$180bn investment in plastic factories feeds global packaging binge

The global plastic binge which is already causing widespread damage to oceans, habitats and food chains, is set to increase dramatically over the next 10 years after multibillion dollar investments in a new generation of plastics plants in the US.

Fossil fuel companies are among those who have ploughed more than $180bn since 2010 into new “cracking” facilities that will produce the raw material for everyday plastics from packaging to bottles, trays and cartons.

The new facilities – being built by corporations like Exxon Mobile Chemical and Shell Chemical – will help fuel a 40% rise in plastic production in the next decade, according to experts, exacerbating the plastic pollution crisis that scientist warn already risks “near permanent pollution of the earth.”

“We could be locking in decades of expanded plastics production at precisely the time the world is realising we should use far less of it,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the US Center for International Environmental Law, which has analysed the plastic industry.

“Around 99% of the feedstock for plastics is fossil fuels, so we are looking at the same companies, like Exxon and Shell, that have helped create the climate crisis. There is a deep and pervasive relationship between oil and gas companies and plastics.”

Greenpeace UK’s senior oceans campaigner Louise Edge said any increase in the amount of plastic ending up in the oceans would have a disastrous impact.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/26/180bn-investment-in-plastic-factories-feeds-global-packaging-binge

Utah paper tells Hatch to 'call it a career' in blistering editorial

Utah's largest newspaper slammed Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) in a Christmas Day editorial on Monday while calling on the senior GOP senator to retire.

The Salt Lake Tribune’s editorial board named Hatch their 2017 “Utahn of the Year,” a designation the paper says is given to someone who has “had the biggest impact. For good or for ill.”

The newspaper said Hatch earned the title based on “his utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power.”

“It would be good for Utah if Hatch, having finally caught the Great White Whale of tax reform, were to call it a career,” the Tribune's editorial board wrote. “If he doesn’t, the voters should end it for him.”

The Tribune went after Hatch for his involvement in President Trump’s decision earlier this year to shrink two national monuments in the state, saying there was “no constitutional, legal or environmental logic" behind the move.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/366449-utah-paper-tells-hatch-to-call-it-a-career-in-blistering-editorial


Well guess what Salt lake Tribune, your a little late, and now a lot of human beings are seeing how in years past you endorsed this "jerk", to let him get away with is final assault on decency and principles, which this jerk never had in the first place

How to Get Away With Bankruptcy Fraud

The boxy building that houses JC Foreclosure Service doesn’t look like much. Drive past, and you might miss it among the gas stations and body shops and small homes here in Bell, a working class, Hispanic enclave in the south part of Los Angeles County. The only thing that might catch your attention is the bold red writing on the front window that says, in Spanish, “WE MODIFY YOUR LOAN. EVICTIONS. BANKRUPTCIES.”

But inside, a kind of magic happens. The owner of the business, Carlos Baez, is a master of a Los Angeles art: contorting bankruptcy into a tool for profit. When his clients come to him, desperate to stay in their homes, he can promise help — as long as they keep paying him — by harnessing the power of bankruptcy to stop foreclosure. Baez is not a lawyer and records show the hundreds of cases he’s filed are often shoddily prepared and thrown out within a few months. But actually winning lasting debt relief for his clients isn’t the point. The goal is to buy time — which he does again and again.

Of course, there are laws to prevent such abuse of the system. If someone files again and again, bankruptcy’s protections can be revoked. But Baez has another technique he often uses. On paper, his clients appear to transfer ownership in their homes to a group of people who get 5 percent apiece. It’s a trick that can turn one homeowner into four homeowners, each of whom can file for bankruptcy, one after the other. It doesn’t matter if these new homeowners are real. By the time a flesh-and-blood person must appear at a hearing, a month or two has passed. Then the case is dismissed and a new homeowner comes forward. Rinse and repeat.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-to-get-away-with-bankruptcy-fraud

Can Sean Hannity Read? Maybe Not

Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.com


Fox News’ Sean Hannity is on the top tier of pro-Donald Trump propagandists at the right-wing “news” network, so it is perfectly in character for him to completely fall flat on his face while trying to attack real journalists.

In an echo of Trump’s childish taunts about “fake news,” Hannity tweeted a message directed to “fake news” CNN and “conspiracy TV” NBC. He told them to “read and learn,” and then posted a link to a story about the Department of Justice’s attempt to reinvigorate the right-wing anti-Clinton conspiracy theory about Uranium One.

The only problem for Hannity is that his link went right back to NBC.


http://www.nationalmemo.com/can-sean-hannity-read-maybe-not/





And yes he is stupid, he really is stupid

And he makes around 20 million a year pushing this BS and he and the sexual predator gobbe this up, right along with the deplorable's

Hey Hannity, as a side note we are coming in November 2018

Emerson, Lake & Palmer I Believe In Father Christmas

My Merry Christmas song to the sexual predator, fascist republican, deplorables, Fox News clans

To the sexual predator clan, the right wing fascist republicans clan, the deplorables clan, Fox news

Trump voters see his flaws but stand by president who 'shakes things up'

Every Christmas, Jeff and Denise Fox have the neighbors over. The door stays open all day. People come and go for food, coffee and conversation.

The tradition continued after Jeff, 58, was diagnosed with cancer in 2009. Even with chemotherapy and the medical bills racking up, the Foxes found reasons to celebrate. This year, those reasons include their son’s transfer from an air force base in South Korea to one in Germany and, they hope, out of harm’s way.

Last year, the reasons to celebrate included the election of Donald Trump. Both registered Republicans, neither Fox had started as a huge fan of the Manhattan real-estate developer. Jeff supported Carly Fiorina in the sprawling Republican primary contest, and Denise, 54, admired Ben Carson, a fellow evangelical Christian.

Their votes mattered a lot because the Foxes live in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, a bellwether county that voted twice for Barack Obama before backing Trump. The area is home to many ageing Democrats whose family politics were forged from the unionized ranks of Bethlehem Steel, once the region’s economic juggernaut, or in the formerly vibrant clothing mills and slate quarries around the Foxes’ home in Pen Argyl.

-snip-

“The only debt we have is healthcare debt,” said Fox, who receives social security and disability payments. “We’ve worked our way out of everything else. It’s amazing what we do with what we get.

“It would be nice for me to say, I got $40,000 of medical bills, so it’d be nice if someone paid them for me. Some would say, ‘It’d be nice, the easy way.’ But it’s real.

“It’s not the responsibility of the government to pay the bills.”


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/24/trump-voters-see-his-flaws-but-stand-by-president-who-shakes-things-up


So this "guy" doesn't understand that his health care is now in jeopardy and right along with his Social Security and his diability insurance payment he gets each month via the social security and medicare, that he paid for in treasury bonds, which are now going to go to the billionaires and the millionaires, who have the attitude let them eat cake

Deducting A CEOs Jet, But Not A Cops Uniform

By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief

Donald Trump often declares his support, even love, for police, firefighters and other first responders. That isn’t stopping him, however, from nicking their wallets in the new tax law that he is expected to sign in early January.

Buried in the hastily drafted tax bill’s more than 500 pages are provisions eliminating “miscellaneous” deductions taken by almost 28 million taxpayers in 2015. Those are costs you bore to support your job or an investment you own or to pay a professional to prepare your income tax return.

This year cops and other first responders can write off the costs of buying uniforms and dry cleaning them. But in 2018, cops who buy their uniforms or are required to buy their own guns and ammunition will no longer be able to deduct those costs as reasonable and necessary expenses to support their earning a paycheck, thanks to Trump and Congressional Republicans.

But that’s not all. Cops and anyone else who belongs to a union will no longer be allowed to deduct their union dues. People who must bear travel costs without reimbursement from their employers will just have to suck it up starting in January.

The new law takes special aim at teachers who seek advanced degrees, which typically qualifies them for more pay. Tuition, books and related costs of getting advanced degrees will not be deductible after the end of this year.

Why are Trump and Congressional Republicans dinging first responders, teachers, nurses, traveling salespeople and even those who pay someone to prepare their income tax returns? So the rich can get bigger tax breaks, of course.

This means that the nearly one in five taxpayers who availed themselves of various “miscellaneous deductions” when filing their 2015 income tax returns will get no such tax breaks starting in 2018.

These individuals reported $158 billion of costs to support their jobs, but Congress did allow them to deduct all of those costs. Only $54 billion of that qualified as deductions because Congress has historically limited miscellaneous deductions to amounts greater than 2% of each taxpayer’s income. Thus, someone who earned $50,000 and spent $1,500 on union dues, uniforms and other expenses to support their job got to deduct only $500.

The one good thing is that Trump and Congressional Republicans left intact the $250 tax deduction for teachers who pay schools supplies for their students. An earlier draft of the legislation eliminated this tax break, one of the reasons we reported earlier that the tax cut bill for the rich and businesses should be called the IDIOTS Tax Act of 2017 for Intellectual Destruction Initiative Outrageous Tax Savings.

Because of Senate budget rules, the tax bill had to add no more than $1.5 trillion to the federal debt over the next 10 years. The tax cuts for those at the top cost more than that, so Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill had to take away tax breaks to offset the tax rate cuts.

What Congress left intact are the rules that let Trump write off his Boeing 757 jet, which he’ll no doubt resume flying once he is out of office. Similarly, untouched are the bar tabs of corporate sales agents or the costs of executive retreats at resorts like Trump golf courses.

https://www.dcreport.org/2017/12/21/deducting-a-ceos-jet-but-not-a-cops-uniform/


83% of the paying taxpayer public are funding this tax cut coming down the pike

Unintended Consequences 101: Tax Scheme Ignites Global Tax War

By James S. Henry, DCReport Senior Editor, Investigative Economics

Before Donald Trump has signed the new tax law, there are already troubling signs that it is the first shot in a global tax war that threatens working people and the public pensions plans that sustain them in old age.

The Trump bill, which reads like a wish list for Goldman Sachs and its clients, has already triggered an aggressive “race to the bottom” in international corporate tax rates, rules and regulations. It is the exact opposite of his campaign promise to help the middle class.

What the mainstream American news has failed to notice are the global responses, including:

Australia’s Finance Minister warned that its economic growth rate might fall by a third unless it responds fast to the Trump/Goldman Sachs legislation. Accordingly, he promised that Australia will soon slash its own corporate tax rate from 30% to 25%. He said even that rate may be too high.

Just this week, Argentina’s conservative President Mauricio Macri—who reportedly maintains close ties with the Trump—announced plans to cut Argentina’s corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% by 2020.

In Europe, Austria’s new government just announced that it is considering a similar reduction.

Norway cut its 25% corporate income tax rate to 24% this month. More cuts may be coming.

France’s corporate tax rate will be cut from 33% to 27% by 2022. Britain moved preemptively last April, cutting its corporate rate from 20% to 19% with plans to reduce it to 17% in 2020.

South Korea, Mexico and Chile are also actively considering corporate tax cuts, in response to the US measure, my interviews with key global tax analysts around the planet reveal.

The Argentinean corporate tax cuts are especially troubling because they may well turn out to be an ominous precursor for what may happen to Social Security in America.

Macri, channeling how the American tax cuts were drafted in secret and then rammed through without hearings, “Trumped” deep cuts in pensions through Argentina’s Congress this week.

In Washington, Congressional Republicans have tried for years to weaken Social Security and undermine its finances in the hopes they can kill the most popular social support program in the country. They are expected to step up their efforts to weaken Social Security, arguing that with the tax cut legislation there just isn’t enough money to sustain the social safety net.

An indication of this approach emerged with regard to CHIP, the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program. It finances often life-saving medical care for more than nine million children and 300,000 pregnant women.

CHIP was enacted in 1997. One of its cosponsors was Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican. On December 17 Hatch indicated that America cannot afford to continue the program, which will begin cutting children off in January unless funding is restored.

The cost of CHIP is about $15 billion annually, roughly a tenth of what the Trump/Goldman Sachs tax bill will add each year to the federal debt.

The complex and hastily drafted Trump/ Goldman tax bill makes at least 121 key tax changes that will impact more than $8 trillion of federal tax revenues over the next decade.

Trump and his sycophants claim that the corporate tax favors will more than pay for themselves. They assert that the big cuts in corporate tax rates and other favors for business will prompt much more U.S. economic growth, with many new jobs and higher wages. Wishful thinking is the response of numerous economists who are not on the Trump/Goldman Sachs payroll.

https://www.dcreport.org/2017/12/21/unintended-consequences-101-republican-tax-scheme-ignites-global-tax-war/


And if anyone doesn't think that there is not going to be another global meltdown............re-read what the Argentine government did........

"The Argentinean corporate tax cuts are especially troubling because they may well turn out to be an ominous precursor for what may happen to Social Security in America.

Macri, channeling how the American tax cuts were drafted in secret and then rammed through without hearings, “Trumped” deep cuts in pensions through Argentina’s Congress this week."