US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3382

The U.S. government is running a massive corporate welfare program for coal companies, prioritizing Big Coal’s interests over the environment and taxpayers, according to a Greenpeace report released Thursday based on government documents.

Much of the country’s largest coal deposits west of the Mississippi River sit beneath federal land. That coal is owned by taxpayers and leased to coal companies by the government. Federally owned coal accounts for three-quarters of what’s mined by three of the largest U.S. coal companies — Arch Coal, Peabody Coal, and Cloud Peak Energy — according to documents obtained by Greenpeace recently through a Freedom of Information Act request. The companies have the right to mine that coal for a fraction of its real value.

A problem with charging companies so little to mine government-owned coal is that it doesn’t account for costs to the environment. Coal is one of the dirtiest fossil fuels, causing smog, acid rain, and air pollution when it burned by power plants. It’s the world’s leading cause of carbon emissions, which cause climate change, and even in the short term can cause respiratory, cardiovascular, and nervous system issues for those exposed to its pollutants.

Adding the social cost of burning coal would bump up the price of leasing these mining rights by $5 billion to $55 billion — depending on how you calculate damage to the environment — to the totals paid to the government each year. And that’s just for the three largest coal companies, according to the report.

The American Coal Council, an industry group, noted in a statement in January that the industry has paid American taxpayers $12 billion over the last decade, or just over $1 billion a year. That means the industry should be paying five-fold what it does now, using the most conservative estimate of coal’s social cost cited by Greenpeace.

On March 18 2016 05:46 Plansix wrote:
That is a huge upgrade. Makes the thread great again.

On March 18 2016 05:50 oneofthem wrote:
need more hillary.


obama agrees

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/us/politics/obama-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders.html?_r=0

But, while he stressed that he was not endorsing either candidate, and that both would make good presidents

On March 18 2016 04:24 KwarK wrote:
To put it simply. The way it works in the UK is as follows
Company plans to pay you $X. It reports this to Inland Revenue. Inland Revenue tells the company to take $Y from that. Company gives you $X-Y and gives the government $Y. At the end of the year the company sends the Inland Revenue a summary and they calculate if you've overpaid and if you have you get a check.

The way it works in the US is as follows
Company plans to pay you $X. They ask you how much of that you'd like to withhold for taxes. However you don't fucking know. They give you a worksheet. The worksheet asks you to enter 1 for your spouse and 1 if you have at least $2000 of child or dependent care expenses. You go through the worksheet which is designed to account for the various credits you may be eligible so you don't overwithhold too much. Then you call your dad and ask him what he did on his W4 and he says that he always puts 0 because he doesn't want to owe tax and he always gets a big refund. You take another look at the form, if your total income will be less than $70,000 ($100,000) if married enter 2 for each eligible child. You write 0 on it.
Company receives W4. The W4 tells them how much of your pay to give to the IRS. This is not the amount the IRS wants. This is the amount you told them to give the IRS because fuck it. Company gives $Y to the IRS, an arbitrary high number and you receive $X-Y. At the end of the year the IRS now have 12$Y but they only wanted $Z. You are therefore owed 12$Y-$Z. But you don't know how much $Z is because fuck all of this. A third party company approaches you and offers to calculate how much $Z is for you and then get the IRS to give back 12$Y-$Z if you give them 0.1*(12$Y-$Z). You agree.

You then bitch about how high your tax rate was and complain about immigrants while failing to understand that Z was always $0.

On March 18 2016 06:31 oneofthem wrote:

lol he doesn't believe that