Suburban Guerrilla

Well, we knew this one wasn’t going away:

A proposal by Canadian oil firm TransCanada to seek new approval for segments of its Keystone XL pipeline project was greeted warmly by the Obama White House today. In a letter sent to the US State Department, the company said it would seek a ‘Presidential Permit application (cross border permit) in the near future for the Keystone XL Project from the U.S./Canada border in Montana to Steele City, Nebraska. TransCanada would supplement that application with an alternative route in Nebraska as soon as that route is selected.’

In effect, TransCanada is using a divide-and-conquer method by splitting up the original Keystone route in two. The lower half of the pipeline would now start in Oklahoma and travel to Texas, but because it does not cross an international border it would not require the special cross-border permit. The northern half would still need federal approval, but TransCanada would begin building the lower half even without it. The company would apply separately to the various federal and state permits for the southern portion of the pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to the company’s letter by saying, “We look forward to working with TransCanada to ensure that it is built in a safe, responsible and timely manner, and we commit to take every step possible to expedite the necessary Federal permits.”

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With his un-American ways:

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that it’s a “myth” that high taxes are “strangling” U.S. corporations.

In a Monday op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum called for the corporate tax rate to be halved from 35 percent to 17.5 percent to “[r]estore America’s competitiveness.”

CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Buffet what he thought the highest rate should be.

“What the rate should be are rates that bring in about 18.5 or so percent of GDP [gross domestic product] as revenue,” the Oracle of Omaha explained. “The interesting thing about the corporate rate is that corporate profits, as a percentage of GDP last year were the highest or just about the highest in the last 50 years. They were 10 and a fraction percent of GDP. That’s higher than we’ve seen in 50 years.”

He continued: “The corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP were 1.2 percent, $180 billion. That’s just about the lowest we’ve seen. So our corporate tax rate last year, effectively, in terms of taxes paid for the United States, was around 12 percent, which is well below those existing in most of the industrialized countries around the world.”

“So it is a myth that American corporations are paying 35 percent or anything like it. Incidentally, 1.2 percent of GDP or 12 or so percent of corporate profits actually paid, that is a rate far, far, far below what we’ve seen in the United States. … Corporate taxes are not strangling American competitiveness.”

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Mac McClelland at Mother Jones has another great undercover piece:

“Leave your pride and your personal life at the door,” the lady at the chamber of commerce says, if I want to last as an online warehouse worker.

[...] Speed-walking back to the electro-trauma of the books sector, I wince when I unintentionally imagine the types of Christmas lore that will prevail around my future household. I feel genuinely sorry for any child I might have who ever asks me for anything for Christmas, only to be informed that every time a “Place Order” button rings, a poor person takes four Advil and gets told they suck at their job.

I suppose this is what they were talking about in the radio ad I heard on the way to work, the one that was paid for by a coalition of local businesses, gently begging citizens to buy from them instead of off the internet and warning about the importance of supporting local shops. But if my coworker Brian wants to feed his new baby any of these 24-packs of Plum Organics Apple & Carrot baby food I’ve been picking, he should probably buy them from Amazon, where they cost only $31.16. In my locally owned grocery store, that’s $47.76 worth of sustenance. Even if he finds the time to get in the car to go buy it at a brick-and-mortar Target, where it’d be less convenient but cost about the same as on Amazon, that’d be before sales tax, which physical stores, unlike Amazon, are legally required to charge to help pay for the roads on which Brian’s truck, and more to the point Amazon’s trucks, drive.

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How did this happen? Why was Arne Duncan serving on a panel with Michelle Rhee, who’s under investigation by his department?

Richard L. Hyde is one who believes that Mr. Duncan should keep his distance. Last year, Mr. Hyde directed 60 state agents in a nine-month investigation of cheating in the Atlanta public schools. They identified 178 teachers and principals in nearly half of the city’s schools who cheated — 82 of whom confessed. The case they built is so strong that criminal indictments are expected.

Mr. Hyde said that to get witnesses to cooperate in such investigations, they must believe that the political leadership is committed. “I’m shocked that the secretary of education would be fraternizing with someone who could potentially be the target of the investigation,” he said. “The appearance of a conflict of interest is troubling because it can cause the public to lose faith in the investigation.”

In Atlanta, the governor at the time, Sonny Perdue, provided extensive resources for the inquiry and then stayed away. “I purposely kept a very low profile and let investigators do their work,” Mr. Perdue said in an interview.

Gee. You don’t suppose the secretary of education is less than committed to nailing Rhee, do you?

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How did we sink to where less than 12 percent of workers are represented by unions? To where the corporate media allows perversely false phrases such as “right to work” to enter the language? More here.

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Shorter David Pogue:

Hey, at least they don’t have to give blowjobs!

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Dave Johnson continues to do incredibly good work. I wish someone would offer him a high-visibility job somewhere:

This new election-funding system has our candidates trolling for billionaire and corporate dollars instead of coming up with policies and positions that serve the people. Did you think Republicans were talking about billionaires as “job creators” because it would get them votes? No, it is because vain, wealthy, greedy billionaires like to be described that way, and those politicians are trying to get them to loosen their wallets. Even if they lose the election they are looking for rewards — lucrative jobs — later.

Even if they aren’t trolling for billionaire bucks, they still dare not offend. These super PACs are in the business of running nasty, negative ads, and lots of them. Politicians want them on their side and not on the other side. So they are much, much less likely to oppose policies that favor the billionaires and their big corporations.

Did you think the country needs an oil pipeline that runs from our northern border all the way across the country to Gulf Coast ports, to help Canadian oil companies sell to China? No, this is about politicians getting big checks from oil companies.

President Obama OK’d a super PAC. A week later he comes out with a proposal to cut corporate taxes from 35% to 25%. Coincidence? And Obama’s tax-reform plans pale in comparison to what billionaire-and-corporate-backed Republicans are proposing. Both parties are proposing rewriting the tax codes to favor the billionaires and their giant corporations.

Go read the whole thing.

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Privatization of prisons is what happens when right-wing politicians collude with corporations to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub,” to borrow Grover Norquist’s vivid phrase. A major church has belatedly taken a stand against such ventures:

The General Board of Pension and Health Benefits of the United Methodist Church, “after six months of study, discussion and prayerful consideration,” announced on January 3 that it had withdrawn nearly $1 million in stocks from two private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group.

A spokesperson for the board said the decision was not based on finance, but morality. “Our board simply felt that it did not want to profit from the business of incarcerating others,” Colette Nies, managing director of communications for the board, told The Crime Report.

She added: “We believe that profiting from incarceration is contrary to Church values.”

The decision comes after a year of lobbying by the National Prison Divestment Campaign, a coalition of immigrant rights, criminal justice and other organizations targeting CCA and GEO. The effort seeks to convince private and public institutions that for-profit prisons are a bad idea.

One of the major objections to private prisons is that, unlike normal prisons, they have no incentive to rehabilitate prisoners because private prisons profit from keeping people incarcerated. Last week CCA was the subject of controversy when it was revealed that it was offering to buy state-owned prisons and operate them for 20 years on the condition that the states keep the prisons at least 90% full.

It’s a pleasure, and a bit of a surprise, to learn that some Christian groups ultimately can’t stomach investing in businesses that are clearly un-Christian.

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We can’t really acknowledge anything that contradicts the corporate-driven conventional wisdom about privatizing schools, though:

One day before Chicago School Board members vote on whether to “turn around” a record number of flagging schools, a new study emerged Tuesday that dumped on the results of the city’s major turnaround vendor.

About 33 neighborhood schools with at least 95 percent low-income students not only outscored equally poor schools cleared out of all staff and “turned around’’ by the Academy for Urban School Leadership, but even beat the city test score average, the study by Designs for Change indicated.

And the neighborhood schools did so without the average $7 million per school in funds and facility improvements over five years given the typical AUSL school — and with far less teacher turnover, the study said.

Don Moore, executive director of Designs for Change, said CPS should try to duplicate the formula of success at its own high-scoring, high-poverty neighborhood schools before it pays AUSL to turn around more schools.

“If you look down this list of [33 high-poverty neighborhood schools], most people have never heard of them but the turnaround people get all the publicity and they have not done as well,’’ Moore said.

Often, the study found, neighborhood schools outperformed equally-poor AUSL turnaround schools located only a few miles away. For example, in the South Shore neighborhood, Powell came in No. 14, while AUSL’s Bradwell was No. 194.

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Barring some act of God, or social upheaval that results in something akin to revolution, the numbers indicate that the 99 percent are screwed. More here.

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John O’Brien was the register of deeds in South Essex County, Massachusetts, and he was one of two who audited mortgage fraud in their jurisdiction. Yves Smith has this from him today on the proposed mortgage settlement:

It is my opinion that this deal has been crafted for the banks and by the banks. It is not in the best interest of the consumer, the homeowner, or the taxpayer. Simply put, I do not trust these lenders who have flooded my registry with over 32,000 fraudulent documents to do the right thing. Those homeowners who now have a corrupted title are looking for answers. This deal gives them none. The illegal activity by the banks is nothing shy of a criminal enterprise, where they crossed state lines using the United States Postal Service to deliver the instruments that were fraudulent and contained forgeries.

I know – why don’t you tell the feds they were also selling medical marijuana? Problem solved!

I will continue to pursue my request for Federal and State grand juries to be impaneled to hold the CEOs of these banks liable for the crimes that have been committed under their watch. The only thing missing in this illegal scheme that MERS and the big banks came up with was a gun and a mask. I will continue to expose this fraud and work everyday to make sure that the taxpayers are fully reimbursed for the over $44 million dollars in lost recording fees in my district alone by institutions who still believe fees are “for thee but not for me.” A message needs to be sent to these banks that they may think that you are too big to fail but they are not too big to go to jail.

We need a common sense approach in order to get this economy running again. I strongly believe that the hardworking homeowners who have struggled to stay current on their mortgages should be able to refinance their homes quickly at a fixed rate of 3%. A true national program with these terms would lower payments and infuse millions into our economy immediately.

Let’s not forget that foreclosures benefit no one. When a bank auctions off a home for less than is owed, that becomes the “comp” for the neighborhood. Simply put, your home and those of your neighbors are worth less. It makes far better sense to work with struggling homeowners and to take whatever action is needed to keep people in their homes.

Unless we face the facts and approach this with common sense we will be talking about the same issues a year from now and I am not sure we can wait that long.

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Since so many aren’t paying anything now, this should result in an increase:

WASHINGTON — President Obama will ask Congress to scrub the corporate tax code of dozens of loopholes and subsidies to reduce the top rate to 28 percent, down from 35 percent, while giving preferences to manufacturers that would set their maximum effective rate at 25 percent, a senior administration official said on Tuesday.

Mr. Obama also would establish a minimum tax on multinational corporations’ foreign earnings, the official said, to discourage “accounting games to shift profits abroad” or actual relocation of production overseas.

His proposal would close a lot of the present loopholes, which Republicans of course oppose.

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Nope, no evil incentives to arrest people there! Via Smirking Chimp, Jayne Lyn Stahl:

Last week Reader Supported News reported that a giant private prison company, Corrections Corporations of America, has approached virtually every state in the union with the offer that they’d buy up their prisons, and “manage convicted criminals at a cost-savings.”

What better time for such an offer, too, when states like California are releasing many minor offenders for lack of money, but a closer look shows that this kind of offer is not unlike a leveraged buyout of federal and state prisons, but with one obvious caveat: per Reader Supported News, too, the company in this case, Corrections Corporations of America, is demanding a 20 year contract. And, more importantly, prisons must be delivered 90% full. 90% full of what, you might ask, of human “product.” Inmates are the assets at the root of prison privatization.

CCA has already devoted $250 million to this so-called prison management venture which is, in reality, not unlike the reconstruction deals awarded to Halliburton after the occupation in Iraq. The independent contractors earn just as much revenue as the parent company.

1 in 100 Americans are behind bars as the New York Times has reported. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. That number is bound to grow when more companies like Corrections Corporations of America get a whiff of all the money to be made in this industry.

This is nothing new, of course, former vice-president, Dick Cheney’s Vanguard Group, while dealing in mutual funds, has famously found a breeding ground for investor money in private prisons for the past several years.

What’s the difference between what CCA is doing, and what Vanguard and other companies that deal in privatizing prisons have done?
[...]

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We have such immoral people running our world:

Just a few months ago, Illinois gave retail giant Sears $275 million to keep its corporate headquarters in the state, after Sears threatened to move elsewhere (including, potentially, Ohio). To show its appreciation for receiving millions in taxpayer funds, as Greg Leroy pointed out at the Clawback blog, Sears announced last week that it will lay off 100 workers at those headquarters:

Despite a huge subsidy package enacted by the state of Illinois in December, Sears Holdings Corp. has already announced layoffs at its headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates. Last week, the retailer announced that 100 HQ staff will be laid off…That December deal, valued at up to $275 million, came after Sears threatened to relocate in headquarters to another state. Its predecessor company, Sears, Roebuck & Co., played the same “job blackmail” game in 1989. The $168 million, 23-year deal it won then was soon to expire when Sears Holdings announced it might again be footloose.

The deal that Illinois signed with Sears actually gives the company the option to lay off another 1,750 workers in the state without penalty, meaning that Illinois paid millions of dollars to potentially see close to 2,000 jobs disappear. “The only surprise is that people are surprised by this,” said state Rep. Jack Franks (D). “The governor knew that this was going to happen, and he pretended he didn’t.”

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I watched “The Last Mountain” on Netflix today, the 2011 documentary about a citizen uprising in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia against Massey Energy’s attempt to remove the last mountain protecting residents from the worst contamination of the company’s mountaintop mining.

Absolutely infuriating, heartbreaking and inspiring in turn. I have to say, if Bobby Kennedy ran for president tomorrow, I’d go work for him. I didn’t think I could ever feel like that again.

P.S. You can watch the entire thing on YouTube for $2.99.

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