Month: October 2009

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US Chamber of Commerce fighting climate regulations

The US Chamber of Commerce has spent $488 million in the past 11 years on lobby efforts. Now they’re throwing their weight and cash behind trying to block regulation that will cap carbon emissions. Now they want the Environmental Protection Agency to hold hearings to prove

that greenhouse gases pose enough of a danger to public health to justify regulations controlling their emissions under the Clean Air Act.

It’s fortunate that William Kovacs, the chamber’s top environment specialist, isn’t buying into this tactic to stall environmental change so companies can continue to make financial profits at the risk of the world’s health. When he said as much this triggered a series of defections by the chamber’s eco-sensitive members read more

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Pension system failure

Recently I was thinking about how much stress pensions cause to the social and economic systems in the United States. After looking at this issue for a while I concluded that pensions are a major contributor to social inequality, and they create unreasonable (and maybe unpayable) financial burdens on future generations of employees and citizens. Here’s how:

Promise now, others pay later

When I began talking to people about pensions I learned that they may also be unsustainable: that is, pensions are promised to employees by a generation of company execs and union bosses who aren’t going to be around the day pension payouts start to come due. This is the same sell-the-future-short ruse that politicians employ when they’re able to get public commendation for voting a law into being although they make no provisions to fund the law’s enactment. New Jersey’s Amistad Legislation which became law in 2002 but is still waiting for funding to bring a racially balanced historic perspective to classrooms across the state is a good example of this. The Racism in Higher Education paper sheds some light on this sujbect. read more