Archive for February, 2007
Psst! Corporations Don't Pay Taxes!
This tidbit appears in “The Short Run” column of the January/February issue of Dollars & Sense. Thanks to Barry Deutch for the ‘toon, and to D&S stalwart Phineas Baxandall for the tip. An obscure state law allows any Wisconsin resident to find out the taxes paid (or owed) by any taxpayer—including any corporation. You just ...Read more.
Toles and The Onion on Inequality
Tom Toles’ recent cartoon in The Washington Post lampoons (most, i.e. orthodox) economists’ puzzlement over the growing income and wealth gap. The suggestion made by Toles’ alter ego (the tiny cartoonist in the corner) that we “start outsourcing those economists’ jobs” reminds us of Dean Baker’s suggestion, in The Conservative Nanny State (excerpted in the ...Read more.
Laws and injustice: Fighting for human rights in Mexico
Laws and injustice: Fighting for human rights in MexicoChris Tilly and Marie KennedyFebruary 2007 This is the second in a series of posts by D&S comrades Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly, who are spending six months in Tlaxcala in central Mexico. Their first posting was about the recent increases in the price of tortillas in ...Read more.
Dollars & Sense not surprised by falling markets
This morning, the New York Times is aflutter about sharp dips in global stock markets and a new report on the decline of U.S. manufacturing. Dollars & Sense has been following the economic developments that led to this situation for years. Excerpts from the NYT and links to Dollars & Sense coverage below. In the ...Read more.
Texas Observer on TXU buyout
On the Texas Observer’s blog, Forrest Wilder sounds some further cautions about the TXU buyout: KKR and the Texas Pacific Group are unlikely to be long-term stewards of Texas’ power supply. Private equity firms, which manage enormous pools of capital amassed by institutional investors and the super-rich, rarely hold onto their purchases for long, usually ...Read more.
TXU resources
Here’s the New York Times overview of the TXU green buyout. The Dallas Morning News has a handy timeline of all the shenanigans that preceded this development. And Daniel Mottola at the Austin Chronicle does an excellent job of fleshing out that timeline and the rest of this session’s battle over global warming and air ...Read more.
More on the TXU carbon emissions agreement
The decision by TXU’s private buyers to cut back its dirty coal permit applications and to reduce its existing environmental impact rested on the realization that in an energy market where consumers care about how their electricity affects their health and the environment, “the entrepreneurial and the innovative will get more profit” than the polluting ...Read more.
TXU buyout cancels 8 of 11 dirty coal permits
Environmental Defense has announced that “as part of their plan to purchase Texas electricity provider TXU Corp, Texas Pacific Group and KKR have agreed to terminate the applications for eight of TXU’s 11 proposed coal plants in Texas and will adopt a platform of initiatives that will significantly reduce the company’s environmental impact in Texas.” ...Read more.
Clean energy in Texas: get involved
Read about Dallas-based energy company TXU’s plans to build 11 new coal-fired power plants in Texas here. TXU is already Texas’ largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, and the new plants would double TXU’s CO2 output. In Texas and around the country, a half dozen major environmental organizations, seven local citizens groups, 36 cities, counties, ...Read more.
Delay in TXU coal plant permitting in Texas
In October 2005, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed an executive order that, among other things, cut the length of permit hearings for new power plants in Texas from 18 months to only six. Last year, Dallas-based power company TXU filed permit applications for 11 new coal-burning power plants that would more than double the company’s ...Read more.
