Author Archives: RF_Alum

The Rich Pay All the Taxes

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Jane Wells reported last December on CNBC that the Congressional Budget Office had issued a report analyzing the amount of taxes paid by the “five tiers of wage earners” for 2010.The report doesn’t seem to indicate that the rich are getting away without paying their fair share, although those who advocate there is income inequality will find ammunition for their argument if they read deeper into the report. The report presents the statistics on payment of taxes by the different income groups in a variety of graphs and written discussions. (The report is overly long and not written to keep your attention, but it contains thought-provoking information.) Table 3 on page 13 shows the lowest wage-earning quintile pays 0.4% of all federal taxes, the second quintile pays 3.8%, the third 9.1%, the fourth 17.6% and the top quintile pays 68.8%.

The report includes the interesting kicker that the top three quintiles pay all the taxes!  Page 11 of the report says, “Much of the progressivity of the federal tax system derives from the individual income tax. In 2010, the lowest quintile’s average rate for the individual income tax was -9.2 percent and the second income quintile’s rate was -2.3%…(A group can have a negative income tax rate if its refundable tax credits exceed the income tax otherwise owed.)…For example, although the lowest quintile’s average rate for individual income tax was about -9 percent, more than one-quarter of the households in that quintile had an average rate below -15 percent, more than one-quarter had a rate of zero or higher, and nearly half had an average rate between -15 percent and zero.” Continue reading →

Beware of Pension Predators

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There is valuable information in an article by Marsha Mercer for retirees struggling to pay their living expenses. Many didn’t save enough for retirement and some who did save and invest were driven from the stock market with heart-breaking losses during the financial crisis. Many of those didn’t get back in the market, which would have resulted in them recovering the losses. They probably instead put their money in “safe investments”, such as insured certificates of deposit (CDs). The Federal Reserve policies have driven those kinds of investments to paying interest rates that are below the rate of inflation. Putting money in a CD or similar relatively safe instruments at this moment in time is like saying to the banker, “Take my money and give me almost all of it back when the certificate matures.” The result is that many retirees are looking for ways to pay monthly expenses without the help of income from investments.

There have been a slew of ads on television targeting retirees.  The ads tell people they don’t have to wait to get their money from retirement programs or structured settlements.  Mercer’s article warns against jumping at those offers. It describes a retiree beset by bills that “…arranged to get a cash advance in exchange for signing over most of his $1,083 monthly pension for eight years.” He agreed to pay $1,070 a month in return for money up front. The cost for the $42,131 cash advance was $102,720. He was named the lead plaintiff in a suit against the company and the judge ordered all the people could stop making payments and that the retirees would be repaid nearly $3 million. The company declared bankruptcy and none of the victims were paid anything. Continue reading →

The Samson Option

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samson-optionThis is a fascinating book by Seymour M. Hersh. As suggested by the subtitle, “Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy,” the book is split between describing how Israel developed nuclear weapons and a succession of American Presidents mostly turning a blind eye toward what Israel was doing. Some of the information is astonishing, and I often wondered whether the information was fact or fiction. There seems to have been a significant amount of research in the form of interviews with Israelis and Americans who could have known the secrets that are discussed. My inclination is to present the book as factual, and that is mostly because that would make the book more interesting!

The story begins with a description of how the U.S. shared high resolution images from a spy satellite called the “KH-11.” It seems a bit odd that the Israelis supposedly promised not to use the images for military purposes but used them to develop targets in the Soviet Union. They also used them to target and destroy the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak twelve miles north of Baghdad in early June 1981. The bombing raid was accomplished with F-16s that had been purchased from the U.S. “for defensive purposes only.” The bombing brought about worldwide protest and was the first Middle East crises for the Reagan administration. President Reagan asked his national security advisor, Richard Allen why the Israelis had bombed the facility and was told “Well. Boys will be boys.” The real answer was that Menachem Begin had said that it was necessary to prevent Iraq from developing a nuclear weapon. He said Iraq having nuclear weapons would result in “another Holocaust.” He then added, “Never again! Never again!” Nine hundred Jewish defenders had committed suicide at Masada in 73 A.D. while Samson had killed himself and his captors by pushing apart the temple pillars where he was chained. “For Israel’s nuclear advocates, the Samson Option became another way of saying ‘Never again!’” Continue reading →

Bosnian Serbs Erect Statue for Assassin Who Started WWI

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Recent commemorations of the beginning of World War I led me to reflect on the difficulties or impossibilities of overcoming centuries of ethnic hatred. One news report described how “Artists and diplomats declared a new century of peace and unity in Europe …in the city where the first two shots of World War I were fired…” Not everyone saw it that way. Another report described Bosnian Serbs unveiling a statute of Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb teenager who killed Crown Prince Ferdinand after Ferdinand had travelled to Sarajevo to inspect his occupying troops.

A hundred years of time have not resolved the divisions. Austrian President Heinz Fischer said “Europeans have learned that no problem can be solved by war. Milorad Dodik, president of the Bosnian Serb half of the country called Princip “…a freedom fighter and the Austro Hungarian empire was an occupier here.”  He added that the people are still divided in “…this country which is being held together by international violence.” An actor portraying Princip posed in front of his statue with a pistol as people shouted “shoot at NATO” and “shoot at the EU.” Continue reading →

Salt of the Earth

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The Phrase Finder explains that the expression refers to those “…of great worth and reliability.” The expression was mentioned in the King James version of the Bible in Mathew 5:13. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the expression is that its meaning is in conflict with the fact that salt was spread on the land to poison it for growing crops in the Middle Ages “…as a punishment to landowners who had transgressed against society in some way.” The positive connotation of the expression was instead based on the value of salt. The powerful were “above the salt” and valued workers were “worth their salt.”

Rocky Flats Then and Now—Contamination

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I was unable to attend the final day of the event held at the Arvada Center June6-8, but a person who did attend provided the following commentary:

I’m a former Rocky Flats employee, employed there at the time of FBI/EPA raid.  I attended most of the activities for “Rocky Flats Then and Now: 25 Years After the Raid.”  The event that I found the most consistently factual among all panel participants and the most currently useful was the Sunday, June 8th panel discussion “What Do We Know today about Contamination from Rocky Flats?”  The panel was moderated by Len Ackland, author of Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West, and included panel members David Abelson, Exec. Dir.,  Rocky Flats Stewardship Council; Niels Schonbeck, Chemistry Prof., Univ. of CO Denver and Regis Univ. and a former member of the Rocky Flats Environmental Monitoring Council; Carl Spreng, Rocky Flats Legacy Management Agreement Coordinator for the Colorado Dept. of Health and Environment; and Scott Surovchak, DOE Office of Legacy Management.

Some key points that I got out of the panel included:  1) RF site plutonium soil and surface water cleanup standards are some of, if not the, most stringent in the nation, over 10 times more stringent even than those recommended by long-time RF activist LeRoy Moore; 2) site institutional controls include prohibition against excavations and unauthorized access; 3) limited remaining buried facility contamination is primarily non-dispersible, not easily mobilized, fixed contamination on concrete or inside pipes; 4) cleanup involved extensive opportunities for stakeholder input and well-considered standards development; 5) extensive environmental monitoring has been done and will continue to assure protection of the RF site and nearby neighborhoods; 6) extensive flooding that occurred at the site within this past year provided a good test and confirmation that contaminant levels remained below the established limits; 7) reports and monitoring data are available to the public. Continue reading →