Every year, the negative consequences of climate change become more evident. This year, volatility in the weather, with extreme heat followed by a normal cold snap, has devastated fruit orchards in the northern United States. This month, I’ve walked through peach orchards without a single fruit growing on any branch. In my back yard, an apple tree is barren, and my currant bushes are almost completely devoid of the little growing berries I expect at this time of year.

The economic harm is direct: There is less healthy food for us to eat. Fruit prices this autumn are going to be much higher than normal. The agricultural benefits of global warming that corporate polluters predicted years ago are not materializing.

Yesterday, the world received more reason to worry. The International Energy Agency reported that carbon emissions from fossil fuels increased by a gigaton last year, a 3.2 percent increase that made last year’s carbon emissions from coal, oil, and natural gas the highest ever in human history.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that Americans Elect’s letter — even after its failure to draw significant support from the American people — represents another delay of disclosure.

Six days ago, I filed a formal request for IRS Form 990 from Americans Elect, four days after the form was due. Americans Elect is required to supply this document to any citizen, and it matters, because it provides information about Americans Elect’s finances that Americans Elect hasn’t provided voluntarily. But Americans Elect has played the same card it played last year, filing for a delay of 3 months on the disclosure of its Form 990.

May 25, 2012

VIA EMAIL: retorts@irregulartimes.com

Jim Cook
52 Conway Road
Camden, ME 04843

Re: Americans Elect

Dear Mr. Cook:
Thank you for your recent inquiry. Americans Elect has not yet filed its 2011 Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service. Americans Elect has filed Form 8868 with the Internal Revenue Service and therefore has received an automatic 3 month extension for the deadline to file its 2011 Form 990.

In three months — that’s August 15, 2012 — Americans Elect’s 3 month extension for filing Form 990 will expire. I’ll be sending another letter to Americans Elect at that time, and we’ll see what Americans Elect is willing — or unwilling — to share.

I don’t even know what a bordeaux room is, but whatever it is, Chateau Carolands has several of them.

Chateau Carolands is a gigantic California mansion, one of the largest private homes in all of the United States. The palace has 65,000 square feet of floor space – enough to encompass between 30 and 40 average-sized family homes. The chateau is home to just one family, though, or part of one family… the children come to visit every now and then.

Right now, the median family income in the United States is $50,000 per year. The latest home renovation project on Chateau Carolands cost over $20,000,000 – the amount that the average American family would earn in four centuries. Expenses are going up as wages stay flat, though, so most Americans just don’t have the chance to save.

It’s in these circumstances that the Mitt Romney for President campaign is having its latest big campaign fundraiser, not at the average house on your corner, but at Chateau Carolands, a week from tonight. This won’t be a party where the riff raff like us are invited, either. The price of having dinner with Mitt and Ann Romney at Chateau Carolands will be $50,000 per person – which just so happens to be the amount of money that a typical American family earns by working hard for an entire year.

As Mitt Romney devises his economic plans, it’s people who can afford to buy dinner at a price of fifty thousand dollars per plate. Romney doesn’t surround himself with people who cook their own dinners in cramped apartment kitchens with ingredients that cost a few dollars. So, it’s no wonder that Mitt Romney’s economic policies provide special perks to millionaires and billionaires, while making working American families pay more for the scraps they depend upon.

There’s one thing we the 99 Percent have on our side, however. Even as the One Percent feast upon their luxury meal at Chateau Carolands, they’re a tiny minority – one out of a hundred. We have the numbers, and we still have an advantage at the ballot box – one vote per person.

This November, unless you were one of the lucky few who could buy a seat at the dinner table at Chateau Carolands, you just don’t have any business voting for Mitt Romney.

The facts are that Democratic Mayor of Newark Cory Booker, former Democratic Representative Harold Ford of Tennessee, and former Obama business advisor Steven Rattner criticized Barack Obama for his advertisement, calling it inappropriate to shame capital investment firms. But these are not all the facts, as only one out of three news outlets reveals.

In its coverage of this kerfuffle, ABC News refers simply to a “divide among Democrats over the portrayal of Romney’s Bain days.” Veering more firmly into blatant inaccuracy, FOX News refers to Obama’s detractors as “rank and file.” But Brayden Simms of Metro News nails the pattern down tight when he considers why some prominent Democrats so harshly criticized Barack Obama recently. Simms writes:

Ford is currently a managing director for Morgan Stanley. Rattner co-founded a private equity firm and worked for Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and others. Booker is a sitting politician whose job is directly linked to the financial sector: Bain and other similar firms contributed hundreds of thousands to his last election.

Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Bain Capital — all firms to which Cory Booker, Harold Ford and Steven Rattner are in thrall — have the common feature of gutting American industries, kicking Americans out of work and subjecting American workers’ hard-earned pensions to jeopardy. Booker, Ford and Rattner are springing to their corporate masters’ defense. Big Finance Democrats like Booker, Rattner and Ford are more than willing to throw Barack Obama under the bus because their allegiance to money is stronger than their allegiance to a candidate.

In explaining why he thought finance capitalism should be above criticism by mere plebes, Rattner revealed his value system:

Bain Capital’s responsibility was not to create 100,000 jobs or some other number. It was to create profits for its investors. It did it superbly well.

Rattner got this one thing right: megafinance corporations are not “job creators” after all. They’re wealth extractors and concentrators on behalf of their already wealthy investors. If you think that kind of behavior should be above question and purged from discussion, then by all means stand with Mitt Romney on the Republican side and with his allies in the “centrist” faction of the Democratic Party. Otherwise, isn’t it time to walk away?

These long periods of vacation for the lower house of Congress, when ordinary Americans are working, are justified as an opportunity for U.S. representatives to go back home from Washington D.C. and meet with constituents in their home district. Mostly, however, these free days are used by members of Congress to go meet with corporate lobbyists and political action committees, begging for money and offering legislative favors.

That’s what Congressman Paul Ryan will be doing this morning. Five hours from now, Ryan will attend a fundraising breakfast in San Francisco at the headquarters of Gap, Inc. Gap, Inc. is a company that specializes in making profits by taking jobs that could be held by American workers and sending those jobs to sweatshop factories in foreign countries. Paul Ryan happens to promote a legislative agenda that keeps the door open to corporations that set up shop overseas instead of creating jobs in the USA.

So, it’s a very tight relationship between Paul Ryan and the executives at Gap corporate headquarters, which is why the company is helping Ryan meet with lobbyists and take their money this morning. The advertised price for the privilege of sitting at Congressman Ryan’s table and having a nice leisurely legislative conversation with him is $5,000.

Do you have enough money to attend that breakfast?

They call it “sporty”, and for the amount of money that a person has to pay to drive a Porsche Cayenne – over $100,000 – you might think that the vehicle could accomplish sporty easily enough. Sporty ought to be well within the cost of a hundred thousand dollars, right?

The Porsche Cayenne certainly has a lot of things – heated seats, plush leather, powerful audio speakers, and such. The truth is, though, that true sportiness just isn’t within the reach of the Porsche Cayenne.

No matter how many extra features a wealthy owner pumps into the vehicle, one thing will remain constant:

Most of the time spent in a Porsche Cayenne while on the road will be waiting, sitting still in traffic, just like every other car on the road. Every moment in their vehicles, Porsche Cayenne drivers will be sitting still, on their increasing fat behinds, losing muscle mass, getting weaker and weaker, becoming as soft as the cushy luxury seats in which they have found their comfort.

That’s not sporty. You want sporty? This is what a genuinely sporty vehicle looks like:

This vehicle costs a lot less than a Porsche Cayenne – just one or two hundred dollars. Of course, it asks more from the person who rides it. A bicycle requires a person to spend their physical energy in order to move forward. Of course, that spending is really just a kind of investment. The more a person on a bicycle pushes, the more power they”ll build within themselves, getting more and more sporty every time they climb aboard.

Sporty isn’t something you can buy with money. Pushing a pedal to hear an engine roar is an exercise in sedentary alienation from the world, relying on a machine to go even the slightest distance. Some people call that luxury. I call it just plain lazy.

Reading about the legislation, my attention was drawn to the date of the original passage of the sanctions being modified. 1996 was 16 years ago. Of course, sanctions against Iran are much older than that. The first sanctions by the United States against Iran went into effect in 1979 – 33 years ago.

One and a half generations of sanctions have not brought Iran to its knees. They haven’t resulted in the replacement of the Islamic government with a secular democracy. They haven’t persuaded the government of Iran to stop supporting terrorist groups. They haven’t prevented the government of Iran from developing a nuclear energy program that could be used to support a nuclear weapons program, as nuclear energy has here in the United States.

What have these sanctions achieved? They have resulted a restricted flow of oil from Iran. The legislation passed yesterday would restrict Iran’s contribution to the international oil markets even further, by expanding sanctions to prohibit trade in oil from projects outside of Iran. S. 2101, if signed into law, will ban the sale of oil from any drilling or refining project in which the government of Iran is an investment or partner, no matter where that drilling or refining takes place. Petrochemical products derived from oil, when they come from such projects outside of Iran, would also be prohibited.

Will this expansion of sanctions convince the government of Iran to change course? There’s little reason to believe so. After all, it was just two years ago that Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010. Iran didn’t blink an eye with that expansion of sanctions. Why would Iran’s reaction be different now?

The text of S. 2101 acknowledges that “Successive Presidents of the United States have determined that the pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities by the Government of Iran presents a danger…” and that “Successive Congresses have recognized the threat that the Government of Iran and its policies present…”. In other words, Iran has been dangerous for years and years and years. The danger of Iran has become a comfortable sort crisis, an ongoing threat that never really comes to a head, but keeps on providing justifications for economic restrictions.

If the sanctions aren’t reducing the dangerous activities of the government of Iran, then why do politicians in Washington D.C. keep tightening sanctions against Iran? Maybe the purpose of the sanctions isn’t really to change Iran, so much as to take advantage of Iran’s extremism in order to take actions that are appealing for other reasons.

In general, the sanctions against Iran mostly focus on oil and products derived from oil. The new sanctions legislation passed yesterday increase the restrictions on oil, even oil that comes from outside Iran. These sanctions reduce the amount of oil on the market, and that reduced supply, through predictable economic mechanisms, increases the price of oil. So, the sanctions allow oil companies outside of Iran are able to make a higher profit without having to work any harder for it. The tighter the sanctions against Iran get, the more money the oil companies make.

So, it’s not strictly true to say that the sanctions against Iran are not working. They’re working very well for the executives and wealthy investors whose fortunes are connected to the price of a barrel of oil.

Passage of the Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Human Rights Act may not do a thing to improve human rights, to enhance regional peace, or to thwart the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But then, such changes may be beside the point.

Gary Ackerman, Jason Altmire, Robert Andrews, Joe Baca, John Barrow, Shelley Berkley, Howard Berman, Sanford Bishop, Tim Bishop, Dan Boren, Leon Boswell, Bob Brady, Corrine Brown, Russ Carnahan, John Carney, Ben Chandler, Judy Chu, Gerald Connolly, Jim Cooper, Jim Costa, Joe Courtney, Mark Critz, Henry Cuellar, Elijah Cummings, Susan Davis, Norm Dicks, John Dingell, Lloyd Doggett, Joe Donnelly, Eliot Engel, Charles Gonzalez, Al Green, Gene Green, Colleen Hanabusa, Martin Heinrich, Brian Higgins, Ruben Hinojosa, Mazie Hirono, Kathy Hochul, Tim Holden, Steny Hoyer, Steve Israel, Sheila Jackson Lee, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Jim Jordan, Marcy Kaptur, Dale Kildee, Larry Kissell, James Langevin, John Larson, Sander Levin, Dan Lipinski, David Loebsack, Jim Matheson, Carolyn McCarthy, Carolyn McCarthy, Mike McIntyre, Jim McNerney, Gregory Meeks, Bill Owens, Ed Pastor, Ed Perlmutter, Collin Peterson, Silvestre Reyes, Laura Richardson, Mike Ross, Dutch Ruppersberger, Adam Schiff, David Scott, Terri Sewell, Brad Sherman, Heath Shuler, Albio Sires, Adam Smith, Betty Sutton, Ed Towns, Nikki Tsongas, Peter Visclosky, and Tim Walz

These are the names of the 77 Democrats in the House of Representatives who voted on Friday in favor of passing H.R. 4310, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013.

You may remember how, last year, Republicans in Congress pushed Democrats into what was called a “compromise”. The deal was that a Special Committee from the House and Senate would be authorized to come up with a plan for reducing the budget deficit, through increases in revenue or through reductions in spending. That committee had a deadline to come up with a plan, and if they didn’t meet that deadline, then there would be automatic spending reductions in programs like Medicare and the military.

There would be no new taxes if the deadline wasn’t met, though, so the Republicans on that Special Committee just sat there, with no intention to come up with any plan, happy to let the spending reductions go into place. This year, there were supposed to be automatic reductions in money for Medicare and for the military alike.

The cuts in Medicare are coming through, but with the version of the National Defense Authorization Act just passed by the House of Representatives, the cuts in military spending do not take place. A vote for this legislation, essentially, is a vote to allow cuts in Medicare without any counter-balancing cuts in military spending or tax increases. It’s a vote to put all the economic burden onto working Americans, while allowing the wealthy to keep their special tax loopholes.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 as passed by the House of Friday preserves spending on extravagant weapons program that the Pentagon says it doesn’t want. It keeps open redundant military bases that are not strategically necessary.

The money to pay for this wasteful military spending is being taken from older Americans, by reducing their health care benefits.

Who would vote for such a thing? Well, almost every Republican in the House of Representatives voted in favor of this unjust redistribution of wealth. It’s not just a Republican problem, though. The 77 Democrats listed above voted to approve this unjust arrangement as well.

These Democratic politicians don’t deserve to be re-elected. If you are represented by one of the Democrats listed above, give your representative a call through the congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Ask to be connected to your representative’s office, and leave a simple message with the aide who picks up the phone: I’m a liberal, and I won’t be voting for you in November, and it’s because you voted for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013.

Measured in these terms, the anti-fracking movement is a success. Investor and investment advisor David White is advising people that the price of natural gas stocks is too high and that investors should sell shares in natural gas stock:

There are many other reasons for RRC to fall. RRC is primarily a natural gas company. Its production is approximately 78% natural gas, 16% natural gas liquids, and 6% oil. Its great natural gas resources are primarily in the Marcellus Shale. Much of these are in Pennsylvania. This comes under Pennsylvania law, and Pennsylvania has recently passed the Unconventional Gas Well Impact Fee Act (Feb. 2012). This law imposes a new fee on every unconventional natural gas well drilled in the state. This is a non-negligible fee. RRC reported a $24 million (or -$0.15 per share charge due to this fee in Q1 2012). The fee will continue to be a problem for all new wells drilled in the state. On top of this new fee, the US Congress has recently introduced a new “Anti-Fracking” bill in both the House and the Senate. This could cause problems and expenses for RRC too.

The legislative action David White describes is a direct result of the political agitation engaged in by Marcellus Shale Protest and other anti-fracking movement groups. Their actions threaten natural gas stock prices. Consequently, it’s in natural gas corporations’ economic interest to address concerns about gas fracking pollution. The anti-fracking movement has succeeded.

Doesn’t this loose spending of government money contradict Republican claims that their political party is dedicated to fiscal responsibility? Not according to Congressman Joe Wilson. Yesterday, Representative Wilson rose to give a speech to his colleagues in Congress, telling them that military spending is somehow different than all other government spending. Representative Wilson declared that military spending “does not contribute to our growing national debt.”

How does that work? How could it be that dollar spent on schools for America’s kids increases the national debt, but a dollar spent on bombs and bullets used to kill people in America’s wars does not increase the national debt? Are there different economic rules that govern military spending and domestic spending?

Joe Wilson, you lie. A dollar of debt is a dollar of debt, regardless of the way that it’s spent. Republicans can’t expect us to believe that they’re against big government spending, after voting for a big government spending bill like H.R. 4310.