This week, Apple CEO Tim Cook was questioned in a Congressional Hearing about his company’s complex scheme to avoid paying taxes.  According to Mr. Cook, the company’s stash of billions of dollars in overseas shell corporations was not tax dodging – it was ingenuity.  And, just in case anyone actually fell for the tech company’s creative explanation, Mark Gongloff of the Huffington Post shared an incredible chart, which illustrates exactly how unjust our nation’s tax system has really become.

The chart was produced by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and it shows how the sources of federal revenue have changed over several decades.  In 1950, corporations contributed over 30 percent to our nation’s revenue, and individual income and payroll taxes made up about 45 percent.  But today, corporations only contribute 17 percent, and individuals are paying for over 60 percent of federal revenue.

So, despite all the Republican claims about the U.S. having the world’s highest tax rate – corporations are contributing less to our nation than ever before.  Yet, corporate executives like Tim Cook have the audacity to say we should be celebrating their “ingenuity.”  These companies make the huge profits they have been raking in by using the commons that our tax dollars develop and maintain.

Without roads and bridges, communications systems and utilities, corporations couldn’t get their products into the hands of hard-working Americans.  They should be paying for the privilege to do business here.  American tax payers should not be picking up a larger share of the tab, while corporate executives hold on to an ever-increasing share of the profits.  Let’s tell companies like Apple that we’ll celebrate their ingenuity just as soon as they start paying their fair share.

Originally published at ThomHartmann.Com.

The following chart measures the growth of hunger over the past few years in Europe and the US:

If you can’t afford food, there’s really nowhere to go but up. That’s why it’s so shocking just how many more hungry people there are now in what were formerly known as the world’s well-off nations. According to a new Pew report released today, almost a quarter of people (24 percent) in the United States and Greece answered “yes” to the question, “Have there been times during the last year when you did not have enough money to buy food your family needed?”

The good news is that the stock market is roaring and the top 1% have been doing really well. So that’s good.

Another aging highway bridge falls, cars and people in the water… This problem was well-known and urgent years ago! But Republicans block it, saying fixing our infrastructure is “more government spending.” Fixing our infrastructure is also jobs and economic growth. And after you fix or build a bridge you have the bridge.

A continuing series
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In Seattle another aging bridge has fallen. The American Society of Civil Engineers report America’s 2013 Infrastructure Report Card gives us a D+ and says we are $3.6 trillion behind in infrastructure maintenance. And this is just to catch up, not get ahead.

This work has to be done at some point but today we have a 10 million person employment gap. And today we can get the money to do this at close to zero percent. We have the double need — it needs doing and we need jobs — and we can get the money almost free.

The hiring and purchase of American-made materials involved in fixing the infrastructure would bring millions of jobs. It would boost the economy, increase the tax revenue and decrease safety-net spending.

Fix Or Build A Bridge: You Have The Bridge

And did I mention that when we fix or build a bridge we have the bridge? After we have updated the roads, bridges, electrical systems, dams, airports and everything else that means our economy is much more competitive and efficient. So the benefits continue. Compare that to the supposed benefits of tax cuts. After the tax cuts you are left with the debt they cause and less revenue with which to pay it off.

This is a trifecta of the urgent need to fix our aging infrastructure matched with all the good that it will do for us to do this now.

WTF is the matter with Republicans, that they won’t even let us maintain the country’s infrastructure?? They call it “just more big-government spending.” In fact they force this sequester of cuts, and demand even more cuts! (More here, here, here, here, here, here, here.)

In this mornings post, Washington’s Literal Sinkhole, And Our Idiotic Fixation On Deficits — written before the bridge collapse — Bob Borosage laid it out,

There is an idiocy about our current national politics that is simply stupefying. We are sitting idly, watching, and suffering, as our nation disintegrates into a run-down backwater. Our airports are a global disgrace. Our railroads, broadband, energy grid are all outmoded by international standards. A bridge falls every other day. Our sewage systems are overwhelmed by normal use, and collapse in the extreme weather that has become the national norm. Sinkholes now are becoming a life-threatening peril.

At the same time, over 20 million people are in need of full-time work.

1) Urgent need to fix the infrastructure.
2) Urgent unemployment problem.
3) Fixing #1 fixes #2.
4) We can get the money for free.
5) It isn’t “government spending” it is investment in ourselves because after we fix or build a bridge we have the bridge and all the things that does for the economy.
6) WTF?

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MORNING MESSAGE: Washington’s Literal Sinkhole, And Our Idiotic Fixation On Deficits

OurFuture.org’s Robert Borosage: “On Tuesday, a “sinkhole” suddenly sank in Washington D.C. three blocks from the White House. Not a metaphor, but a massive hole in the road as “long as a Ford Explorer,” double the width of a train car and 17 feet deep. The asphalt eroded around a metal plate covering potholes in the street and collapsed over a sewer line that was laid in 1897. The sinkhole will take at least five days to “repair.” There is an idiocy about our current national politics that is simply stupefying. We are sitting idly, watching, and suffering, as our nation disintegrates into a run-down backwater. Sinkholes now are becoming a life-threatening peril.  Any business leader with a wit of sense would say this is the perfect time to borrow money to rebuild the country, making investments now that will make us more competitive in the future. Any business leader with a wit of sense would say this is the perfect time to borrow money to rebuild the country, making investments now that will make us more competitive in the future.”

Troubled Bridge Collapses Over Water

Cars, people sent tumbling into Skagit River as I-5 bridge collapses [Komo News Network]: “The Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River collapsed Thursday evening, dropping two vehicles into the water and injuring three people. Both the northbound and southbound portions of the bridge collapsed into the river sometime before 7 p.m., according to Washington State Patrol trooper Mark Francis. … Bart Treece with WDOT was unsure when the bridge was last inspected. ‘All of our bridges in the area are pretty old,’ he said. The bridge is not considered structurally deficient but is listed as being ‘functionally obsolete’ – a category meaning that their design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders are low clearance underneath, according to a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration. The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.”

Salon’s Natasha Lennard writes that the bridge collapse is part of “an aging infrastructure badly in need of repair”: “In his February State of the Union address, President Obama called for $50 billion in new spending on ‘an aging infrastructure badly in need of repair.’ The I-5 bridge collapse in Washington state Thursday evening calls attention to an all-too neglected infrastructure in the context of decade of expensive war-waging. According to AP analysis the collapsed bridge, built in 1955, was not considered “structurally deficient” but is listed as being ‘functionally obsolete” – ‘a category meaning that the design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders and low clearance underneath, according to a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration.’”

Sequester Update

Post-ABC poll: Most Americans still disapprove of sequester [Washington Post]: “The government-wide spending cuts known as the sequester remain unpopular for most Americans, with little difference in opinion across party lines, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll released Friday. Thirty-seven percent of Americans say they have felt a negative impact from the sequester, the poll shows. The data indicates 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the sequester, which is roughly on par with the 57 percent who felt that way in April and the 53 percent in March. Political affiliations seem to matter little, with 54 percent of Republicans disapproving of the cuts, compared to 59 percent of Democrats.”

Sequester Guts Wildfire Prevention, Sets Up Bigger Blazes [Mother Jones]: “Last year saw the third-worst wildfire season in five decades; the Southern California fire that threatened thousands of homes earlier this month looks to be only the first flash of what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last week will be an above-average season for much of the Southwest. But the sequester took a 7.5 percent bite out of the Forest Service’s budget, nearly half of which is spent fighting wildfires. That means there will be 500 fewer pairs of boots on the ground and 200,000 fewer acres treated to prevent fires; the agency’s next proposed budget cuts preventative spending by a further 24 percent. It’s all part of what fire ecologists, environmentalists, and firefighters interviewed by Climate Desk describe as an increasingly distorted federal budget that has apparently forgotten the old adage about an ounce of prevention: It pours billions ($2 billion in 2012) into fighting fires but skimps on cheap, proven methods for stopping megafires before they start.”

Three big federal agencies to close Friday [Washington Post]: “Three of the largest federal agencies will close to the public on Friday, the first time since the government shutdowns of the 1990s that large corners of the government have ceased operations on a weekday. The mass furlough of 115,000 employees at the Internal Revenue Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the small Office of Management and Budget — 5 percent of the federal workforce — is happening because of the budget cuts known as sequestration. Even in a government shutdown, thousands of essential employees are still called to work. In this case, the only ones in the office will be a small number of Senate-confirmed presidential appointees who are exempt from furloughs and emergency responders.”

War Is Over?

Obama seeks to redefine the US war on terror [Agence France-Presse]: “President Barack Obama laid out new guidelines for drone strikes and launched a fresh bid to close Guantanamo, warning that a “perpetual” US war on terror would be self-defeating. Obama told Americans their country was at a crossroads, and must move on from the counterterrorism policies deployed after the September 11 attacks to confront a new era of diverse global threats and homegrown radicals. He argued that the idea of a “boundless” conflict everywhere radicalism took root, be it in Pakistan or Arab Spring nations or Somalia, was now obsolete.”

Time’s Michael Crowley asks, “Can Obama end the war on terror?”: “In his broad address on drone strikes, al Qaeda terrorists, and the prison at Guantanamo Bay Thursday, Barack Obama wrestled with some of the hardest moral questions that have defined national security policy since September 11: Who is the enemy? Who can we kill, and where, and how? What to do with suspected terrorists we hold in captivity? And when, if ever, will this war as we know it end? Along the way, Obama issued a strong defense of his reliance on drones to kill suspected terrorists in places where other military means are infeasible or risk more civilian deaths. …But while Obama has an obviously sincere desire to bring the war against al Qaeda to a close and close the books on Guantanamo, however, he also lacks the power to make these things happen on his own. The future of the terror war that Obama inherited from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney depends on some very open questions.”

Republicans are deriding Obama’s speech as a “retreat”: “Republican lawmakers warned that President Barack Obama capitulated to US enemies in his counterterrorism speech Thursday by renewing his call to close Guantanamo and retreating to a pre-9/11 mindset. … Obama argued that the United States would not be able to use force everywhere that radicalism takes root, and in essence cautioned against a ‘perpetual war’ that could ultimately prove self-defeating. But House leaders warned that, after the Boston bombings and signs that terror networks were regrouping in parts of North Africa and elsewhere, now was not the time for a weakened security posture.”

School Daze

Elizabeth Warren Student Loans Bill Endorsed By Several Colleges, Organizations [Huffington Post]: “Back on May 8, [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren announced her plans to set student loan interest rates at the same level big banks receive from the Federal Reserve. Come July 1, some student loan rates are set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, prompting Warren to push for legislation that reduces the level to 0.75 percent. By Thursday, Warren’s website showcased that more than two dozen organizations have endorsed the measure. Among the notable supporters were major universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and groups like American Federation of Teachers. Coupled with the support from outside sources is a strong core of political colleagues behind the bill. Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) have joined on as co-sponsors, and Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) has introduced a corresponding House version of the bill.”

Massachusetts educator Adam Kirk Edgerton woke up mad about the impact of recent budget cuts on his Upward Bound students: “You can blame only the Republicans for sequestration — fine. I won’t even bother to argue that point. But think about how Obama and his cabinet members are allocating money within their departments. In the Department of Education, Obama’s dominant policy engine is Race to the Top, which aims to implement standards across state lines with financial incentives. I won’t even bother to argue why a financially-driven education system could create perverse incentives for administrators and teachers. What I will argue is this: a Democratic administration is deliberately funneling funds away from direct services to poor people and towards administrators and consultants and bureaucrats. Race to the Top pays some pretty good grant-funded salaries to curriculum writers in Central Offices. It puts on a good conference (I’ve been to one). What it doesn’t do is teach kids, or shelter them in safe homes, or feed them healthy food.”

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s recent data on college graduates has been a gift that keeps on giving. The plethora of information has provided great insight into the millennial generation’s current economic predicament.

In their most recent report, Jaison Abel and Richard Dietz of the New York Fed found that only 27 percent of college graduates have a job related to their major. Their report also confirms that much of America’s youth is underemployed: only 62 percent of graduates had a job that required a college degree in 2010. This comes as no surprise, since 58 percent of jobs created during the recovery have been in low-wage occupations.

Given that reality, and student loan debt that now exceeds $1 trillion and surpasses credit card and mortgage debt, many have begun to question the value of a college education. Graduates under 30 years old now carry an average of more than $21,000 in debt. College enrollment is already 2.3 percent lower than it was this time last year.

On July 1, this argument will be strengthened if Congress allows student loan interest rates to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has proposed a bill that would resolve this issue by allowing students to receive the same rock bottom interest rates as big banks, currently at 0.75 percent. (By contrast, House Republicans have passed a student loan bill that would actually raise rates above 4 percent. President Obama has vowed to veto the bill.)

The last thing struggling families and students need is another blow to their pockets. Millennials are less likely to buy a car or a home, becoming permanent renters. What we are burdening them with is weighing down the entire economy and hindering our recovery.

The employment situation has already scarred a generation and robbed them from a decade’s worth of wealth. Similar to the housing crisis, student loans may be the next bubble to burst. As tuition rises and unemployment remains high, students are right to feel they are being tricked into purchasing a “lemon.”

The predicament America’s youth has fallen into resembles the 1980’s song “Should I Stay or Should I Go Now.” Students must decide if they should be improvident for a degree that will land them a job as a barista and large monthly loan payments, or ride the economic wave until times are better and get a job that relates to their degree.

No one knows the correct answer. The only thing we know for certain is that the government needs policies that support students, create jobs and invest in our country.

As the song goes: “Should I stay or should I go now? If I go there will be trouble. An if I stay it will be double.”

On Tuesday, a “sinkhole” suddenly sank in Washington D.C. three blocks from the White House. Not a metaphor, but a massive hole in the road as “long as a Ford Explorer,” double the width of a train car and 17 feet deep. The asphalt eroded around a metal plate covering potholes in the street and collapsed over a sewer line that was laid in 1897. The sinkhole will take at least five days to “repair.”

There is an idiocy about our current national politics that is simply stupefying. We are sitting idly, watching, and suffering, as our nation disintegrates into a run-down backwater. Our airports are a global disgrace. Our railroads, broadband, energy grid are all outmoded by international standards. A bridge falls every other day. Our sewage systems are overwhelmed by normal use, and collapse in the extreme weather that has become the national norm. Sinkholes now are becoming a life-threatening peril.

At the same time, over 20 million people are in need of full-time work. The construction industry has still not recovered from the housing collapse. The federal government can borrow money at interest rates near zero. Yet instead of grabbing this opportunity to rebuild the country, Washington is focused on cutting budgets, an austerity that clearly costs jobs and impedes the recovery.

Any business leader with a wit of sense would say this is the perfect time to borrow money to rebuild the country, making investments now that will make us more competitive in the future. That’s why the head of the Business Roundtable, former Republican governor John Engler, says it. At the top of his wish list for the economy is borrowing money to invest in roads and infrastructure. The resulting growth will more than repay the virtually free money. We’ll end up with a more competitive economy, a healthier and modern infrastructure that will make lives easier and safer, more jobs, more income, more taxes and less debt.

This is literally a no-brainer. Yet when president proposes even a modest infrastructure bill, the Republican Congress rules it dead on arrival.

If desired, Congress could even get the investment done without adding to the debt. The Federal Reserve purchases $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities every month. Yes, every month. (It also purchases another $45 billion of Treasury bonds). This is designed to keep interest rates low – and is part of the multi-trillion dollar rescue of the big banks, helping them slowly shed the garbage in their basements.

This program – known as “quantitative easing” to befuddle observers – helps to sustain the recovery, despite the counterproductive budget austerity. But flooding the banks with money is a very inefficient way to create jobs and growth. Banks can sit on the dough, or worse, speculate across the world, gambling with what is literally the “house’s money.” Cheap money is more likely to spur mergers and acquisitions rather than new jobs.

A functional Congress would create a national infrastructure bank, designed to make vital investments in rebuilding the country. It could issue bonds that the Federal Reserve would purchase with interest rates near zero. If the Fed spend $20 billion on infrastructure bonds, it would help insure against blowing up the next bubble, while actually putting people to work doing work that has to be done.

Wall Street, of course, objects to this heretical notion. If the Fed is going to print money, then the big banks make certain they are at the door with their hands out. But there is no reason for Congress not to act – other than the bitter truth, as New York Sen. Richard Durbin famously exclaimed, that the big banks “own the place.”

“Internal improvements” used to have conservative support. Alexander Hamilton championed them. So did the Whigs under Henry Clay. Republican Abe Lincoln built the transcontinental railroads and the land grant colleges; Eisenhower the interstate highways. A lot of money was wasted. A lot of insiders got rich. But the country benefited from creating a modern, increasingly efficient infrastructure.

Now the need is pressing; the money is cheap – or free. The work is needed. It is simply idiotic that the Congress refuses to act.

We know Republicans scorn aid to the poor. Food stamps, infant nutrition, preschool, they argue, offer not a safety net, but in Rep. Paul Ryan’s words, a “hammock.” The Tea Partiers seem intent on sacking sensible regulation of the air, water, public health and worker safety.

But repairing roads and rail, building modern airports, keeping our broadband and energy grid at world class standards, making sure the sewers don’t leak, strengthening the sinews for the extreme weather that is upon us – this isn’t an ideological question. It is just common sense.

That this isn’t getting done now reveals exactly how extreme, how corrupt, and how destructive our current politics are.

The upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is using a process that is rigged from the start. It is not being negotiated by governments for the benefit of their people, it is being negotiated by executives (or future executives/lobbyists currently in government) largely for the benefit of the giant corporations they serve. The process has these giant corporations “in the loop” but groups citizens, working people, consumers, the environment, human rights groups and especially democracy are not part of the process. That can only go one way: if you don’t have a seat at the table you are on the table — the meal.

Chile’s TPP Negotiator Quits, Warns Citizens

Rodrigo Contreras, Chile’s lead TPP negotiator recently up and quit to warn people of the dangers this agreement poses to everyone except the giant multinational corporations. In The New Chessboard, (English translation) Contreras warns that the TPP is solidifying multinational corporate control over the Internet, copyrights, patents (especially drug patents), and in particular warns that the giant financial interests are solidifying their current control over the regulatory process. He writes that this will block countries that are trying to “restore the space for applying financial safeguards. In these circumstances it does not makes sense to further liberalize capital flows, depriving us of legitimate tools to safeguard financial stability.”

In particular Contreras warns that smaller countries face a threat from this agreement’s solidifying of the con trol of the giant multinationals, concluding,

It is critical to reject the imposition of a model designed according to realities of high-income countries, which are very different from the other participating countries.Otherwise, this agreement will become a threat for our countries: it will restrict our developmentoptions in health and education, in biological and cultural diversity, and in the design of public policiesand the transformation of our economies. It will also generate pressures from increasingly active socialmovements, who are not willing to grant a pass to governments that accept an outcome of the TPPnegotiations that limits possibilities to increase the prosperity and well-being of our countries.

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, in Chile’s Recent Lead Negotiator on Trans-Pacific Partnership Warns It Could Be a “Threat to Our Countries”, gives us a look at the context of what it means for a country’s TPP negotiator to quit and sound the alarms. She writes that this is “a statement of principle that comes at considerable personal cost” and that “his call to Latin American negotiators has deep-sixed his chances of getting another senior government role or being retained by large companies as a lobbyist or advisor.”

A job as a lobbyist or advisor to the multinationals is the golden goose that drives the negotiators. The last US negotiator, Ron Kirk, recently left that post to join the law firm Gibson Dunn where he will advise giant multinationals, probably for free. (Just kidding, he isn’t doing it for free.) The Financial Times notes that “Other former US trade representatives, including Charlene Barshefsky and Mickey Cantor under President Bill Clinton, also joined law firms after their tenures in government.” They probably also are not advising giant multinationals for free, either.,

Smith at Naked Capitalism notes that, “Some of Asian participants in the negotiations (particularly Japan) are also believed to have serious reservations about the provisions of the TPP that would weaken national sovereignity by allowing corporations to challenge laws and regulations as violations of the TPP.”

Americans are also reacting to the threat that the TPP poses to national sovereignty — government’s ability to control the wealth and power of the giant multinationals. Bloomberg News yesterday, in Wall Street Seeks Dodd-Frank Changes Through Trade Talks warns that, “U.S. bankers and insurers are trying to use trade deals, which can trump existing legislation, to weaken parts of the Dodd-Frank Act designed to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.”

The Bloomberg report gets into some specific problems that watchdog groups see. For example, “The trade talks could easily become a Trojan Horse,” said Marcus Stanley, the policy director for Americans for Financial Reform, a group that includes labor unions, civil rights organizations and consumer advocates.

Trade agreements, once signed, override national sovereignty and limit a country’s ability to regulate giant corporations. The Bloomberg report noted that the financial industry is already trying to use existing trade agreements to roll back regulations required by the 3-year-old Dodd-Frank law,

The financial services industry has already invoked international trade rules in its bid to weaken proposed regulations, notably the Volcker rule that would ban proprietary trading. Named after former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, the rule is a signature part of Dodd-Frank.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sought a review of the rule by U.S. trade authorities, arguing it violated existing agreements.

So the financial industry is trying to use the upcoming TPP to overturn portions of Dodd-Frank and other rules in other countries they see as restricting their power.

Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke of this at a recent Senate hearing:

Fix The Process

The process that we use to negotiate our “trade” agreements needs to be changed to relect that this country is supposed to be run by We, the People. The current secrecy must give way to an open, transparent participative process that serves citizens, workers, the environment, consumers, human rights and other considerations of all the stakeholders.

The way the process is currently set up, the giant multinationals have a seat at the table, and they are salivating as they await the main course. We the People and our silly laws and regulations that are in the way of the profits of the 1% are being prepared to be served up. And a fine meal we will be.

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As I noted in my previous post, even before the winds died down in his home state, Oklahoma  Republican Sen. Tom Coburn insisted that additional disaster relief approved by Congress must be “paid for” by cuts elsewhere in the federal budget. Coburn even defended his insistence on further slashing the federal budget to pay for emergency aid by invoking the children pulled from the rubble of two schools in Moore, OK.

The truth is, the federal government currently has about $11.6 billion in disaster aid relief. So, Oklahoma will likely get the disaster relief it needs, without further cuts to offset federal spending on recovery and rebuilding. But if Coburn sincerely believes this kind of spending should be “paid for” with cuts elsewhere, he can start in his own state.

Here are a couple of ideas.

Oil Subsidies

Oil is a huge part of Oklahoma’s economy. In fact, the energy sector accounts for 9.5 percent of Oklahoma’s gross state product, and 4.6 percent of the state’s non-farm labor force. It’s also an important source of revenue that funds everything from education to transportation in Oklahoma.

However, by the time you factor in tax breaks the state gives to the industry, big oil pays almost no state taxes in Oklahoma. According to the Oklahoma Policy institute, that’s about $645 million in tax breaks and rebates.

The oil and gas industry is unquestionably vital to Oklahoma’s economy. The energy sector accounts for nearly 9.5 percent of Oklahoma’s gross state product and employs 4.6 percent of the state’s nonfarm labor force.1 Although the state economy has diversified to some extent since the oil bust of the 1980s, our economic prosperity remains closely tied to the fortunes of the energy industry.

Revenue from oil and gas production is also a vital component of the state’s tax system. It provides the funding to educate our children, protect our communities, maintain our transportation grid, and assist those in need. Oklahoma assesses a 7 percent gross production tax on oil and gas extraction, except when prices fall below a certain floor. However, several production methods, including horizontal drilling and deep-well drilling, benefit from tax rebates and credits that lower the tax rate to just 1 percent for horizontally-drilled wells and 4 percent for deep wells.

These tax breaks were enacted when these drilling techniques were new and relatively risky. Today they are standard industry practice with far fewer risks. As a result, oil and gas production has shifted increasingly towards horizontal and deep well drilling, and the cost of these tax breaks has skyrocketed.

The state paid out or accrued $645 million in tax rebates and credits to the industry over the latest 3-year period (FY 2010 – FY 2012). Most of the credits – $537 million – went to producers of horizontal wells. Without legislative action to change course, the cost of these credits will continue to grow exponentially in coming years, reducing the resources available to fund core public services.

Cost was cited as one reason why so few homes and schools in the areas it hardest by the tornado had no storm shelters or safe rooms. The mayor of Moore, OK said that a small, sunken shelter might coast about $4,000. So, Oklahoma has given the oil industry enough in tax breaks to but over 160,000 such shelters.

Farm Subsidies

In 2010, about 27,000 people collected $81 million in farm subsidies as direct payments. Most collected less than $1,000, but six farms received more than $100,000. It’s probably a safe bet that Oklahoma legislators who rail against spending — but collect millions of dollars from the federal government — got some of the biggest checks from the government.

Roughly two dozen state lawmakers – some who have railed against government spending – have collected federal farm subsidies in recent years, either directly or through payments to spouses, a Tulsa World investigation found.

Some legislators who received payments are among the largest subsidy recipients in their communities. Others are not primarily farmers, and instead work as doctors or attorneys.

At least three state legislators apparently violated Oklahoma law by failing to report the payments to the Ethics Commission, according to statements of financial interest.

The lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, have received a combination of crop, disaster and conservation subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

… The USDA paid at least 22 Oklahoma lawmakers or their spouses a total of $3.8 million since the mid-1990s, the World found.

That $3.8 million is another 950 or so tornado shelters, by the way. And since Oklahoma farmers are willing to take some some federal cuts, why not take them up on it?

This is what we came up with after just a bit of research today. Digging deeper might turn up even more.

Republicans have. How much disaster aid could these cuts pay for? It’s a moot question where Republicans are concerned.  The GOP would rather coddle the rich and take food stamps away from 2 million Americans — or cancel subsidized school lunches for 200,000 low-income children, and cancel unemployment insurance for millions of Americans.

Republicans like Tom Coburn would rather tax the poor and cut away the safety net — ostensibly to address a deficit that has already shrunk considerably since the Bush era — than ask the 1 percent, and corporate “people” the oil industry, to pay their share of taxes, which would be more than enough to offset or “pay for” disaster relief and then some.

Republicans would have us believe that American can’t afford to offer relief to those victimized by disaster, and aid poor, feed the hungry, help the jobless, heal the sick, etc. Republicans want Americans to believe we have to choose between these things; that in order to do one we must do less of the other.

In a sense, Sen. Corburn does have point, there are some things we could benefit from cutting, right in Coburn’s state.

MORNING MESSAGE: Apple Pie is American, But Apple Computer Isn’t

OurFuture.org’s Richard Eskow: “We should treat Apple and other formerly American multinationals as neutral entities with whom we can cooperate at times for our mutual benefit. We should encourage them to invest in the United States and hire American workers, as we do with other non-American corporations. What we shouldn’t do is treat them as US corporations. The very concept is probably obsolete in the multinational arena.”

Apple Testimony Doesn’t Add Up

Apple lied, says NYT’s Joe Nocera: “[CEO Tim Cook] said that the low taxes Apple pays overseas is on the profits of its overseas sales. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this was a flat-out lie.”

Apple can’t square its position on immigrant visas with its tax avoidance, argues TNR’s Alec MacGillis: “If Apple really cares about a shortage of homegrown engineering talent, then it should pay taxes to fund the institutions that could address that problem.

Immigration Reform Pressured From Left and Right

Sen. Marco Rubio seeks further changes to win additional GOP support for immigration reform. NYT: “The current bill sets up a sequence of new border measures that must be in place before illegal immigrants can gain legal status and eventually citizenship. Under the current bill, the Department of Homeland Security is directed to produce and carry out the border security plan … [Rubio] would take the authority away from the department and move the responsibility to Congress.”

Rubio is not alone. Politico: “Many of the almost two dozen Republicans identified as possible supporters by the Gang of Eight are demanding changes that would make the bill significantly more conservative. They want stricter border security, tighter control on government benefits for newly-documented immigrants and tougher requirements along the pathway to citizenship. Go too far on any of those elements, and liberal Democrats — who aren’t thrilled with many aspects of the bill already — begin to pull away.”

Dems split over proposed health care language in House draft immigration bill. Politico: “The House Democratic Caucus chairman knew that he couldn’t endorse a proposal to deny citizenship to undocumented immigrants who took government health subsidies … [Rep. Xavier] Becerra is torn between two roles: his part in the bipartisan group and his position in Democratic leadership, where he is under pressure from a progressive caucus not to give too much ground to the Republicans.”

House Dem leaders unsure if backing bipartisan House bill helps or hurts. The Hill: “…some Democrats and outside advocates are arguing the party should rally behind the Senate bill and pressure House Republican leaders to bring it to the floor once it passes the upper chamber. Yet some members of the bipartisan House group are worried … that walking away from the bipartisan agreement could kill immigration reform altogether.”

More than 100 conservative economists back immigration reform. LAT: “The economists cited the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in noting that an immigration overhaul could increase average economic growth over the next decade by 0.1% and reduce the federal deficit by more than $300 billion.”

Trade Talks Threaten Wall St. Reform

“Wall Street Seeks Dodd-Frank Changes Through Trade Talks” reports Bloomberg: “‘The trade talks could easily become a Trojan Horse,’ said Marcus Stanley, the policy director for Americans for Financial Reform … In separate letters on the EU and Asia-Pacific pacts, the industry coalition said negotiators should draft rules limiting what regulators can do in the name of protecting financial stability. The letters also urged using the pacts to curb extra-territorial rules that can reach beyond U.S. borders, like ones currently being considered on financial derivatives.”

Justice Dept. hasn’t examined whether bank prosecutions would harm the economy, reports HuffPost: “Testimony by a top Justice official and fresh documents made public on Wednesday during a House financial services committee hearing revealed that financial regulators and the Treasury Department did not provide warnings to prosecutors weighing the economic consequences or fallout in the financial system of criminal indictments against large financial groups … The hearing comes as DOJ, Treasury and financial regulators battle perceptions that they consider some large financial institutions are either too big or too important to the economy to fail.”

Breakfast Sides

“Harry Reid mulling filibuster overhaul” reports Politico: “Publicly, Reid has been coy about whether he’ll try to alter the Senate’s hugely controversial rules to help confirm President Barack Obama’s nominees … But it’s clear the majority leader wants to get something done and find 51 Democrats to support … changing the rules so executive branch nominees can no longer be blocked by filibusters requiring 60 votes to break.”

Tesla Motors pays back government loan nine years early. NYT: “‘Tesla is repaying early and it’s a great vindication,’ said Greg Kats, president of Capital-E, a firm that invests in clean-energy companies. ‘Tesla has really helped push the Big Three automakers down the energy efficiency track.’ The Energy Department on Wednesday said that losses on its loans were equivalent to 2 percent of its $34 billion portfolio.”

CBO examines carbon tax. WSJ: “Instituting a carbon tax could help reduce the deficit and ‘produce incremental benefits’ for the environment, but could also raise the cost of many goods and services … the economy as a whole would benefit if the tax was used to reduce the deficit.”

Anyone who thinks education is the “civil rights issue of our time”  needs to look at what’s going on in Chicago.

In three days of protests over the weekend and lapping into Monday, people who look like they would be involved in a civil rights cause – mostly African-American and Latino/a teachers, parents, and students, many living in low-income communities – were protesting against the city’s decision to close their neighborhood schools.

City officials have claimed that the closures are for the sake of “reforming” the city’s schools, but people who the schools actually serve aren’t buying it.

Similar protests are happening in Philadelphia where communities of black and brown citizens are openly defying civic leaders’ decisions to cut education spending and close neighborhood schools, again, in the name of “reforming” them.

Also from the heartland last week, in Indiana, a parent-led rebellion against policies mandating that schools adopt new curriculum standards known as the Common Core resulted in government officials delaying implementation of the standards that have been cast as necessary “reforms” to the system.

Similar rebellions are occurring in Alabama, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

Moving west to Seattle, teachers boycotting standardized tests that state leaders mandated in a “reform” effort got what they wanted last week when the school administration gave into the teachers’ demands that the tests not be made mandatory for high schools.

A similar resistance has been happening across the state of Texas where a coalition of educators, parents, and state policy leaders are calling for a “counterattack” against standardized testing. This time, instead of teachers leading the rebellion, the salient force are parents who have, according to a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, “overwhelmed the powerful business and political forces that made Texas the capital of high-stakes testing.”

These events, and others, reveal an emerging American movement unifying diverse factions across the nation in efforts to reverse education policy mandates and bolster public schools instead of punishing them and closing them down.

There is little doubt now that a counterargument to the education policies championed by the likes of Michelle Rhee and Education Secretary Arne Duncan is now slipping into the mainstream of American opinion.

Even the editorial board of The New York Times is calling for a change in how that city has been administering its public schools. In an editorial this week, the newspaper, which had been a cheerleader for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education mandates, now states, “The school system has indeed gone overboard in relying on standardized testing. Tests need to be a means to the end of better instruction, not the pedagogical obsession they have become.”

What’s generally not understood is that these flashpoints of resistance around the country are driven by common core grievances – a grassroots “common core” if you will – that is shaping the rapidly evolving education debate.

Behind nearly every protest to the status quo policies meted out to the nation’s public education system are common grievances about resource deprivation, inequity, public disempowerment and the widespread perception that governing policies are driven by corruption.

The situation in Chicago is a microcosm of how these four grievances are converging.

Resource Deprivation

What’s not widely acknowledged is that there is a systemic and deliberate agenda across America to starve public schools of funding. This is especially true in Chicago and especially true for the schools that are scheduled for closing.

A recent report from the Chicago Teachers Union looked at schools that were closed and revealed the district’s intentional policy to starve the targeted schools of necessary funds. As local blogger and activist Kenzo Shibata recently observed at The Huffington Post, “The school closings wave is at the crescendo of years of slow and steady sabotage by the Chicago Board of Education.”

Shibata quoted a Chicago Public Schools Official who readily admitted that “If we think there’s a chance that a building is going to be closed in the next five to 10 years, if we think it’s unlikely it’s going to continue to be a school, we’re not going to invest in that building.”

Shibata correctly observed, “The very schools that needed the most support – libraries, small class sizes, and wraparound services – were starved.”

Inequity

Not only is there a nationwide effort to disinvest from public schools, there is a systemic policy in America to ensure schools that need funding the most are targeted for deeper cuts or lower funding.

This is especially true in Chicago where the schools being closed are predominantly in parts of the city that are populated with lower-income African American and Latino families.

Writing at the website Alternet, Samantha Winslow reported, ” Almost all of the 54 schools targeted for closing serve primarily black and Latino students. All are in poor neighborhoods.”

Reporter James Patrick at Substance News observed,

“Since 2001, 98 of the 100 schools being closed or phased out in Chicago have been located in predominantly African-American and Latino communities. School closures directly correspond to the locations of troubled mortgages, foreclosures, and population loss.”

Public Disempowerment

Behind nearly every protest against the nation’s education metric-driven agenda is the complaint from teachers, parents, and school children that they are being disempowered.

Whether the voices of dissent are coming from teachers objecting to unfair evaluations, parents objecting to having no voice in creating and implementing new standards, or students complaining of unjust discipline measures, the prevailing narrative is that Americans of all persuasions increasingly believe they have diminishing control over their education destinies.

Policy decisions affecting education are increasingly promulgated from governing bodies that are not elected and serve at the whim of powerful mayors and governors who take power away from locally-elected bodies and hand it over to hand-picked “managers” and committees filled with their close associates and campaign funders.

Education policies are increasingly the product of Washington-based technocrats who have little or no contact with the schools and communities whose schools are being affected by their plans.

Even charter schools – often promoted as a authentic “choice” for parents who want to escape “government monopoly schools” – are increasingly operated by distant executives and appointed boards with little accountability to local constituents.

This sense of disempowerment is an especially prevalent force behind the Chicago protests. Bloggers and activists have recorded countless stories of parents who have done everything they can to provide their children access to good schools only to see their efforts undone by the city’s action.

One account, appearing in the local independent newspaper Catalyst, told how parents have seen these Chicago neighborhoods completely transformed by forces out of their ability to address. In one neighborhood, “Over the past decade, three of the schools that served the area’s children have been closed and reopened – one as a charter school, one as a selective enrollment school and the third as a lease by a private Catholic school that costs about $8,000 a year.”

In other words, the option to choose a school that accepts all children is no longer available.

This is not an isolated example, noted reporter Sarah Karp. “The end result of the school [administration's] actions is that traditional, district-run neighborhood schools will become scarcer. Schools to which students have to apply and those run by private organizations will continue to take over, casting an ever-bigger shadow over the district.”

Widespread Perceptions Of Corruption

Prominent news stories about charter school profiteering, massive cheating on standardized tests, and the heavy involvement of Wall Street investment firms and the publishing industry behind the scenes are creating widespread perceptions that education policy is driven by corruption.

People to the right of the political spectrum accuse efforts to align all state curricula to Common Core standards of being driven by a federal government intent on spreading “propaganda” and invading our privacy.

Those who tend to lean left see corporations as the primary benefactors of education policies like the Common Core and charter school proliferation.

Either way, the core grievance is that education policies are being sold to the American people with very deceptive language and with occasionally ulterior motives.

These perceptions are not confined to the extremes of the spectrum. Recently at The New Republic, Nicholas Lehmann wrote that education reform poster-person Michelle Rhee has “misled” education advocates who favor current policies.

“Rhee simply isn’t interested in reasoning forward from evidence to conclusions: conclusions are where she starts,” Lehmann observed. “She gives us little or no discussion of pedagogical technique, a hot research topic these days, or of curriculum, another hot topic owing to the advent of the Common Core standards, or of funding levels, or class size, or teacher training, or surrounding schools with social services.”

Lehmann concluded that Rhee’s leadership in “the education-reform movement” has had the damaging effect of making the whole enterprise take on “a narrow and melodramatic frame” that remains so influential mostly because “it depends so heavily on the largesse of people who are used to getting their way.”

Certainly the people of Chicago know what it’s like to be misled by influential and local officials threatening their schools. A local radio station, WBEZ, took the time to fact check what school district officials have been reporting and found lots of gaps in the truth.

For instance, Chicago Public Schools says “30,000 children will be impacted by school closings. But the district’s plan actually will touch more than 46,000 children.”

Although school and city officials have “claimed a loss of 145,000 students, between 2000 and 2013, actual enrollment in Chicago Public Schools has not decreased dramatically.” And, “since 2000, the proportion of Chicago kids attending public schools has actually increased.”

Also, “Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said the key reason to close schools is about getting children ‘trapped’ in low performing schools to a better place.” But the reporters found that in previous closings, “most students whose schools were closed by the district re-enrolled in schools that were academically weak.”

School and city officials have stated the school closures are scheduled to save $43 million and help close $1 billion shortfall in the district’s operating budget. But again, the facts show “all cost savings, plus tens of millions of additional dollars (for a total of $233 million), will be put into receiving schools.” And “the district is borrowing $329 million to pay for improvements to receiving schools,” which “will cost $25 million in debt service every year for 30 years.”

The New Bipartisanship On Education?

The common core grievances driving the backlash to education mandates are not going to go away any time soon. Despite how the particulars of the debate pivot to issues about content standards, to assessment results, to school choice, etc. widespread feelings of resource deprivation, inequity, public disempowerment, and overwhelming corruption are not only going to remain – they are likely to grow. Any lurch from crisis to crisis – no matter how well orchestrated – will likely further intensify a popular sense of a system out of control.

The only remaining question is, now that it’s becoming more acceptable to say that education mandates have “gone too far,” how much longer will it take for those same opinion outlets to admit the mandates were mistaken to begin with?