Bad Subsidies- Worse President

A recent study of fossil fuel subsidies, published in the journal, World Development, has shown that industries in that sphere now benefit by over $5 trillion per year in subsidies. That doesn’t even take into account the cost of damages to the environment caused by the extraction, transportation and use of such fuels. $5 trillion is a staggering number, especially when one realizes that it is repeated every year and is currently rising from $4.9 trillion in 2013 to $5.3 trillion in 2015. There are no current figures but a simple progression shows that they should be in the neighborhood of $5.7 trillion by this year. The study finds that this amount represents 6.5% of total global GDP.

So what does this mean to us? Well, for one thing it represents a direct cost to every taxpayer for every dollar spent on these subsidies by their government. A subsidy is basically a government gift to the provider of a particular substance, in this case, oil, coal or gas, that the government wants the provider to be able to sell to the public at a lower than economically feasible price so as to encourage the use of that substance over another. In the case of fuel, it should represent some fuel that the government is trying to encourage the use of because it is in some way more beneficial to the public than its competitors. In the case of fossil fuels this is not true and in fact represents the exact opposite position. Fossil fuel is bad for the atmosphere, bad for our water systems and bad for any land that it travels through.

In addition, these egregious subsidies do not take into account the added costs incurred by the damage done in obtaining, using and transporting fossil fuels as part of our energy systems. We should be eliminating fossil fuels not providing subsidies to them. That, of course, would put our legislators at war with the fossil fuel lobbies that funnel millions of the dollars, acquired through these subsidies back into those same legislators in the forms of campaign donations and outright bribes. That, right there, is the biggest obstacle in reform.

Look at the simple fact that renewable energy, sun, wind, etc. is already topping the economic and environmental benefits of fossil fuel and in addition is creating 17 times the jobs that fossil fuel does. In a moral world this last figure alone would be reason enough to stop the extraction of fossil fuels immediately and transfer all energy activity to renewables, but that wouldn’t allow the billions in profits that are currently finding their way into the pockets of the fossil fuel barons.

If we had honest legislators, men who would vote the good of their constituents, the fossil fuel subsidies would stop immediately and some portion of them would be switched over to renewables. But that’s just not how the world works. Our crooked President, in his support of the fossil fuel industries, is proving that every day. Why does he do this? It’s hard to nail down without getting a look at his balance sheet, but the smart money says that he is heavily invested in oil and coal and the smarter money says that he is in bed with Russian oil interests.

So how can subsidies be used to help instead of hinder safe energy? Well, the most efficient way is to give monies to a particular industry to boost its ability to compete in the marketplace. This is done by paying that industry a set amount per measurable volume of production. In the case of oil, it is so much per barrel or with coal, so much per ton. You may have noticed that no mention of profit or loss was involved in the explanation. That’s because subsidies rarely involve profit or loss. That might curtail their distribution.

Despite the fact that their product has been scientifically proven to be hazardous to our environment and to be causing global warming, we are paying out enormous sums of taxpayer money to encourage companies that are making billions in pre-subsidy profits to produce more of what they would already be producing without the subsidy. Crazy? Yeah! But it’s really profitable for the scum that are busy trying to kill off you and your kids.

Tearing these subsidies away from those currently enjoying them will be almost impossible without acquiring a whole new set of legislators in both House and Senate, but it can be done. So can single payer healthcare, functional tax changes, infrastructure and so much more. What it takes is wholesale change in Washington and not the kind brought about by Donald Trump. It’s obvious that his voters expected what I am describing and it’s just as obvious that they didn’t get what they expected but it’s also clear that they won’t get it from either one of the existing parties as they are currently constructed.

Most of the Republicans and some Democrats are far too dishonest to ever look to help the people who voted them into office, not when lobbyists are handing out cash by the bundle. Most of the Democrats and some Republicans are too unrealistic to ever see the real problems instead of the minor bullshit that people like Trump spend their days wallowing in. They will never be able to create a clear path to improvement because their pristine tunnel vision keeps them from seeing the broader landscape of importance. Looking at the rosters on both sides of the aisle there aren’t more than three or four potential presidential candidates that have both the charisma to get elected and the vision to do something once they’ve won. That’s pathetic but it is what it is.

The potential is out there but we have to find it. To do that perhaps we have to scuttle both parties and find another way to fund elections. It is essential that we find those candidates if only so that we can get the current subsidy mess turned around.

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Okay, so the thing in Charlottesville happened and he jumped the shark…again. So what else is new? What did you expect? You think he was all of sudden going to start acting presidential? Haven’t you been paying attention? This is it! This is what we got and this is what we’re going to get. The only thing he didn’t lie about is what he is; an egomaniacal sociopath, pathologically dishonest with tendencies toward self-destruction. And he’s got his finger on the button.

This week it wasn’t playing chicken with worldwide annihilation, this week is was embracing anti-social degenerates who still think he’s an asshole for allowing himself to acquire a Jew as a son-in-law. Oh yes, and while the riots were going on and the legions of the damned were parading through this peaceful little Virginia town waving torches in the true tradition of the KKK and singing anti-Semitic songs, where was newly converted Jewess Ivanka and young Jared, the President’s number one advisor and a true member of the Tribe? Ivanka has condemned the Alt-Right, the Nazis, the white Supremacists but no word has come down from Jared. Why? Has he surrendered his Jewishness to be a member of his father-in-law’s coterie of fascists? Is he stupid enough to think that they will ever accept him? Do Steve Miller, Gary Cohen, Steve Mnuchin, the rest of the Jews and the couple of blacks in Herr Trump’s White House circle think that he will not betray them? Maybe they need a little lesson in history, a lesson that pre-dates Kristalnacht.

In 1927 the Ku Klux Klan rallied in Queens, NY, just across the East River from Manhattan. Not unexpectedly, a riot ensued and one of those Klansmen who was arrested, robe and all, was real estate developer Fred Trump. Guess whose father Fred Trump is? Now if Fred Trump was a virulent enough racist and bigot to belong to the Klan in NYC where it wasn’t a political or business asset the way it was down south, it stands to reason that conversation around the Trump house, when it came around to such matters, was at least sprinkled with racial pejoratives and that the sentiments expressed were anything but liberal. So we have a legitimate basis for the sentiments that we now see Trump expressing.

His Birther attacks on Obama, based on absolutely nothing, were just early expressions of the kind of racial sentiments that drive Trump and lead him to support the actions of the degenerate Alt-Right.

This writer is not familiar enough with the writings of the White Supremacist groups, those of them that can write, but I am certainly familiar enough with the KKK and the neo-Nazi’s to be able to say that they are such a vile threat to the health and safety of any nation that they should be eliminated by any means necessary. Yeah, I know; that’s not a very liberal sentiment but then I’ve never been a real liberal and I’ve never been a cheek turner.

The KKK and the Nazi’s throughout their history have proven to be violent and subversive far past the boundaries of human acceptance. In my more virulent right wing moments I have considered the functionality of lining them all up and shooting them. This, of course, can never be. Even stopping them from expressing their vile sentiments is a violation of freedom of speech, that right, which is the bedrock on which the concept of American freedom is built, cannot be violated. Even outlawing their organizations would be the first step to a new McCarthyism, a horrendous danger, from which we are never more than a short distance.

So we live with these diseases, much the way we live with cancer and aids, searching for a cure, and when we can, inoculating against them with knowledge and education, fighting against all odds to expose our youth to the truths that will kill this infection of the mind before it seduces them. The reality though, is that we will probably never be free from the infections carried by these diseased animals. There will always be those that fail in life and those with a desire to lead the failed. Those two elements are what make up the alt-Right, an accumulation of losers who cannot successfully climb the wall of life and those who are clever enough but unsuccessful enough themselves to want to be bothered leading them.

Who among us has never been ill treated or taken advantage of by some one or some group? The answer is always to turn the situation around and triumph over our adversaries. But that’s never the answer for the losers of the Alt-Right. They may rail against those that subvert them but they never seem to get it together to triumph over them. Instead they find some one or some group against whom they can take out their anger. When the Union armies crushed the traitors who supported the enslavers and the greedy plantation owners looking for free labor, only Quantrill’s raiders, a gang of thieves and murderers stood up to the citizens of the north and even then, not to any organized forces. Instead what the brave men of the south did was don white masks and attack individuals, women and children, raping and lynching, like the cowards that they were.

As in Charlottesville, the Klan and the Nazi’s have always believed in the safety of numbers and anonymity, that’s why those Trump described peaceful demonstrators showed up clad in armor and carrying guns. Every peaceful demonstration needs those safety features, doesn’t it? The Klan-like torches and the vile chants and songs only added to the unacceptability of the herd. Yes, there were demonstrators on the left who came to fight. No question, but the violence was directed first by the neo-Nazis and KKK want-a-bees. A Nazi with a car committed the only murder and the only guns drawn were by KKK cowards. No, the right came to do violence. Trump’s excuse that many in that crowd were only there to protest the removal of a statue was as ridiculous as he is. The statues were of two southern traitors, men who led forces against the United States, men who having been West Point graduates had sworn loyalty to the United States of America but who attacked it for greed and the subjugation of human beings. In a different political climate they would both have been righteously hung.

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God bless Ali Velshi & Stephanie Rhule. They had a Trump backer and advisor named Brad Thomas on the show today and as he began lying about everything that Trump is doing economically they systematically kicked the living crap out of him. Every lying statement he made they refuted with indisputable facts. Every incorrect supposition he put forth they stomped on with both feet. They left this poor clown humiliated and hanging in shreds on the back of the set. I have never seen such an all-inclusive demolition on TV in my life. This was Mohammad Ali vs Joe Blow and it was all done with facts and attitude.

Neither of these financial reporters was about to accept bullshit from a clown like Thomas. Every time he said anything they refuted it with truth. There isn’t anywhere near enough of this on the tube. Not enough people seem to realize that someone speaking on almost any TV program is speaking to and influencing millions of people, because right or wrong, people seem to believe what they hear on TV.

For that very reason it is imperative that the truth will out and Velshi and Rhule are among the top progenitors of that theory. They proved it today as they have many times before… in spades. Let’s hope they stay with it and get to do it every day in every way.