Methane Emissions far greater than believed from Natural Gas production

A major new study blows up the whole notion of natural gas as a short-term bridge fuel to a carbon-free economy.
Natural gas is mostly methane (CH4), a potent heat-trapping gas. If, as now seems likely, natural gas production systems leak 2.7% (or more), then gas-fired power loses its near-term advantage over coal and becomes more of a gangplank than a bridge.


http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/25/2988801/study-methane-emissions-natural-gas-production/

HOW BIG COMPANIES AVOIDED BILLIONS IN TAXES! The inside story.

THIS ARTICLE IS LONG BUT IT IS VERY INTERESTING and worthwhile in finding out about the TAX AVOIDANCE BY BIG COMPANIES.

It was a humbling experience for the chief executive of the world’s most valuable company. Hauled before a Senate panel, Apple’s Tim Cook had to explain how an American company whose American engineers had created the iPhone and the iPad was able to avoid paying any taxes on billions of dollars in profits generated by those products — not to United States, not to any country. The only defense the Cook could conjure up for Apple “stateless” income was that it was all perfectly legal.
A few miles away in Arlington, a 55-year-old economist named Marty Sullivan sat on a folding metal chair at a card table in the garage of his modest brick home and watched the hearing unfold on his laptop computer. Sullivan is one of those unheralded members of the permanent Washington establishment who make things work, at least when the politicians let them. And for two decades, from the same home office, Sullivan has been exposing the tax-dodging schemes of multinational corporations in the columns of Tax Notes, a must-read publication for tax lawyers, accountants and policy wonks.
It was Sullivan who shined an early light on how companies had finagled “transfer prices” — the price one division charges another for parts or services — to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/26/marty-sullivan-figured-out-how-the-worlds-biggest-companies-avoided-billions-in-taxes-heres-how-he-wants-to-stop-them/

Wealthiest are the Welfare Queens: Why do people feel the poor and middle class created the mess?

The GOP Triumph in Successfully Framing The Budget Debate
Around Austerity and the Necessity for Entitlement Cuts

The triumph of right-wing Republicanism extends further. Failure to reach a budget agreement will restart the so-called “sequester” — automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that were passed in 2011 as a result of Congress’s last failure to agree on a budget.

http://evans-politics.com/robert-reich-the-triumph-of-the-right.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook#.UmplIxxjgb0

KOCH BROTHERS WOULD MAKE 100 BILLION DOLLARS from a Keystone XL Pipeline

A new study released today concludes that Koch Industries and its subsidiaries stand to make as much as $100 billion in profits if the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is granted a presidential permit from U.S. President Barack Obama. 

   

http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/study-koch-brothers-could-make-100-bil#sthash.lyj8oLlk.dpbs

Supreme Court: 500 Wealthy People will control US Democracy if the Campaign Finance Law is overturned.

The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to strike down most of the remaining limits on massive spending by wealthy donors on political campaigns. On Tuesday, justices heard arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which has been referred to as "the next Citizens United." Republican leaders and wealthy GOP donor Shaun McCutcheon wants the Supreme Court to throw out aggregate limits on individual contributions in a single two-year cycle, saying they violate free speech. "If these advocate limitations go down, 500 people will control American democracy. It would be 'government for the 500 people,' not for anybody else — and that’s the risk,"

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/500-people-will-control-american-democracy-if-supreme-court-overturns-campaign?akid=11045.294211.ZIlatD&rd=1&src=newsletter910521&t=23

IMF Report says, "TAX THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS MORE" It caught a lot of people by surprise.

Tax the rich and better target the multinationals: The IMF has set off shockwaves this week in Washington by suggesting countries fight budget deficits by raising taxes.

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/tax-rich-imf-report-shocks-establishm

THE RIGHT WING: Why? Power and Money is the reason

The Teaparty Crowd generally make money than you or I.  They are white and used to having a large say in how their city, county, state and country are run.  Minority populations are increasing and there are more minorities in states like Texas and California.  So, for white folks to maintain power, they have to curb voting for minorities and cut benefits for the poor.  It is all about Whites continuing as the dominant people economically and politically.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/tea-party-radicalism-misunderstood-meet-newest-right?page=0%2C2&akid=11015.294211.QmbVMm&rd=1&src=newsletter906249&t=13

Klugman: Rich are waging class warfare.

  In a post at his blog, New York Times columnist and award-winning economist Paul Krugman argues that while it may appear the rich want to destroy all forms of government, that isn’t the case. What they really want to do, Krugman writes, is destroy all forms of government that don’t benefit themselves. 

http://www.alternet.org/krugman-rich-are-waging-pure-class-warfare

Corporations Get Billions in Welfare: Why Cut 40 Million in food stamps from the Poorest?

It’s perverse to weaken our nation’s first line of defense against hunger and poverty by $4 billion per year while giving hundreds of billions to big corporations that don’t need them. Here are a few examples of what your hard-earned tax dollars are spent on:

• $7 billion per year subsidizing the oil industry.
  
• $600 billion—15 times the value of proposed food stamp cuts—over a decade by allowing corporations to stash cash overseas.
  
• $1 trillion over a decade be allowing special tax exemptions and loopholes for multinational corporations and wealthy households.
  
• $137 billion over a decade by not negotiating prescription drug prices.
  
• Over $20 billion per year on farm subsidies.
  

http://www.nationofchange.org/10-farm-subsidy-recipients-who-voted-cut-food-stamps-1379857259

KOCH AND FRIENDS declare war on the Middle Class to make MORE MONEY.

The Billionaires got 90% of all profits made the last 10 years yet they want more.

Marc Short, the group’s president (who was previously chief of staff for former Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and also for then-Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana), told Politico the group was primarily a bunch of wealthy self-made businesspeople who were not seeking publicity but felt their propersity was under attack in America.
“Short said his members are ‘concerned that the nation that they had grown up in and that their businesses have flourished in will not be there for their children and grandchildren’ and are ‘committed to trying to restore what they view are free markets in a free society in America,’” Politico reported. “Many, he said, are ‘Horatio Alger-type stories,’ and most of them not household names, who got rich after starting small businesses, from service to manufacturing to information technology.”


http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/secret-quarter-billion-dollar-koch-brothers-political-operation-revealed?paging=off