to prioritize his friends over the American people.”
Igor Derysh is a staff writer at Salon. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and Baltimore Sun.
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anv 1/20
..Farm bailouts benefit richest owners
Trump’s war on American soybeans has helped spur increases in Midwest farm bankruptcies, according to the American Farm Bureau.
Of course, Trump claims the opposite. He gives credit to using your tax dollars to subsidize farmers who cannot sell their products in China, but without mentioning you or the taxes you pay.
“Our great Farmers will recieve [sic] another major round of ‘cash,’ compliments of China Tariffs, prior to Thanksgiving,” Trump tweeted on Nov. 17. “The smaller farms and farmers will be big beneficiaries.”
What Trump calls China tariffs are in reality a tax increase because the costs are born by Americans through either higher prices or, for business owners, reduced profits.
But big corporate farms, not yeoman farmers, benefit most from Trump’s taxpayer bailout, an analysis of government records by the Environmental Working Group found.
The bottom 80 percent of affected farms will get on average just $5,136. Some may collect only $1.
The EWG pointed out that the top 10 percent of recipients—the biggest and most profitable industrial-scale farms in the country—have received half of the $6 billion in aid given since August. Their average: $177,000 each.
EWG found that “the richest of the rich” farmers—the top 1 percent—received 13 percent of the federal payments. Three were given more than $1 million each and 45 got more than $500,000.
And the payments have been slow. Taxpayers have had to pay more than $1 million just in interest for late payments to farmers.
...
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-mitch-mcconnell-gave-a-sweet-deal-to-the-kentucky-coal-industry/
no lnx
How Mitch McConnell gave a sweet deal to the Kentucky coal industry
Written by Maureen Nevin Duffy / DC Report December 30, 2019
Kentucky coal miners—along with the rest of us—will be paying the price to keep the government running next year. And we can thank Kentucky’s senior senator, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for the sellout.
Buried in the giant $1.4 trillion government spending package that McConnell ushered through the Senate last week was a relatively modest $15 billion, 30-year payout to sustain the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund—a boon to the majority leader’s home state coal miners. As many as 1 in 5 of coal miners suffer from black lung.
But here’s the kicker: What McConnell had removed from the must-pass funding legislation. In order to keep the government running, McConnell threw out provisions that would have forced coal companies to commit to higher payments toward the health-care costs of their employees and retirees, nixing requirements to extend the commitment period and modestly increase the tax on coal mining companies that are supposed to support the trust fund.
In short, McConnell let the coal industry skip out and leave the $15 billion black lung tab for everyone else to pay.
The move was mind-boggling, considering McConnell is already under scrutiny and criticism for partnering with a previously sanctioned Russian businessman, Oleg Deripaska, who McConnell voted to de-sanction. Deripaska, who owns Rusal, a Russian-owned coal company, joined McConnell in a project that his home state of Kentucky voted in 2017 to invest $15M of taxpayer money.
‘A Handout’
“This is a handout. This is a giveaway,” Jim Waters of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, told WaPo in August. Waters reasoned that judgment might have been clouded by the possible thousands of area jobs that could be added. “I think the excitement of that overrode some of the due diligence.”
McConnell’s strange allegiances to influences domestic and foreign have clearly reached the grassroots level. As Mikaela Curry, a community organizer and member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, wrote in an op-ed in the Courier-Journal, Feb. 22, entitled, “Mitch McConnell is silent on coal while Kentucky miners suffer and die”: “When McConnell speaks up for coal, it always seems to align with the people profiting in the fossil fuel industry and not the hard-working people he is supposed to represent.”
Disabled Miners
Most poignant are the call outs to McConnell from those suffering physically as well as financially from his unwillingness to make the coal companies own up to their responsibility to their current and retired workers and their families. Patty Amburgey, now secretary of the local black lung association in Letcher County, is the widow of a coal miner who died of Black Lung Disease after leaving mining, “blind, unable to feel his legs or arms, and constantly short of breath,” according to his obit.
“I’m asking [Mr. McConnell] to please remember that East Kentucky is a mining area,” his widow wrote in Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. “And we do have a lot of miners and the election is coming up. I want him to understand that.” Obviously, Mr. McConnell is betting his Appropriations Bill will heal these sores and smooth his way to re-election.
But that may not be so easy in practice. Instead of increasing the excise tax rate in effect in 2018, which sunset on Jan. 1, 2019, Congress failed to act, which allowed the tax for coal companies to reset to 1985 rates, lowering contributions by 55% (from $1.10 per ton of coal from subsurface mines to $.50 and from $0.55 per ton for coal from surface mines to just $0.25), which many in Congress had contested.
Companies Protected
After congressional wrangling, the 2020 tax rate will revert to 2018 rates of $1.10 and $0.55 per ton, respectively. But those prices will sunset again on Dec. 31, 2020, and if not renewed will revert to the 1978 rate of $0.50 and $0.25 per ton. The companies also are protected from market price rises by a ceiling cap on the tax of 4.4% of its coal selling price.
In June, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a 10-year extension as part of a broader package. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) proposed the rate be renewed at a higher rate through 2029. He and co-sponsors want to see the Trust Fund fully funded with no sunsets.
While Moscow Mitch steers millions toward business ventures with oligarchs, many in Appalachia want lawmakers to realize that a hike in the excise tax of $0.14 per ton for surface-mined coal and $0.28 per ton for underground-mined coal would eliminate the debt in the Fund completely by 2050, according to the General Accounting Office.
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Foxconn wants Wisconsin to keep paying it billions, but it won't disclose what kind of factory it will buildCORY DOCTOROW
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omg offshore
https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trumps-treasury-dept-pushes-plot-to-fan-the-flames-of-corporate-tax-dodging/
no lnx
Trump’s Treasury Dept. pushes plot to fan the flames of corporate tax dodging
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams November 1, 2019
President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department on Thursday took the first step toward eliminating remaining regulations designed to prevent corporations from avoiding U.S. taxes by storing profits overseas, a move critics decried as yet another harmful giveaway to big business.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive, said in a statement that the 2017 GOP tax law—which disproportionately benefited the rich—rendered Obama-era rules against offshore tax avoidance “obsolete” by significantly reducing the corporate tax rate.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, disagreed with Mnuchin’s assessment, warning in a statement that the Treasury Department’s plan “only provides an opening for corporations to again dodge their taxes.”
“The corporations that got a massive taxpayer handout are getting another gift from Donald Trump,” said Wyden. “The Obama administration had essentially shut down inversion—transactions whose only purpose is to help big multinational corporations move overseas to avoid paying taxes.”
According to Bloomberg, the Treasury Department’s proposal, detailed in a policy guidance (pdf) released Thursday, “could make it easier for firms to use accounting tactics to minimize their U.S. earnings and inflate their foreign profits, which are frequently taxed at rates lower than the current 21 percent domestic corporate levy.”
“The existing regulations were aimed at stopping American companies from moving their headquarters to a lower-tax country, a process known as a corporate inversion,” noted Bloomberg.
Contrary to Mnuchin’s claim that the GOP’s 2017 tax law eliminated incentives for corporations to shift profits overseas, advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers have argued the law made it easier for businesses to avoid U.S. taxes.
“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will allow companies to avoid taxes on $235 billion in profits each year going forward,” a coalition of more than 50 progressive organizations led by Americans for Tax Fairness wrote in a letter (pdf) to Congress last May.
“Moreover, the law created new incentives for multinational corporations to move their real operations offshore,” the groups said. “The law guarantees that U.S. multinational corporations will pay at most one-half the domestic tax rate on their offshore earnings, with many companies paying little or nothing in taxes on these earnings.”
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919 AN
White House officials are balking at the ballooning cost of Trump’s botched farm bailout: report
Donald Trump’s trade war with China has so devastated American farmers that the administration’s bailout to try ease their pain has ballooned to an epic $28 billion, and now even some…
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trump patch?
no lnx
Trump’s big farmer grift: He’s giving millions to the rich while starving the poor
https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trumps-big-farmer-grift-hes-giving-millions-to-the-rich-while-starving-the-poor
Written by Jim Hightower / Creators Syndicate August 15, 2019
Donald Trump loooooves farmers. We know this because he says so. “Farmers, I LOVE YOU!” he declared in December. And we’ve learned that whenever The Donald says something, it’s true — even when it’s not.
These days, he’s loving farmers to death. Trump has ignored the obvious need to get monopolistic price-fixing bankers, suppliers and commodity buyers off their backs. And he’s ineptly playing tariff games with China and other buyers of U.S. farm products, causing exports and farm prices to tumble. The result is that our ag economy is tumbling into a deep ditch, slamming farm families and rural America with a rising tsunami of bankruptcies.
Adding crude insult to economic injury, Trump’s doofus of an ag secretary, Sonny Perdue, laughed at farmers, branding them “whiners” for opposing his majesty’s disastrous policies.
So, needing a political “I love you” gesture, Trump has been sending big bouquets of money to some of his beloved farmers. Our money. Lots of it — $28 billion so far, in what he cynically (and comically) calls the Market Facilitation Program, otherwise known as a taxpayer bailout.
But TrumpLove turns out to be highly selective, with more than half of the government payments going to the biggest farm owners. The Department of Agriculture initially announced a $125,000 limit on the amount any one farm could get, but every Trump deal seems to have a gimmick in it to give a special break to the slickest operators. The slickum in this deal is that assorted members of a family can claim to be owners of the same farm and be eligible for bailout money, even if they do no actual farming and live in New York City! Thus, one Missouri farm family got $2.8 million worth of subsidy love from Trump, and more than 80 families topped half a million in payments.
Meanwhile, the great majority of farmers — 80% of eligible grain farmers — got zilch from Donald the Dealmaker. The smaller producers who are most endangered by his export collapse got less than $5,000. So Trump’s “Market Facilitation” is squeezing the many who are most in need while helping a few of the largest get even bigger.
While the Trumpistas are presently trying to plow a multibillion-dollar subsidy into big grain farms, they’re shockingly stingy when it comes to our society’s moral responsibility to make sure the least-wealthy among us get an adequate level of food. Their latest effort in the practice of mass minginess is to try literally taking food off poor children’s plates. Using a tangle of federal red tape, Trump ideologues and bureaucratic minions are intervening to prevent states from providing food stamp assistance to millions of their people.
According to federal rules, to qualify for food aid, a family of three should have an income under $27,000 a year. But with rents, utilities, health care and even food prices constantly rising, millions of Americans can’t make ends meet on such a low income. Thus, 40 states have stepped in to loosen that income restriction so families at least get the minimum nutrition humans need. Far from being welfare moochers (as far-right-wing extremists screech), these recipients overwhelmingly are working families, children, the elderly and Americans with disabilities. The benefit is hardly lavish; it averages only $127 a month, but even this modest outlay has proven enormously successful in mitigating poverty.
Congress actually authorized states to make such pragmatic income adjustments in a 1996 revamp of the law. But look out! Here comes Sonny Perdue again, rising up on his hind legs to proclaim that naughty state officials are using that authority as a “loophole” to circumvent Trump’s federal authority. So Sonny and Donnie are demanding that a whole new bureaucracy of food stamp “eligibility police” be set up to monitor the assets of hard-hit people who’re just trying to get adequate food on their tables. This nonsense will cost tens of millions of our dollars to harass the poor in an autocratic hope of nabbing a couple of hungry families who have a dime more in assets than miserly Trumpistas claim they should have.
What we have here is government by plutocratic authoritarians who’ll gleefully dole out millions to a wealthy family and then just as gleefully go out of their way to deny food to millions of poor families.
Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes “The Hightower Lowdown,” a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org. COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM
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intercept 1st energy
The cost of the nuclear bailout for Ohio ratepayers is a bargain compared to the bill being given to residents in South Carolina. The cost of a failed program to build a nuclear power plant there topped $9 billion. Two of the companies involved — Dominion Energy and SCANA Corporation — entered into a buyout and settled a large portion of the bill, leaving ratepayers responsible for footing the remaining $2.3 billion, more than twice the Ohio figure. Not a single kilowatt of energy was produced in South Carolina by the project, which consisted largely of a hole in the ground.
aha, subsidies not just federal; local tax incentive trying to lure biz/factory is a kind of extraction/extortion?! // sports arena: we'll take your team if you don't buy us luxury boxes. a kind of privatization?
...
The Everything Store: The growing share of online shoppers who start their search on Amazon
Today, using large-scale statistical techniques, sociologists have confirmed Mills and Ulmer’s broad conclusions, finding, for example, that communities that possess more local economic power are better able to solve problems. But these ideas are no longer reflected in policy. Now, instead of actively seeking to disperse economic power, policy-makers encourage its concentration. Many elected officials are as enthralled with Bezos as his investors are, and they’ve been equally willing to fund Amazon’s growth. Congress has repeatedly declined to pass legislation that would allow states to require out-of-state retailers to collect sales taxes. This allowed Amazon to largely avoid collecting sales taxes for nearly two decades, giving it a price advantage that research shows helped drive shoppers to its site. Then, as Amazon’s warehouse expansion began to compel its compliance with sales taxes, the company started angling for local development incentives. It’s raked in more than $1.1 billionthrough these deals, according to Good Jobs First, and more than half of the warehouses that Amazon built between 2005 and 2015 received public subsidies....
// race to the bottom on outsourcing? the most desperate cities are willing to go deeper into debt, make a bigger bet?
==
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/robert-reich-heres-how-corporate-welfare-hurts-you/
you often hear Trump and Republicans in Congress railing against so-called “welfare programs” – by which they mean programs that provide health care or safety nets to ordinary Americans.
But you almost never hear them complaining about another form of welfare that lines the pockets of wealthy corporations. We must end corporatewelfare. Now. There are several ways corporations get rich on the taxpayer’s dime. The most obvious comes through subsidies or tax breaks for certain businesses or industries.
[vid]
Consider the fossil fuel industry, one of the most profitable and privileged sectors of the economy. Every year, oil companies get to deduct millions of dollars from their tax bills for the cost of new wells, oil exploration, and other drilling and mining expenses.
It's been estimated that repealing these special tax breaks would save taxpayers $39 billion over 10 years.
Other examples of corporate welfare include billions in government subsidies for agricultural conglomerates, pharmaceutical makers, tech giants and defense contractors.
Other industries don’t get these benefits. Meanwhile, most families don’t even benefit from tax credits and deductions for childcare.
State and local governments are also handing out corporate welfare, often with no strings attached. In 2013, for example, the state of Washington approved a record $8.7 billion handout to Boeing in order “to maintain and grow its workforce within the state.“ What did Boeing do? In the following years, it laid off more than 12,000 workersin the state. ...tate and local tax breaks for corporations are estimated to cost local schools almost $2 billion a year in lost tax revenue.
It’s argued they create jobs, yet nationwide, not a single new job is created. At most, the jobs are merely moved from state to state.
How do corporations get this corporate welfare? Follow the money. They spend hundreds of millions on lobbying and campaign contributions.
An even more insidious example of corporate welfare occurs when corporations don’t pay their workers a living wage. As a result, those workers often have to rely on programs like Medicaid, public housing, food stamps and other safety nets.
Which means you and I and other taxpayers end up subsidizing these low wages so those corporations can enjoy even higher profits for their executives and wealthy investors. very year, Americans spend an estimated $153 billion in taxes and on programs to subsidize McDonald’s and Walmart’s low-wage workers.
Here’s the bottom-line: When corporations get special handouts from the government, it costs the rest of us. We have to pay more in taxes to make up for these hidden tax breaks, subsidies, and loopholes. In turn, there’s less money for good schools and roads, Medicare and national defense, and everything else we need.
So the next time you hear conservatives railing against welfare handouts for the poor, remind them that we should really be cutting corporate welfare – unnecessary and unwarranted aid for dependent corporations.
==
ref phRMA
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/drug-companies-reaped-billions-new-us-tax-law/
apr 2019
Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck, and Abbott Laboratories saved an estimated $7 billion
Pharmaceutical giants Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck and Abbott Laboratories benefited from an estimated $7 billion in tax savings last year from two central provisions in the new US tax law, according to a new analysis of end-of-year financial statements released by Oxfam America ahead of Tax Day. This gain is enough to pay for health insurance for more than two-thirds of the children in the US who do not have health coverage.
Amid growing concern that the pharmaceutical industry’s pricing, tax and lobbying practices are undermining the health of millions of people in the US and across the globe, Oxfam America’s analysis shows how four US drug companies saved about $1.7 billion from the cut in the US corporate tax rate while receiving an estimated windfall of $5.3 billion thanks to the rebate on previously untaxed offshore earnings. The companies prioritized investor payouts in the form of stock buybacks and dividends while investments in research and development remained stagnant.
“Despite promises that tax cuts would bring billions back onshore and create jobs, drug companies are still dodging their taxes, still charging sky-high prices and still paying off their wealthy executives and shareholders instead of boosting investments in life-saving research and development to lower drug costs,” said Paul O’Brien, Vice President of Policy and Campaigns at Oxfam America. “US companies paid $92 billion less in tax in 2018 than in 2017, at a time when revenue is needed more than ever. The biggest corporate tax cut in a generation is boosting the short-term profits of global companies like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck and Abbott Laboratories at the expense of the poorest, especially women and girls.”
Fewer taxes means less investment in America’s schools, hospitals, and people. But it is not only the American people who suffer from tax revenue losses. The new US corporate tax law may be leading a race to the bottom that will deplete the tax revenues of countries around the world raise from multinational companies. Mexico, for example, with high trade exposure to the United States, could lose over 30 percent of its already-dwindling multinational tax revenue because of the US corporate tax makeover.
By failing to pay their fair share in taxes, large corporations like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck and Abbott Laboratories, which are directly dependent on government support to protect their patents, buy their products and invest in research and development, are abandoning their contributions to essential public investments. These investments are essential to combat gender, racial and economic inequalities in both the US and around the world.
“On a daily basis, taxes save lives. In the richest country in the world as well as in the poorest, taxes fund schools, health clinics, public safety programs, medicines, and many other services so vital to a life in dignity,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International. “But corporate tax dodging reduces the funds available to invest in public services, with particularly disproportionate, adverse impacts on girls and women because they are more likely to live in poverty.”
Oxfam is calling on corporations to pay their fair share by publicly committing to pay taxes on profits where economic activity takes place, and to stop shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions. Oxfam is also calling on the US Congress to require multinational companies to publish country-by-country tax reports to ensure they pay their fair share of taxes where economic activity takes place.
“Without our taxpayer dollars, these companies would not be profitable. Whether it is taxpayer-funded research at the NIH, taxpayer-funded legal and patent protection, taxpayer-subsidized charitable and marketing activities, taxpayer-paid prescription drugs through Medicare, or taxpayer-funded schools that educate their employees, these companies rely on a functioning tax system to thrive,” said Nicholas Lusiani, Senior Advisor at Oxfam America and author of the report. “It’s time that these companies hold up their end of the bargain.”
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rr ref 2 guk
https://yyy.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jul/02/us-cities-and-states-give-big-tech-93bn-in-subsidies-in-five-years-tax-breaks
This article is more than 1 year old
US cities and states give big tech $9.3bn in subsidies in five years
Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Foxconn among companies taking increasingly large tax breaks in return for the promise of jobs
Dominic Rushe
@dominicru
Mon 2 Jul 2018 11.00 BST Last modified on Thu 5 Jul 2018 16.07 BST
Data centers for Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and others have secured huge tax breaks but created few jobs.
Giant technology companies in the US, which include some of the world’s most profitable firms, have been pledged at least $9.3bn in state and local subsidies over the last five years – much of it coming from the coffers of cities and states with failing infrastructure, struggling schools and broken budgets.
The analysis by watchdog group Good Jobs First shows that the size of individual handouts appears to be growing. The latest – and largest – award of $4.8bn went to Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturer of the iPhone, PlayStation and other electronic goods, for its enormous new plant in Wisconsin.
The overall figure is also likely to increase. It does not include any breaks Amazon can expect for securing its second headquarters, known as HQ2: in the first round of bidding, many of the tax and subsidy packages on offer topped the Foxconn subsidy. One region alone – Montgomery County, Maryland – offered tax breaks and infrastructure improvements worth more than $8.5bn.
Good Jobs First calculates that the average price of a job created by a “megadeal” – one costing $50m and above – is now $658,000. “At that price taxpayers never break even,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Goods Jobs First.
States and cities argue the tax breaks are necessary to attract the high-paying jobs that technology companies provide. But the list of the biggest giveaways so far shows that the handouts rarely result in significant job creation – and the jobs that are created come with a high price tag.
Tech is not the only industry to secure megabucks, but it is among the worst offenders, LeRoy said. Data centers for Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and others have secured huge tax breaks but created few jobs. Amazon warehouses and assembly plants like Foxconn’s may create large numbers of jobs, but few six-figure salaries.
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, for example, has said that Foxconn’s new plant will create 13,000 new jobs in the state. More conservatively the company has predicted it will “create 3,000 jobs with the potential to grow to 13,000 new jobs. ” If 13,000 new jobs are created, Wisconsin would be paying $346,153 per job at a subsidy of $4.5bn. The subsidy would be worth $1.5m per job cost if the deal ends up creating just 3,000 new positions.
The true cost of tech’s tax breaks is slowly becoming clear, thanks to changes in US accountancy rules that require states and localities to release more information about the cost of their tax abatement agreements.
In the last tax year local governments in Nevada lost more than $105m as a result of state abatement programs. Nevada is home to Tesla’s “Gigafactory” - which received $1.3bn in tax benefits, the largest such subsidy the state has ever awarded.
The new rule – Governmental Accounting Standards Board Statement 77 (GASB 77) – led to Nevada giving one of the most detailed breakdowns so far of the cost of the cost of these corporate handouts.
How much does a tech bro cost?
Read more]
Tesla accounted for $68.7m of last year’s loss. Good Jobs First calculates that Tesla’s tax breaks resulted in one school district, Storey County Schools near Reno, losing $36.7m of revenue.
LeRoy of Good Jobs First said on current trends the handouts were only likely to increase. “The big dirty secret in economic development in America is that the number of job creation programmes is falling,” he said.
Fewer smaller, fast growing companies are being created in the US; as a result “anxious mayors and governors are chasing these big deals” and driving prices up. “The big loser is the taxpayer,” he said.
rr ref 3
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/top-100-parents
| Rank | Parent | Subsidy Value | Number of Awards |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boeing | $14,523,117,926 | 1,436 |
| 2 | General Motors | $6,459,357,386 | 710 |
| 3 | Intel | $5,989,367,883 | 141 |
| 4 | Alcoa | $5,795,553,997 | 166 |
| 5 | Foxconn Technology Group (Hon Hai Precision Industry Company) | $4,825,629,570 | 71 |
| 6 | Ford Motor | $4,312,842,671 | 575 |
| 7 | NRG Energy | $3,889,197,400 | 273 |
| 8 | Cheniere Energy | $3,864,202,239 | 24 |
| 9 | Sempra Energy | $3,361,530,958 | 39 |
| 10 | NextEra Energy | $2,697,269,352 | 61 |
| 11 | Tesla Motors | $2,441,582,590 | 112 |
| 12 | Amazon.com | $2,400,136,208 | 190 |
| 13 | Southern Company | $2,345,400,981 | 98 |
| 14 | DowDuPont | $2,341,963,319 | 939 |
| 15 | Iberdrola | $2,287,574,694 | 105 |
| 16 | Fiat Chrysler Automobiles | $2,199,288,686 | 215 |
| 17 | Nike | $2,094,781,049 | 97 |
| 18 | General Electric | $2,045,925,807 | 1,892 |
| 19 | Mubadala Investment Company | $2,035,262,371 | 53 |
| 20 | Summit Power | $1,979,911,371 | 8 |
https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jul/30/america-spends-over-20bn-per-year-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-abolish-them
GUK no lnx
America spends over $20bn per year on fossil fuel subsidies. Abolish them
While we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground, America is giving the fossil fuel industry billions to extract more
Dana Nuccitelli
Mon 30 Jul 2018 11.00 BST Last modified on Tue 31 Jul 2018 06.51 BST
Imagine that instead of taxing cigarettes, America subsidized the tobacco industry in order to make each pack of smokes cheaper.
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A report from Oil Change International (OCI) investigated American energy industry subsidies and found that in 2015–2016, the federal government provided $14.7bn per year to the oil, gas, and coal industries, on top of $5.8bn of state-level incentives (globally, the figure is around $500bn). And the report only accounted for production subsidies, excluding consumption subsidies (support to consumers to lower the cost of fossil fuel use – another $14.5bn annually) as well as the costs of carbon and other fossil fuel pollutants.
At a time when we need to transition away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible, the federal and state governments are giving the industry tens of billions of dollars to make the production of their dirty, dangerous products more profitable.
We already have to leave tapped fossil fuels in the ground
Crucially, the OCI report noted that if we want to meet the Paris target of limiting global warming to less than 2°C (and we do!), not only does the fossil fuel industry have to stop developing new reserves, but “some already-tapped reserves must be retired early.”
Developed fossil fuel reserves vs. remaining carbon budget to meet 2°C and 1.5°C Paris climate targets.
Developed fossil fuel reserves vs. remaining carbon budget to meet 2°C and 1.5°C Paris climate targets. Illustration: Oil Change International
This reality is incompatible with continued US government subsidization of fossil fuel industry production, including $2.5bn per year for the exploration of new fossil fuel resources – new resources that simply cannot be developed if we’re to meet the Paris climate target.
To achieve that goal, we instead need to replace fossil fuels with clean energy as quickly as possible. And yet, OCI notes that permanent tax breaks to the US fossil fuel industry are more than seven times larger than those for renewable energy. Some of those fossil fuel subsidies have been around for over a century. And they’re making it profitable for the oil industry to extract resources that would otherwise be left in the ground:
at current prices, the production of nearly half of all U.S. oil is not economically viable, except with federal and state subsidies.
And as David Roberts notes, federal policy is also propping up the coal industry. Were they forced to meet modern pollution standards, 98% of currently operating coal power plants would be unprofitable compared to an equivalent natural gas plant. Coal power plants only stay open through regulations allowing pollution exemptions, and by forcing taxpayers to pick up the climate change bill.
Add another trillion dollars in climate subsidies
Without a price on carbon pollution, Americans are effectively subsidizing the fossil fuel industry for the costs incurred through its products’ climate change damages. For example, think about the added costs to taxpayers for worse wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and flooding, all amplified by human-caused climate change. In the absence of a price on carbon pollution, the fossil fuel industry doesn’t pay a cent of those costs. Taxpayers pick up the whole tab.
These costs can be estimated via the‘social cost of carbon.’ It’s a difficult number to pin down, but even at theextremely conservative US federal estimate of $37 per ton of carbon dioxide pollution (some recent research pegs the value at more than five times higher), that’s about $200bn per year for America and $1.3tn globally. While direct government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry are expensive, they’re dwarfed by the costs incurred by failing to tax carbon pollution.
The fossil fuel industry owns the GOP
The OCI report noted that the Obama administration actually proposed to eliminate 60% of federal fossil fuel industry subsidies, but that proposal went nowhere for one obvious reason:
In the 2015-2016 election cycle oil, gas, and coal companies spent $354 million in campaign contributions and lobbying and received $29.4 billion in federal subsidies in total over those same years - an 8,200% return on investment.
Of those fossil fuel industry contributions to political campaigns,88% went to Republican politicians. As a result, 97% of House Republicans oppose taxing carbon pollution, and the Trump administration is looking into every possible scheme to further prop up the dying coal industry. The GOP might as well rebrand itself as the Grand Oil Party.
Americans needs to rethink what subsidies are for
Subsidies are a way for the government to assist an industry, hypothetically for good reason. For example, wind and solar power help meet our energy needs without producing harmful pollution in the process. Because of the associated societal benefits, it’s possible to justify subsidizing clean energy. Alternatively, we could eliminate all energy subsidies and instead tax carbon and other forms of pollution. If rising energy prices are a concern, we could offset those costs by returning the pollution tax revenue to taxpayers.
There are numerous different policy options available to achieve the Paris climate target. We can avoid unacceptably risky levels of global warming while also achieving cleaner air, water, and public health without destroying whole landscapes. But continuing to funnel tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry is perverse and counter-productive, as the OCI report noted:
Removing these highly inefficient [fossil fuel] subsidies – which waste billions of dollars propping up an industry incompatible with safe climate limits – should be the first priority of fiscally responsible climate, energy, and tax reform policies.
Perhaps the Democratic Party should add ‘abolish fossil fuel subsidies’ to its platform.
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LA school turn down?! exxon
subsidy loophole
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/us/louisiana-itep-exxon-mobil.html
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https://www.vox.com/2019/5/17/18624740/fossil-fuel-subsidies-climate-imf
The world’s top climate scientists calculated in a startling report last year that if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius this century to avoid devastating social and economic consequences, we need to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
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One big reason that goal is tough to hit is that we’re still heavily dependent on coal, oil, and natural gas — and governments support these forms of energy far more than clean energy...ts last assessment in 2015 tabulated a value of $5.3 trillion — so not much has changed since then, despite growing alarm about rising temperatures and plummeting prices for alternatives like solar and wind energy. And it’s now clearer than ever that the political will to take on fossil fuels still hasn’t materialized.
So why don’t governments just pull the subsidies, save a ton of money, and fight climate change at the same time?
Well, as former Vox reporter Brad Plumer explained at length in 2015, the IMF is using a, let’s say, unconventional definition of the word “subsidy.”
Fossil fuels do get preferential support from governments, and it’s been critical in keeping some mining and drilling operations running far longer than they would have otherwise.
But the IMF’s calculation is intended to help us grapple with other, hidden advantages we give to fossil fuels. Undoing these cryptic subsidies will not be as simple as zeroing out a line item in a budget. However, confronting them could actually lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions while also addressing economic inequalities.
Here are some key takeaways from the new IMF paper.
Carbon polluters are dumping their waste in the atmosphere for free
Fossil fuel companies receive a significant quantity of what we might think of as conventional subsidies — government funding to reduce the retail price of fuel. The IMF describes these as “pre-tax” subsidies, and they amount to roughly $500 billion a year.
Countries like Malaysia, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia are facing pressure to cut their subsidies for heating and transportation fuel (for budget reasons), but overall, these subsidies are on the rise again around the world.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16283719/ff_subsidies.png)Direct pre-tax subsidies to fossil fuels are on the rise again after years of decline. This corresponds to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. OECD/International Energy Association
But the vast majority of the IMF’s subsidy tally comes from failing to price greenhouse gas emissions, a.k.a. “post-tax subsidies.” In essence, the world’s carbon polluters are dumping their waste into the atmosphere for free. About 87 percent of greenhouse gas emissions don’t face any kind of carbon price at all.
Getting to do something for free that adds a cost to society does confer an advantage, but it’s debatable whether that should be called a subsidy.
And that debate is important. How we sort the factors that drive the ongoing consumption of fossil fuels positions our options to avoid them. The politics is similar across the board for curbing emissions, but the policy tools change depending on whether you view greenhouse gas emissions as a tragedy of the commons or an unfair market advantage, i.e., a tax, a restriction, or an investment in an alternative.
So the $5.2 trillion number might be best understood as a way to signal that the world has grandfathered in a lot of the inherent risks of fossil fuels. Extracting fossil fuels damages and degrades the land and the oceans. Transporting coal can spread dust, pumping oil can spill, and natural gas can explode. When burned, these fuels emit air pollutants like particulates and nitrogen oxides in addition to greenhouse gases.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16283662/Screen_Shot_2019_05_17_at_11.07.37_AM.png)The majority of global energy subsidies are indirect, post-tax forms of support, like failing to price greenhouse gas emissions. International Monetary Fund
As my colleague David Roberts has pointed out, there’s also a tremendous security cost. A huge chunk of foreign policy and military strategy for many countries involves protecting shipping lines for fossil fuels. The US military spends at least $81 billion a year protecting oil supplies. Meanwhile, there are no carrier groups defending wind turbine supply chains or a strategic silicon reserve for solar panels.
We as a society pay these costs. Economists have come up with dollar values for how much carbon dioxide harms the world per unit of emission, a value known as the social cost of carbon. But such costs usually aren’t built into the price tag of gasoline, coal-fired electricity, and natural gas heating. As a result, the people most responsible don’t pay directly for their pollution. It also leaves few incentives to limit greenhouse gas emissions, so problems like climate change go unabated.
“It’s much more than just global warming,” said David Coady, an author of the paper and division chief of the fiscal affairs department at the IMF. “A big part of the damage, in fact the biggest, comes from domestic, local pollution, which shows up as really bad health. You just have to look at Beijing and Delhi.”
The IMF’s subsidy value is essentially a way to tally all these factors.
Coady also noted that there are other fossil fuel subsidies the IMF didn’t consider at all, namely subsidies directly to fossil fuel producers, like tax credits or government research and development funding for extraction. “It’s very country-specific and hidden away under laws,” he said. These kinds of support mechanisms for fossil fuels are hard to suss out.
Direct subsidies for fossil fuels do serve a purpose, but they’re really inefficient
Subsidies reduce the retail price of a commodity. That makes the commodity, whether it’s milk, eggs, coal, or oil, cheaper for retail buyers. This can be done to prop up an ailing industry like coal or to boost an emerging sector like renewables.
Subsidies can also be motivated by a desire to help the poor, like keeping lifesaving fuels such as heating oil accessible to low-income households. Leaving out the environmental harms from the price tags for fossil fuels keeps energy affordable as well.
However, the problems that fossil fuels cause, namely air pollution and climate change, remain, and their consequences disproportionately hit the poorest the hardest. And while energy might be cheaper, other constraints for the poor might be more pressing, like food, housing, and child care. So propping up fossil fuels with subsidies often ends up being a counterproductive social welfare program.
“[Subsidies] are very, very inefficient and inequitable approaches to achieving that objective,” said Coady. “It’s not to say that removing these subsidies will not impact heavily on the poor. It will. And so what we argue is that you really need to strengthen social protection systems.”
...
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MAY 8, 2019
Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending
The world would be richer and healthier if the full costs of fossil fuels were paid, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund
By TIM DICKINSON
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fossil-fuel-subsidies-pentagon-spending-imf-report-833035/
United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuels in recent years than it has on defense spending, according to a new :{report:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}: from the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF found that direct and indirect subsidies for coal, oil and gas in the U.S. reached $649 billion in 2015. Pentagon spending that same year was :{$599 billion:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;font-weight:400"):}:.
The study defines “subsidy” very broadly, as many economists do. It accounts for the “differences between actual consumer fuel prices and how much consumers would pay if prices fully reflected supply costs plus the taxes needed to reflect environmental costs” and other damage, including premature deaths from air pollution.
RELA
These subsidies are largely invisible to the public, and don’t appear in national budgets. But according the the IMF, the world spent $4.7 trillion — or 6.3 percent of global GDP — in 2015 to subsidize fossil fuel use, a figure it estimated rose to $5.2 trillion in 2017. China, which is heavily reliant on coal and has major air-pollution problems, was the largest subsidizer by far, at $1.4 trillion in 2015. But the U.S. ranked second in the world.
The human, environmental and economic toll of these subsidies is shocking to the conscience. The authors found that if fossil fuels had been fairly priced in 2015, global carbon emissions would have been slashed by 28 percent. Deaths from fossil fuel-linked air pollution would have dropped by nearly half.
Oil, gas and coal companies — and their stooges in public office — have long argued that making consumers pay for the full impacts of fossil fuel use would cripple the economy. The IMF experts call bullshit on this idea, revealing that the world would, in fact, be more prosperous. Eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels would have created global “net economic welfare gains” in 2015 of “more than $1.3 trillion, or 1.7 percent of global GDP,” the study found. (These net gains are “calculated as the benefits from reduced environmental damage and higher revenue minus the losses from consumers facing higher energy prices.”)
For the United States, the $649 billion in fossil fuel subsidies exceeded even the extravagant amount of money the country spent on defense. To offer a sense of scale, Pentagon spending accounted for 54 percent of the discretionary federal budget in 2015. In comparison to another important, but less well-funded part of the federal budget, fossil fuel subsidies were nearly 10 times what Congress spent on education. Broken down to an individual level, fossil fuel subsidies cost every man, woman and child in the United States $2,028 that year.
At the opening of the IMF’s spring meetings in April, Managing Director Christine Lagarde laid out the benefits she sees in properly pricing fossil fuels. “The numbers are quite staggering” she said, referring to the savings that could be achieved “fiscally, but also in terms of human life, if there had been the right price on carbon emission as of 2015.”
Lagarde continued to rattle off the benefits to humanity of realizing these savings. “There would be more public spending available to build hospitals, to build roads, to build schools and to support education and health for the people,” she said.
For Lagarde and the IMF, the conclusion was obvious: “We believe that removing fossil fuel subsidies is the right way to go.”
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Time for the US to End Fossil Fuel Subsidies | NRDC
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/danielle-droitsch/time-us-end-fossil-fuel-subsidies
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Energy subsidies - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies
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Overview · Impact of fossil fuel ... · IEA position on subsidies · Subsidies by country
Fossil Fuel Subsidies Cost U.S. More than Defense Budget: IMF ...
https://www.rollingstone.com/.../fossil-fuel-subsidies-pentagon-spending-imf-report-833...
May 8, 2019 - Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending ... Pentagon spending that same year was $599 billion. ... problems, was the largest subsidizer by far, at $1.4 trillion in 2015. ... To offer a sense of scale, Pentagon spending accounted for 54 percent of the discretionary federal budget in 2015.
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One Trump Tax Cut Was Meant to Help the Poor. A Billionaire Ended Up Winning Big.
Opportunity zones are meant to spur new investment in poor areas. But Under Armour’s Kevin Plank is getting a tax break for investments that are not new and not in a poor tract. And Plank’s area was picked over neighborhoods that are actually poor.
by Jeff Ernsthausen and Justin Elliott
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Perry says federal coal and nuke bailout not dead, but encourages ...
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/perry-says-federal-coal-nuke...not.../550461/
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Department of Energy moves forward with controversial test reactor ...
https://www.sciencemag.org/.../department-energy-moves-forward-controversial-test-r...
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“We renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country,” Donald Trump said recently.
Someone should alert him that America is now a hotbed of socialism. But it’s socialism for the rich. Everyone else is treated to harsh capitalism.
In the conservative mind, socialism means getting something for doing nothing. This pretty much describes General Motors’ receipt of $600 million in federal contracts, plus $500 million in tax breaks, since Trump took office.
Some of this corporate welfare has gone into the pockets of GM executives. Chairman and CEO Mary Barra raked in almost $22 million in total compensation in 2017 alone.
But GM employees are subject to harsh capitalism. GM is planning to lay off more than 14,000 workers and close three assembly plants and two component factories in North America by the end of 2019.
The nation’s largest banks saved $21 billion last year thanks to Trump’s tax cuts, some of which went intomassive bonuses for bank executives. On the other hand, thousands of lower-level bank employees got a big dose of harsh capitalism. They lost their jobs. [vid]
Banks that are too big to fail—courtesy of the 2008 bank bailout—enjoy a hidden subsidy of some $83 billion a year because they have the backing of the federal government. This hidden subsidy gives Wall Street, giant banks a huge advantage.
In 2017, Wall Street’s bonus pool was$31.4 billion. So, take away the hidden subsidy, and that bonus pool disappears, along with most profits. Trump and his appointees at the Federal Reserve are easing bank requirements put in place after the bailout. But they will make sure the biggest banks remain too big to fail.
When he was in business, Trump perfected the art of using bankruptcy to shield himself from the consequences of bad decisions– socialism for the rich at its worst –while leaving employees twisting in the wind. Now, all over America, executives who run their companies into the ground are getting gold-plated exit packages while their workers get pink slips.
Under socialism for the rich, you can screw up big time and still reap big rewards. Equifax’s Richard Smith retired in 2017 with an $18 million pension in the wake of a security breach that exposed the personal information of 145 millioncustomers to hackers.
Wells Fargo’s Carrie Tolstedt departed with a $125 million exit package after being in charge of the unit that opened more than 2 million unauthorized customer accounts.
Whatever happened to the idea of a meritocracy – an economic system that allows everyone to get ahead through hard work, and economic gains go only to those who deserve them?
Around 60 percent of America’s wealth is now inherited. Many of today’s super-rich have never done a day’s work in their lives. Trump’s response has been to expand this divide by cutting the estate tax to apply only to estates valued at over $22 million per couple. Mitch McConnell is now proposing that the estate tax be repealed altogether.
To the conservative mind, the specter of socialism conjures up a society in which no one is held accountable, and no one has to work for what they receive. Yet, that’s exactly the society Trump and the Republicans are promoting for the rich.
Meanwhile, most Americans are subject to an increasingly harsh and arbitrary capitalism.
They need stronger safety nets, and they deserve a bigger piece of the economic pie.
If you want to call this socialism, fine. I call it fair.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/in-final-blow-to-scott-walker-the-foxconn-deal-that-was-supposed-to-save-his-job-was-just-exposed-as-a-bait-and-switch/
On Wednesday, Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn dropped a bombshell on Wisconsin: their $10 billion new campus in the state will not be devoted primarily to manufacturing LCD screens as promised. Instead, it will be used primarily for research and packaging.
The company insists that it still plans to create the 13,000 jobs it promised when it initially announced the project — but this shift means that far fewer of these will be the blue-collar factory jobs that were supposed to boost Wisconsin’s manufacturing sector. his bait-and-switch is a blow from beyond the political grave to former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who when he first announced the deal in 2017, was supposed to be his key to a third term and was frequently hyped by President Donald Trump.
From the moment the Foxconn deal was brokered, it was controversial. The price tag for the state of $3 billion did not seem to justify 13,000 jobs — that works out to $230,000 of taxpayer money spent on each $54,000 job created. And that was not all Wisconsin was giving up for the project — Walker worked hand in hand with then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt to exempt Foxconn from environmental laws, possibly threatening the health of locals. It did not help matters that Foxconn has a history of broken promises — one plant they promised to build in Pennsylvania never happened — and of using robots instead of workers.
As the Foxconn deal cratered in polls, Democrats turned what was to be Walker’s trump card into a millstone around his neck, hammering it as a con job. Walker ultimately lost re-election to superintendent of public instruction Tony Evers.
The Foxconn saga is a cautionary message for politicians around the country: economic development incentives which do not properly vet the businesses and projects they’re trying to promote can end in disaster, and this is by no means limited to Walker and the GOP. Utah and New Jersey have also both had oversight problems when handing out tax breaks to developing businesses, there has long been a “border war” of businesses in Kansas City gaming tax breaks between Kansas and Missouri, and New York City’s deal to receive Amazon’s second headquarters is expensive and exacerbates the city’s housing issues for unclear benefit.
Politicians who want to bring jobs to their state should look to Walker as an example of what not to do.
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ew 119
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Subsidized Corn and Beans
"You come down to Iowa, it's all corn and beans, and it's neutering the land," said Chris Peterson at his family's farm near Clear Lake. The farm was nearly pushed out of business in the 1990s, Peterson said, because of consolidation in the livestock industry, but he managed to hang on by finding niche markets for the pork he produces.
Four or five decades ago, typical American farms looked a lot more like Peterson's, growing several crops and raising livestock in diversified, integrated and time-honored synchrony. Farmers sold some crops and fed others to their animals, which also foraged on grass and over-wintered on hay. Cash crops paid the bills and meat met the mortgage.
"Subsidies give the larger producers the resources to add more ground that they can tack on to their ever-growing acreage," Hoefner said. "We directly subsidize consolidation. We reduced the risk of consolidation. Without subsidies, crop insurance and commodity payments, consolidation would have gone much more slowly."Hefty government subsidies, along with market forces and technology, have since tilted the balance to corn and soybeans, transforming much of the Midwest into a vast duoculture of those two crops. The fields get bigger and bigger.
The resulting corn-and-beans duo demands the heavy use of fertilizers—especially nitrogen synthesized from natural gas—and depletes the soils. And by neglecting diversity, the system forfeits a crucial recovery cycle that would build soil back up and improve its ability to hold carbon.
"We could do a lot to change this simply by shifting to policies that promote nature-based climate resilience," Lengnick said.[graf]
Farm to Fuel
Like subsidies, government mandates to use biofuels have pushed farmers to expand corn and soybean acreage—especially on environmentally sensitive land.
"A lot of erodible land, and some in wetlands, was converted to row crops," said Matt Liebman, an agronomy professor at Iowa State University. "If you want to soak up the surplus, putting it into ethanol is a good way to do that."
The mandates require refineries to blend a percentage of biofuels, including corn-based ethanol or soy-based biodiesel, into their fuel mix. Demand for the two crops shot up, adding pressure to shift land into producing them.
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koch Industries is calling for the elimination of tax credits for electric vehicles (EVs), all while claiming that it does not oppose plug-in cars and inviting the elimination of oil and gas subsidies that the petroleum conglomerate and its industry peers receive.
Koch Industries is calling for the elimination of tax credits for electric vehicles (EVs), all while claiming that it does not oppose plug-in cars and inviting the elimination of oil and gas subsidies that the petroleum conglomerate and its industry peers receive.
Outgoing Nevada Republican Senator Dean Heller introduced a bill in September that would lift the sales cap on electric vehicles eligible for a federal tax credit, and replace the cap with a deadline that would dictate when the credit would start being phased out.
Under the current tax credit for EVs, once a manufacturer sells 200,000 EVs in the U.S. the amount of the credit gets slashed in half, then halved again. The full credit amount is $7,500. Tesla has already hit the 200,000 cap and GM will soon reach it, so both companies would benefit from a tax credit extension via eliminating the sales cap. Heller’s bill lifts the 200,000 vehicle limit and substitutes a phase-out period starting in 2022.
But the conservative senator’s bill is facing opposition from the conservative billionaire Koch brothers.
In a letter to senators dated October 24, Koch Industries lobbyist Philip Ellender urges opposition to the expansion of EV tax credits through 2022. Ellender claims that the tax credits primarily benefit wealthy consumers and that subsidization interferes with “innovation and consumer choice.”
The letter cites two studies, each by a right-wing think tank. One study comes from the Pacific Research Institute, which has received fossil fuel funding – including over $1.7 million from Koch-related foundations and $615,000 from ExxonMobil. The PRI study, titled “Costly Subsidies for the Rich: Quantifying the Subsidies Offered to Battery Electric Powered Cars,” emphasizes that “the majority of the dollar benefits from energy and electric car subsidies are paid to tax filers in the higher income tax brackets.”
The other study is from the Manhattan Institute, another “free market think tank” that takes in money from the Koch network and Exxon. The study paints a misleading picture of EVs and their subsidies.
In addition to citing biased studies by groups tied to Koch money, Ellender claims in the letter that “We do not oppose electric vehicles.”
This sentiment echoes the company's 2016 advertorial, in which Koch Industries claimed to be “all for electric vehicles.”
Ellender also claims that Koch Industries is against any and all energy subsidies, even ones that benefit the company. According to the letter:
Instead of expanding this subsidy for wealthy EV owners, Congress should eliminate it along with all other energy incentives – including eliminating any incentives given to us and our competitors where we may participate. We are focused on long-term value creation, not short-term windfalls.
In reality, while Koch Industries is claiming publicly to support ending fossil fuel subsidies (along with EV and clean energy incentives), Koch lobbyists have long worked to ensure that the petroleum industry continues to get subsidized.
As Koch vs. Clean previously pointed out, “In a detailed 2011 report on Koch Industries, the Center for Public Integrity wrote: ‘Oil is the core of the Koch business empire, and the company’s lobbyists and officials have successfully fought to preserve the industry’s tax breaks and credits.’ The report documented that Koch lobbyists have worked to preserve billions of dollars in oil industry subsidies, including the Section 199 manufacturing tax deduction and the ‘last-in, first out’ accounting rule.”
In fact, according to the International Business Times, Koch Industries has itself directly secured subsidies totaling more than $195 million.
The Koch network also lobbied for the Trump tax cuts that became law late last year. The corporate tax cut is not specific to energy, but it benefits giant corporations including Big Oil and Koch Industries nonetheless. Americans for Tax Fairness estimated that theKochs would save over $1 billion just this year from the tax cut—a significant windfall for a corporate behemoth that claims, “We are focused on long-term value creation, not short-term windfalls.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/doubling-down-on-the-biofuel-boondoggle/2018/10/14/3092cd7e-ccbc-11e8-920f-dd52e1ae4570_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2303e6fcccfd
October 14 at 7:37 PM
FOR MORE THAN a decade, the United States has pursued the foolhardy energy policy known as the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS. Thanks to legislation passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by a Republican president, George W. Bush, in 2007, the RFS illustrates the sad-but-true principle of Washington life that bipartisanship is no guarantee of wisdom. In a nutshell, the RFS required the nation’s petroleum refiners to blend ever-increasing quantities of biofuels, chiefly ethanol, into gasoline, purportedly to promote energy independence and fight climate change.
Never mind that the United States has meanwhile become a major oil exporter, due to a production boom. Never mind that the environmental harms of ethanol arguably outweigh its benefits, because it takes massive amounts of energy to distill ethanol from corn — and massive amounts of fragile farmland to grow that crop. Never mind that diverting resources into corn production for ethanol raises the price of food. Never mind all that, because 39 percent of Iowa’s corn crop goes to create nearly 30 percent of all U.S. ethanol. And Iowa is a swing state with six crucial electoral votes and a first-in-the-nation presidential caucus; whatever Iowa wants, Iowa gets, from politicians of both parties.
Hence President Trump’s announcement, on the midterm-election campaign trail in Iowa, that he would, in effect, double down on this decreasingly justifiable policy. Mr. Trump declared that the Environmental Protection Agency will draft regulations allowing the year-round sale of motor fuel containing 15 percent ethanol,as opposed to the 10 percent limitation in effect for several months a year because of air-pollution concerns related to summertime atmospheric conditions. This would incentivize gas station owners to install pumps capable of delivering the fuel, thus boosting ethanol sales. : 0...because of retaliation from trading partners against Mr. Trump’s tariffs. The more fundamental problem is that, at its inception, the RFS assumed that ever-rising U.S. gas consumption would permit refiners to absorb huge amounts of ethanol. In fact, the year after Congress adopted the bipartisan RFS legislation, the U.S. economy went into a recession, causing a collapse in the number of miles Americans drove and the amount of fuel consumed per capita. Only last year did consumption return to pre-recession levels.
Refiners face high and rising costs when they are forced either to mix more ethanol into their motor fuels or to buy offsetting credits known, obscurely, as Renewable identification numbers (RIN). Plagued by volatility and manipulation, the market for RIN has turned into a major headache for smaller refiners, which often seek waivers of the ethanol blending requirement. The entire system adds enormous bureaucracy and complexity to the fuel market, with little or no benefit to consumers. E15, as the 15 percent ethanol blend is known, might cost less per gallon, but because of its lower energy content, motorists would probably get poorer mileage and have to fill up more often.
The petroleum industry has promised a lawsuit to stop Mr. Trump’s plan. While we hesitate to take sides between agribusiness and Big Oil, in this instance public policy clearly favors the latter.
==
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/05/06/us-tax-breaks-shale-oil-gas-master-limited-partnerships
no lnx
About a half decade ago, as the shale drilling rush was sweeping across the U.S., drillers needed upfront cash — and quick — to let them snap up acreage, drill and frack exploratory wells, and hone their skills at the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that fueled an oil and gas boom.
Bankers and financiers began attending shale industry conferences, marketing a clever idea. By dusting off an obscure part of the tax code, drillers and pipeline builders could attract a different class of investor than would usually look at a boom-and-bust prone industry, an investor hunting for stability and predictability. Form a Master Limited Partnership, or MLP, shale drillers and pipeline builders were advised, and you'll be able to access that capital.
[series:
The Fracking Industry’s Water Nightmare
The Fracking Industry Is Cannibalizing Its Own Production, Increasing Spill Risks
Oil Industry Plans to Keep Workers Safe—by Firing Them and Having Robots Do Their Jobs
Rise of the Machines: Fracking Execs Plan Profits by Using Automation to Shrink Workforce
Why It Matters If Fracking Companies Are Overestimating Their ‘Proved’ Oil and Gas Reserves
Flip This Well: How Fracking Company CEOs Get Rich While Losing Billions
This Fed Policy Enabled the Fracking Industry’s $280 Billion Loss
How Wall Street Enabled the Fracking ‘Revolution’ That’s Losing Billions
GOP Tax Law Bails Out Fracking Companies Buried in Debt
Low Octane: The Surprising Reason Shale Oil Makes a Poor Fuel for High-Tech Cars and Trucks
Despite Disappointing Returns, Oil Driller Pushes Ahead with Fracking Near Rare Texas Wildlands]
The Secret of the Great American Fracking Bubble
The pitch for investors on MLPs was hard to resist: They “offer high yields and low taxes,” as the Financial Times described them in 2013. The tax benefits were a huge part of the draw, especially for wealthy investors (not just individuals, but also pension funds, which poured in billions).
The biggest benefit: a tax loophole that lets MLPs dodge so-called “double taxation,” paid by regular corporations and much-hated by investors, in which tax is paid both by the corporation on earning money and by investors as personal income. No corporate income tax, more money to go around for everyone but the government.
In 2000, MLPs had a total market value of less than $14 billion; by 2014, they had drawn over $500 billion in investments and some people were breathlessly predicting MLPs could wind up a trillion-dollar asset class.
And MLPs offer another quirk that investors found exciting. Holders not only stand to collect “distributions,” or a percentage of profits every three months, they can also trade MLP shares like stocks, meaning there were two ways to profit during the sector's rapid expansion.
Meanwhile, the tax benefits were substantial — from 2009 to 2012, MLPs shaved $13 billion dollars off their beneficiaries' tax bills, one 2013 report calculated.
Investment firms pushed MLPs hard. In 2014, Bloomberg reported that 109 out of 114 MLPs had favorable recommendations from the majority of Wall Street analysts covering them. “At the top, everybody’s a believer,” Timothy Gramatovich, Chief Investment Officer at California-based Peritus Asset Management, told Bloomberg.
Wall Street loved them for their own reasons: the $890.3 million that Bloomberg calculated MLPs earned banks in fees in 2013. “MLPs are Wall Street’s dream,” a Hedgeye Risk Management analyst observed. “They’re fee machines.”
MLPs helped to pour gasoline on the shale industry's fire, fueling the rapid expansion of fracking nationwide. In a perfect trifecta of poor public policy, the benefits from an energy MLP are exclusively available to producers of non-renewable fuels, set up a tax shelter benefitting these corporations, and create incentives for companies to go deeper into debt.
That's right — MLPs offer a tax break for U.S. companies to produce non-renewable energy, a break that's not available for wind, solar, geothermal, or hydroelectric energy companies, and their use rapidly expanded at a time when the rest of the world was busy laying the groundwork for huge leaps in the transition to renewables.
The problem now is, many MLPs may not even prove to be sound investments.
Running the Toll Booths
Heavily tilted towards pipeline companies, MLPs were often marketed to investors as running the “toll booths” on the shale highway. Investors were advised: Don't be the one who funds the risky fracking company; be the one who charges a tiny percent for every barrel of oil or million cubic feet (mcf) of natural gas those frackers pump. MLPs had the potential to become the “primary capital provider” for the infrastructure required for the shale rush, analysts predicted.
But even those risky fracking companies were getting in on the MLP game, spinning off assets like production from existing wells into a package that would let drillers raise more capital while offloading the risk that their wells might under-perform over the long run.
Because MLPs pay out a huge chunk (sometimes 90 percent) of their earnings as quarterly “distributions,” they constantly need new sources of cash. If that cash comes from a slow drip of income from an existing pipeline, MLPs can be extremely stable. But when cash flow continually comes from borrowing (often to fund new projects), MLPs can wind up accumulating debts fast, as they borrow one quarter, then borrow more the next.
And when MLPs go bad, they carry a double-punch, as many investors found out in 2016 when oil prices crashed. Their tax benefits reverse, and investors face both losses and a climbing tax bill at the same time. That happened the first time shale MLPs suffered a major crash in 2015-2016, as falling oil prices caused many investors to flee.
'Dry Wells? Your Problem'
Now, John Dizard, columnist for the Financial Times who presciently warned about the shale bubble back in 2010, is pointing to evidence of an “oil and gas infrastructure bubble” that he says is bursting for a whole new reason — even as oil prices have begun to creep higher.
Investors might reasonably expect that the pipelines, gas wells, and processing plants their money helped to fund will generate returns for decades, even if the frenzied expansion of the early shale years has slowed amid two years of low oil prices. But it's a little more complicated than that, Dizard warns.
"Delve deeper into the oil and gas basins, though, and you hear the rest of the story. Oil and gas fields deplete … and shale fields do so faster than others,” Dizard wrote. “That means the pipelines and processing plants eventually have sandpits at one end and impatient consumers at the other. No matter how many years’ service the pipes and plants could provide, there will not be the production to fill them.”
“Dry wells? Your problem,” he warned in an April 13 column. “That fate has just arrived for the pipes and plants connected to some of the first great shale-gas plays in Barnett, Woodford, and Haynesville. In September, Wells Fargo analysts estimated that four pipelines serving the original boom areas would be re-contracted for much lower volumes.”
While fortunes have been made and lost predicting the future of the oil and gas industry, Dizard has a track record that makes him worth paying attention to. He was one of the earliest prominent skeptics about the shale gas rush — and any investor who sold their stock in Chesapeake Energy, poster-company for the shale gas rush, when Dizard aired his doubtsback in July 2010 would have walked away at over $21 a share, compared to the $2.95 a share that Chesapeake's stock currently commands.
And while perhaps no one could have predicted the exact nature of the legal troubles and scandals that dogged Chesapeake Energy, the issues Dizard raised back in 2010 continue to loom over the shale industry: fracking costs a lot of money and shale wells dry up fast.
Beyond Chesapeake, the shale industry has continued to drive oil and gas production growth, but it's done so while losing money hand over fist, with The Wall Street Journal reporting in December 2017 that the industry has spent a stunning $280 billion more than it has earned.
Eight years after Dizard aired his first warning, there's little question that individual shale wells decline fast. Over half of America's oil production now comes from wells that were drilled in the last two years, the Energy Information Administration reported last year. For years, producers kept Wall Street interested by sprinting from one new discovery to the next — but many observers have started to catch on.
“Hot shale plays tend to fall short of expectations after a few years, and the Permian Basin will be the next big test of the pattern,” Stephen Rassenfoss, Senior Editor at the Journal of Petroleum Technology, wrote in September 2017.
Wall Street Moves On
Shale drilling MLPs have recently been falling out of favor on Wall Street, creating friction between the industry and its financiers. Some shale executives argue that MLPs can be at their finest when they bundle together operations at all stages of oil and gas production, giving drillers insights into the pipeline landscape and pipeline companies insights into prospects for drillers.
But Welles Fitzpatrick, managing director of Exploration and Production (E&P) research at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, argued at the shale gas conference Marcellus Midstream 2018 that from an investor's standpoint, combining an exploration and production company with a pipeline company made little sense. “You're essentially selling a bundle that people just don't like — I mean, it's not like internet and phone, it's like internet and karate lessons or something,” he said. “It just doesn't make sense.”
And the sharks aren't only circling MLPs because of the immediate profits to be made from breaking them up. They've been reeling from a number of factors.
“What happened in the downturn in 2015-2016, volumes were down and those pipelines were not pushing through enough volume in either crude or natural gas, and therefore [MLPs’ earnings were] down,” said portfolio manager Gary Bradshaw of Hodges Mutual Funds, which controls $1.5 billion in assets. “We’ve almost overbuilt many of the pipelines out there. A lot of these companies had to finally cut their dividends, and it really left a sour taste with investors.”
Leveling the Playing Field?
In the 1980s Congress moved to curtail the use of MLPs by many industries, passing legislation that limited their use to companies that earn 90 percent or more of their income from a specific list. If you built a pipeline, logged timber, or mined coal, you qualified; run a restaurant or build a windmill, you were out of luck. They revisited the issue in 2008 and added a handful of other energy sectors including biofuel, but the biggest renewable energy growth sectors like wind and solar were left out.
Environmentalists have debated ever since whether to push for an expansion of MLPs to cover wind and solar companies or for the structure to be wiped out.
A Senate bill, The Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act, was introduced in November by Delaware Senator Chris Coons and would make wind and solar companies eligible to form MLPs. The bill has drawn endorsements from a wide array of institutions, including NRG Energy, Williams, and DuPont as well as the Union of Concerned Scientists and an array of renewable energy industry groups.
But some fear that any benefits to the wind and solar industries would be small in scope and outweighed by the benefits of preserving the tax break for the fossil fuel industry.
“Many would agree that promoting renewable energy is a worthwhile endeavor because it would promote a cleaner environment and reduce dependence on imported oil. Allowing renewable energy access to the same public equity capital as the oil and gas industries would be an important step in promoting renewable energy growth,” wrote accountant David Powers in a 2017 law review article.
“However, eliminating the ability of the oil and gas industry to utilize the MLP rather than opening it up to the renewable energy sector best achieves this objective.”
Renewable energy companies have another option if they're hunting for ways to claim some similar benefits while funding a rapid expansion of their own — at least for now.
The wind and solar industries use another corporate structure called a YieldCo to create a “synthetic MLP.” But YieldCos rely on tax credits (the Investment Tax Credit and the Production Tax Credit) that are being phased out and will be gone in five years. Unless something changes, they will only be available for a brief period of time.
At the moment, the political climate in Congress has stalled reform efforts. Texas Republican John Cornyn handed MLPs a bit of leverage by slipping a last minute amendment into Trump's tax reform package that preserved some of their tax benefits.
But whether the law changes or it remains the same, the financial prospects for MLPs remain dodgy, with one major shale MLP filing bankruptcy just last month — leaving behind assets of $61.4 million against liabilities of $654 million, according to Reuters.
==
AEP screwing customers, bailout subsidies , hurt poor ppl
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14082018/coal-energy-prices-appalachia-mining-electric-bill-kentucky-economy-aep-rates
==
https://www.alternet.org/buried-fine-print-trump-rule-would-give-25-billion-tax-cut-big-bank-fat-cats
Wall Street banks continue to enjoy record profits thanks to President Donald Trump's $1.5 trillion tax scam, Trump's Treasury Department—headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin—quietly moved to hand big banks yet another major gift on Wednesday by hiding a $2.5 billion tax cut in the fine print of an "esoteric" new rule proposal (pdf).
At first glance, the Trump administration's rule appeared to be little more than a mundane set of regulations aimed at providing owners of so-called pass-through businesses everything they "need to comply with the Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," as Reuters put it.
But Capital & Main journalist David Sirota decided to take the radical step of actually reading the proposal in its entirety, and he found that the White House's rule alsoseeks to exclude banking from the "financial services" category—a move that would allow thousands of large banks to take advantage of the controversial tax cut for pass-through income included in Trump's tax bill. As they were hashing out the details of their tax bill behind closed doors, Sirota notes, Republican lawmakers included a provision that prohibited businesses in the "financial services" sector from qualifying for the tax cut in an effort to counter "assertions that the bill could enrich big banks."
But, at the direction of bank lobbyists, the Trump administration's new rule asserts that "'financial services' don't include banking," thus allowing "hundreds of banks operating as S corporations—as well as their owners—[to] claim the tax cut," Sirota writes.
In addition to taking the side of bank lobbyists with its new rule, the Trump administration also explicitly "echoed their views" in the fine print of its proposal, Sirota points out.
"Banking industry lobbyists pushed for the interpretation—acknowledging that the bill generally blocked pass-through tax cuts for businesses in financial services, but arguing that 'financial services are, however, clearly something other than banking,'" Sirota writes. "The Trump Treasury Department not only sided with the lobbyists, but in the fine print of its new rule, which is now subject to a public comment period before it goes into force, echoed their views."
According Daniel Hemel, a tax law professor at the University of Chicago, the Trump administration's rule change would reward "roughly 2,000 banks around the country that qualify as S corporations."
"It's a safe bet that most of the S corporation shareholders benefited by today's decision will fall into the upper reaches of the top one percent—not many middle-class folks own a bank," Hemel told Capital & Main. "If you assume a return on assets of around one percent and S corporation bank assets in the range of $400 billion, then the move reduces the total tax liability of S corporation bank shareholders by $300 million per year for 2018 through 2025. We're talking about something like $2.5 billion total."
In response to the Trump White House's latest attempt to reward the wealthy—which comes as wages for most workers are declining—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote, "It's never been more clear who the Trump administration is really working for."
https://www.alternet.org/where-did-tax-benefits-trump-promised-average-americans-go-straight-big-oil-big-pharma-and-their
Any tax cuts working families received this year after the Republican Party pushed through its tax law have likely been canceled out by higher costs of gas, healthcare, and other necessities, according to Americans for Tax Fairness (AFT), due to President Donald Trump's policies.
The average American family is paying $420 more per year for fuel than they did before Trump entered office in January 2017, the group said this week, while Trump's changes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will cost middle class households an average of $2,000 more in healthcare costs than they paid previously.
While traveling around the country selling their tax proposal, Republicans including Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) promised an average tax cutof $1,182 for the average American family—far less than the rising costs of necessities. As AFT executive director Frank Clemente noted, the wealthiest Americans are enjoying a $51,000 tax cut this year alone while working families see little benefit to the so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
"American families are seeing this tax cut law for what it is—a scam," said Clemente in a statement. "It's a handout to the wealthy and big corporations while many of us will see little or nothing, especially when rising gas prices and higher health insurance premiums are factored in."
Seventeen major oil and gas companies are saving $25 billion on their taxes this year, and four of the largest will get tax cuts of $15 billion over the next decade, according to AFT.
Public Citizen has also tied rising gas prices to a number of Trump's policies, including his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal against the advice of international leaders, which promptly sent oil prices skyrocketing to their highest levels since 2014.
Trump's proposed plan to roll back clean car standards—which saved Americans nearly $60 billion in gas costs—and his decision to export U.S. oil instead of encouraging companies to sell it domestically, have also contributed to sticker shock.
According to ATF:"Because of Trump's costly policies, there will be fireworks for oil company profits this July Fourth at the expense of American consumers," said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program....
==
Wisconsin Foxconn Plant: A Bad Deal for Taxpayers | National Review
https://www.nationalreview.com/.../wisconsin-foxconn-plant-bad-deal-for-taxpayers/
1.
Foxconn breaking ground on Wisconsin plant it received $4 billion to ...
money.cnn.com/2018/06/28/technology/foxconn-wisconsin-plant/index.html
1.
Foxconn's first Wisconsin factory likely will be smaller than planned
https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/.../06/.../foxconns...wisconsin.../740627002/
1.
https://www.ecowatch.com/g7-fossil-fuel-subsidies-2575139413.html
Taxpayers Still Shelling Out Billions Annually in Fossil Fuel Subsidies
The world's richest countries continue to subsidize at least $100 billion a year in subsidies for the production and use of coal, oil and gas, despite repeated pledges to phase out fossil fuels by 2025.
The Group of Seven, or G7, consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the U.S. The group, as well as the larger G20, agreed as early as 2009 to phase out fossil fuels in order to combat climate change.
But a new report from Britain's Overseas Development Institute (ODI) reveals that on average per year in 2015 and 2016, the G7 governments supplied at least $81 billion in fiscal support and $20 billion in public finance, for both production and consumption of oil, gas and coal at home and overseas.
"With less than seven years to meet their 2025 phase-out deadline, G7 governments continue to provide substantial support the production and use of oil, gas and coal," the authors stated.
The study, co-authored by Oil Change International, the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Natural Resources Defense Council, was issued Monday ahead of the G7 summit in Canada.
"Governments often say they have no public resources to support the clean energy transition," the study's lead author Shelagh Whitley told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "What we're trying to do is highlight that those resources are there (but) it is being used inefficiently."
For the study, each G7 member was rated on the following measures: transparency; pledges and commitments; ending support for fossil fuel exploration; ending support for coal mining; ending support for oil and gas production; ending support for fossil fuel-based power; and ending support for fossil fuel use.
France ranked the highest overall, with 63 out of 100 points. While the country is lagging behind in its support for fossil fuel use, France earned the top spot for making early progress in ending fossil fuel exploration and production and ending coal mining, the researchers determined. Germany (62 points) and Canada (54 points) rounded out the top three in the dubious list.
Unsurprisingly—due to President Donald Trump's intention to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement and his administration's unrelenting push of fossil fuels—the U.S. was ranked lowest on the list, scoring only 42 out of 100 points.
The report showed that the U.S. spent $26 billion a year supporting fossil fuels and scored the worst in ending support for coal mining, a pet project of President Trump.
==
https://www.ecowatch.com/coal-nuclear-bailout-trump-2574242069.html
Trump Administration Plans Costly Taxpayer Bailout of Unprofitable Energy Industries
The Trump administration is planning to bail out unprofitable coal and nuclear plants by mandating grid operators buy electricity from them in the name of national security, Bloomberg reported late Thursday.
A draft Department of Energy memocirculated before a National Security Council meeting Friday proposes invoking rarely-used emergency authorities under the Defense Production Act and Federal Power Act to force grid operators to purchase power from struggling plants. Per the memo, the move is meant as a "stop-gap measure" while the administration conducts a two-year study on "grid security challenges" facing the country.
The proposal is the latest overture by the Trump administration as it struggles to make good on a campaign promise to help the coal and nuclear industry—as well as some of the president's biggest donors.
As reported by Bloomberg:
"While administration officials are still deciding on their final strategy—and may yet decide against aggressive action—the memo represents the Energy Department's latest, most fully developed plan to intervene on behalf of coal and nuclear power plants, pitched to the president's top security advisers.
...
Opponents of the new plan contend bailouts are a solution in search of a problem. They argue there are many ways to back up the grid that won't cost ratepayers billions of dollars. A coalition of natural gas and renewable power advocates told [Energy Secretary Rick] Perry that 'power plant retirements are a normal, healthy feature of electricity markets,' and therefore there is no emergency that would justify Energy Department action."
deeper dive:
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- Opinion | The Trump Administration's Coal Bailout - The New York ... ›
==
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/05/06/us-tax-breaks-shale-oil-gas-master-limited-partnerships
About a half decade ago, as the shale drilling rush was sweeping across the U.S., drillers needed upfront cash — and quick — to let them snap up acreage, drill and frack exploratory wells, and hone their skills at the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that fueled an oil and gas boom.
Bankers and financiers began attending shale industry conferences, marketing a clever idea. By dusting off an obscure part of the tax code, drillers and pipeline builders could attract a different class of investor than would usually look at a boom-and-bust prone industry, an investor hunting for stability and predictability. Form a Master Limited Partnership, or MLP, shale drillers and pipeline builders were advised, and you'll be able to access that capital.
- This Federal Policy Enabled the Fracking Industry’s $280 Billion Loss
- How Wall Street Enabled the Fracking ‘Revolution’ That’s Losing Billions
- GOP Tax Law Bails Out Fracking Companies Buried in Debt
- Low Octane: The Surprising Reason Shale Oil Makes a Poor Fuel for High-Tech Cars and Trucks
- Despite Disappointing Returns, Oil Driller Pushes Ahead with Fracking Near Rare Texas Wildlands
- The Secret of the Great American Fracking Bubble
The pitch for investors on MLPs was hard to resist: They “offer high yields and low taxes,” as the Financial Times described them in 2013. The tax benefits were a huge part of the draw, especially for wealthy investors (not just individuals, but also pension funds, which poured in billions).
The biggest benefit: a tax loophole that lets MLPs dodge so-called “double taxation,” paid by regular corporations and much-hated by investors, in which tax is paid both by the corporation on earning money and by investors as personal income. No corporate income tax, more money to go around for everyone but the government.
In 2000, MLPs had a total market value of less than $14 billion; by 2014, they had drawn over $500 billion in investments and some people were breathlessly predicting MLPs could wind up a trillion-dollar asset class.
And MLPs offer another quirk that investors found exciting. Holders not only stand to collect “distributions,” or a percentage of profits every three months, they can also trade MLP shares like stocks, meaning there were two ways to profit during the sector's rapid expansion.
Meanwhile, the tax benefits were substantial — from 2009 to 2012, MLPs shaved $13 billion dollars off their beneficiaries' tax bills, one 2013 report calculated.
Investment firms pushed MLPs hard. In 2014, Bloomberg reported that 109 out of 114 MLPs had favorable recommendations from the majority of Wall Street analysts covering them. “At the top, everybody’s a believer,” Timothy Gramatovich, Chief Investment Officer at California-based Peritus Asset Management, told Bloomberg.
Wall Street loved them for their own reasons: the $890.3 million that Bloomberg calculated MLPs earned banks in fees in 2013. “MLPs are Wall Street’s dream,” a Hedgeye Risk Management analyst observed. “They’re fee machines.”
MLPs helped to pour gasoline on the shale industry's fire, fueling the rapid expansion of fracking nationwide. In a perfect trifecta of poor public policy, the benefits from an energy MLP are exclusively available to producers of non-renewable fuels, set up a tax shelter benefitting these corporations, and create incentives for companies to go deeper into debt.
That's right — MLPs offer a tax break for U.S. companies to produce non-renewable energy, a break that's not available for wind, solar, geothermal, or hydroelectric energy companies, and their use rapidly expanded at a time when the rest of the world was busy laying the groundwork for huge leaps in the transition to renewables.
The problem now is, many MLPs may not even prove to be sound investments.
Running the Toll Booths
Heavily tilted towards pipeline companies, MLPs were often marketed to investors as running the “toll booths” on the shale highway. Investors were advised: Don't be the one who funds the risky fracking company; be the one who charges a tiny percent for every barrel of oil or million cubic feet (mcf) of natural gas those frackers pump. MLPs had the potential to become the “primary capital provider” for the infrastructure required for the shale rush, analysts predicted.
But even those risky fracking companies were getting in on the MLP game, spinning off assets like production from existing wells into a package that would let drillers raise more capital while offloading the risk that their wells might under-perform over the long run.
Because MLPs pay out a huge chunk (sometimes 90 percent) of their earnings as quarterly “distributions,” they constantly need new sources of cash. If that cash comes from a slow drip of income from an existing pipeline, MLPs can be extremely stable. But when cash flow continually comes from borrowing (often to fund new projects), MLPs can wind up accumulating debts fast, as they borrow one quarter, then borrow more the next.
And when MLPs go bad, they carry a double-punch, as many investors found out in 2016 when oil prices crashed. Their tax benefits reverse, and investors face both losses and a climbing tax bill at the same time. That happened the first time shale MLPs suffered a major crash in 2015-2016, as falling oil prices caused many investors to flee.
'Dry Wells? Your Problem'
Now, John Dizard, columnist for the Financial Times who presciently warned about the shale bubble back in 2010, is pointing to evidence of an “oil and gas infrastructure bubble” that he says is bursting for a whole new reason — even as oil prices have begun to creep higher.
Investors might reasonably expect that the pipelines, gas wells, and processing plants their money helped to fund will generate returns for decades, even if the frenzied expansion of the early shale years has slowed amid two years of low oil prices. But it's a little more complicated than that, Dizard warns.
“Delve deeper into the oil and gas basins, though, and you hear the rest of the story. Oil and gas fields deplete … and shale fields do so faster than others,” Dizard wrote. “That means the pipelines and processing plants eventually have sandpits at one end and impatient consumers at the other. No matter how many years’ service the pipes and plants could provide, there will not be the production to fill them.”
“Dry wells? Your problem,” he warned in an April 13 column. “That fate has just arrived for the pipes and plants connected to some of the first great shale-gas plays in Barnett, Woodford, and Haynesville. In September, Wells Fargo analysts estimated that four pipelines serving the original boom areas would be re-contracted for much lower volumes.”
While fortunes have been made and lost predicting the future of the oil and gas industry, Dizard has a track record that makes him worth paying attention to. He was one of the earliest prominent skeptics about the shale gas rush — and any investor who sold their stock in Chesapeake Energy, poster-company for the shale gas rush, when Dizard aired his doubts back in July 2010 would have walked away at over $21 a share, compared to the $2.95 a share that Chesapeake's stock currently commands.
And while perhaps no one could have predicted the exact nature of the legal troubles and scandals that dogged Chesapeake Energy, the issues Dizard raised back in 2010 continue to loom over the shale industry: fracking costs a lot of money and shale wells dry up fast.
Beyond Chesapeake, the shale industry has continued to drive oil and gas production growth, but it's done so while losing money hand over fist, with The Wall Street Journal reporting in December 2017 that the industry has spent a stunning $280 billion more than it has earned.
Eight years after Dizard aired his first warning, there's little question that individual shale wells decline fast. Over half of America's oil production now comes from wells that were drilled in the last two years, the Energy Information Administration reported last year. For years, producers kept Wall Street interested by sprinting from one new discovery to the next — but many observers have started to catch on.
“Hot shale plays tend to fall short of expectations after a few years, and the Permian Basin will be the next big test of the pattern,” Stephen Rassenfoss, Senior Editor at the Journal of Petroleum Technology, wrote in September 2017.
Wall Street Moves On
Shale drilling MLPs have recently been falling out of favor on Wall Street, creating friction between the industry and its financiers. Some shale executives argue that MLPs can be at their finest when they bundle together operations at all stages of oil and gas production, giving drillers insights into the pipeline landscape and pipeline companies insights into prospects for drillers.
But Welles Fitzpatrick, managing director of Exploration and Production (E&P) research at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, argued at the shale gas conference Marcellus Midstream 2018 that from an investor's standpoint, combining an exploration and production company with a pipeline company made little sense. “You're essentially selling a bundle that people just don't like — I mean, it's not like internet and phone, it's like internet and karate lessons or something,” he said. “It just doesn't make sense.”
And the sharks aren't only circling MLPs because of the immediate profits to be made from breaking them up. They've been reeling from a number of factors.
“What happened in the downturn in 2015-2016, volumes were down and those pipelines were not pushing through enough volume in either crude or natural gas, and therefore [MLPs’ earnings were] down,” said portfolio manager Gary Bradshaw of Hodges Mutual Funds, which controls $1.5 billion in assets. “We’ve almost overbuilt many of the pipelines out there. A lot of these companies had to finally cut their dividends, and it really left a sour taste with investors.”
Leveling the Playing Field?
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/26/gop-tax-law-bails-out-fracking-companies-debt-eog-hamm
...
Thanks to the new tax law, Continental took home an extra $700 million because its effective tax rate for 2017 was negative 406 percent.
...Continental needed that money (although Hamm certainly doesn’t). In 2007 Continental had $165 million in debt and paid $13 million a year in interest on that debt. In 2016 its debt had ballooned to $6.5 billion and the annual interest payments rose to $321 million. The GOP tax law essentially pays off two years of Continental’s interest payments, allowing this failing business model to continue because Continental has not been generating enough income to pay even the annual interest on its debt.
While the company he leads is drowning in $6.5 billion of debt, Harold Hamm is personally worth twice that amount. He'll be fine. He was easily able to afford one of the most expensive divorce settlementsever.
These are just two examples of shale companies receiving an immediate financial lifeline from the GOP tax bill. These companies also will benefit from lowered tax rates in future years. However, this one-time handout simply masks the reality that the shale revolution looks a lot like a Ponzi scheme enriching CEOs and Wall Street financiers by producing oil and gas with borrowed money that is unlikely to be paid back in the future.
And Hamm and the Wall Street financiers have no incentive to do anything differently. Sure bankrupt energy companies destroy worker pensions, wipe out investors equity, layoff thousands of workers — but if we use the coal industry as an example — CEOs will still get bonuses after driving their companies into bankruptcy.
Tax Bill Especially Beneficial to Oil Companies
The benefits of the new tax bill are certainly not unique to oil and gas companies. Utility companies did even better and the big Wall Street banks who are financing the cash-burning shale industry also are awash in new profits thanks to the GOPtax overhaul.
However, due to the nature of how oil and gas companies book profits and losses — and the epic money-losing streak the shale industry created over the past few years — these companies benefited more than most.
To be clear — this bill which was signed at the end of 2017 was applied to the deferred tax liabilities that were already on the books — thus erasing a large chunk of the liabilities for these companies that had built up while the industry kept borrowing to drill more and ultimately lose more money. Simply a bailout of reckless financial behavior by any other name.
And it wasn’t just the companies primarily working in shale that benefited. ExxonMobil raked in a $6 billion benefit from the new tax law, which even CNN Money referred to as a “gift.”
Industry Will Use Bailout to Borrow and Drill More
In discussing the trade deficit President Trump recently tweeted the following:[twit]
Coming from a man whose career includes multiple bankruptcies, this shouldn’t be surprising. The shale oil industry definitely has a kindred spirit in the White House.
What happens when you give free money to gamblers on an epic losing streak? In the shale industry, they double down.
ExxonMobil has promised to use the billions it gained from the tax bill to … drill and frack more shale oil. Which is likely to result in further discounts of Permian Shale oil, which will lower the price of oil and put more pressure on the heavily leveraged shale companies.
While the mainstream media is pushing the industry message that shale companies now are focused on profits instead of just production volume, record U.S. oil production and predictions for even greater increases would appear to reveal the lie in that promise. Just as most sharks must swim to stay alive, shale companies must drill to preserve CEO bonuses, which are often tied to oil production, not profits. So, they drill. Even when that means losing money on nearly every barrel of oil they pump.
A graphic from the Wall Street Journal reveals just how much money the shale industry has been losing compared to traditional oil — all while CEOs such as Harold Hamm were amassing billions in personal wealth. The shale oil industry generated free cash flow pumping oil for one brief period in the last seven years. Hamm has done a bit better personally during that time frame.
Shortly after President Trump signed the new tax bill, he took another vacation to Mar-a-Lago where he reportedly toldthose in attendance: “You all just got a lot richer.”
A rare moment of honesty from the President. And while he wasn’t speaking specifically to shale oil CEOs — it's safe to say they got the message loud and clear.
Peabody Coal: vs Take Back St. Louis
7/14Missouri Governor Nixon signed SB 672, with Amendment 135.980 from the state legislature — where Peabody spent almost half a million dollars in the last two elections) which bans the City of St. Louis from restricting through ballot initiative public financial incentives for coal mining companies for two years, basically stopping giving incentives to coal companies and help create a green economy. While the case was pending, the mayor’s office pushed a curious amendment to an obscure state bill. In the middle of a bill about county prosecutors and sewer districts, you’ll find a provision that specifically prohibits the city of St. Louis from passing, by ballot measure, any restrictions on tax breaks for coal mining companies. There’s only one coal mining company in St. Louis known to receive city tax breaks: Peabody Energy.
This story began when ordinary citizens joined together and took a stand against both climate change and their city’s destructive practice of granting enormous tax breaks to big business while cutting funding for public services. They talked to thousands of residents who were upset that St. Louis keeps giving away tens of millions of dollars of badly needed public money to Peabody Energy (the world’s largest private-sector coal company). They collected over 22,000 signatures — more than 10 percent of all the voters in St. Louis — on a petition for a ballot initiative. The city’s elections board verified the signatures, and began preparing to print ballots. The coal company’s lawyers rushed to court and asked a judge to block the election on the grounds that the law would unfairly discriminate against the coal company and its business partners, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. At the trial, Take Back St. Louis provided evidence about the environmental damage caused by burning coal, and the damage to the fabric of St. Louis caused by the city’s penchant for giving away public dollars to big business. The other side didn’t put any witnesses on the stand.
The judge also opined that the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution - which was passed after the Civil War to protect the rights of newly-freed slaves - prevents the people of St. Louis from voting on the initiative. The opinion cites the infamous Citizens United decision to suggest that coal companies have the same rights as people, which effectively means that corporate tax breaks are off-limits for voters. Before the people even had an opportunity to vote, the judge decided that fossil fuel energy companies and their major business partners are entitled to judicial protection from the democratic process. It is unusual in itself that this ruling would occur before residents even had a chance to vote on the initiative. Usually, initiatives go before voters and legal proceedings happen if the initiative passes. CA Prop 49 on corporate personhood was also pulled from the ballot, though for arguably less evil reasons.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2014/02/13/st-louis-judge-cites-citizen-united-protect-tax-breaks-peabody-energy
With the quick stroke of a pen, a circuit court judge in St. Louis has singlehandedly silenced more than 22,000 city residents, who had sought to bring a ballot initiative to end tax breaks to fossil fuel companies to a citywide vote in April.
Last summer, volunteers with the Take Back St. Louis coalition gathered over 22,000 signatures to put onto the ballot a measure that would amend the city’s charter to include a “Sustainable Energy Policy” and end taxpayer-funded support of fossil fuel companies.
According to Take Back St. Louis, the “proposed charter amendment would end public financial incentives, such as tax abatements, to fossil fuel mining companies and those doing $1 million of business with them per year, and requires the city to create a sustainable energy plan for renewable energy and sustainability initiatives on city-owned vacant land.”
On Tuesday, Judge Robert Dierker sided with Peabody Energy (in a decision you can read here) to grant a temporary restraining order that would, in essence, keep the initiative off the April 8th ballot.
First declaring the initiative “facially unconstitutional,” Judge Dierker proceeded to cite the *Citizens United* decision in explaining why the policy would represent a “patent denial of equal protection” to fossil fuel energy companies. Specifically, Judge Dierker wrote:
business entities (which, after all, are a species of associations of citizens coming together in the exercise of economic freedom) are entitled to constitutional protection as citizens and may not arbitrarily be denied basic legal rights. See Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm., 558 U.S. 310 (2010).
The proposed initiative and judge’s decision have implications far beyond the city of St. Louis. Peabody Energy, the largest privately-owned coal mining company in the world, is headquartered in St. Louis, and received tax breaks of over $61 million from the city in 2010. The Take Back St. Louis coalition was hoping to target future giveaways, arguing that the public funds would be much better spent on underfunded local services like schools.
“We fundamentally disagree with this temporary ruling, and quoting Citizens United is an insult to home rule powers and our local democracy. Saying that Peabody Energy has equal rights with St. Louis public school students who lack supplies due to corporate tax breaks is what is a violation of rights in our city,” said Reginald Rounds with the Take Back St. Louis campaign. “We, and the 22,000 registered voters in the City of St. Louis who signed to put this on the ballot, will continue to fight for our right to have a sustainable local economy, not one run by coal corporations and other polluters.”
:{Peabody Energy’s lawyers filed the restraining order motion two weeks ago, and seem to have a sympathetic ear with Judge Dierker, who is an outspoken opponent of public interest law. In 2006, Judge Dierker authored “The Tyranny of Tolerance: A Sitting Judge Breaks the Code of Silence to Expose the Liberal Judicial Assault,” a book which he promoted extensively on Fox News.
}:
Also providing testimony in the hearing were two representatives from the mayor’s office, who oppose the citizen-driven initiative, spotlighting what Take Back St. Louis reps call “collaboration” between the mayor’s office and Peabody.
Take Back St. Louis has vowed to fight the temporary restraining order, and the legal battle could prove a crucial precedent for how the controversial Citizens United ruling can be applied to local resistance against taxpayer handouts to fossil fuel companies.
TAGS:
2/18 budget
In addition, the legislation extends tax credits to makers of biodiesel and "renewable diesel," and pushes back the deadline for nuclear facilities to qualify for credits. The nuclear provision would benefit the only plant in the works, under construction by Southern Company, in Georgia.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29122017/wyoming-powder-river-basin-coal-subsidies-climate-change-oil-gas-trump
end of choke hold series, no many links
How Federal Giveaways to Big Coal Leave Ranchers and Taxpayers Out in the Cold
Short cuts, subsidies and tax breaks helped create 7,000 jobs in the Powder River Basin. Damage to water, air and land is part of the price borne by the public, too.
By Neela Banerjee, Robert McClure
DEC 29, 2017
This story was also published on WyoFile.
On the morning after the autumn's first snow, L.J. Turner looked out over a creek near his house that reliably watered his family's livestock for more than 70 years. A third-generation Wyoming rancher, Turner remembered hunting rabbits there amid lush marsh grasses and high cottonwood trees when he was a boy in the 1950s.
Then the nation's three largest coal mines began to dig in downhill from his 10,000-acre ranch. To get to the coal, they blasted through and drained the region's aquifers. The marsh grasses vanished. The creek began to recede and eventually ran dry, as did a well Turner dug to feed a livestock watering trough.
As the mines grew and oil and gas wells came, Turner lost not only his ranch's abundant water, but also 6,000 acres he once leased as grazing land—scraped away to reach the coal. Now his cattle herd is half what it was, calves near the coal mines die at alarming rates, and he has had to spend thousands of dollars drilling deeper and deeper wells, eating into an already reduced income.
"You can't really do a whole lot about this as an individual, and there's not a reason or a lot of benefit to sitting there and beating your head against the wall," said Turner, who sued the state unsuccessfully over the loss of water. "It's just, you have to change."
Over the last 40 years, Turner and some of his neighbors have paid a heavy price for the development of energy resources beneath the sagebrush-studded high plains where he lives in the Powder River Basin, a West Virginia-sized swath straddling Montana and Wyoming. The wave of fossil fuel extraction brought jobs and money. It also depleted aquifers that allowed people to live and ranch here for generations, devoured thousands of rural acres, and worsened air quality.
American taxpayers everywhere have paid heavily, too. The federal government owns most of the coal, oil and gas in the ground here. And it has fostered mining and drilling through a host of subsidies, including tax breaks, cheap leases and low royalties that permit fossil fuel corporations to privatize the benefits while socializing many of the costs. Corporations have been able to lease federal coal at $1 a ton or less, use loopholes to halve official royalty rates, and take risks that could push the costs of land reclamation onto taxpayers.
Direct fossil fuel subsidies by the federal government amount to about $10 billion annually in tax breaks and deductions, according to a conservative estimate by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group. Oil and gas companies, for instance, can deduct the bulk of a well's drilling costs in the year they are incurred, as opposed to writing off the capital expenditures over many years as other industries do. That deduction cost taxpayers almost $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2015, and "distorts markets by encouraging more investment in the oil and natural gas industry," according to the Treasury Department.
Tallies of direct subsidies don't include the hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenues from undervalued leases and royalty rates. They also don't account for billions taxpayers shell out to clean up after fossil fuel extraction or the resulting damage to human health and the environment from climate change.
After calculating all the effects, the International Monetary Fund estimated that governments worldwide pay more than $5.3 trillion annually to support the burning of fossil fuels. The United States is the second-most prolific fossil fuel subsidizer, behind China, according to the 2017 study.
"We're a century and a half into coal and oil. These are not fledgling industries," said Dan Bucks, former director of the Montana Department of Revenue and a consultant on tax and conservation issues. "We're subsidizing fuels with enormous environmental costs especially climate change, and it can't be justified when we know we can supply our energy needs by other means.
"The subsidies slow the natural transition to a more competitive and environmentally sound energy future," Bucks added.
Choke Hold
Industry spends considerable amounts to hold on to this taxpayer support, part of a multi-pronged strategy it deploys across courtrooms, legislatures, news media and in Congress to preserve its bottom line. During the 2016 federal election cycle, fossil fuel companies laid out $354 million in campaign donations and lobbying, according to a report by the climate watchdog group Oil Change International. Over the same period, the industry enjoyed $29.4 billion in direct and indirect federal and state subsidies, the group estimated.
Many fossil fuel projects would likely have gone ahead even without the tax and royalty breaks. But reducing the number and forcing companies to pay for the impact on air, water, land and the climate would shrink fossil fuel extraction markedly, analysts said.
If coal mining in the Powder River Basin had gone slower or been less widespread, things could have ended up differently for the Turners.
"There are significant external costs that companies don't pay for, and if they had to pay for them, we would have a lot less coal production" in the Powder River Basin, said Mark Squillace, director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado Law School. "And there's no doubt that if you had less coal development there, you would have less aquifer depletion."
The government has long subsidized industries to foster their growth. Renewable energy gets tax breaks—but their cost to taxpayers to date is smaller than for fossil fuels and they're written to sunset in the future. Fossil fuel supports have lasted for decades, with two oil subsidies about a century old.
In 2009, President Barack Obama pledged to phase out fossil fuel subsidies by 2020, citing a need to keep more fossil fuels in the ground and avoid the worst damage from climate change. The Republican-led Congress took no action on Obama's budget requests to end them. In his last year in office, the Interior Department suspended new federal coal leases in order to overhaul the program so it better reflects environmental costs and boosts revenue.
The Trump administration reversed those efforts, part of the president's deregulatory agenda aimed at maximizing production of coal, oil and natural gas while backing away from climate policy. The tax bill signed by Trump this month preserves the subsidies enjoyed by industry. "We've ended the war on beautiful, clean coal," Trump declared recently.
Free Land in Coal Country but With a Catch
After fighting in World War I, L.J. Turner's father sold the family farm in Missouri and moved a thousand miles to become a rancher in Wyoming. There he got a subsidy of his own. The federal government gave the Turner family land for free under the Homestead Act, passed during the Civil War to encourage westward expansion. When the family was picking acreage, locals advised them, "Be sure you get the big spring there, 'cause it's absolutely foolproof water" for livestock, L.J. Turner said, recalling the stories he was told.
As coal mines grew and oil and gas wells came to the Powder River Basin, L.J. Turner lost his ranch’s abundant water as well as thousands of acres he once leased as grazing land.
But there was a catch: A few years before the Turners arrived, Congress changed the terms of the Homestead Act so that the federal government would retain ownership of minerals beneath the land it was deeding to settlers. It was a move that would come to benefit today's corporations immensely.
Mining federal coal in the Mountain West began in spurts in the 19th century to feed the railroads, but coal leasing accelerated in the 1970s to meet demands of utilities that needed more fuel to support booming manufacturing. The 1973 Arab oil embargo added urgency.
At the time, environmental activists, empowered by the Federal Lands and Management Policy Act of 1976, were pushing for opening more public lands to uses other than resource extraction and for better planning. Even supporters of resource extraction wanted competitive bids and better royalty rates so that taxpayers would be paid a fair price for the fossil fuels they own.
But "the urgency to mine coal ended up winning out," said Bucks, who served on a U.S. Commerce Department commission in the 1970s that studied the consequences of coal mining in Wyoming and Montana. "Land management was complex, the science evolving. That's a long-term endeavor, while the energy need was immediate."
The rush to mine had its biggest impact on the Powder River Basin. In 1977, the Black Thunder mine opened about 20 miles east of the Turners' home. Five years later came the Antelope Mine, now owned by Cloud Peak Energy, about 15 miles to the southeast. Eventually, between those two projects, Peabody Energy built the largest surface coal mine in the world, the North Antelope Rochelle mine.
By 2002, the Powder River Basin had become the country's largest coal-producing region. Today it produces 40 percent of all the coal burned in the United States and accounts for more than 10 percent of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions.
The coal boom employed 7,000 people in Wyoming at its employment peak in 2011. By 2016, that number had fallen to fewer than 5,700, as demand for coal slowed considerably under competitive pressure from cheaper natural gas and renewable sources and the weight of federal regulations.
Even with the industry in decline, the government continues to support the coal companies in the Powder River Basin and elsewhere by offering short cuts, subsidies and tax breaks at nearly every step of the mining process.
America's Declining Coal Industry
Taxpayer Coal for Sale at $1 a Ton—or Less
Since coal mining took off there 40 years ago, investigations by federal agencies and independent analysts have repeatedly shown that the leasing process shortchanges taxpayers. The first two coal leases sold in 1982 "were legally suspect and publicly criticized for not receiving fair market value," leading to a major Congressional inquiry, Squillace wrote in a 2013 law journal article.
In 1990, the Interior Department under Pres. George H.W. Bush rescinded the Powder River Basin's status as a federal coal-producing region for reasons that remain unclear. The move loosened coal leasing restrictions. Rather than Interior deciding where, when and how much coal should be mined, those decisions fell to industry.
U.S. taxpayers have lost billions of dollars in revenue over decades from undervalued coal lease sales and royalty payments that benefit coal companies. investigations by federal agencies and independent analysts have shown.
One enduring effect of this has been to make noncompetitive lease sales the norm. A corporation will pick a tract of coal to expand an existing mine and petition Interior to lease it. These parcels are too small to be standalone mines that would otherwise invite competitors, Squillace said. So when the coal lease is put up for sale, there's usually only a single bidder, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2013.
In a survey of 107 leased parcels, 96 of them, or 90 percent, went to a sole bidder, almost always a company seeking to expand an existing mine, the report found.
This lack of competition means rock-bottom rates and sparse returns to taxpayers. Over the years, the federal government has sold leases in the Powder River Basin for about $1.00 per ton of coal or less. The market price of Powder River Basin coal is about $12.00 a ton, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Besides the lack of competition, leases are so cheap because the Interior Department itself sets the initial price for a coal tract at far below market value. The process for calculating a lease's value is confidential, but separate studies by the Interior Department's Inspector General and the GAO determined the process is flawed. It fails to account for growing overseas demand and other market forces, and deprives taxpayers of millions of dollars annually.
...
The Senate voted early Saturday to approve a major overhaul of the U.S. tax code that critics say would decimate clean energy investments while continuing to hand out tax breaks to the oil and gas industries.
The sweeping tax system overhaul bill—which represents the biggest corporate tax cut in the country's history and would reach into many areas of American lives—also contains language that would open the door for oil and gas companies to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
While the Senate proposal preserves tax credits that have spurred huge growth in the wind and solar industries, it contains an obscure provision that could undercut investment in renewables.
Larger challenges for clean energy lie in the House of Representatives' tax proposal, which passed in mid-November. That version takes a whack at a bundle of clean energy tax credits that were extended in 2015 in exchange for lifting a decades-old ban on crude oil exports.
Now, as the two chambers begin work on reconciling their versions of the bill, the clean energy industry is bracing for a fight.
Here's what the two tax bills, as currently written, would do.
New Hits to Clean Energy Investments
The Senate bill contains a provision that has raised alarm across the clean energy industry: The Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT) provision would subject tax credits given to companies with operations overseas to a new, 100 percent tax. That provision, according to a letter sent to the Senate by clean energy groups this week, would send investors fleeing and put $12 billion in clean-energy investments at risk. It says the impact would be "devastating."
"The tax equity marketplace would collapse under these provisions, leading to a dramatic reduction in wind and solar energy investment and development," the letter states.
Another last-minute change in the Senate bill, which was still being written just hours before the chamber voted on Dec. 2, could push more corporations to the Alternative Minimum Tax. The change could mean that certain clean energy tax credits could no longer be used and that depreciation for wind and solar projects would be calculated at a lower rate.
"If these provisions are retained, they will result in broad instability and uncertainty for businesses and investors across many sectors, including the clean energy sector," said a coalition of clean energy groups led by the American Council on Renewable Energy.
Solar Power
The Senate proposal says nothing about solar credits, so it would effectively maintain the current timeline on phasing out the Investment Tax Credit for solar developers and homeowners, which remains at 30 percent through 2019, then lowers every year until 2022, when it stays at 10 percent indefinitely. Congress approved this timetable in 2015, with the industry's support.
The House version maintains the current phase-down timetable, but at the end of 2021, the credit for homeowners drops to zero and the credit for developers drops to 10 percent. The 10 percent credit terminates altogether in 2027.
The House proposal also would retroactively change how solar developers qualify for credits, a provision that could stall or halt investments that have already been made. (This applies to wind, too. See below.)
Wind Power
The Senate proposal, which says nothing about wind credits, would effectively maintain the current timeline for phasing out the Production Tax Credit for wind developers, which is currently 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour and extends through 2019, but begins phasing down in 2017.
The House version maintains the timeline but removes an inflation adjustment, a move that would drop the value of the credit by 40 percent to 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.
The House proposal would also retroactively change the rules that dictate how wind developers qualify for credits. This change would mean that developers who started on wind projects that depended on the credits would, in effect, have to eat the costs or abandon the work. The American Wind Energy Association estimates this threatens 60,000 jobs and $50 billion in private investment.
Together, the inflation adjustment and eligibility rule change would mean $12.3 billion less in incentives over 10 years, according to an analysis by Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation.
Electric Vehicles
The Senate bill is silent on electric vehicle tax credits.
The House bill would eliminate the current $7,500 tax credit for purchases of electric vehicles, starting after the 2017 tax year.
Oil and Gas
The House and Senate bills maintain tax provisions for the oil industry, including deductions for drilling costs and preferential accounting rulesthat allow oil companies to reduce their tax burden.
In the Senate bill, an amendment offered by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and approved by the chamber would also allow some income from oil and gas companies to be taxed at a significantly lower rate. It would let energy companies classified as "master limited partnerships"—many based in Texas—qualify for the reduced rate under the "pass-through" benefit. (The New York Times points out that much of President Donald Trump's income has been taxed in this way.)
The House bill would kill tax breaks for the oil industry on marginal wells—a provision the Joint Committee on Taxation says will have no effect on revenue—and for "enhanced oil recovery," a process designed to extract more oil from old reservoirs, which the committee says will have a $200 million impact.
Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
The Senate bill would allow oil and gas companies to drill in a 1.5 million-acre area of Alaska's nearly 20-million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling in this pristine wilderness has been a longtime goal of Republicans, and the Senate voted down an amendment on Saturday that would have removed it from the tax bill.
The House bill contains similar language, but environmental groups are hopeful that, with some House Republicans expressing concern, it could be changed as the chambers negotiate the final legislation.
What's Next?
As lawmakers now work to settle differences between the two bills, environmental and clean energy groups are watching closely.
"The fight's not over," said Evan Vaughan, a spokesman for the American Wind Energy Association.
Members of the Senate Finance Committee, which writes tax legislation, have signaled they could also make changes to clean energy tax credits later using spending measures—as they did in 2015.
It's clear, though, that neither chamber is likely to scale back provisions in the tax code that boost the fossil fuel industry.
"If you're actually trying to address the challenges we're facing with the deficit, and how to offset these cuts, the first place you might cut is the $14 billion in subsidies for the oil and gas industry," said Elizabeth Noll, a legislative director with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Neither the House or Senate did."
https://www.ecowatch.com/tax-bill-wind-solar-2514029749.html