TheDailyBanter.com

Bush Lifts Ban on Offshore Drilling

By Peter Bauer (Contributing Editor) and Tom Drake (Science and Environmental Analyst)  

On July 14th, President Bush issued a memorandum to lift the executive prohibition on oil exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).  Arguing that Americans are "feeling the squeeze of rising prices at the pump," Bush encouraged expanded domestic oil production. 

With this memorandum, Bush declared that "all Executive Branch restrictions on access (to offshore drilling) have been cleared away" and that "the ball is squarely in Congress's court."

Bush lauded the potential of oil shale, which he claimed could  "provide Americans with domestic oil supplies that are equal to a century's worth of current oil imports."  He further stated the drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would produce the equivalent of "two decades of imported oil from Saudi Arabia."

Bush concluded by saying that "this is a difficult period for millions of American families," and that every dollar spent on fuel costs is "one dollar less they can use to put food on the table or send a child to school."

This sets up as an argument of ‘hard-working-family’ wants vs. the potential catastrophic threat of climate change.  The public’s climate-change fatigue is well documented and with the economic slow down, people are likely to think with their pockets instead of their brains. Bush attempts to balance this by pitching offshore drilling as a temporary solution while America undergoes the transition to sustainable energy sources.

 

A Triadic Conundrum: Turkey, Kurds, and the United States

Exclusive to The Daily Banter

By Daniel Ritchie

The United States has entered a precarious situation in an area of the world which has been notoriously entangled in historical turbulence: northern Iraq. The Ottomans, the British, the Baathists and now the Americans are playing a deadly game of divide and conquer, with the local Kurds being the major playing piece.

Obama helps transparency in Government

By Ben Cohen

One of the main keys to restoring serious democratic values to American society is to make it more transparent. And that means tax payers should know exactly where their money is going, and what the federal government is spending it on. The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 created by Barack Obama along with Tom Coburn has resulted in a website USAspending.gov, that tracks every single dollar the Federal Government spends.

Obama may be a mainstream candidate running on a main stream agenda, but this is a big step in the right direction. The more we know about where our money is going, the more can do to prevent corruption.

The U.S government spends a ludicrous amount of money on defense, more than every other nation on the planet combined. Most Americans are largely unaware of this, so buy into the right wing fear mongering that tells them the U.S needs to spend more on its military.  With social spending diminishing, Americans wonder why health care is so expensive, and their pensions are eroding. Now, they will know why.

Papua New Guinea shames the Bush Administration...and wins

After years of denial, equivocation, obfuscation, and obstruction on the environment, the Bush Administration has finally been pressured into giving some ground...by Papua New Guinea.  The (economically) small island nation had no problem piling the shame on the U.S. delegation to the U.N. environment conference in Bali.  The delegate from Papua New Guinea told the United States to etiher lead or get the hell out of the way and stop trying to prevent other nations from making progress.  It was great, and worked.  To be certain, all they got was an agreement by the U.S. to allow negotiations to continue, which isn't much, but with a short speech they managed to accomplish what so many others have failed at. 

From the Guardian UK: 

           Late-night drama pushes US into climate deal

It overran by a day and the American delegation found itself being roundly booed, but a compromise deal on saving the planet has been hammered out at the climate change conference. Juliette Jowit, Caroline Davies and David Adam in Bali report

After tears, jeers and a dramatic eleventh-hour U-turn by the United States, a compromise deal for a new international climate change agenda was finally struck in Bali yesterday, just as talks appeared on the brink of collapse.

Amid extraordinary and emotional scenes, which at one point saw the American delegation booed at the UN climate change conference, ministers from more 180 countries thrashed out agreement after days of wrangling.

The resulting 'Bali roadmap' is a global warming pact that starts a two-year process of negotiations designed to agree a new set of emissions targets to replace those in the Kyoto protocol.

But the road was extremely rocky. Talks stalled as Paula Dobriansky, head of the US delegation, signalled that America opposed calls from poorer countries for technological and financial help to combat climate change. It seemed any agreement was doomed. Then Papua New Guinea took to the floor and, in a highly charged speech, its delegate challenged the US: 'If you're not willing to lead, get out of the way.'

Minutes later, in an astonishing reversal, Dobriansky returned to announce, to cheers from the hall: 'We will go forward and join the consensus.'

Read the full article here

 

Bush continues to lie about Iran

By Ben Cohen

The Bush Administration was caught up in another hugely embarrassing scandal this week, when it was revealed by a U.S intelligence report that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Having been through months of escalating rhetoric (World War 3, a nuclear attack on Israel etc), the report poured cold water on the idea that Iran posed an 'imminent threat' to the U.S. The Bush Administration has been caught red handed given it knew about the report when it came out. Not to be dissuaded by the facts, Bush is doing his best to convince everyone that the report actually proves Iran is even more of a threat.   

From the New York Times:

President Bush warned today that Iran remained a threat despite an intelligence assessment that it had halted a covert program to develop nuclear weapons four years ago, as the administration struggled to salvage a diplomatic process now in disarray.

The future is in weapons, not the environment says Naomi Klein

By Ben Cohen

George Bush believes environmental problems can be fixed by the 'free market', as it will cater to changes in consumer demand. However, eclipsing the environmental market is a major emerging market in private security and disaster relief. With the corporate capitalist onslaught against government, private companies are taking over where the state is failing, offering the rich protection from fires, floods, crime and immigrants. This is where venture capitalists are directing much of their money at the expense of the pressing need for environmental technologies to curb global warming.

In her latest article in the Guardian Naomi Klein explains why when markets are left alone, real problems do not get solved. Check it out here.

Despite the assertions of Bush & Co., the reality is that our ecomony sucks

Like so much of reality, the economy is not run by the delusions of the Bush administration. Their economic and social policies have been a dismal failure as well as a clear and unambiguous demonstration of the practical and moral bankruptcy of the neoconservative political philosophy. The fact is that they do not seem to comprehend why they think the economy is good (because for them is has been) and everyone else in America disagrees. One might assume that after such a long period of complete irrationality and arrogance in government, we might become immune to such appalling conditions, but it seems that no matter how many scandals and failures of policy and leadership we witness, each renews my sadness and disgust as if it were the first.
From the New York Times:
2005 Incomes, on Average, Still Below 2000 Peak

Published: August 21, 2007
by David Cay Johnston

Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they had to make ends meet with less money than at the peak of the last economic expansion, new government data shows.

While incomes have been on the rise since 2002, the average income in 2005 was $55,238, still nearly 1 percent less than the $55,714 in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, analysis of new tax statistics show.

The combined income of all Americans in 2005 was slightly larger than it was in 2000, but because more people were dividing up the national income pie, the average remained smaller. Total adjusted gross income in 2005 was $7.43 trillion, up 3.1 percent from 2000 and 5.8 percent from 2004.

Total income listed on tax returns grew every year after World War II, with a single one-year exception, until 2001, making the five-year period of lower average incomes and four years of lower total incomes a new experience for the majority of Americans born since 1945.The White House said the fact that average incomes were smaller five years after the Internet bubble burst “should not surprise anyone.”

The growth in total incomes was concentrated among those making more than $1 million. The number of such taxpayers grew by more than 26 percent, to 303,817 in 2005, from 239,685 in 2000.

These individuals, who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000.

People with incomes of more than a million dollars also received 62 percent of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003, according to a separate analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a group that points out policies that it says favor the rich.

The group’s calculations showed that 28 percent of the investment tax cut savings went to just 11,433 of the 134 million taxpayers, those who made $10 million or more, saving them almost $1.9 million each. Over all, this small number of wealthy Americans saved $21.7 billion in taxes on their investment income as a result of the tax-cut law.

The nearly 90 percent of Americans who make less than $100,000 a year saved on average $318 each on their investments. They collected 5.3 percent of the total savings from reduced tax rates on investment income.

Read the full article