$10 million wasted annually in Dutchess through incineration, landfilling-- enough!...

Recall these facts from Mar. 7th Poughkeepsie Journal article regarding Dutchess County:


"The Dutchess County Resource Recovery Agency recycles only 4 percent of Dutchess' 250,000 tons of garbage, a consultant's report says. According to officials and reports, little is done to encourage recycling in the county. When waste recycled by private haulers is included, the county recycling rate is only 11 percent, about half the state rate, agency figures show; an estimated 30,000 tons of paper alone go to the trash heap yearly. An estimated 57 percent to 62 percent of waste produced in the county every year passes through the jaws of its giant incinerator on the Hudson River."
[from "Critics Rip Agency As Recycling Falters" by Mary Beth Pfeiffer
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20100307/NEWS01/3070352/Critics-rip-agency-as-recycling-falters ]


[recall-- "Ulster County's Recycling Rate-- 40 Percent-- Approaches State Goal" by Patricia Doxsey
http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2010/04/28/news/doc4bd7bcd192621739013476.txt
again-- this is similar to Rockland County's success recycling-- see http://www.RocklandRecycles.com ]


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Hi all...


One more reason to come out to join us today 5:30 pm for the first meeting of our new Zero Waste Working Group for Dutchess County at the Retreat at Vassar College (cafe on first floor of Main Bldg.)...


[note, too: scroll down a bit for great article in Southern Dutchess News on Paul Connett talk last Thurs.]


Fact: Dutchess County now flushes well over $10 million down the drain every year by incinerating and landfilling about 90% of our waste/resources-- instead of recycling, reusing, or composting the Clean Dozen-- reuse, textiles, polymers, metals, glass, paper, putrescibles, plant debris, wood, soils, ceramics, and chemicals-- see just below!...(how many more years are we going to wait before we do this here?)...


Joel
242-3571/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net

[thx again tons to colleague Co. Leg. Jim Doxsey for doggedly pressing our colleagues for zero-waste; Jim and I have been debating our colleagues online in Co. Leg. on this issue; need you to help too!...so email all 25 of us now at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us for no further delay: zero-waste here!]


[...and join 66 other Dutchess folks signed up for this too-- at http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes !...]


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Extrapolated for Dutchess from http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/zerowaste/hawaii-zero-waste-plan.pdf ...


[from Zero Waste Implementation Plan for County of Hawaii by Richard Anthony Associates Mar. 2009]


Fact: 89% of waste/resources currently generated in Dutchess County is incinerated or landfilled-- while that very material could provide resources, revenue, and jobs needed for our county's sustainability(!).


Estimated Annual Lost Value of Dutchess County Discards Incinerated or Landfilled:


[Hawaii population-- about 200,000; Dutchess population-- about 300,000; so extrapolated < Hawaii]


Categories Percentage Annual Tons $/Ton Annual Revenues Lost


1. Reuse 5% 15,000 $500 $7,500,000


2. Textiles 3% 9,000 $50 $450,000


3. Polymers 8% 24,000 $50 $1,200,000


4. Metals 8% 24,000 $50 $1,200,000


5. Glass 2% 6,000 $10 $60,000


6. Paper 23% 72,000 $50 $3,600,000


7. Putrescibles 17% 50,000 $7 $375,000


8. Plant Debris 15% 45,000 $7 $330,000


9. Wood 10% 30,000 $8 $240,000


10. Soils 2% 6,000 $7 $45,000


11. Ceramics 6% 18,000 $4 $75,000


12. Chemicals 1% 3,000 $15 $45,000


County laws could be passed and enforced as soon as infrastructure can be put in place for:


-- construction and demolition reuse and recycling plans


-- separation of designated organics, reusables, and recyclables (including all haulers being required to provide recycling services as a condition of their county permit)


-- funding for training and social marketing programs


-- retailer and producer take-back of non-recyclable, non-reusable, or non-compostable products and packaging


-- compostable organics out of incinerators and landfills


Dutchess County government should work with towns, cities, and villages (Dutchess County Association of Supervisors and Mayors) across our county to redesign municipal transfer stations into Resource Recovery Parks, including ReStores for recovery and sale of reusables, organic material and rock grinding areas, full signage and demonstration areas, along with mini-MRF's for recyclables.


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[here below-- article in Southern Dutchess News that came out yesterday on Connett talk last Thursday]

"Incinerator Options Recommended for County"
by Rich Flaherty

An international expert on solid waste reduction gave a presentation on Earth Day last Thursday at Vassar College on environmental and cost problems with incineration.

Dr. Paul Connett is Executive Director of AmericanHealthStudies.org. Since 1985, he's given over 2,000 pro bono presentations in 52 countries and 49 states.

In January, he gave a talk in New York at the Division for Sustainable Development at the United Nations, and he's scheduled to return for additional discussion in early May.

Connett's presentation last week was entitled: "Zero Waste: A Key Step Towards Sustainability (and why it is more important than ever to close down the Poughkeepsie (Dutchess County Resource Recovery plant) incinerator."

He said during the 20th century, the goal was how to get rid of waste. In the 21st century, the emphasis is on resource management. "Something has to change," said Connett. "India and China are copying our (U.S.) consumption patterns."

"We cannot run a throw-away society. Our consumption is a waste crisis." He said global warming is "a symptom" of the world's growing consumption and the products that are discarded as waste. "Overconsumption is the crisis," Connett said.

Global advertising contributes to our consumption. He said the average high school student will have watched over 350,000 TV commercials by the time he or she graduates from high school. "We can't sustain this lifestyle til the end of this century."

Connett said the issue can be helped with the use of better technology, resource management and industrial design changes with packaging that can be recycled or reused.

Some communities are "tigers" in the area of recycling, waste reduction, and composting. "Poughkeepsie is a sheep," said Connett. He highlighted that the key is community responsibility that will help drive industrial responsibility.

Connett said the Dutchess County Resource Recovery Facility in the Town of Poughkeepsie, which burns refuse that is converted to electricity and sold to Central Hudson is a waste of energy. The process wastes time, produces air emissions that can be toxic, creates few jobs, and requires landfilling for the fly ash that is the byproduct of burning.

"Over half the money spent on incinerators goes to air pollution controls. Money spent on alternatives goes to jobs that stay in the community." "Even if we make incineration safe, we would never make it sensible. It's toxic mush," said Connett. "A modern incinerator is attempting to perfect a bad idea."

Mass burn incinerators only obtain 75 percent of waste reduction, with 25 percent created by the ash byproduct.


He highlighted San Francisco, with a population of 850,000. That city is ahead of the curve on recycling and waste reduction and is a model municipality for emulating. The city established a goal of 50 percent waste diversion by 2000. In 2009, 72 percent of its waste was diverted. In 2010, the goal is 75 percent, and by 2020, the city anticipates 100 percent of waste diverted.

Los Angeles is looking at zero waste with a population of four million people. Prince Edward Island is on the same path, and Nova Scotia has created 2,000 jobs with its zero waste activities.

Connett said a combination of recycling and composting is 46 times better reducing greenhouse gases than incineration that generates electricity.

His presentation outlined 10 steps toward zero waste. 1) Source separation 2) Door-to-door collection of recycled products 3) Composting (just as important as recycling) 4) Recycling 5) Reuse, repair and deconstruction (about 90 percent of construction and demolition material can be recycled) 6) Waste reduction initiatives 7) Provide economic incentives 8) Residual separation and research 9) Individual responsibility 10) Interim landfill.

The Xerox corporation is an example of industrial responsibility with the company collecting old copy machines from 16 countries and saving $76 million in recycling and reuse programs.

Between 1985 and 1995, over 300 incinerator proposals were rejected in the United States. About 35 incinerators were proposed in California in 1985, with three approved. In New Jersey, 22 incinerators were proposed during that ten-year period; only five were built. In New York City, six were proposed, and none were approved.

"All over the country, these incinerators were being rejected at a margin of about four to one," Connett said. Of the 300 that were rejected, about 70 were constructed. There haven't been any new permitted incinerator projects since 1995.

"The problem for the incinerator industry is not just that the public doesn't want to live near them, but that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against flow control in the mid 1990's." The result was that localities could not mandate area refuse haulers to bring trash to resource recovery or burn plants for disposal.

The case involved New Jersey waste haulers that did not want to pay a $90 tipping fee at local burn plants. They wanted to bring their waste to Pennsylvania landfills with a tipping fee of $45 to compete with the landfills. The incinerators could continue to pay their operating costs, but they couldn't pay the debt and capital costs.

Dutchess County provided a $3.5 million subsidy to the Dutchess County Resource Recovery Agency (RRA) in 2008. The agency sought $6.3 million in a net service fee for the 2010 county budget, but county legislators late last year put the issue on hold to be resolved this year. The county legislature also requested a new solid waste plan from the RRA, which is expected to be ready later this year. Presently there is no county funding for the RRA.


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Fact: As the Institute of Local Self-Reliance website itself has noted-- "On a per-ton basis, sorting and processing recyclables alone sustain 10 times more jobs than landfilling or incineration."
[see: http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/recyclingmeansbusiness.html ]


Applying these job-to-ton ratios to Dutchess' current volume indicate that literally 18,000 jobs could be created right here in our county with a 100% zero-waste approach to resource recovery-- and 9,000 new green recycling/composting jobs created even with just a 50% recycling rate(!).


From http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/recyclingmeansbusiness.html ...


Job Creation: Reuse and Recycling Vs. Disposal [from Institute for Local Self-Reliance]

Type of Operation Jobs per 10,000 TPY

Product Reuse
Computer Reuse-- 296
Textile Reclamation-- 85
Misc. Durables Reuse-- 62
Wooden Pallet Repair-- 28

Recycling-based Manufacturers
Paper Mills-- 18
Glass Product Manufacturers-- 26
Plastic Product Manufacturers-- 93

Conventional Materials Recovery Facilities-- 10
Composting-- 4
Landfill and Incineration-- 1

TPY = tons per year; figures are based on interviews with select facilities around the country.

On a per-ton basis, sorting and processing recyclables alone sustain 10 times more jobs than landfilling or incineration. However, making new products from the old offers the largest economic pay-off in the recycling loop. New recycling-based manufacturers employ even more people and at higher wages than does sorting recyclables. Some recycling-based paper mills and plastic product manufacturers, for instance, employ on a per-ton basis 60 times more workers than do landfills.

Value is added to discarded materials as a result of cleaning, sorting, and baling. Manufacturing with locally collected discards adds even more value by producing finished goods. For example, old newspapers may sell for $30 per ton, but new newsprint sells for $600 per ton. Each recycling step a community takes locally means more jobs, more business expenditures on supplies and services, and more money circulating in the local economy through spending and tax payments. Recycling has had a major impact on job creation in local and state economies.


In North Carolina, recycling industries employ over 8,700 people. The job gains in recycling in this state far outnumber the jobs lost in other industries. For every 100 recycling jobs created, just 10 jobs were lost in the waste hauling and disposal industry, and 3 jobs were lost in the timber harvesting industry.


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To cut to the chase-- to more fully flesh out what I (and Paul Connett of http://www.AmericanHealthStudies.org and Neil Seldman of http://www.ILSR.org , along with Co. Leg. Jim Doxsey and I believe) suggest below, if we're going to move towards making our county incinerator unneeded and obsolete, we need to help make sure about 60% of our county's waste (at least 150,000 tons or so) are recycled or composted-- instead of being sent to the incinerator each year...


...but don't forget-- as it is already it costs the taxpayers of Dutchess County literally three million dollars a year just to dispose of the ash from our county incinerator...


[...besides the millions necessary otherwise to run that thing...]

.......and again-- recycling/composting is ALWAYS cheaper than incineration or landfilling!...


See below-- if cities in Italy can radically increase their waste diversion (recycling) rate in just a year or so-- there's no reason why we here in Dutchess can't as well!...

Recall these two gems from Paul Connett below-- "Novarra near Turin (pop. 100,000) reached 70% in just 18 months. Salerno, went from 18% to 82 % in one year."
[ http://www.no-burn.org/why-incineration-is-a-very-bad-idea-in-the-twenty-first-century ]

Our task, as I humbly see it, is for us to make real asap three-point plan in count-- hopefully getting as many waste haulers, municipalities, businesses, and homeowners to buy in to this as possible...

Suggested plan (endorsed by Paul Connett, Neil Seldman, essentially all zero-waste experts):

1. Get organics out of the waste stream with curbside collection for food waste/yard waste.
[note-- just this first step alone, together with recycling enforcement could get us to 60%]
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2010/04/01/hamilton_wenham_blaze_green_trail_with_municipal_composting_program/ (Ithaca, Portland, Seattle, Boulder, Cambridge, and communities across Vt, No. Car., Minn., Michigan, Calif. all successfully food-waste composting; see:
http://www.cool2012.com/community/collection/ http://www.jgpress.com/archives/_free/000525.html ;
http://www.recycletompkins.org/editorstree/view/177 ; http://ccetompkins.org/compost/index.html )

[Shabazz Jackson and Josephine Papagni of Greenway Environmental Solutions should be crucial in our effort to get organics out of wastestream in Dutchess; recall his suggestion as part of our task force:
food-waste composting in county: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/assets/pdf/BK142669916.PDF ;
recall-- Shabazz was recognized in 1992 by the NYS Council of Mayors with an Innovations in Local Government Award-- for getting the City of Beacon up to a verified 72% recycling rate w/transfer station:
http://greenwayny.com/beta/about/?id=bio ; http://www.cbsm.com/public/mma/advanced+training.htm ]

2. Implement incentivizing pay-as-you-throw system for residual trash-- and keep it free for businesses and homeowners to recycle and compost, but charge for collecting residual trash.
[this should get us to 85%; see: http://www.epa.gov/waste/conserve/tools/payt/tools/bulletin/spring09.htm ]

3. Implement Extended Producer Responsibility (stop co.'s from producing waste, as in Ontario)
[see: http://www.hazmatmag.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?ntoken=NOCOOKIE ; stop waste at source]

If Nantucket can have 92% recycling/waste diversion rate-- why not Dutchess?...(no reason at all!).

Remember Oct. 19th NYTimes-- "A New Recycling Strategy Is Catching On" by Leslie Kaufman; see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/science/earth/20trash.html .


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From Paul Connett's new essay "Why Incineration Is a Very Bad Idea in the Twenty First Century"...
[see: http://www.no-burn.org/why-incineration-is-a-very-bad-idea-in-the-twenty-first-century ]


[notice how quickly communities CAN move towards zero-waste-- huge increases in just a year or so!]


"The alternatives are not pie-in-the-sky-- many communities in California, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and the UK have embarked on the zero waste strategy (not all call it that) and have achieved some with very rapid and impressive results. San Francisco (population 850,000) has reached 72% diversion from waste disposal. Their goal for 2010 is 75% diversion and their goal for 2020 is Zero Waste. Many other communities in California have also reached over 70% diversion. In Italy over 200 communities have done so. Novarra near Turin (pop. 100,000) reached 70% in just 18 months. Salerno, went from 18% to 82 % in one year. Villafranco d'Asti (population 35,000) has reached 85% diversion and the small town of Ursibil in Spain has reached 86%.


In Brescia, Italy, they spent about $400,000,000 building an incinerator and have created just 80 full-time jobs. While Nova Scotia, a province of Canada, after rejecting an incinerator, has created over 3000 jobs in the handling of the discarded resources and in the industries using these secondary materials.


The problem with incineration is twofold: a) because every object in commerce is likely to end up in an incinerator any toxic element used in these products is likely to end up in the nanoparticles. The nanoparticles from incinerators are the most dangerous of any common source. b) There are NO regulations in the world for the monitoring nanoparticles from incinerators. In most countries the particles regulated are 10 microns and above.In some countries they regulate particles at 2.5 microns. But neither standard comes closer to monitoring nanoparticles. We are flying blind on this crucial issue.


There is a very important paper on this issue from Dr. Vyvyan Howard from Northern Ireland. I know Vyvyan very well and he is one of the brightest people I have ever met. He co-authored a book on nanoparticles in 1999; see: http://www.chaseireland.org/Documents/ProfVHowardBiography.htm ."


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Thx tons to all who came out last Thursday in Poughkeepsie to hear world-class anti-incineration expert Paul Connett speak at Vassar-- Poughkeepsie Co. Leg. Jim McCabe and former Co. Leg. Bill McCabe, Sierra Club's Joanne Steele, Rhinebeck's Marcus Mello (of CAC), Clinton's Patricia Zolnik (of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies) and JP Ferraro (of WHVW), Millbrook's Didi Barrett (Dem candidate for NYS Senate), Nadine Souto of Vassar College's Sustainability Committee and Samantha McClenahan of Vassar, Poughkeepsie's Dick Hathaway & Peg Keiser (of Poughkeepsie Friends Mtg.), Beacon's Tom Baldino (CAC Chair) and Marcia Frahman (of Howland Public Library), East Fishkill's Richard Dennison, Wappinger's Fred Doneit (of the Poughkeepsie Friends Meeting), and many more...


[thx as well to Rich Flaherty of Southern and Northern Dutchess News of media for attending this too]


Paul Connett suggested we start a Zero Waste Working Group for Dutchess County-- so we are...


Come out to our first mtg.-- today Thurs. Apr. 29th 5:30 pm at Vassar's Retreat!...(cafe in Main Building)...


[if you haven't yet join 66 other Dutchess Zero Heroes signed to http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes !]


Fact: At the end of this year Dutchess County's current Solid Waste Management Plan will expire.


Fact: Next year Dutchess County Incinerator's NYS Solid Waste Permit expires (time for action: now).


Fact: Dutchess County's contract with the incinerator in Poughkeepsie scheduled to expire in 2014.


Fact: Dutchess taxpayers pay $3 million/yr. for incinerator ash disposal alone after burning 150 tons/yr.


Fact: It's always cheaper for taxpayers & private sector to recycle or compost resources than incinerate.


[don't forget-- Dutchess taxpayers spent $1,167,271 on "Solid Waste" (incineration) in 2006, $5,005,364 on this in 2008, $6,330,612 on this in 2009]


Fact: If Dutchess got organics out of wastestream and implemented PAYT, incinerator unnecessary(!).


[PAYT = pay-as-you-throw; for much more on this see http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/tools/payt/ ]


NOW IS THE TIME TO WORK TOWARDS MAKING COUNTY INCINERATOR UNNEEDED, OBSOLETE!


Now we must bring municipal officials, waste haulers, businesses, institutions, homeowners together...


[...but we can't do without you folks-- so please join us today 5:30 pm @ Vassar's Retreat Cafe!...]


[...again-- sign at http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes if you'd like to be a Zero Hero in Dutchess!...]


Here's what Paul Connett told us last Thurs. (essentially same thing that Neil Seldman of http://www.ILSR.org told us repeatedly last year-- but good to hear from another world-class expert):


"Getting the organics out of the wastestream is key; a municipality's recycling rate can be doubled with curbside collection of organics like food waste and yard waste; in order to seriously move towards zero-waste the food waste needs to be separated from the wastestream-- otherwise the rest of the wastestream becomes contaminated...Then a pay-by-the-bag (pay-as-you-throw) system has to be instituted to deal with the residuals-- the part of the wastestream that can't be recycled or composted."


[yes-- same thing Shabazz and Josephine of Greenway.com told us last year about this as well; see:
"Hamilton, Wenham Blaze 'Green Trail' with Municipal Composting" (Boston Globe Apr. 1st)
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2010/04/01/hamilton_wenham_blaze_green_trail_with_municipal_composting_program/ ]


In fact, Paul Connett's been writing and speaking out for communities to follow the successful example of Nova Scotia's innovative, job-creating residual screening and research facilities for four years now--
"Zero Waste-- Not Just Better for the Environment, It's Better for the Local Economy as in Nova Scotia"
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6685/is_1_32/ai_n29266797/ (by Paul Connett Jan./Feb. 2006)...


Let's not forget-- Neil Seldman of http://www.ILSR.org reminded us of following markets for recyclables:


"The Feb. 1st Waste and Recycling News had these recycling prices for NY region:

soft mixed paper $70 per ton
boxboard cuttings $72.50 per ton
de ink news $55 per ton
corrugated containers $110 per ton
White news blanks $175 per ton
sorted office paper $215 per ton
sorted white ledger $300 per ton
hard white envelope cuttings $445 per ton
aluminum 80 cents per lb
plastics HDPE 19 cents per lb
PET 13 cents per lb"


Neil Seldman (President of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance): "The key to recycling is that it saves money over garbage; the prices on the market are an after-issue. The fact is that markets are there for recycling; material brokers will confirm this, and cities can get contracts for floor prices. It just costs less to recycle than dispose of materials as garbage. Trucks are lighter, payload better. It also allows garbage trucks to cover more houses per day and allows cities to eliminate garbage routes."


Fact: According to the EPA, 98% of wastestream in U.S. are recyclable, reusable, or compostable materials (Dutchess wouldn't be too different from nat.'l ave.)-- food scraps (19%), yard trimmings (7%), paper/paperboard (24%), metals (9%), wood (8%), glass (7%), textiles (6%), and plastics (18%),
[see: http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/msw99.htm ; also Neil Seldman/ILSR PowerPoint]

Berkeley's Urban Ore Reuse and Repair Center provides a great model for us here in Dutchess if we are to seriously move towards zero-waste (three acres of well-organized used goods)-- we here in Dutchess need a Hudson Valley Materials Exchange-- see Jill Gruber's http://www.HVME.com here)...


Check out http://UrbanOre.ypguides.net for more on Berkeley's Urban Ore-- we need for Dutchess:


Hardware Exchange-- with lighting, locks, tools, motors, bikes, sporting equipment
Building Materials Exchange-- with doors, windows, sinks, tubs, lumber, bricks, fencing tile
General Store-- with collectibles, appliances, furniture, cabinets
Arts and Media Exchange-- with computers, electronics, books, music, art


Also from Urban Ore-- "We do conceptual designs of zero-waste disposal facilities. Consulting clients have included: State of West Virginia; Australian Capital Territory; Sonoma County, CA; Architects Kauai, HI; Humboldt County, CA. We design facilities to receive 12 master categories of discards that can all be recycled. Using these 12 categories, otherwise known as the Clean Dozen (SM), nothing is left out and nothing is left over. The facilities have been called by many names, including: Zero Waste Parks, Ecoparks, Serial Materials Recovery Facilities (Serial MRFs), Discard Malls, Resource Malls."


[send a letter to all 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us if you'd like Dutchess to have this!]


Ontario: model for us re: Extended Producer Responsibility http://www.nypsc.org/aggregator/sources/4


Fact: For literally only 1/600th of the current $6.5M cost to Dutchess taxpayers to subsidize the DCRRA (about $6.5 million), the county could hire nationally known zero-waste experts like Neil Seldman, Gary Liss, Richard Anthony to prepare a $10,000 report on cost-saving, green-jobs zero-waste possibilities.




Fact: According to Neil Seldman, President of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, "Worcester (MA), Portland (OR), Seattle/King County (WA), Hawaii County, Oakland, and Los Angeles are all examples of communities that have rejected incineration and invested in recycling and composting, saving tax dollars as the costs of solid waste management have gone down."
[see http://www.ILSR.org ]


Fact: According to Neil Seldman, President of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, "A zero-waste approach to resource recovery saves tax dollars because solid waste has been reduced in those communities by diverting materials to the private sector which hire workers, pay taxes, and expand the local tax base. For example, Oakland has created over 1000 jobs in the last decade as a result of a rejected incinerator there and invested in recycling and composting."
[see http://www.ILSR.org ]


Fact: "Significantly decreasing waste disposed in incinerators and landfills will reduce greenhouse gas emissions the equivalent to closing 21% of U.S. coal-fired power plants. This is comparable to leading climate protection proposals such as improving national vehicle fuel efficiency. Indeed, preventing waste and expanding reuse, recycling, and composting are essential to put us on the path to climate stability." [ http://www.StopTrashingtheClimate.org ]


Thanks much to the Sierra Club's Joanne Steele and Marie Caruso for their interest and commitment to help us as much as possible move Dutchess County towards a cost-saving, green-jobs, clean-air, less-carbon, zero-waste approach to resource recovery; Joanne and Marie are looking for volunteers to help them put together a local zero waste task force on this-- contact them at sierraclubjoanne@gmail.com and mariehv@verizon.net if you or anyone else you know is interested...


Again-- your letters to all 25 of us in Co. Leg. do matter-- at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us...


[tools ARE in our hands-- MANY communities across planet quickly moving to zero waste; pass it on!]


[...and-- Poughkeepsie Friends Meeting's Fred Doneit is right-- we should have screening soon of Annie Leonard's http://www.StoryofStuff.com soon here in Dutchess-- who would like to help on this?]


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Comments from some signed on to http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes -- join us for zero waste!...


66.
Sheila Buff
Please reduce and eliminate waste in Dutchess County/
500 Milan Hill Road, Milan NY 12571
65.
Danielle Falzon
Zero waste!
11714
64.
Emily Svenson
I support county leadership for waste reduction!
12538
63.
Amy Marcus
Zero Waste is the way to go!
Vassar College Box 2984, 124 Raymond Ave, Poughkeepsie NY 12604
62.
George Adams
none
12604
61.
Annie Cai
I support zero waste!
124 Raymond Ave Poughkeepsie, NY 12604
60.
Richard Dennison
If you care about your children, your grandchildren and future generations, "zero waste" is a MUST.
12533
59.
Alyssa Kogon
I totally endorse this policy
7 Stonehouse Road Rhinebeck, NY 12572
58.
richard p. mchugh
a must petition !
154 chelsea rd ,wappingers falls 12590
57.
Kevin Barratt
Zero waste is the most responsible thing we can do now to make a better future for generations to come. Anyone opposed to this is not thinking of others, but only of themselves, and their own prosperity.
96 Sodom Road, Staatsburg, NY 12580
56.
margaret de wys
zero waste. a great step towards our future
12574
55.
Megan J Hastie
An important commitment and not a moment too soon.
96 Station Hill Rd, Barrytown, NY 12507
54.
Susan Quasha
reducing waste (on most levels) is imperative
124 Station Hill Road, Barrytown, NY 12507
53.
George Quasha
zero waste is a no-brainer -- can't believe any non-profiteering folks would be against it
124 Station Hill Road, Barrytown, NY 12507
52.
Louise de Leeuw
Lets reduce our waste as fast as possible.
97 College Ave. Poughkeepsie, NY 12603
51.
Mary James
Better late than never!
12603
50.
Honorable James R. Doxsey
The time is now to begin a Zero waste approach
12601
49.
richard mchugh
go green!
154 chelsea rd ,wappingers falls 12590
48.
Blanche Rubin
I strongly urge the Dutchess county government to adopt a Zero Waste approach. If we each do our own part -- composting, recycling, etc. -- it can be a win-win program.
12580
47.
Vivian Mandala
Do what makes sense and this does.
PO Box 195, Rhinecliff, NY 12574
46.
Mara Farrell
I support this
Fishkill, NY 12524
45.
Joshua Farrell
The future is now. We can't afford to continue to pollute our environment and waste natural resources.
12524
44.
Dan Maciejak
Create sorting/processing jos, make compost, reduce CO2 emissions, stop incineration now!
12572
43.
Natalie Narotzky
less waste, less pollution, less consumption
Bard College, Annandale on Hudson, NY
42.
Shaun Chesley
Zero Waste, Save now, Save the future
12601
41.
Marcia Slatkin
I just moved here, and was shocked to find that the post office doesn't yet recycle paper. On LI, I've always recycled and composted all waste I produce, and have made good garden soil out of kitchen waste, so my garden grows better. I've read that the teamster's union says that recycling of thrown out materials -- i.e. packaging, computers, appliances -- could create 2 million jobs nationally -=- new green jobs that we need so desperately. ANd incineration is dirty, fouls the air, and addes CO2 that causes climate cyhange -- a huge danger to us all. The expansion of reuse, recycle and composting are essential to climate stability. Doing this would reduce CO2 emissions by 7 \% by 2020. Please, then, those of you who will vote against this -- give your reasons! Why are you against stabilizing the earth's climate? I think your constitutents have the right to detailed and clear explanations!
Box 484, Rhinebeck, NY 12572
40.
elizabeth robinson
it's time
hopewell jct ny 12533
39.
Nora Edwards
There is much we could do to reduce waste.
Wingdale12594
38.
suzanne curran
thank you for your work from sue and brian
sue 6 anderson school rd brian in a welfafemotel he is a great recycler
37.
Martha P Humphreys
Please, please let this happen!
10 Jefferson ave, Beacon, NY 12508
36.
laura cullen
must do
23 crumwold place, hyde park ny 12538
35.
Richard and Viola Hathaway
The less is burned, the less CO2 in the air.
141 Fulton Ave. 12603
34.
Connie Hogarth
Dutchess cty can help save our planet and its people!
20 Hartsook Lane, Beacon NY 12508
33.
Steven Mann
Sounds like a smart idea!
43 North Loop, Rhinebeck, NY 12572
32.
Vane Lashua
Why not?
95 Liberty Street, Beacon, NY 12508
31.
Patricia Zolnik
Please get this going , especially for our children's sake ...maybe this will help to start reducing our ever increasing cancer rates too.
93 Deer Ridge Drive, Staatsburg, NY 12580
30.
Fernando R. Valentin
Thank you for your consideration
12601-1515
29.
Scott Patrick Humphrey
It is possible for zero waste to be a reality NOW, please take thoughtful action to promote sustainable living practices. Support our environment and your local Green Party candidate.
12601
28.
Thomas Baldino
We are polluting the planet. We must use all means to protect the planet. We need to shut down burn plants and landfills as a first big step.
19 North St., Beacon, NY 12508
27.
Bryan Kallen

783 Centre Road Staatsburg NY 12580
26.
julia widdowson
i endorse and support zero waste.
juliawiddowson@mac.com
25.
Josh Schlossberg
Zero waste is a necessary goal
5 Cedarcliff Lane, Poughkeepsie, NY, 12601
24.
William E. Lunt
Zero waste is good for the economy and good for the environment. It is a win win solution.
114 Bedell Rd, Poughkeepsie, NY 12603
23.
Barbara Lindsey
yes to zero waste
53 Ferris Lane, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
22.
Michael West
This has to happen.
595 Route 308 Rhinebeck, NY 12572
21.
Alicia Lenhart
Behind you all the way Joel
12572
20.
Karl J. Volk
no wste
43 Whittier blvd Poughkeepsei Ny 12603
19.
chris 'creek' iversen
Living sustainably is, by definition, the only future
221 Stoneykill Rd; Wappingers Falls, NY 12590
18.
Fred Nagel
zero waste, a way for Dutchess Co. to help save the planet
12572
17.
Doris Kelly
It's about time we strive for zero waste
7 Susan Court, 12538
16.
Edwin A Pell III
we say no to terrorists
clinton, 12572
16.
Edwin A Pell III
we say no to terrorists
clinton, 12572
15.
Ron Ray
keep up the good work
po box 1052 beacon, ny
14.
Dana J. Tompkins
Hey Joel, Sorry to hear about the abuse. I'm proud of you for your veracity. Let me know if you need any help.
73 College lane, Millbrook, NY 12545
13.
Diane Sommer
It's so important to support this... and let it begin in our own households
LaGrangeville, NY
12.
kathleen everett
sensible and long overdue
chestnut street, rhinebeck 12572
11.
Peter Conklin
must be done
Hyde Park NY
10.
tim kleeger
I support the Zero Waste plan.
Hyde Park, 12538
9.
Anthony Henry Smith
Each of the items in this petition merits its own separate petition.
12601
8.
Sara Fletcher Luther
I support the petition
60 S Randolph Ave, Pok, NY 12601
7.
Doug McComb

37 Hornbeck Ridge Poughkeepsie NY 12603
6.
Patricia G. Lamanna
I'd like to see Dutchess County be a leader on this...after Berkeley, CA, of course, immortalized in the song on Pete Seeger's latest album
27 Meyer Avenue, Poughkeepsie, NY 12603
5.
Joanna Dupee
I endorse this petition. It is long over-due.
81 La Bergerie Ln, Red Hook, NY 12572
4.
Patti Gordon
great idea.
7575 Old Post Road, Red Hook, NY 12571
3.
Geoffrey Carter
Necessary - start planning immediately
12571
2.
Edward Hernandes
I am for the zero-waste program
144 lime Ridge Rd. Poughquag, NY 12570
1.
Cary Kittner
This is very important for so many reasons
12507


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More from Paul Connett's "Why Incineration Is a Very Bad Idea in the Twenty First Century"...


(he made this presentation Jan. 12 to UN's Division for Sustainable Development; speaking again May)


[see: http://www.no-burn.org/why-incineration-is-a-very-bad-idea-in-the-twenty-first-century ']


After ending war, sustainability is the most crucial challenge our civilization has faced since the beginning of the industrial revolution. On a finite planet we cannot run a throwaway society indefinitely. We have to ape nature and recycle everything we possibly can. We would need four planets if everyone in the world consumed like Americans. We would need two planets if everyone consumed like Europeans. Meanwhile, both India and China, with their massive populations, are hell-bent on copying our "over-consuming" lifestyle. It was India's Mahatma Gandhi who many years ago said that "the world has enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed." We in the North and the West need to set a better example. We have only got one planet and we must start behaving as if that was the case.


Is incineration safe? This is an issue I have followed for 25 years. The issue that peaked my interest was the incredible fact that simply by burning household trash we make the most toxic substances that we have ever been able to make in a chemical laboratory: polyhalogenated dibenzo para dioxins and furans (PCDDs, PCDFs, PBDDs, PBDFs etc) called "dioxins" for short. There are literally thousands of these substances. There is no question that over 25 years the industry has got better at capturing these pollutants but we are still hostage as to how well the plants are designed and operated, monitored and the regulations enforced. In addition to this, incineration releases many toxic metals from otherwise fairly stable matrices. At worst these metals (lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium etc) go into the air, at best they are captured in the fly ash in the air pollution control devices (APC). But it is a truism to state that the better the APC the more toxic the ash becomes.


There is nothing new about nanoparticles, which are particle of less than one micron in diameter. They are produced in any high temperature combustion which includes vehicles, coal-fired power stations, industrial boilers etc. What is new is nanotechnology where these particles, which have very unusual properties, are being used in many commercial products from shaving cream to tennis rackets. This has raised the question of whether they have any negative health effects. That question has given rise to a new discipline called nanotoxicology. It turns out that these particles have exquisite biological properties which are very worrying. They are so tiny that they can cross the lung membrane and enter the bloodstream. Once there they can enter every tissue in the body including the brain. The problem with incineration is twofold: a) because every object in commerce is likely to end up in an incinerator any toxic element used in these products is likely to end up in the nanoparticles. The nanoparticles from incinerators are the most dangerous of any common source. b) There are NO regulations in the world for the monitoring nanoparticles from incinerators. In most countries the particles regulated are 10 microns and above.In some countries they regulate particles at 2.5 microns. But neither standard comes closer to monitoring nanoparticles. We are flying blind on this crucial issue.


There is a very important paper on this issue from Dr. Vyvyan Howard from Northern Ireland. I know Vyvyan very well and he is one of the brightest people I have ever met. He co-authored a book on nanoparticles in 1999. The attached paper was delivered in 2009 in a hearing on an incinerator proposed for Ireland. It is the most up to date review of the issue of nanoparticles and incineration available. Before any new incinerator is built in India, or anywhere else for that matter, government officials (or the public) should force the project director to produce a scientific response to the key questions posed in this paper. If they cannot do so, then clearly building such a plant is taking a reckless gamble with the public's health. Moreover, if we return to the opening of this statement, such a gamble cannot be justified on either economic or environmental grounds, both local and global.


For more about the nuts and bolts about the zero waste approach see my webpage at http://www.AmericanHealthStudies.org . There you will find a series of videotapes I have shot on Zero Waste around the world and also an essay entitled Zero Waste for Sustainability."


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From http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6685/is_1_32/ai_n29266797/ ...


Zero waste wins: it's not just better for the environment, it's better for the local economy. Ask Nova Scotia
Alternatives Journal, Jan-Feb, 2006 by Paul Connett


One approach to dealing with residual materials is to build residual screening and research facilities in front of interim landfills. Already, Nova Scotia has a successful working residual screening facility near Halifax. If this were combined with a research division (possibly provided by a local university), we might find other ways to use these materials and, even better, advise industry on better design that would eliminate their becoming part of the residual fraction.


Since the 1980s, environmental activists and citizens opposed to both incinerators and landfills have argued for a third way: intensive recycling and composting. The result of this debate has come down to the question of what we do with the residuals--the stuff we can't currently recycle or compost cleanly--and how to pay for problematic recyclables.


If the back-end engineers want to make the residuals disappear, then the front-end thinkers want to make the residuals very visible and very unattractive. The residuals represent bad industrial design and should be removed from the beginning rather than destroyed at the end.


With good leadership, the residual screening and research facility is where community responsibility and industrial responsibility can meet.


If the community cannot reuse, repair, recycle or compost it, industry shouldn't be making it--that's the position of zero-waste communities. Zero waste is not merely a call for 100-percent recycling, which emphasizes community responsibility and works at the back end of the problem. Zero waste tries to marry community responsibility with industrial responsibility in an attempt to shift the emphasis to the front end of the problem: bad products, poor industrial design and poor packaging of otherwise desirable products. The battle over waste has focused on the back end for far too long. For over 100 years, engineers and officials have argued over how to get rid of waste (the options are to bury it or burn it). For many engineers, the issue is to find better ways to construct landfills or magic machines that can destroy the material safely.


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From http://myzerowaste.com/2010/02/dr-paul-connetts-zero-waste-and-sustainability/ ...


February 5, 2010 in section: Blog by Mrs Green with 2834 views

Dr Paul Connett gives a compelling talk on zero waste and sustainability

I've just got back from an excellent talk by Dr Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry, St Lawrence University, New York.


Dr Connett has researched waste management issues for over 14 years and is a world leading expert in incineration. He has given over 2000 talks in 52 countries with the aim of bringing clarity to the issue of incineration and sustainability.


The meeting was hosted by Ian Mean, Editor of our local paper "The Citizen" who opened the meeting by saying that waste was one of the two biggest issues we currently face in Gloucestershire. The meeting was organised by supported of four local campaign groups - Glosain, Glosvain, SWARD and Gloucestershire Friends of the Earth.

INCINERATION: A POOR SOLUTION

DR Connett's opening line was "Incineration: A poor solution for the twenty first century" and I knew we're in for a riveting 1 1/4 hours.

One and a quarter hours is a long time to talk, and an even longer time to listen, but this flew by and before we knew it, people were queuing up to shake his hand, ask questions and Little Miss green had her head resting on my lap for sleep.


Paul covered the arguments against incineration, told us why gasification (and other technologies) were not the answer and covered the zero waste strategy solution.


SOLUTIONS

The talk was compelling; not one to dwell on the negative, the thrust was to focus on the solution - a call to action for a zero waste future. The message bought to us was that what we do as individuals has an impact on the world. Paul pointed out that during the 20th century, the focus was on waste management and how to get rid of waste efficiently and with minimal damage to our health and the environment. The 21st century focus needs to be on RESOURCE management and sustainability for future generations.

CONSUMPTION IS KEY

The real problem, as Paul sees it, is fighting everyone's over consumption. By the time a child is 16, they have watched 350,000 TV adverts; all telling them they can be sexy, intelligent, popular and happy if they buy x,y, and z. He pointed out that Development is measured by how quickly we can extract, produce, consume and waste something. See Annie Leonard's "The story of stuff" below for a dynamic 20 minute talk on this.


INCINERATORS STILL NEED LANDFILL!


Incinerators don't challenge our consumption and they sabotage genuine moves towards sustainability. Incinerators also stifle innovation because you have to feed it. The shocking statistic I wasn't fully aware of was that for every 4 tonnes of stuff you burn in an incinerator, you still have to LANDFILL 1 tonne of toxic ash.

DIOXINS AND TOXINS


We were then told about dioxins, and all the other toxins given off by incinerators such as mercury, cadmium, lead and arsenic and shown that dioxins accumulate in animal fat. This means you don't even need to be living near an incinerator to suffer some of the negative effects. You simply need to eat the animals that have been grazing on nearby land to ingest dioxins. Once you get these dioxins in your system you can't get rid of them; except for women, who can get rid of them by having a baby. Apparently any dioxins stored in your fat goes into your baby when you get pregnant.

ZERO WASTE SOLUTIONS


After all the facts about why we should avoid incineration, the rest of the talk was on the solution - the zero waste model. Comprising of things you would expect such as kerbside collections, home composting, recycling, reusing, repairing and moving into other lesser thought of areas such as de-constructing, economic incentives, waste reduction initiatives and better industrial design, Paul showed us how a zero waste future was possible.

He talked about many inspiring communities all across the world in Nova Scotia, Japan, Spain, California and Italy who were virtually sending zero to landfill and incinerating nothing. Areas where recycling programmes were in place, community composting was commonplace, refills were the norm and new parents were given free reusable nappies! To see some of these inspiring stories visit the American Environmental Health Studies videos page.

QUALITY OF LIFE

The message we were left with was that we had to teach the future generations how to separate their quality of life from material consumption; reiterating that if we continued as we are living now we would need another 2 - 4 planets to sustain us. He also optimistically told us that a threatened community is a strengthened one if people work together. He reminded us that change begins with every person talking to their friends and neighbours.

SPREAD THE MESSAGE


I hope you all feel great about that, because I know many of you talk to your friends and colleagues and you must keep doing that - you have no idea how far those ripples will spread in time.

At the end of the talk, Ian Mean called Dr Connett's talk "Inspirational" He said "We really know why the UN wants him back and what I got was that we can all do something."


Indeed we can all do something; right now. What will you do today to make a difference?


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Towns blaze 'green' trail with composting service
By David Rattigan
Boston Globe Correspondent / April 1, 2010
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2010/04/01/hamilton_wenham_blaze_green_trail_with_municipal_composting_program/


A grass-roots effort has brought curbside collection of garbage in Hamilton and Wenham, and area environmentalists say they will follow the progress of the East Coast's first municipal organic-waste pickup program.

Starting yesterday, more than 500 families in the two towns were to begin leaving tamper-resistant containers with food waste on the curb alongside their trash and recyclables.

The curbside-composting initiative is being spearheaded by the Hamilton-Wenham Recycling Committee, and follows a 74-family pilot program run in Hamilton last year.

"With the feedback we got from those participants, we felt it was worth it to go ahead,'' said Gretel Clark, the committee's chairwoman, who credits 70 neighborhood captains with enlisting the families joining the collection program this week. Clark said it is the first of its kind on the East Coast.


The organic waste will be turned into compost for use by local gardeners rather than being incinerated with the household trash. Peter Britton, of Brick Ends Farm in south Hamilton, runs the composting operation for the collection company, whose other clients are restaurants, markets, and other places with large amounts of organic waste. As an incentive, Britton will allow participants to take unlimited amounts of composted material.

In addition to the environmental benefit, the program should reduce costs for the towns, which pay a tipping fee for trash pickup and disposal based on the tonnage of refuse collected from residents.


Increased recycling efforts have already reduced the trash-collection budgets for area communities by reducing the amount of paper, plastic, glass, and other items thrown away.

"Food waste is one of those items in the waste stream that could be recycled at a higher rate,'' said Ed Coletta, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, which has supported the program both financially and with technical advice.

"According to our most recent figures, 13 percent of the waste stream has been identified as food waste, but only 3 percent of food waste is recycled,'' he said. "Obviously, we've got quite a distance to go to see that food waste gets recycled and composted.''

Nantucket has required residents to compost organic waste since the mid-1990s, according to its Department of Public Works director, Jeff Willett, but they are responsible for getting the material to the town composting facility.
Statewide, recycling programs have reduced the waste stream by 38 percent, Coletta said.

In Hamilton, household-waste collection has been cut by more than half since 2008, when the town implemented a pay-as-you-throw disposal system aimed at increasing recycling. While the old average was 55 pounds of trash per week per household, Board of Selectmen chairman David Carey said, the current recycling figure is 30-35 pounds, leaving 20-25 pounds of trash to be hauled away.

Based on a disposal cost of $70 per ton, he said, if every one of Hamilton's approximately 2,400 families recycles 10 pounds of organic waste each week, the town would save $43,000 annually. The same rate of savings would hold true in Wenham, which has approximately 1,200 families.

"People like it, because they feel they can have a positive impact in doing small things, when big things aren't necessarily under their control,'' Carey added.

To join the program, residents also had to support the cause with their wallets. With limited funding - the state Department of Environmental Protection provided a $7,000 grant, and approximately $7,000 came from private donors - participation comes with a price tag. Each family pays $75 for the year, and the first 500 to sign up received a free compost bin. Subsequent participants paid $29 for a set of bins, including one for the counter to collect the organic waste and another for its disposal.

Nearly 600 families have signed on, and Clark said, "We're averaging two to three calls per day'' from others wanting to join.


Hamilton Selectwoman Jennifer Scuteri, who said she intends to participate in the program, said it is a reflection of residents' sensibilities.

"They identify themselves as 'green,' '' she said. "I think people move here for the open space, and have an appreciation of it.''

People also find other benefits for being involved, Clark said.

"There are a variety of reasons,'' she said. "A lot of people just liked not putting that mushy stuff into their solid waste, by sequestering it with a countertop collector and our little bin. A lot of other people were entranced at the idea of getting unlimited compost from Brick Ends Farm.''

While Hamilton and Wenham will be the pioneers, other communities may join the program, or start their own.

"We're very interested in it," said Ipswich Selectwoman Ingrid Miles, adding that her board will monitor the program's progress.


"We hope that it's a great success, and hope that other communities implement it as well,'' the DEP's Coletta said.


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From http://www.greenpeace.org/italy/campagne/inquinamento/rifiuti/inceneritori/connett ...


Autore
Dr. PAUL CONNETT
Professor of Chemistry
St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY 13617

Febbraio 2006

Since 1985, in the US, over 300 trash incinerators, have been defeated or put on hold. In 1985, California had plans for 35 incinerators, only 3 were built, the rest were cancelled. In 1985, New Jersey had plans for 22 trash incinerators, only 5 have been built. A sixth planned for Mercer County was finally defeated after many years of struggle, in November 1996. Since 1994, more incinerators have been closed down than those that have gone on line.


Incineration is not an appropriate waste management solution in the twenty first century. They are formidably expensive and very few jobs are created for this massive economic investment. On the other hand, if the community puts its efforts into source separation, reuse and repair, recycling and composting, a very large number of jobs are created, both in the actual handling of the waste and in the secondary industries which utilise the recovered material.


Fortunately, the public's fears about the pollutants released and those captured in the residues, as well as incineration's enormous economic costs, when made visible, have dramatically slowed down the building of these facilities in both northern and southern countries alike. If one avoids the beguiling but inaccurate label "waste-to-energy" one can see that these facilities do not belong in a future in which sustainability will become the key issue for survival.


In my view, when you build an incinerator in your community you are advertising to the world that you were not clever enough, either politically or technically, to recover your discarded resources in a manner which is responsible to your local community or future generations.


Simply put incineration represents business as usual when the planet cannot afford business as usual. Incineration is simply not sustainable. It does not make sense to spend huge amounts of money destroying resources we should be sharing with the future.

Incineration puts the focus on the wrong end of the problem. Our task is not to get more and more sophisticated about destroying waste but to stop making those things which inevitably become waste. Thus the front end of the problem is bad industrial design: badly designed products and packaging. The concept of throwaway objects and packaging has no place in a sustainable society.

It is this need to shift the focus from the back end to the front end which has led to notion of a "Zero Waste strategy" currently being practised in Nova Scotia; Canberra. Australia; throughout New Zealand and San Francisco and other Californian communities, with remarkable results. Many cities have now achieved diversions from landfill of over 50%, some over 60%, without resorting to incineration. In addition to the familiar source separation programs (particularly door-to-door) resulting in composting of clean organics, reusing and repairing of many household items; recycling of materials back to industry; special collection of household toxics and smaller and safer interim landfills which receive only non-toxic materials and biologically stabilised organics, is the concept of the "Residual Screening and Research Facility". Such a facility - without the research component - has its prototype in Nova Scotia. This facility - built in front of the landfill - receives the residuals (the stuff not currently composted or reused or recycled or poorly separated) and examines them carefully on conveyor belts, where well protected workers remove bulky objects, more recyclables, more toxics and leave the dirty organic fraction for shredding and biological stabilisation.


I envisage a research component being added to this, where perhaps an adjunct from the local University or Technical School, is located in the Facility. The purpose of this component is that faculty and students study the composition of the residuals and work on two things: a) develop new uses for some of these discarded materials and where that is not possible b) offer better industrial design of such objects to industry.

It is interesting to compare the two different approaches: with incineration you convert three tons of waste into one ton of toxic ash that no one wants. With the zero waste approach you convert three tons of waste into one ton of compostables, one ton of recyclables and one ton of EDUCATION! We educate ourselves, we educate our decision makers and we educate industry. The education is simple: if we can't reuse it, can't reuse it, or can't compost it, industry shouldn't be making it!


One of the reasons I have now come to Italy 21 times since 1996 and given several hundred presentations in practically every region and major city, is that I believe Italy can make a huge contribution to the Zero Waste approach. It is no secret that Italy has some of the best designers in the world. I believe if they were challenged they could lead the world in designing waste out of the system. Italy has also had some of the most creative and inventive people in the world (Leonardo, Galileo, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Avogadro, Cannizaro, Modiglianni, Dali, Vivaldi, Verdi, Puccini Š the list could go on and on). What we have found in numerous places around the world is that a little creativity at the front of the problem can save millions at the back end. It is already beginning to happen in Italy. Your supermarkets are introducing equipment where customers can refill their own bottles with shampoo, detergent , water and wine. Think of the millions of plastics bottles that could keep out of landfills!


Sadly, this amazing potential for positive change is being thwarted by an Italian law which gives massive energy subsidies to incinerators. The international group Greenpeace has done an excellent job drawing attention to this short-sighted law and educating the public to the dangers of incineration and providing information about the more sustainable alternatives described above. I salute the brave young men and women of Greenpeace who often put their own lives in peril to draw attention to environmental abuse which stretches from the hunting of whales to the contamination of our food chains with dioxin. Essays I have authored on these issues can be found at www.no-burn.org and www.grrn.org


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Three crucial essays on all this posted online to The New York Times "Room for Debate" website:


http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/should-the-u-s-burn-or-bury-its-trash/?src=mv#neil


* Neil Seldman, Institute for Local Self-Reliance


* Laura Haight, New York Public Interest Research Group


* Ananda Lee Tan, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives

A Bad Economic Deal


by Neil Seldman

Neil Seldman is co-founder and president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. He is the author of "The U.S. Recycling Movement 1945-95," and "Wasting in the U.S. 2000."


Environmental questions are not the primary concerns of many in the U.S. who oppose garbage incineration. While environmental concerns usually wake people up, the economic and financial issues are paramount.

Cities and counties cannot afford the cost of building waste-to-energy plants, which typically cost $650 million per plant. With 20 years of bond payments this would amount to $1.3 billion, plus operating costs.


The difference between Denmark and the U.S. is that we have landfills giving us time to carry out more recycling and composting that are 10 percent the cost of incineration. Plus the raw materials returned to industry and agriculture create jobs, (about 5 to 10 more jobs vs. incineration in just processing, and much more in manufacturing).

Oakland, for example, has created 1,000 jobs in the past 10 years by investing in recycling and composting instead of incineration. Their tax base has expanded through these jobs and small businesses. Jobs are created as value is added to the raw materials.
The country's modest 33 percent recycling rate supports over 1 million jobs. Another 1 million jobs are waiting if the country doubles its current diversion rate. This is easily doable in the next 5 years, simply by adopting and adapting the best state-of-the-art practices.

That is why cities and counties are building resource recovery parks to keep materials local. Half the materials in the waste stream if properly processed have active markets within a 50 mile radius of cities that generate the materials.


In World War II the country had to make do with local materials or do without. There are 500 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) and construction and demolition debris that we cannot waste without severe economic pain. Los Angeles, for example, recovers 94 percent of its construction and demolition materials. New rules, economic incentives and equipment used there and in other cities and counties could be applied throughout the U.S.


If the incineration industry does not tie up waste streams for 20 years it cannot survive. But recycling, composting and anaerobic digestion are emerging so quickly, and are so much more economical than both incineration and landfilling, that the industry is desperate.

Hence the investment of millions by the industry in donations to Congress, state legislatures and local councils and commissions to gain subsidies and exemptions from pollution regulations. But it won't work to overcome the huge costs to build and operate incinerators. Every local community that has investigated the issue is saying no to new incinerators.

Even when a facility works, as in Montgomery County, Md., it needs $40 million a year in subsidies to cover costs above revenue from energy sales and tip fees. Citizens pay a surcharge of from $200 to $400 per household.


We should - given the space, time and budgets we have - make the transition from waste management to resource management.


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Start With Waste Reduction


by Laura Haight

Laura Haight is senior environmental associate with the New York Public Interest Research Group.


Ever since the ill-fated journey of the infamous Long Island garbage barge in 1987, Americans have been acutely aware that there is no place called "away" where the garbage all goes, and there are no magic bullets to solve our waste problems.

Recycling saves three to five times the amount of energy that incineration generates.

In 1988, in the aftermath of this embarrassment, New York adopted its first state law mandating source separation of recyclable materials, and set an ambitious goal of 50 percent waste reduction and recycling by 1997. But according to the state's recently released draft Solid Waste Management Plan, New York is achieving a paltry 20 percent recycling rate of its mixed household waste. This is unacceptable.


Where there's a will, there's a way to achieve far more successful recycling rates than the dismal performance in New York and most of the country. San Francisco, for instance, has set a goal of sending zero waste to landfills or incinerators by 2020, and is already achieving an impressive 72 percent recovery rate through aggressive recycling, reuse, and composting programs.


Waste-to-energy competes with recycling and composting programs for many of the same materials, such as paper, plastic, textiles and organic wastes. Over 85 percent of New York's municipal solid waste (MSW) is recyclable. Recycling saves three to five times the amount of energy that incineration generates.

In addition, burning garbage is a dirty and inefficient way of producing energy. As a fuel source, garbage incinerators release more CO2 emissions than coal-fired plants.


Incinerators are extremely costly to build and to operate, and consequently they rely heavily on the revenue stream from power generation. This means there needs to be a steady supply of waste to feed the plant, which is in direct conflict with the "3 R's" -- reduce, reuse, recycle. In contrast, landfill life can be extended significantly through aggressive waste reduction programs.

Finally, significant health concerns remain regarding incinerator emissions and the disposal of toxic ash residue. In addition to potential releases of dioxins and other cancer-causing emissions that have been a long-standing concern in the U.S., new research indicates that modern incinerators in Europe are a major source of ultrafine particle emissions, which can cause lung disease, heart disease, cancer and premature deaths.


It is a waste of energy to be discussing burning our garbage versus burying it -- our focus needs to be on waste reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting, which is where the real environmental, economic, and energy-saving benefits can be found.


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Incineration Remains a Serious Threat


by Ananda Lee Tan


Ananda Lee Tan is the U.S. and Canada coordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.


From http://www.no-burn.org/gaia-raises-serious-concern-on-new-york-times-article-on-incineration ...


GAIA Raises Serious Concern on New York Times Article on Incineration

To the Editor, NY Times

Re: NY Times article: "Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags", 4/12/2010


Dear Editor,

I would like to raise some serious concerns about yesterday's article by Elisabeth Rosenthal: "Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but the U.S. Lags". This piece fails to reference any credible information sources regarding waste incineration and the risk posed by incineration technologies.


Introducing Danish incinerators as "Far cleaner than conventional incinerators..", the article cites the website of Ramboll - a Danish incinerator vendor, whose public relations department must be delighted by such careless reporting. In covering controversial issues where public interest and industry practices are widely known to be in conflict, I would expect the NY Times to conduct more thorough research to ensure balanced journalism.

The following points address a range of public concern, which Ms. Rosenthal has failed to examine.

For decades the tobacco industry told us that cigarettes were safe. Now the waste incineration industry wants us to believe they are coming clean?

Despite the latest industry spin, there is nothing better about burning garbage today, whether in the U.S. or in Denmark (1). Attempts to peddle "waste to energy" haven't gained wide acceptance around the world because people are growing increasingly aware that:

1. Incineration poses a serious threat to public health. Burning garbage is a primary source of cancer-causing dioxins and other pollutants that enter the food supply and concentrate up through the food chain. Installing of scrubbers and filters to reduce the smokestack emissions only serves to increase the amount of residual fly ash that needs to be disposed in landfills, contaminating groundwater and generating similar risk.

2. Incineration produces more carbon dioxide (CO2) per unit of electricity generated than coal power plants (2). Current atmospheric carbon loads cannot safely bear additional emissions from incinerators and landfills. Howevere, zero waste practices such as recycling and composting has the potential of mitigating up to 42 % of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

3. Incineration represents a massive waste of energy. Due to its low calorific value, burning garbage to produce energy is highly inefficient (3). Conversely, recycling recovers three to five times more energy than incineration produces.

4. Incineration creates an economic burden for communities. Billions of taxpayer dollars are spent subsidizing the construction and operations of incinerators. For a fraction of this cost, investments in recycle, reuse and remanufacture, create significantly more business and employment opportunity.

5. Incineration represents the destruction of valuable resources and jobs. Zero waste practices create over 10 times the number of jobs than burning or burying the same waste. Over ninety per cent of municipal solid waste in the U.S. can be recycled, re-used or composted, to create thousands of long-term, family-supporting jobs and community resilience.

As part of their marketing efforts, incinerator industry lobby groups have even recruited the same "expert" witnesses that once testified for the tobacco industry. Fortunately, citizen groups today are not easily deceived by such masquerades and are familiar with the real solutions.

The next time the NY Times looks at gleaning information from industry websites, I would encourage your colleagues to diligently question the source.

For more information on waste incineration and the latest reports on the economic, public health and environmental risk associated with incinerator technologies, please check our website or contact me directly.

Respectfully,

Ananda Lee Tan
North American Program Coordinator
Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives
1958 University Avenue, Berkeley, Ca 94703
Phone: +1 510 883 9490 Ext 102
Email: ananda(at)no-burn.org
Website: www.no-burn.org

Footnotes:

1. According to Eurostat in 2007, Denmark produces the highest waste per capita (over 1762 lbs. per person each year) in the EU - clearly an unsustainable level of waste generation. Additionally, over 80 % of what is burned in Danish incinerators is recyclable/compostable.

2. http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/affect/air-emissions.html


3. State of the art incineration plants in Denmark achieve only 25% energy efficiency with heat and power

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today's Times-- two letters for zero-waste; more here...
[join 50 Dutchess folks signed on for zero-waste-- carbon-cutting, clean-air, cost-saving, green jobs now; don't forget to come out for Paul Connett Thurs. 8 pm Earth Day!...(Vassar Taylor Hall Rm 203)...
see: http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2010/04/paul-connett-vassar-for-earth-day-dont.html ; time is NOW-- this week-- Earth Week-- to send letters to all 25 of us: countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us!]

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Recall these two great letters to the editor in the April 18th Sunday New York Times...(see http://www.no-burn.org ; http://www.ILSR.org !)...

[...and again-- check out entire http://www.StopTrashingtheClimate.org report if you haven't yet...]

From http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/l18trash.html?ref=opinion ...

To the Editor:

It is alarming to see The New York Times buying into the garbage industry greenwashing of incinerators as "clean energy."

Around the world, there is a growing citizen backlash against incinerators that burn garbage and trees. The resulting electricity is dirtier than burning coal on a per megawatt basis. Garbage-burning emissions can cause cancer, heart disease, asthma and more.

In Massachusetts, there will be a statewide referendum in November to remove these incinerators from the state's renewable portfolio standard, which requires a certain percentage of energy from renewable sources.

Taxpayers and ratepayers are outraged about paying billions in subsidies for this so-called green energy. The laws subsidizing these toxic incinerators must be changed.

Margaret E. Sheehan
Chairwoman, Stop Spewing
Carbon Campaign
Cambridge, Mass., April 13, 2010

[see http://www.StopSpewingCarbon.com ;

http://www.stopspewingcarbon.com/facts/environmental-impacts

http://www.stopspewingcarbon.com/the-media/76-press-alert-massachusetts-air-pollution-ballot-initiative-targets-biomass-incinerators.html ]

To the Editor:

There are significant differences between European and United States waste combustion markets and regulations that merit deeper examination.

European countries, including Denmark and Germany, have stronger regulations governing combustion plants, higher landfill taxes, carbon-based energy costs, higher levels of recycling and composting, national container deposit laws and laws that require product manufacturers to pay for municipal waste disposal.

All of these policies play a role in defining their waste management systems, and the lack of all of these policies in the United States plays a role in whether waste combustion should be considered here.

Moreover, in the United States, waste combustors are disproportionately sited in minority and poor communities, which justifiably leads to local opposition to combustion plants.

The energy benefits of waste combustion plants compared with landfills are not in dispute.

The more relevant comparison is between combustion plants and recycling. Recycling is the more energy-productive choice for the vast majority of materials found in the municipal waste stream, and the broader ecological winner as well.

Therefore shouldn't increasing the recycling rate, not combustion, be the primary focus of our waste management policies?

Allen Hershkowitz
Director, Solid Waste Project
Natural Resources Defense Council
New York, April 13, 2010

"Capitalism: A Love Story"-- free screening today-- don't miss it!...

Hi all...

Come out, come out today if you can to our free screening of Michael Moore's latest documentary "Capitalism: A Love Story" today at 5:30 pm at Rhinebeck Town Hall at 80 E. Market St. (with refreshments), and discussion/strategizing; see http://www.MichaelMoore.com !...

[...and-- watch Michael Moore tonight 9 pm on Larry King Live on CNN too!...]

See below-- a variety of ways that our state legislators in NYS and congressional representatives in U.S. could and should truly stand up for us on Main Street instead of Wall Street; 38 Dutchess residents signed on to our http://www.petitiononline.com/stocktax so far to address county/state tax/budget...

It's not just about lobbying Albany & Washington either...see http://www.MovetheMoney.info ...

No reason at all why Dutchess County couldn't follow great examples of L.A., Philadelphia, et. al. on this; recall recent Los Angeles City Council unanimous vote to hold local banks responsible for $28 B.

[see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-santiago/los-angeles-pushes-for-re_b_488126.html ; Dutchess could also reform county investment policy here as has been proposed in Rockland County;
http://www.co.rockland.ny.us/Legislature/LNews/09/021709.pdf -- and Dutchess could/should follow recent Northern Dutchess Alliance recommendation for "Community Reinvestment Report";
see: http://www.northerndutchess.org/images/NDABlueprintWeb.pdf (see p. 82); banks accountable!]

New fact: "Six banks have assets equivalent to 60% of our gross national product-- Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo; to put this in perspective, in the mid-1990's, these six banks or their predecessors, since there have been a lot of mergers had less than 20 percent. Their assets were less than 20% of the gross national product."

[from Bill Moyers--"Six Banks Control 60% of GNP; U.S. Is at the Mercy of an Unstoppable Oligarchy"
http://www.alternet.org/story/146528/moyers%3A_six_banks_control_60%25_of_gross_national_product_--_is_the_u.s._at_the_mercy_of_an_unstoppable_oligarchy (Moyers w/Simon Johnson, Jim Kwak)]

Seven new reasons to come out today to see "Capitalism: A Love Story" and discuss afterwards:

"How Can We Reconnect Capital with Community?" by Stacy Mitchell
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/money-that-works-for-local-communities

"Bank Reform: Setback in the Senate, Action in the Streets" by John Nichols
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/555599/bank_reform_setback_in_the_senate_action_in_the_streets

"Financial Reform: Empower the People" by Ralph Nader
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/26-10

"Taking it to the Banks" by Peter Rothberg
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow/555367/taking_it_to_the_banks

"Breaking the Banks" by William Greider
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100510/greider

"Larry Summers: Professor Pants on Fire" by William Greider
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/25-3

"How To Talk To a Tea Party Activist" by Chuck Collins of http://www.FairEconomy.org
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100426/collins

Joel
242-3571/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net

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First...

Kudos: Hall/Hinchey co-sponsoring Donna Edwards' constitutional amendment: corp.'s are not people!
[see: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/01-1 ; also see http://www.MovetoAmend.org ]

[why haven't Murphy, Schumer, Gillibrand agreed to co-sponsor this?...see John Nichols column below]

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Second...

Kudos both to Rep. Maurice Hinchey-- and Sen. John McCain-- for coming out strongly this past winter to bring back FDR's Glass-Steagall Act to truly bring back some integrity and stability to our economy, banks, and Wall Street; join 40 other folks signed on to Tyner's http://www.PetitionOnline.com/FDRagain effort in support of their work.

[why haven't Murphy, Hall, Schumer, Gillibrand agreed to co-sponsor S.2886/H.R.4377?]

For more on this check out these five links:

Hinchey Introduces Bill to Reinstate Glass-Steagall Act; Break Up MegaBanks that Caused Financial Crisis; Measure Would Separate Investment & Commercial Banking to Protect the Public [12/16/09]
http://www.house.gov/list/press/ny22_hinchey/morenews/121609glasssteagall.html

Statement by Sen. John McCain on The Banking Integrity Act of 2009 [12/17/09]
http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=9edb5b0f-d58c-6a14-815c-b60728ddd845

"An Odd Post-Crash Couple: Spurning Obama, McCain and Cantwell Propose Resurrecting Glass-Steagall to Break Up Wall Street" [Newsweek 12/15/09]
http://www.newsweek.com/id/226938

"McCain, Cantwell Battle The Monolith To Reinstate Glass-Steagall" [Huffington Post]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/17/mccain-cantwell-battle-th_n_395748.html

"McCain Gets It, Obama Doesn't" by Robert Scheer [1/6/10]
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/06-4

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Third-- great initiatives from http://www.MovetheMoney.info and http://www.NewRules.org !...

Recently Updated Rules

Depositing Public Funds in Local Banks - Maryland

This bill would give local banks and credit unions a 10 percent pricing preference on bids to manage both state and municipal bank accounts. More

Depositing Public Funds in Local Banks - Minnesota

This bill gives local banks and credit unions a 10 percent pricing preference when bidding to manage the state's bank accounts. Currently, the state maintains 264 major accounts, including its general fund account and accounts for various agencies. The total amount of money on deposit in these accounts varies considerably over time, but can be as high as $100 million. Every five years, the state bids out these accounts as a package, awarding their management to a single bank. U.S. Bancorp, the nation's 11th largest bank holding company, won the most recent bid. More

Depositing Public Funds in Local Banks - New Mexico

The bill would give New Mexico-based banks and credit unions that otherwise meet the state's banking requirements a 10 percent preference in bidding to be the state's fiscal agent, the institution that manages its day-to-day banking business. The bill also requires the New Mexico Treasurer and the State Investment Council to develop an investment policy for funds held in CDs (certificates of deposit) that would increase community bank lending to local residents and businesses. More

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Fourth-- again-- join 38 other local folks signed on to our http://www.petitiononline.com/stocktax effort if you agree with the massive Better Choice Budget Coalition that at least a small stock transfer tax should be re-implemented on the destructive speculation on Wall Street-- to stop local property taxes from rising any more than they have already-- and stop the cruel and unnecessary state budget cuts proposed to just about everything in our communities locally and across the state!...

A stock transfer tax is a better choice than decimating state funding for our schools, parks, libraries, universities, hospitals, nursing homes, home care programs, counties, towns, villages, universities, domestic violence services, housing, legal services, homeless, runaways, and other programs for our poor, Environmental Protection Fund, DEC staffing, and many other crucial programs-- taking $7.4 billion dollars out of our state's economy during a recession will only make the current economic situation worse, not better...

These members of the Better Choice Budget coalition all strongly support re-implementation of a stock transfer tax on Wall Street-- Dutchess Outreach, NYS Library Association, NYS Coalition Against Domestic Violence, NY Statewide Senior Action Council, NYS Alliance for Retired Americans, Interfaith Alliance of NYS, Interfaith Impact of NYS, Sierra Club, Environmental Advocates, Citizens Environmental Coalition, Citizen Action, NY Children's Action Network, NY Jobs with Justice, NYS AFL-CIO, CSEA, PEF, NYSUT, AFSCME, NYS Community Action Association, NYS Episcopal Public Policy Network, NYS Child Care Coordinating Council, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, Public Utility Law Project, Center for Working Families, Class Size Matters, Coalition for After-School Funding, Fiscal Policy Institute, Hunger Action Network of NYS, many more-- see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org.

Fact: A stock transfer tax on Wall Street has been in existence since 1915, but hasn't been collected since 1981; now every year literally $16 billion in stock transfer taxes (at a nickel a share) is collected from- and given back to-- the same speculators on Wall Street who destroyed our economy.

Fact: A statewide poll commissioned by the NYS AFL-CIO in 2003 showed that by 63% to 24%, New York voters strongly favored re-instituting at least a partial stock transfer tax of one or two cents per share on stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange (as in Texas and Florida).
[see http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2010/01/stock-transfer-tax-has-3-to-1-support.html ]

Fact: Crain's New York reported Mar. 28th that New York Stock Exchange firms made "an astonishing $61 billion-triple the previous record-- more pretax profits in last year's second quarter than they made in the former record-busting year of 2006. There's a good reason Wall Street didn't trumpet its stunning comeback: Nearly all of the earnings were due to enormous government subsidies. 'A disproportionate amount of government assistance went to New York banks,' says economist Marisa Di Natale of Moody's Economy.com. 'This is the result.'"
[see: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100328/FREE/303289966 ]

Fact: "There's every reason to believe that this will be the rule from now on; when push comes to shove, no matter who is in power, the financial sector will be bailed out."
[from Paul Krugman's "Punks and Plutocrats" column in NYTimes 3/29/10:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/opinion/29krugman.html ]

Fact: $14 trillion over last few years has been paid out/set aside to bail out Wall Street (not $787 billion).
[according Nomi Prins; see: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/real-size-bailout-treasury-fed ]

Fact: 98% of small business owners (true engine of job growth in U.S.) make less than $250,000 a year.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/16/barack-obama/most-small-businesses-wont-be-subject-to-obamas-ta/ ; http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf ]

Fact: 70% of our economy is driven by consumer demand; recession ends when middle class has $$$.
[see: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/13/pm_retail_sales/ ]

Fact: Millionaires in NYS now pay only 7% of their income in state/local taxes; middle class pays 11%.
[see: http://www.itepnet.org/wp2009/ny_whopays_factsheet.pdf ]

Fact: Millionaires used to pay 15.5% NYS income tax rate in early 70's; they now pay less than 9% rate.
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/taxhistory2.htm ]

Fact: The richest 5% of Americans now own 60% of all wealth; other 95% of us own 40% of the wealth.
[ http://hudson-valley.chronogram.com/issue/2009/11/News+&+Politics/Larry-Beinhart-s-Body-Politic ]

Fact: Millionaires paid 91% federal income tax rate in 50's; they now pay 35% federal income tax rate.
[see: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ILikeIke ]

Fact: "Bank of America, Wells Fargo Probably Won't Pay Income Tax for '09" by Christina Rexrode:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/27-4 .

And-- read these eight strong pieces on the need for a stock transfer tax again if you haven't yet:

"Financial Transactions Tax: A Little Tax on the Big Casino" by Tanya Dawkins [Yes magazine 3/10/10]
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/10-4

"Time To Tax Financial Speculation" by Sarah Anderson [Yes magazine 2/9/10]
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/time-to-tax-financial-speculation

2010 People's State of State Rally at Capitol statement [Mark Dunlea/Hunger Action Network of NYS]
http://www.hungeractionnys.org/People%20State%20of%20the%20State%202010.pdf

"Taxing the Speculators" by Paul Krugman [NYTimes 11/27/09]
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/opinion/27krugman.html

"The Benefits of a Financial Transactions Tax" [Dean Baker/Center for Economic Policy and Research]
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-benefits-of-a-financial-transactions-tax/

"A Stock Transfer Tax: The Right Medicine for Wall Street" by Dean Baker [3/15/08]
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/15/a_stock_transfer_tax_the_right/

"Ferrer Proposes Return of Tax on Stock Trades to Aid Schools" [New York Times 4/19/05]
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E0DA1F3EF93AA25757C0A9639C8B63

"Big Idea: Tax the Street" by J.W. Mason [City Limits Magazine 9-10/02]
http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=2806

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From http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=920718&category=OPINION ...

Look to Wall Street for help

By FRANK MAURO AND RON DEUTSCH
Albany Times-Union First published in print: Monday, April 12, 2010

With New York, like other states, still reeling from a devastating national recession, Gov. David Paterson and the Legislature are proposing budget plans that rely overwhelmingly on cuts to essential public services. This, they imply, would hurt the economy less than a more balanced approach that includes some economically sensible revenue choices. Nothing could be further from economic reality.

The painful irony of the current crisis is that people's needs are rising while the resources available to the states to meet those needs are shrinking. Reacting to this situation by offering even less help to struggling families not only hurts people trying to get back on their feet, but it's also bad for the state's economy.

Several years ago, during a previous national recession, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Peter Orszag, now director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, wrote a paper explaining why. They took into account the fact that most tax dollars that states collect go for salaries and purchases that are spent quickly and close to home -- the essence of economic stimulus.

Stiglitz and Orszag found that reducing this type of spending, especially when the economy already suffers from a faltering private sector, is actually more damaging in the short run than tax increases focused on the portions of higher income households' incomes that are the least likely to be spent in the local economy.

The budget cuts being proposed by the governor and Legislature would go in the other direction. These cuts would pull the rug from under many New York families. And just in the areas of education and health care alone, they would add 30,000 more New Yorkers to the unemployment rolls and threaten this fragile recovery.

Under a balanced approach to the state budget, revenues should be raised in ways that would hurt the economy the least; and should be used to reduce the extent of the spending cuts and to provide meaningful property tax relief.

While most families and businesses are struggling economically, Wall Street is enjoying record profits -- an estimated $61 billion last year. That's triple the previous record set in 2006 and it adds up to very generous salaries and bonuses, all on the heels of the recent trillion dollar, taxpayer-funded bailout. Wall Street bounced back quickly, but Main Street remains mired in the aftermath of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression -- a crisis, by the way, caused in large part by finance sector excesses.

Wall Street could not have recovered so quickly without Main Street's helping hand.
Now it's time for Wall Street to return the favor and help Main Street.

There are several ways in which Wall Street could help prevent the most disastrous cuts to essential state and local public services that are now being considered by the Legislature.

For example, temporarily lowering from 100 percent to 80 percent the portion of the state's Stock Transfer Tax that is rebated would produce about $3.2 billion a year. In effect, this change would impose a tax of only one cent per share on shares selling for more than $20 each, and as little as a quarter of a cent per share for shares selling for less than $5 per share.

Another approach would involve a temporary moratorium on the ability of businesses to offset current profits with prior years' losses. This would ensure that profitable firms contribute on an "ability to pay" basis during the current downturn.

In a crisis like this, it's easy to forget about the future. Just getting through each day is tough enough. But New York can't afford to be so short-sighted. Education, affordable health care and housing, vital state services, a strong safety net and a sound transportation system are all essential for a prosperous economy. Cutting too deeply in those areas today will hurt the state.

But a balanced approach that includes economically sensible revenue increases would be a sound investment that New York can't afford not to make.

Frank Mauro is executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute. Ron Deutsch is executive director of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness.

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From http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100426/collins ...

How to Talk to a Tea Party Activist
Comment
by CHUCK COLLINS

April 14, 2010

We'll be hearing a lot about the tea party movement on tax day. They will be angry, and some of that anger at the tax system will be justified.

Like all social movements, the tea party wave is not monolithic. There are hard-core libertarians, white supremacists and partisan Republicans that are not interested in dialogue. But in my conversations with rank-and-file tea party activists, there are important points of common ground.

Many participants have seen their personal economic security devastated by the economic meltdown. They are worried about their tax bills, national debt and the economy their children will inherit. They feel isolated and the tea party is a community.

Here are a few conversation points I've found useful in talking with the open-minded participants at tea party activities:

We Agree

The middle class is overtaxed. After fifty years of major "tax reform" by both political parties, the middle class pays the same percent of income in taxes today as it did in 1960. The very rich (with incomes over $2 million) pay half as much as they did in 1960 and the richest 400 households pay two-thirds less. Big corporations like ExxonMobil and General Electric have gamed the system so that they pay zero or little taxes.

We are borrowing recklessly from the future, from our children's standard of living. We borrowed to give rich and global corporations tax breaks and fight two wars. In the last eight years, we borrowed $700 billion to give tax breaks to people with incomes over $250,000.

The middle class standard of living is under attack. For thirty years real wages have been flat and our economic security has declined. This was masked by people working more hours and taking on unprecedented amounts of personal debt. The economic crisis unmasked how our security was built on a bubble of debt. A job is no longer a source of health insurance or retirement security. We've been told: you are on your own.

Wall Street is squeezing us at every turn. In addition to the government, corporations are also "taxing" us, with their fees, charges and monopoly control over markets. We pay more and more to Visa, Verizon, AT&T, Blue CrossBlue Shield, ExxonMobil, US Airways, etc. These are forms of taxes paid to corporations. They won't stop unless we organize to stop them.

Where We May Disagree:

President Obama is not the enemy. Both major parties have been hijacked by corporate overlords whose first priority is to protect Wall Street financiers and greedy corporations. President Obama is pushing back more than President Bush did, and he had an enormous mess to clean up (he inherited two wars, the Wall Street meltdown and a $10 trillion national debt). If we demand a government that protects Main Street and ordinary people against organized greed, he will respond.

Scapegoating vulnerable people is a dead end. Our economic problems were not caused by immigrants or low-income people. Wall Street greed in high places is what drove the economy over a cliff. Powerful elites want to distract us by having us fight among ourselves, with racial divides and class wars. Let's not be distracted.

Weak government is not the answer. If we shrink government, who will defend us against Wall Street and the corporate looters? The parts of government that should protect us against Wall Street greed, speculation and the assaults on the middle class have been weakened under both political parties.

Solutions

A fair and accountable tax system. Wealthy people and corporations should pay their fair share and reduce the bite on middle-class taxpayers. We should eliminate tax dodges that create one tax system for the privileged and another for everyone else.

Reduce national debt and make real investments. We need to pay down our national debt and make long overdue investments in public infrastructure that our small businesses and communities depend on.

Oversight of Wall Street. The financial sector is incapable of policing itself. We need strong public institutions to oversee the financial markets so that the reckless, greedy and unregulated financial activities that wrecked our economy cannot happen again.

Rein in big corporations. We need a constitutional amendment to limit the power of corporations to dominate our political process including elections, campaigns and lobbying. This is key to preserving our democracy and liberties.

About Chuck Collins
Chuck Collins directs the program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Washington, DC-based Institute for Policy Studies and coordinates the Working Group on Extreme Inequality. He is co-author, with Mary Wright, of The Moral Measure of the Economy (Orbis).

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Fifth...

"The Sanders Standard for Serious Bank Reform"
posted by John Nichols on 04/20/2010 @ 10:06am
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/553584/the_sanders_standard_for_serious_bank_reform

There will be a lot of talk about holding big banks and Wall Street to account in coming days, as the Senate takes up the question of how to overhaul a financial-services industry that is currently defined by a toxic combination of blind greed, unsustainable speculation and "too-big-to-fail" threats not just to the economy but to the stability of this country's democratic experiment.

Most of the measures of success or failure when it comes to regulating big banks, payday lenders, credit-card sharks and the Federal Reserve will be made by Republicans who are taking their marching orders from Wall Street lobbyists and Democrats who are inclined toward compromises that will keep the corporate campaign cash flowing their way in a tough election season.

Who to trust?

How about someone who was complaining about the speculators before their crashed the economy in the fall of 2008?

How about someone who voted against the bank bailout?

How about someone who has demanded accountability from the Fed not just in recent years but across the past two decades?

How about someone who, as a lonely member of the House back in 1999, voted against deregulating the the financial services industry in a manner that set the stage for the orgy of greed, the boom-and-bust economy and the predictable meltdowns?

How about Bernie Sanders?

What does the Vermont independent say?

He begins by arguing, correctly, that the great mass of Americans want a lot more that Republican talking points and Democratic compromises.

"Disgust at Wall Street is profound," says Sanders. "The American people want us to change in a very profound way how Wall Street functions, and Congress must deliver."

What's the Sanders Standard profound change of how Wall Street functions?

The senators says the Senate should amend a tepid financial reform bill to:

1. Break Up Huge Banks.

The four biggest U.S. banks - Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Well-Fargo - issue two-thirds of all credit cards, write half the mortgages and control nearly 40 percent of bank deposits in the United Sates. "We must break up these behemoths because of the incredible economic power they exert through their concentration of ownership," Sanders said. "It is simply not acceptable that a small handful of giant financial entities can exert such enormous influence over the economic well being of hundreds of millions of Americans."

2. Make Wall Street Part of the Real American Economy.

"With rampant unemployment and when small- and medium-size businesses are unable to obtain affordable credit, it is insane that our largest financial institutions continue to trade trillions in esoteric financial instruments which makes Wall Street the largest gambling casino in the world," he said. Instead, Sanders said, we need to create millions of new jobs by rebuilding our manufacturing base, transforming our energy system and addressing our transportation and infrastructure crisis. We need to make sure that businesses get the credit they need to expand and create employment.

3. Cap Credit Card Interest Rates.

Millions of middle-class Americans who pay their bills on time are being charged interest rates of 30 percent or more. "That is not only obscene but, according to every major religion, immoral. Banks cannot be allowed to engage in usury and charge outrageous interest rates," Sanders said. He will offer an amendment that would cap interest rates for private banks at the same level federal law allows for credit unions; 15 percent except under exceptional circumstances.

4. End Fed Secrecy.

During the bailout, large financial institutions received trillions of dollars in near-zero interest loans. "Who received those loans and under what terms? The Fed won't say. Did some of them turn around and, in a mammoth welfare scam, invest that Fed money in government treasury bonds at 3 percent or 4 percent interest rates? The Fed isn't telling. It's time we had transparency at the Fed so that the American people know what our central bank is doing with taxpayer dollars," Sanders said.

That's the Sanders Standard.

It's the right one to begin with.

Senator, be they Democrats or Republicans, should be expected to rise to it by backing the four amendments.

But they should not stop there. Senators who are serious about reform should embrace a host of specific proposals developed by top economists and analysts such as Rob Johnson, the former chief economist for the Senate Banking Committee; Robert Kuttner, the former chief investigator for the Senate Banking Committee; Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research; and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

Under the auspices of theAgenda Project's campaign to "Repair the Foundation of Our Economy," they argue with regard to proposed financial services reforms that:

Nineteen months after the most devastating financial crisis since the Great Depression, our financial system remains at risk. Neither the bill passed earlier this year by the House, nor the one currently under consideration in the Senate would have prevented the crisis. Without serious restructuring, they will not prevent a future crisis.

Sound financial markets are the bedrock of a strong economy. Over the last decade, under both Democratic and Republican leadership, our financial sector moved away from core market principles - transparency, competition, free flow of information and the essential discipline of failure - that allowed the US economy to thrive. Restoring the integrity of our financial markets and providing the foundation for economic recovery, requires re-committing to these principles.

We, the undersigned, call on you to fulfill the responsibilities of your position by joining together in non-partisan cooperation to pass legislation that AT A MINIMUM would have prevented the crisis we just endured. Such legislation must include ALL of the following reforms or be considered incomplete:

1. Eliminates a perpetual system of government sponsored corporate bailouts financed by the government or private industry.

2. Increase minimum capital requirements for banks to no less than 8 percent. Apply additional risk-weighted capital requirements for: a) risk concentration, b) significant interconnectedness with other financial institutions and c) illiquidity which assumes a decline in collateral values. Create standard metrics for these variables.

3. Require on balance sheet reporting of all liabilities with disclosure of related material information including all contingent claims (including but not limited to swaps, SIVs and VIEs). Provide a private right of action for failure to comply and for knowingly aiding and abetting securities fraud.

4. Require all standardized derivatives to be traded over exchanges and central clearinghouses with pricing transparent to market participants include a strong presumption that most existing OTC transactions would be standardized. Require all inter-bank and inter-dealer contingent claims (including but not limited to derivative and swap transactions) that cannot be standardized to be reported on a daily basis to a regulated transparent clearinghouse. Mandate significant and consistent margin and regulatory requirements across standardized and OTC contingent claim transactions.

5. Create standardized Pooling and Servicing Agreements and mandate the timely availability of electronically usable loan level information for asset backed securities, covered bond and similarly structured transactions prior to sale. Provide a private right of action and personal liability for sponsors of securitized underwritings.

6. Establish a timeline for the resolution of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

7. Mandate that credit rating agencies be subject to the same legal standards as other market participants.

8. Mandate a separation of the roles of Chairman of the Board and CEO for regulated financial institutions.

Without these reforms, our economy remains at risk.

The debate over financial services reform will get rough, and complex at times.

But the measure of real reform is easy.

Begin by meeting the Sanders Standard.

Then get serious about the Agenda Project proposals.

Do that, and the Senate is talking about real reform.

Anything less and the Senate is just talking.

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Sixth-- from Danny Schechter the News Dissector:

"In Britain, the police are raiding Hedge Funds to bust insider traders. In America, the Hedge Funds are still raiding us, even as public opinion calls for a crackdown on Wall Street. One recent poll, in a nation that seems so divided on everything, showed 82% for aggressive action. 82%! A new Bloomberg survey says the public wants the government to punish the financial fraudsters. '57 percent of Americans have a mostly unfavorable or very unfavorable view of Wall Street, versus fewer than one-quarter who have a favorable opinion. Banks are viewed badly by 54 percent of poll respondents, and 60 percent have a negative opinion of insurance companies'..."

"Next Up: Wall Street Reform" by Danny Schechter [Common Dreams News Center 3/25/10]
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/25-3

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Seventh...

From http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100329/nichols ...

"Banking for the People"
By John Nichols

This article appeared in the March 29, 2010 edition of The Nation.
March 11, 2010

Even if financial services reforms are finally enacted at the federal level, it is unlikely they will create a banking system that serves the interests of Main Street America or the great mass of citizens who do the work and pay the taxes yet reap few of the benefits of this nation's immense wealth. But what if that great mass of citizens owned the banks?

That's a question that a growing number of candidates and legislators across the country are answering with proposals to create state-owned banks. Though these initiatives borrow from an old model--North Dakota has run a successful state bank since 1919--they are a response to a new reality: the hundreds of billions of public dollars plowed into big banks by the federal bailout have done little to free credit for job creation or economic development in recession-ravaged communities. So, taking a cue from Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and other critics of private-bank bailouts, latter-day populists are proposing to put public money to work for the public good.

Oregon Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Bradbury is calling for the creation of a Bank of Oregon, which would keep money in the state and invest in sustainable development. "It is time to declare economic sovereignty from the multinational banks that are responsible for much of our current economic crisis," says the former State Senate president and secretary of state. "Every year we ship over a billion dollars in Oregon taxpayer dollars to out-of-state and multinational banks in the form of deposits, only to see that money invested elsewhere. It's time to put our money to work for Oregonians."

Michigan's Virg Bernero, a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor in that hard-hit state, is another public-banking proponent. "We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall Street at their own game by keeping our money right here in Michigan and investing it to retool our economy and create jobs," says the populist mayor of Lansing. In Illinois, Green Party gubernatorial nominee Rich Whitney, who won 10 percent of the statewide vote in 2006, proposes depositing all state tax revenues and pension contributions in a state bank. "Instead of using state funds as a means to further enrich private banks, a state-owned bank could earn additional revenue for the state while at the same time help spur economic development in Illinois," he argues.

It is not just candidates who are talking up bold remedies to the challenges created and perpetuated by "too big to fail" banks. Legislators from Vermont to Virginia, from Michigan to Washington State, are proposing to start state banks. They take inspiration from the Bank of North Dakota, created ninety-one years ago by radical Non-Partisan Leaguers to serve as the depository for all state tax collections and fees. The nation's only state-owned bank avoided subprime lending and the derivatives markets during the recent real estate bubble and now has $4 billion under management. It maintains the faith of its founders and, in the words of bank president Eric Hardmeyer, continues to "plow those deposits back into the state of North Dakota in the form of loans. We invest back into the state in economic development type of activities." What that means, according to Ellen Brown, author of the book Web of Debt, is that North Dakota has avoided the credit freeze "by creating its own credit [and] leading the nation in establishing state economic sovereignty."

That sounds good to Massachusetts Senate president Therese Murray, who wants her state to look into creating its own bank. Washington House finance committee vice chair Bob Hasegawa, a Seattle Democrat, has formally proposed a State Bank of Washington. "Imagine financing student aid, infrastructure, industry and community development. Imagine providing access to capital for small businesses, or otherwise leveraging our resources instead of having to do it with tax incentives," he says. "Imagine keeping our resources local instead of exporting them as profits, never to be seen again--that's what this bank could do."

The movement to create state-run banks is part of a broader push to put public money to work for the people. In Los Angeles the City Council voted unanimously on March 5 to ensure that taxpayer money is invested only in banks that have established track records of helping families stay in their homes, lending to small businesses that create jobs and eschewing toxic interest-rate "swaps" that saddle communities with excessive fees and interest rates. Pennsylvania's auditor general, Jack Wagner, is leading a campaign in that state to get local governments and school boards to stop risking public funds with investment banks that engage in deals Wagner describes as "tantamount to gambling with public money." Urging these initiatives on is the Service Employees International Union, which is waging a national campaign to stop investing in unaccountable banks. "It's time for Wall Street banks to stop focusing on their profits and start doing their part to help our cities and families recover," says SEIU secretary-treasurer Anna Burger.

The prospect of what might be done with all the money that has flowed from the federal Treasury to private banks has some players talking of taking the North Dakota model national. At a Nation magazine "Meltdown" event a year ago, Stiglitz suggested, "If we had used the $700 billion to create a new financial institution, allowed it to lever 10 to 1, which is very modest compared to the 30 to 1 that we were doing--10 to 1 would have generated $7 trillion of new lending capacity, far in excess of what our country needs. So the issue here is not about lending. It's really about saving the bankers. And what we confused was saving the banks versus saving the bankers and their shareholders." Yet as Washington struggles with the task of imposing basic regulation on big banks, the action will be in the states. How likely is that? Hardmeyer used to doubt that the North Dakota model would ever be adopted elsewhere. Now, he says, "when I look around the country, it's not quite as far a leap as I once thought it was."

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Eighth...

"Amend to End Too Big to Fail"
posted by John Nichols on 04/23/2010 @ 12:06pm
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/554614/amend_to_end_too_big_to_fail

"In the midst of a Wall Street fight, when fear supersedes reason, it is difficult for those who are in it, but not directing it, to determine how much is real, how much is sham."

So declared Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette during the great battle of a century ago over regulating the banks that had very nearly crashed the U.S. economy with the panic of 1907.

Little has changed.

As the U.S. Senate again approaches the question of regulating toxic-asset banks and a financial services industry that is defined by speculation and profiteering rather than service to the real economy of the United States, there are plenty of shams.

President Obama and Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, claim that the reform legislation they are promoting will address the worst excesses of bad bankers and brokers. But the legislation as constructed by Dodd and backed by Obama is so weak that it does not break up "too-big-to-fail-banks," let alone end the boom-and-bust patterns of false growth and real pain that have so undermined the financial stability of working families.

Even worse are Republican critics of reform, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who was one of the chief backers of the massive Wall Street bailout of 2008. With talking points assembled in closed-door meetings with Wall Street insiders, he has emerged as the loudest defender of a status quo that rewards speculators while denying credit to small businesses and foreclosing on family homes and farms.

The Senate could use a La Follette.

And it may just have one.

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, a populist Democrat who has frequently broken with his own party's leadership on international trade and domestic economic issues, is proposing an essential amendment to the Dodd bill.

Brown and his allies -- including Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley and Delaware Democrat Ted Kaufman -- want to force the biggest banks and bank holding companies to downsize so that they no longer will be able to control so much of the nation's wealth and financial activity that they are "too big to fail."

Big banks would not disappear under Brown's plan. But they could not control more than ten percent of all total deposits, as three now do, and accumulate liabilities so substantial that -- in the event of a bust -- they could threaten the entire U.S. economy. It is just such a threat that led to the 2008 bailouts and the continued coddling of bad banks by federal regulators.

"The major issue is to keep the banks from getting too large to begin with," explains Brown. "Too big to fail is too big. That's where we need to be much more aggressive."

Without Brown's amendment, Dodd's bill amounts to little more than tinkering around the edges of the real problem. In other words, it is the sort of sham that La Follette bemoaned a century ago, when he warned that -- despite talk of trust busting and reform by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson -- "the greatest banks of the financial center (Wall Street) have become primarily agencies of promotion and speculation."

Real reform requires real controls on the biggest banks.

"This is about holding Wall Street accountable to ensure that American taxpayers never have to bail out the big banks again," says Sherrod Brown. "While taxpayers helped Wall Street banks get back on their feet, Main Street Americans were not so lucky. Their homes, their jobs, and their retirement accounts were lost or put at risk due to big banks that gambled with their money."

Brown's right.

The Senate should reject sham reform and go for the real thing.

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Ninth-- from http://www.ANewWayForward.org ...

Four Dangers of the Big Banks

1. Big banks are dangerous to our democracy. They have drowned out 95% of Americans, turned government into a feeding trough for the financial elite, and turned economic growth into deficit.

2. Big banking is so dangerously large that too much of America's wealth is tied up in it to serve the wealthy few.

3. Big banking is the biggest lobby and dangerously lobbies against the majority, to make dangerous practices legal. Big banking controls more than 40% of GDP as profit. There is little competition and they can overprice -- their highest fees and rates go to create cycles of debt.

4. Big banks dangerously invest in more big banking, and do very little lending to small and medium businesses -- the real engine for jobs and a safe and prosperous economy. Breaking them up and closing the feeding trough means opening up the market to many more small and medium sized banks and small and medium-sized businesses and jobs for people.

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Tenth...

[again re: below-- much kudos to both John Hall and Maurice Hinchey on this-- why not Scott Murphy?]

From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/01-1 (also recall http://www.POCLAD.org on this!)...

Tell Congress to Get Serious About Corporate Campaign Abuse
Published on Thursday, April 1, 2010 by The Nation

by John Nichols

Members of the House and Senate are on their annual spring break. And, this being an election year, the vast majority of them are heading home to their districts to "listen" to the voters.

This year, they'll get an earful -- from constituents who may still be debating about the scope and character of health-care reform but who (according to every poll) are remarkably united in their support of job-creation projects and a "bust-the-banksters" approach to financial services reform.

Members of Congress who claim to be serious about any of these important issues need to be asked a question: "Have you signed on as a co-sponor of legislation that would amend to the U.S. Constitution in order to assure that corporations do not control our elections and our policy making?"

Chief Justice John Roberts and his Supreme Court cabal trashed the original intent of the framers, the laws of the land and a century of judicial precedent to issue a lawless ruling in the case of Citizens United v. FEC. That ruling removed even minimal limits of the ability of corporations, with their vast resources and focused agendas, to buy elections and to set the legislation agenda for the nation.

Left in place, it would forever change the premise of the American experiment from "of, by and for the people" to "of, by and for the biggest businesses." And we're not even talking about the biggest U.S. businesses. So determined were Wall Street's justices to lift limits on corporate campaigning that it actually cleared the way for multinational conglomerates to intervene in American elections via their U.S. subsidiaries -- creating a loophole so offensive and so dangerous to democracy that Justice Sam Alito tried to deny its existence when President Obama called the court out on the issue.

The right response to this assault on the law, on the basic premises of the Constitution and on democracy is to assure that no court can ever abuse its authority again. And the way to do that is by amending the Constitution to close the loopholes and assure that elections are about issues and the will of the people -- as opposed to special-interest demands and the will of the corporations.

Maryland Congresswoman Donna Edwards has proposed such an amendment.

It simply declares that:

Section 1. The sovereign right of the people to govern being essential to a free democracy, Congress and the States may regulate the expenditure of funds for political speech by any corporation, limited liability company, or other corporate entity.

Section 2. Nothing contained in this Article shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who is the chamber's great defender of the Constitution, was Edwards' first co-sponsor.

In the weeks since the Maryland Democrat proposed her bill, 23 additional House member have signed on.

They are:

Andre Carson, D-Indiana
Yvette Clarke, D-New York
Keith Ellison, D-Minnestota
Bob Filner, D-California
Alan Grayson, D-Florida
Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona
John Hall, D-New York
Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico
Maurice Hinchey, D-New York
Mazie Hirano, D-Hawaii
Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas
Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Illinois
Barbara Lee, D-California
Carolyn Maloney, D-New York
Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts
James McGovern, D-Massachusetts
Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-District of Columbia
Chellie Pingree, D-Maine
Nick Rahall II, D-West Virginia
Tim Ryan, D-Ohio
Louise Slaughter, D-New York
Betty Sutton, D-Ohio
Peter Welch, D-Vermont

That's an impressive list, with several committee chairs (Conyers, Filner, Slaughter), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (Grijava), the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (Barbara Lee) and a number of other key players in the current Congress. It is significant that Pingree, the former head of Common Cause, is on board, along with Jesse Jackson Jr., who has written extensively about and taken a lead on constitutional matters.

But many of the most serious and engaged members of the House have yet to become co-sponsors of the proposal.

When representatives are home in their districts, it is vital that they be urged to sign on.
If they don't agree to do so, find a candidate who will.

The process of amending the Constitution will take time.

But, with members in their districts, this is the time to speed it up the process.

To learn more about the campaign to amend the Constitution in order to restore power to the people, follow the terrific work of the Free Speech for People and the Move to Amend projects.

Copyright © 2009 The Nation

John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. A co-founder of the media reform organization Free Press, Nichols is is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again and Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy. Nichols is also author of Dick: The Man Who is President and The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism.

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From http://www.michaelmoore.com/books-films/facts/capitalism-love-story ...

Citigroup's research department wrote three memos for investors concluding that wealth and power in the U.S. were increasingly concentrated in the hands of the top 1%, stating the top 1% of the population now have more financial wealth than the bottom 95% combined.

The Citigroup memos have been discussed by the Wall Street Journal and Alternet.

During Mike's childhood years in the '50s, the richest paid a top tax rate of 90%.

The Tax Foundation posts historical tax rates on their website. From 1950 to 1963, individuals paid 91% or 92% of their income above $200,000 to the federal government. The Tax Policy Center, a project run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, also posts historical tax rates.

As productivity increased, from 1980 to the present, working people's wages remained essentially frozen.

Increases in productivity and wages since 1973 are examined in the 2007 paper "The Productivity to Paycheck Gap: What the Data Show" by economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Baker writes: "The real hourly wage of a typical worker is only slightly higher in 2006 than it was in the seventies." Exact figures are available in the paper's figures 4 and 5.

The richest had their taxes cut in half.

The top marginal rate decreased from 70% in 1980 to 28% in 1989. Historical marginal tax rate tables are posted on the website of the Tax Policy Center.

By 2008, total household debt grew to nearly one hundred percent of the GDP.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis provides data on household debt and on GDP.

Personal bankruptcies increased dramatically.

According to the American Bankruptcy Institute ("Non-Business Filings"), in 1980 there were 287,570 personal bankruptcy filings in the United States; by 2005, that number soared to 2,039,214. (In 2006, the number of filings was dramatically down, but this was due to a 2005 change in the law that made it far more difficult and expensive for individuals to declare bankruptcy. Nonetheless the rate has been rising sharply since 2006.)

We locked up millions of our citizens.

According to the US Department of Justice, the number of people in jail or prison increased from 503,586 in 1980 to 2,293,157 in 2007.

Sales of antidepressants skyrocketed.

"National Patterns in Antidepressant Medication Treatment" by Mark Olfson, MD, MPH and Steven C. Marcus, PhD in the journal "General Psychiatry." Data is from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), conducted by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (within the Department of Health and Human Services).

The stock market rose enormously from the time of Reagan's election to the present.

See Yahoo.com's historical data on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In January, 1981, when Reagan was inaugurated, the Dow Jones was hovering under 1,000. In October, 2007, the index broke 14,000. (Although the Dow has since dipped significantly below this record high, it has still maintained huge gains since 1981.)

CEOs increased greatly from the time of Reagan's election to the present.

The rise in CEO pay from 1980-present is available in the graph "Executive Pay and Unionization, 1980-2005" on page 19 of "Executive Excess 2008" by Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, Chuck Collins and Sam Pizzigati of the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, based on Business Week and Wall Street Journal surveys.

At the time when Mike was making 'Roger and Me,' GM was posting profits of over $4 billion, while simultaneously eliminating tens of thousands of jobs.

According to Fortune magazine, GM made $4.86 billion in profit in 1989, while laying off over 40,000 workers.

GM eliminated nearly all its jobs in Flint, and went bankrupt.

In Germany, unions help hire and fire the board of directors so the workers have a say in what's going on.

There are many "worker cooperatives" in the United States, companies which are run democratically by the workers, who also own the company and share equitably in the profits.

The Isthmus Engineering website describes the company's "Seven Cooperative Principles":

• Open membership - no gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination
• Democratic control - one member, one vote
• Equitable economic participation among members and distribution of profits based on patronage
• Autonomy and independence - controlled by members
• Education and training
• Cooperation among cooperatives
• Concern for community

The Alvarado Street Bakery website describes cooperatives as "a business voluntarily owned and controlled by its member patrons and operated for them and by them on a nonprofit or cost basis. It is owned by the people who use it ... based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity."

Students from the top schools often go to Wall Street, where they can make a lot of money, rather than into the science and math fields.

According to Spring 2008 surveys conducted by three top colleges, more seniors who already had accepted full-time jobs at the time of graduation were headed to the financial services industry than to any other field. 27% of Harvard seniors with jobs, 31% of U Penn graduates, and 41.5% of Princeton seniors with jobs were going into financial services.

The FBI warned of an approaching "epidemic" of mortgage fraud in 2004.

CNN, September 17, 2004: "Rampant fraud in the mortgage industry has increased so sharply that the FBI warned Friday of an 'epidemic' of financial crimes which, if not curtailed, could become 'the next S&L crisis.'"

The FBI says that 80% of the mortgage fraud was induced by the banks, not the individuals seeking loans.

Rocky Mountain News: "The FBI report said research indicates that 80 percent of mortgage fraud nationwide 'involves collaboration or collusion by industry insiders.'"

After 9/11, more than 500 FBI white collar crime specialists were transferred over to terrorism.

New York Times, January 22, 2009: "The senators noted that, by some published estimates, the Bush administration failed to replace at least 2,400 F.B.I. agents who were transferred to counter-terrorism squads. As a result, the F.B.I's white collar crime units are currently down at least 625 agents from pre-9/11 levels, a reduction of 36 percent."

Robert Rubin, the former Secretary of the Treasury, was a top executive at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. While at Treasury, he worked to deregulate the banking industry.

New York Times, January 10, 2009: "Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible."

After he left the Treasury, Robert Rubin was paid over $115 million by Citigroup.

New York Times, December 4, 2008: "[Rubin] has been awarded more than $126 million in cash and stock [from Citigroup] over the past decade."
Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and current Chief Economic Adviser to President Obama, made millions of dollars in speaking fees, as well as $5.2 million from his part-time job at a hedge fund.

Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2009: "In total, Mr. Summers made a total of about 40 speaking appearances to financial sector firms and other places, with fees totaling about $2.77 million."

Goldman Sachs set aside $6.8 billion for bonuses in 2008, the same year in which they accepted $10 billion in TARP funds from the American taxpayer.

CBS News: "According to a report from financial news agency Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, for example, has set aside $6.8 billion for bonuses, and Morgan Stanley, $6.4 billion."

Goldman Sachs was President Barack Obama's number one private contributor, with nearly one million dollars in contributions.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Goldman employees and their families and the Goldman Political Action Committee contributed almost $1 million to the Obama presidential campaign.

Despite fear-mongering about the word "socialism," particularly around the time of the 2008 Presidential election, only 37% of young people prefer capitalism over socialism, while 33% prefer socialism to capitalism.

Rasmussen Poll: "Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided."

Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans decided to stop performing foreclosure sales until he was satisfied that distressed homeowners had been given adequate opportunities to avoid foreclosure through federal assistance.

Morning Sun, February 3, 2009: "'I cannot in clear conscience allow any more families to lose their homes through foreclosure sale until I'm satisfied they have been afforded every option they are entitled to under the law to avoid foreclosure,' Evans said. 'The moratorium does not prevent lenders from foreclosing on homes. The sheriff's office just won't sell them,' Evans said. 'The sale is what pre-empts the person from having an option later to renegotiate the mortgage."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a "Second Bill of Rights."

The full text of Roosevelt's January 11, 1944 State of the Union speech is available at the FDR Library website.

The Italian Constitution guaranteed all women equal rights in 1947.

Italian Constitution: "Article 37: (1) Working women have the same rights and, for equal work, the same wages as working men. Working conditions must allow women to carry out their essential role in the family and ensure special appropriate protection for the mother and the child."

The post-World War II German constitution said that the State has the right to take over property and the means of production for the common good.

German Basic Law: "Article 15 (Socialization). Land, natural resources and means of production may for the purpose of socialization be transferred into public ownership or other forms of publicly controlled economy by a law which provides for kind and extent of the compensation."

And here's what we wrote up for the Japanese: all workers have a right to organize into a union. And academic freedom is guaranteed.

Japanese Constitution: "Article 23. Academic freedom is guaranteed ... Article 28.The right of workers to organize and to bargain and act collectively is guaranteed."

The American Experience, PBS: "[General MacArthur] Staff member Beate Sirota Gordon, then in her early twenties, still remembers the day well: '... General Whitney [head of the government section] called us into a meeting room... And he said, "You are now a constituent assembly ... And you will write the Japanese constitution"' ... Their work resulted in a thoroughly progressive document ... including not only most of the American bill of rights, but such things as universal adult suffrage, labor's right to organize, and a host of marriage and property rights for women ... After marathon negotiations in early March, Japanese officials accepted the American draft with only minor revisions."

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From http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/money-that-works-for-local-communities ...

Making Money Work: How Can We Reconnect Capital with Community?
Our investments tend to fund consolidation and speculation. But new models are emerging that allow us to finance the economy we really want.

by Stacy Mitchell
posted Apr 23, 2010

The financial crisis has provided us all with a crash course on how much of our economy is based not on the creation of real value, but on speculation. Over the last year, we have learned that the speculative economy—the one that trades in exotic derivatives like credit default swaps and makes short-term, bubble-inducing bets on assets like real estate and tech stocks—is vast and highly rewarded. We have learned that the speculative economy undermines and consumes the productive economy. And we have learned that money made by speculation is often treated much more favorably by tax systems than money earned through real work.

We have also learned how entangled we all are in the speculative economy. If you think about it, there are very few opportunities for you and I to invest our savings in ways that would strengthen our local economies. Most of us, whether we like it or not, have our retirement and other savings invested in funds composed of stocks, derivatives, and other speculative vehicles.

This de-linking of money from place and productive investment is not the inevitable result of economic evolution. Money is a human invention and the rules that control its dynamic are also a human invention. The rules in place today favor mobility over community, speculation over productive investment, volatility over permanence.

How can we reconnect capital with community needs? Global climate change has created an urgent need to retool much of our infrastructure, develop regional food systems, retrofit buildings, reestablish neighborhood enterprises, and so on. And yet our system for pooling and deploying capital is completely ill-suited to this task, oriented as it is to maximizing short-term gains rather than building long-term community capacity.

There are very few opportunities for you and I to invest our savings in ways that would strengthen our local economies. How can we reconnect capital with community needs?
One way we might begin to reorient the financial system is to establish a modest tax on all financial transactions, including international currency trades. This would lessen the appeal of high-frequency speculative trading. It would also generate a stream of revenue that could be used to establish a publicly owned wholesale bank or fund that would channel capital to Community Development Financial Institutions. These in turn would finance small businesses, cooperatives, and social enterprises.

We might also consider funding, as the New Economic Foundation has suggested, a Green Industrial Bank to provide long-term financing for green infrastructure and renewable energy development. At the local level, cities are already pioneering ways to finance the transition to renewable energy. The city of Berkeley, California, for example, is using its bonding authority to provide long-term, low-interest loans that enable homeowners to become electricity producers by installing solar cells on their rooftops. The debt, which stays with the house if the owner moves, is repaid over a 20-year period through a fee added to their biannual property tax bill.

Bringing Money Down to Earth :: Slow Money founder Woody Tasch on financing local food economies.
Another useful model, which relies on a mix of public and private investment, is Pennsylvania's Fresh Food Financing Initiative. This $120 million fund has provided low-interest, long-term loans to finance over 60 locally owned food markets in neighborhoods and small towns that lacked places to buy fresh food. All but one of these stores has succeeded, demonstrating that the reason "food deserts" exist in so many low-income communities is not that grocery stores are not viable in these areas, but rather that banks have been reluctant to finance these ventures. We ought to build on this model by establishing similar funds to capitalize a new generation of neighborhood stores, small-scale farms, and other enterprises that can expand the capacity of communities to meet more of their needs locally.

In the private sector, we should look to reform the banking industry by both breaking up big banks and adopting policies that favor independent banks and credit unions. These smaller institutions have generally been much more responsive to their local communities. And, while big banks have focused on the needs of big business, small banks operate at a scale better matched to the needs of local economies.
Financial institutions are not the only way to link local capital with community enterprise. A growing number of local businesses are being financed directly by their customers. In the United States, Community-Supported Agriculture schemes, or CSAs, which enable people to fund the operations of a farm in exchange for a share of its harvest, have multiplied to well over 3,000. Hundreds of independent bookstores, restaurants, and other local businesses in both the U.S. and the U.K. have raised capital from their customers to sustain or expand their operations. Earlier this year, more than 100 customers of the Busy Bee Toyshop in Greater Manchester put up £32,000 to take over the store, which had recently closed, and operate it as a cooperative. In Brooklyn, a similar initiative made hundreds of customers investors in their local bookstore. People have come together not only to save or grow local businesses, but also to start them. Six years ago, in Powell, Wyoming, over 800 families invested $500 each to capitalize a new community-owned downtown department store.

Many political and corporate leaders are eager to put the financial crisis in the rear-view mirror and return to business-as-usual. But we should not let them. More than ever, we need a vision for a new economy. We need a bold new deal that reorients antitrust, planning, and financial policy to shrink the power of corporations, resurrect citizenship, nurture local enterprise, and build a sustainable future.


Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher with the New Rules Project, a program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance that challenges the wisdom of economic consolidation and works to advance policies that build strong local economies. If you liked this piece, you might enjoy her acclaimed monthly bulletin, the Hometown Advantage, and her book, Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses, which was named one of the top ten business books of the year by Booklist.

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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/26-10 ...
Published on Monday, April 26, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Financial Reform: Empower the People
by Ralph Nader

Dear President Obama, Senator Schumer and Senator Shelby:

On the eve of the portentous Senate debate over the extent to which the financial industry is to be so as to avert future megacollapses on the backs of taxpayers, workers and consumers, a great gap has been left unattended.

That gap pertains to the continued powerlessness of the investors and consumers-the people who bear the ultimate brunt of Wall Street's recklessness, avarice and crimes and who have the greatest interest in strong regulatory enforcement.

Among all the amendments filed for the upcoming Senate debate, only amendment number 29, introduced by Senator Schumer, provides a facility to establish an independent non-governmental non-profit Financial Consumers' Association (FCA).

Amendment 29 includes the following for funding this unique institution:

"...the financial industry has enjoyed virtually unlimited access to represent its interest before Congress, the courts, and State and Federal regulators, while financial services consumers have had limited representation before Congress and financial regulatory entities;" and
"...the Federal Government has a substantial interest in the creation of a public purpose, democratically controlled, self-funded, nationwide membership association of financial services consumers to enhance their representation and to effectively combat unsound financial practices."

Anyone modestly familiar with the history of regulatory failures knows that the gross disparity of power and organized advocacy between big business and consumers outside of government leads to an absence of fair standards and law enforcement.

It also leads, as everyone knows, to massive taxpayer bailouts, subsidies and guarantees when these giant banks and other financial firms immolate themselves, after enriching their bosses, while engulfing tens of millions of innocent people in the subsequent economic conflagration.
Given all the privileges and costly rescues for culpable corporations that flow regularly from Washington, D.C., adopting ever so mildly the principle of reciprocity makes a powerful case for facilitating a nationwide Financial Consumers' Association-one that would be composed of voluntary memberships by consumers who, through their annual dues, will sustain the FCA for an expert place at the table.

Senator Schumer, when he was a Congressman during the savings and loan bailout in the nineteen eighties, introduced such a proposal. But the bankers took the $150 billion bailout and blocked this reciprocal respect for depositors in the House Banking Committee.

Then Representative Schumer and his supporting colleagues on that Committee understood that without the supposed beneficiaries of regulatory authority being organized to make regulation and deterrence work, the Savings and Loan collapse could happen again. And so they became prophetic beyond their wildest nightmares.

Before he died in a plane crash in 2002, Senator Paul Wellstone recognized the need for such a facility, when he introduced the Consumer and Shareholder Protection Association Act.

A key enhancing feature in amendment 29 is a requirement that invitations to membership in the FCA be included in the billing envelopes or electronic communications of financial institutions with their customers. At no expense to these vendors, these notices would ensure that the maximum number of consumers are invited to join and fund such a democratically run, educational and advocacy organization.

In early 2009 I met with Chairman Christopher Dodd and explained the nature and importance of the FCA and Senator Schumer's earlier role in advancing this civic innovation. He seemed receptive to the idea and urged us to have his colleague Senator Schumer take the lead, which he has done with amendment 29 just a few weeks ago. Senator Shelby and I have also discussed the FCA proposal.

The major valiant but overwhelmed consumer groups, who experience daily this enormous imbalance of power between corporations and consumers, presently stacked by unprecedented amounts of federal funds and bailout facilities for the misbehaving companies, support the creation of a self-funded FCA.

The Federal Government has long paid for facilities in the U.S. Department of Agriculture for agricultural businesses to band together and assess themselves to promote beef, corn, cotton and other commodities to increase their profits. By contrast the FCA, once launched, would be composed of consumers paying their own way to preserve their hard-earned savings from predatory financial speculators.

Allow one prediction. Even if the ultimate legislation comes out stronger than expected on such matters as derivatives, rating agencies, too big to fail, using depositor funds for speculation, and the consumer financial regulatory bureau, unless the consumer-investor is afforded modest facilities to band together with their experts and advocates, the laws will hardly be enforced with sufficient budgets, personnel and regulatory will power.

Give the consumer a modest round in this prolonged deliberation following the destructive events of 2008.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

(For more information, see: http://www.csrl.org )

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel -  is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.

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Bank Reform: Setback in the Senate, Action in the Streets
posted by JOHN NICHOLS on 04/27/2010 @ 12:47am

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/555599/bank_reform_setback_in_the_senate_action_in_the_streets

The party of "no" said "no" again on Monday -- this time to tightening regulation of the nation's financial system.

While 57 Democratic and independent senators voted to open that long-delayed debate, Senate Republicans and a single Democrat (Nebraska's Ben Nelson) blocked a cloture vote that would have opened the debate on repairing a financial system so vulnerable and dysfunctional that it has repeated brought the nation's economy to the brink of collapse.

Monday's 57-41 vote offered a powerful perspective regarding which side the Grand Old Party -- which made its name a century ago as the champion of trust-busting legislation -- is now on.

Tom McMahon of Americans United for Change summed things up when he said: "Look up ‘Quid pro quo' in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with his hand out to hedge fund managers and banking executives just days before leading the filibuster against Wall Street reform. Pretending as if the financial crisis that cost over 8 million Americans their jobs never happened, Senate Republicans today stood in unanimous support of Wall Street over the Main Streets that suffered the consequences of the big banks' greed and recklessness."
McMahon's assessment was blunt and unforgiving:

Senate Republicans stood in unanimous opposition to ending taxpayer bailouts, to shining a bright light on the shadowy derivatives markets, and establishing a new watchdog agency on Wall Street that will protect American consumers against Madoff-style scams. They did just what they were told by the 1,500 Wall Street lobbyists camped out their offices this week that got every dime's worth of the $465 million they spent last year to kill reform.

Counting on Republicans to block financial reform was the safest and surest bet Wall Street executives have made in a very long time. But, with two-thirds of American people in support of stricter regulations for banks and other financial institutions, Senate Republicans just made the riskiest gamble of their careers. In the face of overwhelming public demand that Wall Street be held accountable for laying waste to our economy, it's not a question of whether reform is going to pass -- it's a question of how long Republicans can run from the pitch forks on Main Street.

Some Democrats are already excited by the prospect of running fall races against Republicans who took the side of the big banks.

But one of the Senate's most ardent reformers, Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders, was not thinking about the politics of the fall. He was worried about the reality of a banking system reforms that have been too long deferred.

"I am disappointed but not surprised that not a single Senate Republican voted to allow us to proceed to consideration of Wall Street reform," said Sanders, who opposed the Wall Street bailout of 2008 and has been a steady critic of abuses by big banks and financial institutions.

Speaking of his Republican colleagues, Sanders said, "I hope they reconsider. To my mind, it is absolutely imperative that we end the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street which has led to the loss of millions of jobs and the worst recession in modern history."

To help promote that reconsideration, thousands of Americans will gather on Wall Street Thursday to demand that the GOP do the right thing -- and that the whole of the Senate (including reluctant Democrats) back real reform.

The AFL-CIO and National People's Action have organized the afternoon protest so that "everyday people--small business owners and union members, homeowners and tenants, faith leaders, the employed and the unemployed--to join together in recognition of our shared fate and our commitment to democracy."

On April 29th at 3:30pm, the groups say:

Thousands will converge on Wall Street to reclaim America with one simple message: Americans deserve an economy that works for all of us, not just Wall Street!

Wall Street and big banks like Bank of America and Wells Fargo crashed our economy leaving millions without housing, work, and critical services.
Join us as we take the fight for financial reform into the belly of the beast!

Wall Street insiders and their political allies may want to shut down the debate about financial reform.

But the people want a showdown, and they will have it Thursday

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From http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow/555367/taking_it_to_the_banks ...

Taking it to the Banks
posted by PETER ROTHBERG on 04/26/2010 @ 1:43pm


This Thursday, April 29, thousands of people are expected to stage a massive march on Wall Street to hold big banks accountable for undermining the economy and to demand that Wall Street do its part to help Main Street recover. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will be among the high-profile speakers.

Last week Senators Sherrod Brown and Ted Kaufman unveiled the "SAFE Banking Act" with a clear purpose: Breaking up the big banks.

The proposal places hard leverage and size caps on financial institutions. It is well crafted and based on a great deal of hard thinking, according to economist Simon Johnson. And, as suggested on the front page of The New York Times, it has the potential to draw a significant amount of support.

When the financial crisis first engulfed the world, wrote William Greider, opinion leaders rushed to explain it as a freak of nature -- a "perfect storm" that arrives once a century. Subsequent revelations destroyed that nonsense. "Like famines, financial crises are man-made. This one was made in America--invented on Wall Street and enabled by Washington complicity, Democrats and Republicans alike."

And the mechanism to enable the crisis was the big banks and their de-regulated ability to run amok. This video, created by my friend Mary Bottari, amusingly exposes the role the big banks have played in fomenting economic distress.

Fortunately, the perfidy of the mega-banks has not gone unnoticed, and Brown and Kaufman's bill represents the first legislative effort to confront the problem. Stressing the need for more competition among smaller banks and increased business lending, the senators believe that the largest financial institutions present a prohibitive risk to our economy.

The bill would place a cap on any financial institution, limiting its total assets to three percent of GDP (that would lower to two percent for banks, and three percent for non-bank institutions). Currently, the six largest banks have holdings that equal 63 percent of GDP. The Safe Banking Act would also impose a ten percent cap on any bank holding company's share of insured deposits.

As Brown said when introducing the legislation, "If we're going to prevent big banks from putting our entire economy at risk, we need to place sensible size limits on our nation's behemoth banks. We need to ensure that if banks gamble, they have the resources to cover their losses."

A new coalition of community organizations spearheaded by National People's Action, PICO and the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), is seeking to put significant pressure on legislators this week with plans for a series of national protests challenging the political influence of mega-banks just as the Senate takes up debate on the banking reform bill.
Peter Drier, writing at CommonDreams, helpfully explains the coalition's strategy: "The coalition's short-term goal is to push Congress to enact strong consumer protection regulations on the financial industry. Their intermediate goal is to pressure banks to stop the epidemic of foreclosures and renegotiate mortgages so owners can keep their homes. Their long-term goal is to limit the banking industry's political clout and its economic influence. They believe banking should be reorganized so it invests in good jobs, affordable housing, and environmentally-friendly businesses."

The protests start tomorrow, Tuesday, April 27, when organizers expect more than a thousand marchers to tromp through downtown San Francisco to Wells Fargo's annual shareholder meeting at the Merchants Exchange Building. Also tomorrow in Kansas City, family farmers, retirees, veterans and union members from Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa will march through that city's financial district to the Bank of America, an action that organizers are calling "showdown in the heartland."

On Wednesday, April 28 in Charlotte, NC, citizens hurt by foreclosures and lay-offs will rally at the First United Presbyterian Church and then, proxies in hand, march to Bank of America's annual shareholder meeting at Belk Theater, while in Chicago, unions, community groups, and faith-based activists will march to the corporate offices of Goldman Sachs, whose executive bonuses, illegal practices, and political influence-peddling have made it, to use Drier's apt words, "the poster child for public anger against big banks".

Then, this Thursday, April 29, thousands of people are expected to stage a massive march on Wall Street to hold big banks accountable for undermining the economy and to demand that Wall Street do its part to help Main Street recover. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will be among the high-profile speakers.

The protest actions will culminate in a three-day "Showdown on K Street" in Washington, DC from May 15 to 17. The DC mobilization will focus attention on the banking industry's political clout through its huge campaign contributions with a series of protests at the offices of corporate lobby groups and members of Congress -- Democrats and Republicans -- with close ties to the banking establishment.

Check out showdowninamerica.org/ for info on all these events and host of additional resources and please implore your senators to support The Safe Banking Act.

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From http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100510/greider ...

Breaking the Banks
Editorial
by WILLIAM GREIDER
This article appeared in the May 10, 2010 edition of The Nation.
April 21, 2010

When the financial crisis first engulfed the world, opinion leaders rushed to explain it as a freak of nature, like a "perfect storm" or a tsunami that comes every 100 years. Subsequent revelations destroyed that nonsense. Like famines, financial crises are man-made. This one was made in America--invented on Wall Street and enabled by Washington complicity, Democrats and Republicans alike.

This message was delivered again by the SEC's recent fraud charges against Goldman Sachs. The investment house sold poison to unwitting customers--financial instruments deliberately designed to fail. Sure enough, they failed, but they also helped to poison the entire system.

People are asking if anyone will go to jail. No, not yet. The SEC only charges a "civil" offense--Goldman's failure to disclose that its hedge fund partner, John Paulson, stacked the deck. But the case has the potential to rock Wall Street and Washington politics. First, the facts scream out for deeper investigation. Securities law usually allows Wall Street con men to avoid prosecution by paying off swindled parties. Still, bankers and traders must be feeling queasy, because the Street is awash in similar manipulations--conflicts of interest that in other business sectors often qualify as criminal fraud.

Furthermore, the Goldman case could stiffen the spine of senators now working on financial reform legislation, which began as the White House's utterly inadequate response to the economic catastrophe. Thanks to this scandal, there's a chance that toughening amendments will greatly improve things. Sherrod Brown's, for example, would shrink the size of bloated mega-banks. Blanche Lincoln is pushing a hard crackdown on dangerous derivatives. The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could be rescued from bank lobbyist efforts to strangle it. And Bernie Sanders is trying to put a hard cap on credit card interest rates.

Maybe Senate reformers can stiffen President Obama's spine too. His reform strategy essentially would have turned the mess over to the Federal Reserve. His premise was folly, since the Fed had cheered on the deregulation that enabled the bankers' reckless greed. And by putting the Fed in charge, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House adviser Larry Summers accepted the bankers' proposed solution: tinker with the regulatory system but do not greatly disturb Wall Street's business model. That lets politicians evade the need to enact laws that compel real change. House Democrats went along.

The Senate, however, is now a more promising arena than expected. First, Chris Dodd, lame-duck chairman of the Banking Committee, proposed a more ambitious reform: dump the central bank as "super-regulator" and strengthen provisions to curb oversize banks. His draft is marred by weak points and may not survive the floor action, but the fight for serious reform is still alive.

GOP leader Mitch McConnell responded with his usual hypocrisy. He accused Obama and the Democrats of ratifying the bailout of mega-banks. As evidence, he cites the Senate bill's $50 billion liquidation fund ($150 billion in the House version), to be collected from bankers, not taxpayers, but anticipating more bank crises in the future.

Republicans are falsifying the politics (since they are really fronting for bankers), but they happen to be right on the larger point: notwithstanding Obama's claims, the Democratic legislation does not put an end to "too big to fail"; it merely authorizes Treasury and the Fed, with other regulators, to shut down dangerously overexposed financial firms that pose risks to the system--if officials so choose. But leaving this difficult choice to unelected regulators is a pipe dream. Those same regulators repeatedly failed in the past. If Congress doesn't have the nerve to break the behemoths into smaller pieces, lap-dog regulators will not do the dirty work for them. During the last generation, the central bank and other agencies allowed banks to amass profits while taking on larger, more dangerous risks. Regulators lacked the will to intervene and spoil the good times for important clientele. When the system became endangered, it was too late for discipline.

Wall Street's players decided, correctly, that government would come to their rescue if they went too far. And they did. That smug assumption must be smashed by strong new laws and safeguards, or taxpayers will be on the hook for more odious bailouts in the future.
Citizens need to direct their anger at weak-kneed lawmakers. Organized people are often outgunned by organized money, but people still have a shot at winning this fight--and terminating political careers if they don't. Dodd's bill includes strongly worded limits on the incestuous bank-to-bank borrowing that evaded the old ceilings on leverage. Senator Robert Menendez is going after the off-balance-sheet gimmicks banks used to hide debt. Senators Carl Levin and Jeff Merkley would forbid bankers from playing self-interested games against their customers, as Goldman did.

Paul Krugman, among other commentators, thinks bigness is not the problem and we should tolerate too-big-to-fail bailouts. Reform, he says, is like equipping the fire department to put out a burning building. His metaphor left out the real solution: fire prevention. Government needs to enact a new building code for the banking system--a set of stern prohibitions that protect the community from the carefree firebugs of Wall Street. The way to avoid future bailouts is straightforward: eliminate the too-big-to-save banks.

About William Greider
National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and, most recently, Come Home, America. more...

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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/25-3 ...

Published on Sunday, April 25, 2010 by The Nation
Larry Summers: Professor Pants-on-Fire
by William Greider

How can I say this nicely? Larry Summers is a clumsy public liar. His noxious, condescending manner helps explain why he failed as president of Harvard. But it is the crude mendacity that ought to bother people now. The man is President Obama's top economic adviser.

Watching Summers befog the mild-mannered interviewer on the PBS NewsHour the other night, I found myself yelling back at the TV. It takes real arrogance for the former Harvard professor to imagine he can away with such evasions and falsehoods. I lost count on the fibs. If this is how Summers explains the financial mess to the president, maybe that's why Obama has been a reluctant reformer.
Banks "made mistakes" or "errors." That is as far as Summers would go in his critique. Instead of bailing out "too big to fail" banks, he was asked, why not just limit the size of the banks?

Bad idea, Summers said.

"Most observers who study this believe that to try to break banks up into a lot of little pieces would hurt our ability to try to serve large companies, and hurt the competitiveness of the United States.... They believe it would actually make us less stable because the individual banks would be less diversified.... dealing with the simultaneous failure of many small institutions would actually generate more need for bailouts and reliance on taxpayers than the current economic environment."

Say what? If Obama has other sources of information, like reading the newspapers, he can quickly determine that every element in Summer's statement ranges from dubious to flat-out false.

Summers's claims about what caused the banking crisis were, likewise, aggressively misleading to plain deceitful. "Regulators didn't have the specific mandate for the consumer." Wrong. The Federal Reserve and other agencies had plenty of legal authority to protect consumers. They chose not to use it. Their dereliction actually occurred on Summers's watch, when he himself was Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton.

"Regulators didn't have authority in a comprehensive way to monitor the derivatives market." This is a flaming lie. The principal regulatory agency--the Commodity Futures Regulatory Commission--was actually preparing to impose stricter oversight on derivatives in the late 1990s when Larry Summers stopped it. Summers and Republican allies intervened in 2000 with legislation that castrated that agency and prohibited it from acting further. Derivatives exploded thereafter.

When Summers was finally asked about his own responsibility for encouraging the dangerous financial instruments, he responded with a mouthful of double talk. "You know, the situation's changed hugely.... So people were actually focused on a very different set of issues." Summers even tried to make it sound like he personally had wanted to tighten the oversight, but was blocked by "Congressional opposition."

Liar, liar, pants on fire. If Obama wants to have an economic adviser so loose with the truth, that's his choice. But if the president wants his own words to be taken seriously, I suggest he keep Larry Summers off television.

© 2010 The Nation

William Greider is national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He is author of "Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country" and, most recently, "Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country."

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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/26-2 ...

Published on Monday, April 26, 2010 by The Huffington Post
Obama Rejects Bipartisan Bank Deal
by Robert Kuttner

Although Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd and his sometime Republican ally Richard Shelby continued to make noises on the Sunday talk shows about a possible bipartisan deal, both President Obama and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank have personally urged Dodd not to cut a deal with Republicans. I asked Frank point blank why Dodd would want such a deal, and he said--on the record--"I have no idea, but both President Obama and I have urged him not to."

This is a welcome sign that Obama realizes that public opinion is moving in the direction of tougher banking reform, and that he learned from the health debate that bipartisan compromise on key reform issues is a snare and a delusion. Kudos to Chairman Frank and to the President.

Assuming that Dodd doesn't cave, the Democrats still need 60 votes if Republicans decide to filibuster the motion to take up the bill. But with tide turning strongly against coddling Wall Street, it is hard to imagine that a few Republicans won't break ranks. If so, there may be no filibuster at all.

On one of the most contentious issues, derivatives reform, Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday urging him to back Senator Blanche Lincoln's tough derivatives provision, which not only narrows exclusions in the draft legislation, but keeps big banks from trading derivatives for their own accounts. It's hard to imagine Snowe backing this measure and then joining in a filibuster to block consideration of the reform altogether. Here is part of her letter:

"I believe that strong derivatives regulation goes to the heart of an effective financial reform bill and that Chairman Lincoln's legislation is a strong step towards realizing this fundamental component to financial reform......I believe that we should err on the side of caution and finally bring full transparency to these markets once and for all and allow regulators to preemptively identify these damaged firms.
"Accordingly, I believe the Senate should start with a comprehensive, strong derivatives reform proposal and defend attempts to weaken it, not the other way around and the legislation produced by the Senate Agriculture Committee includes the strongest safeguards and most robust transparency provisions on our expansive derivatives market.

I urge the Majority Leader to incorporate these provisions into the regulatory reform bill."

Then we have the case of the accidental senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, who is facing re-election in just two years. His special election last January was a fluke--a perfect storm of voter backlash against recession and a weak Democratic campaign. Brown ran as a kind of regular-guy economic populist. I can't believe that Brown will stand up for Wall Street against Main Street and vote to filibuster against even taking up the bill (Elizabeth Warren should run for the Democratic nomination to take him on in 2012. Now that would be one helluva race.)

In short, Republican leaders McConnell and Shelby are bluffing. They know they can't hold their troops, and that's why they so desperately want a deal with Dodd for a weaker bipartisan bill that Republicans can support.

If Dodd avoids such a deal, my hunch is that several Republicans will not support the filibuster and that debate will proceed. And once it does, there will be several votes on key strengthening amendments. These will also put Republicans in a bind.

Senator Chuck Grassley supported the Lincoln bill in the Agriculture Committee. Will he now join Snowe and vote to add it to the reform bill? How could Grassley vote to strengthen the derivatives position, but vote to block taking up the whole bill?

My sources tell me that one key Democrat, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is actually somewhat more pro-banker than moderate and heartland senate Republicans when it comes to derivatives reform. He is sympathetic to Wall Street complaints that the Lincoln bill would eat into derivatives profits, and has weighted in on the side of watering down her bill. Happily, he doesn't vote, but President Obama should decide the administration position and not leave it to Geithner.

Two other key amendments: One will be offered by Senators Sherrod Brown, Ted Kaufman, Bob Casey and Sheldon Whitehouse, limiting the size of large banks; another by Senators Jeff Merkley and Carl Levin would write into law the Volcker Rule separating commercial banking from financial gambling. These will also put Republicans in a deliciously awkward spot--though they may also be opposed by pro-Wall Street Democrats such as Evan Bayh of Indiana and Mark Warner of Virginia. And watch closely to see how Chuck Schumer votes on these strengthening amendments. Schumer, once known as the senator from Wall Street, is remaking himself as a financial reformer in preparation for a possible run for majority leader against Dick Durbin should Harry Reid go down this November.

Bottom line: If the Senate Democratic Leadership can resist the snake oil of a bipartisan deal and if Obama personally works the phones and takes control of his own administration, the bill will probably get stronger as it works its way through Congress. This is the right kind of bipartisanship--a progressive bill so clearly demanded by public opinion that many Republicans don't dare to oppose it.

Even so, this bill is far from the final chapter of reform. While banks will not be able to do quite as much damage to the rest of the economy, entire areas of abuse such as credit rating agencies, hedge funds, and private equity are largely untouched and the basic business model of the financial conglomerates will be only partly constrained. Real mortgage relief is also put off for another day.

A little history is reassuring. For all of his personal resolve, it took Franklin Roosevelt seven years and several pieces of landmark legislation to complete the New Deal structure of financial regulation that kept Wall Street well harnessed until the late 1970s - including the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Public Utility Holding Act of 1935, ending with the Investment Company Act of 1940. Even in that golden age of reform, Wall Street wasn't tamed in a day.

If the Democrats don't extinguish the momentum with a premature bipartisan deal, public understanding and indignation are still building. Regulatory agencies are beginning to do their jobs, and Democrats are starting to sound like a progressive party. It's about time.
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Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, and is a senior fellow at Demos. His new book is "A Presidency in Peril."