Category Archives: Commentary

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 →

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 →

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 →

Rocky Flats Then and Now—A Surprising Revelation

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The event held at the Arvada Center June 6-8, 2014 was interesting, and I commend the organizers and participants. I have posted earlier commentaries about the event, and I am considering perhaps one more. One panel discussion was titled “The Raid in Retrospect—Keynote Panel.” The Moderator was Patty Limerick and the panel consisted of Jon Lipsky (FBI leader of the raid), Former Governor Roy Romer, and former Congressman David Skaggs.

David Skaggs was the first panelist to speak who described how he had won a close Congressional race and was told by Tim Wirth, “Now Rocky Flats is yours.” Mr. Skaggs added that he was unaware of the raid until after it began and was made public.

Former Colorado Governor Romer was next, who began by describing how the Governor of Idaho refused three railroad cars of waste from Rocky Flats (an important occurrence). He toured the Plant and issued an order that limited the amount of waste allowed to be stored there.

The mostly mundane nature of what was being discussed was broken with Governor Romer saying that he was going to discuss something for the first time in public. He described how he had been informed that a night-time surveillance flyover of Building 771 at Rocky Flats had identified heat coming from the stack, which was interpreted to indicate that wastes were being illegally incinerated. He said he was very concerned and went to the Plant to look at the incinerator. (What follows approximates his comments.) “The incinerator was about the size of a refrigerator. I asked how many people had to be in the loop to run this ‘furnace.’ I was told it takes 30 people, and I didn’t think the ‘furnace’ had burned. Years later the FBI said the film was faulty and didn’t show the ‘furnace’ was burning.” Continue reading →

Rocky Flats Papers Unsealed

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One of the panels that was part of the event at the Arvada Center about the Rocky Flats raid was  titled “The Raid in Retrospect.” The panel consisted of moderator Patty Limerick, Jon Lipsky (leader of the FBI Raid team), Roy Romer (Colorado governor in 1989), and David Skaggs (Colorado Congressman in 1989).

Mr. Lipsky said in his remarks that he had asked Mike Norton to delay forming the Special Federal Grand Jury. He added the case got out of hand quickly, and he was ordered to unseal the search warrant. He finished by offering the opinion the reason for the Grand Jury was to keep a seal on the documents. That comment feeds the conspiracy theory that there are 65 boxes of evidence from the raid that would reveal sites of contamination and environmental crimes not pursued by the government.

An audience member asked why the government wouldn’t allow anyone to look at the content of the 65 boxes. The panel members sat looking at each other in silence for a time after the question. Congressman Skaggs earned my respect by stepping up with an answer that I’m certain was not popular with the audience. He said that, as a lawyer, he understood the reason why Grand Jury information needed to be treated as secret. It would be “a slippery slope” to begin releasing such information to meet special needs. He said he was willing to let the courts decide.  Continue reading →