Letters to a Senator: Congressional Certification of Electoral College Results, January 6th, 2021

The following are letters sent January 2nd  and 3rd, 2021, to a staffer for Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska, regarding the Congressional Certification of the Electoral College vote for President, to be held Wednesday, January 6th.  

First Letter: 

I congratulate Senator Sullivan on his re-election.  This was not the outcome I, and the majority of my friends had hoped for.  I put considerable time and money into trying to prevent this result.  But I value democracy and respect the results of Senator Sullivan's election.*  He is my representative in the Senate, as well as for those who supported him in the election, so I'm writing to you again about my concerns.  If you are reading this on Monday, the certification vote will be in only two days.  Thank you for your time.  

In four days, Congress will vote to certify results of the electoral college vote to declare Joe Biden the next President.  In the two months since the general election, there has been an unprecedented challenge to the validity of that election by the incumbent and others working on his behalf.  The arguments to overturn the results of the election have ranged from trivial procedural points to absurd conspiracy theories. 

 

American democracy is under attack.  In 2016, Mitt Romney stated that Russia is without question our number one geopolitical foe.  Other commentators, notably Garry Kasparov and Masha Gessen, have stated that Vladimir Putin sees democracy as an existential threat to Russian authoritarianism, and therefore Putin is conducting a cold war against the institution of democracy around the world.  Putin’s goal is to undermine trust in the institution of democracy, to weaken and disrupt democratic nations.  

 

The threat from Russian anti-democratic disinformation is made clear in many reports, including a Senate minority staff report and a US State Department report referenced below.

 

“For years, Vladimir Putin's government has engaged in a relentless assault to undermine democracy and the rule of law in Europe and the United States. Mr. Putin's Kremlin employs an asymmetric arsenal that includes military invasions, cyberattacks, disinformation, support for fringe political groups, and the weaponization of energy resources, organized crime, and corruption” (2018, Senate Minority Staff Report, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS)

 

“Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem is the collection of official, proxy, and unattributed communication channels and platforms that Russia uses to create and amplify false narratives….The Kremlin bears direct responsibility for cultivating these tactics and platforms as part of its approach to using information as a weapon.” (2020, State Department GEC Special Report)

 

The idea that the 2020 Presidential election was flawed, fraudulent, or rigged is exactly such a false narrative.  Republican election officials in key states declared the results completely valid, and have run recounts and audits of processes and votes to make that determination.  About sixty court cases challenging the election have been summarily dismissed as completely lacking merit.  The Executive Committee of the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, and the members of the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council issued an official statement that “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” 

 

Nevertheless, as of today, 140 Republican Representatives and 12 Senators stated that they intend to vote against certification of the election.  The only real basis for this revolt against the election is simply that the Republican candidate lost.  The phrase Republicans are using in this effort is the hypocritical, Orwellian slogan, “Stop the Steal.”

 

The main argument of the current assault on the election is that procedural changes, made without the authority of state legislatures, to accommodate voting during the pandemic, were illegitimate.  Senator Cruz of Texas is leading the effort to invalidate the election in the Senate.  Ironically, the procedural change in Texas to close all but one early-voting site per county was also made without the authority of the state legislature.  If the logic of the complaint holds, then Senator Cruz’ election was also invalid, and he should not be seated to vote on January 6^th!  In any event, there is no argument that these votes were not honestly cast for Joe Biden – the intent is simply to disenfranchise Biden voters. 

For generations, we have fought wars to make the world safe for democracy, spilling American blood and treasure.  Promoting democracy overseas has been a major policy goal since the Reagan administration.  And yet here we are, with three-quarters of the Republicans in the House and one-quarter of the Republicans in the Senate seeking to undermine democracy in our own government.  

In the weeks following the election, I was disappointed in Senator Sullivan’s slow recognition of the Biden win, because that slow recognition gave encouragement to Trumpists looking to find some way to cheat. 

 

Democracy, like free enterprise, requires truth and integrity to function.  Both fail when people cheat.  Unfortunately, many Republicans are once again showing that they lack integrity.  I have to ask, what in the hell are they doing?  These Republicans are undermining Americans’ trust in our democracy, which is the number one foreign policy goal of our number one geopolitical enemy.  This seems to me to be pretty close to sedition and treason.  Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski have been almost alone among Republican Senators in criticizing the effort to overturn the legitimate election of Joe Biden.  In this context, silence is complicity.  I ask Senator Sullivan to stand up for the principles of democracy, denounce the effort to overturn the election, and show faith and trust in our democratic institutions.  And to congratulate Joe Biden, commit to working with the President-elect on improving lives for Americans, and to strengthen our trust in democracy.

References:

* The opening lines of this letter are a parody of an official statement by Senator Sullivan, regarding the election of President Biden.  Sullivan's original statement, unfortunately, has now been removed from Twitter.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-115SPRT28110/html/CPRT-115SPRT28110.htm

PUTIN'S ASYMMETRIC ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY IN RUSSIA AND EUROPE: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY

 

“For years, Vladimir Putin's government has engaged in a relentless assault to undermine democracy and the rule of law in Europe and the United States. Mr. Putin's Kremlin employs an asymmetric arsenal that includes military invasions, cyberattacks, disinformation, support for fringe political groups, and the weaponization of energy resources, organized crime, and corruption. The Kremlin has refined the use of these tools over time and these attacks have intensified in scale and complexity across Europe. If the United States fails to work with urgency to address this complex and growing threat, the regime in Moscow will become further emboldened. It will continue to develop and refine its arsenal to use on democracies around the world, including against U.S. elections in 2018 and 2020.”

 

“Mr. Putin has thus made it a priority of his regime to attack the democracies of Europe and the United States.”

 

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-Russia%E2%80%99s-Disinformation-and-Propaganda-Ecosystem_08-04-20.pdf

GEC Special Report: August 2020, Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem

 

“[T]his report draws on publicly available reporting to provide an overview of Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem is the collection of official, proxy, and unattributed communication channels and platforms that Russia uses to create and amplify false narratives. The ecosystem consists of five main pillars: official government communications, state-funded global messaging, cultivation of proxy sources, weaponization of social media, and cyber-enabled disinformation. The Kremlin bears direct responsibility for cultivating these tactics and platforms as part of its approach to using information as a weapon. It invests massively in its propaganda channels, its intelligence services and its proxies to conduct malicious cyber activity to support their disinformation efforts, and it leverages outlets that masquerade as news sites or research institutions to spread these false and misleading narratives.”

 

“A thriving counter-disinformation community comprised of governments, civil society, academia, the press, the private sector, and citizens around the world who refuse to tolerate these tactics is pushing back.”

 

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2019/07/31/combating-disinformation-and-foreign-interference-in-democracies-lessons-from-europe/

Combating disinformation and foreign interference in democracies: Lessons from Europe, 2019

 

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Weapons-of-Mass-Distraction-Foreign-State-Sponsored-Disinformation-in-the-Digital-Age.pdf

WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION: Foreign State-Sponsored Disinformation in the Digital Age, 2019

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Second Letter:

Please note that I wrote yesterday's letter before the news broke about Trump's phone call to the Georgia State Attorney General, using a combination of threats and flattery to convince Raffensperger to create false election results.

This news reinforces what I had to say in that letter.  The efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the election are clearly illegal.  

Senator Murkowski has spoken out against this violation of democracy.  We are in serious banana-republic territory with the Congressional challenge to the electoral college, and Senator Sullivan's silence is complicity.

I was an internal technical auditor for a couple of years for the company that once supplied half of the natural gas to South-Central Alaska.  We once had a region manager (not in Alaska) who made bullying demands of his engineers to change the numbers, similar to Trump's call to Raffensperger.  We fired the region manager, and disciplined the engineers who complied with the manager's demand to change the numbers. By enforcing integrity, we ensured that our customers had enough gas to heat homes and have electricity; our shareholders received truthful accounts of the company's financial condition, and we were protected from lawsuits.

Integrity matters in all things.  Cheating is wrong, and it is important to say so, loudly. 

I'm waiting for Senator Sullivan and many other Republicans to show some integrity regarding Trump's campaign to overturn the election. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html

Corporate Tax Cuts in the Republican 2017 Tax Reform Bill

The Republican-controlled Congress is in the final stages of writing the most sweeping tax changes in forty years.  The Senate version of the tax bill is 487 pages, which is hardly the sweeping simplification promised by Republicans, and too long to easily summarize in this paragraph.  Business taxes are affected far more than individual taxes. Specifics of the tax bill are summarized at the end of this article.

The main focus of the tax reform is lower taxes for corporations.  The pretext is that lower taxes on corporations will result in economic growth, but the real goal is to lower taxes on unearned income.  Profits saved through lower taxes will flow through corporations to shareholders, including Republican Party donors.  The expectation of higher dividends and capital gains has driven the stock market by more than 25% since the election.

Most, if not all, serious economic reviews of the tax plan do not support the expectation of higher economic growth.  The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation concluded that the bill would only add marginally to economic growth, while adding one trillion dollars to the US Federal debt, even after accounting for the additional tax revenue resulting from growth.  And both private and JCT analyses conclude that tax benefits will accrue to the wealthiest Americans, with poorer Americans losing money.

As my son pointed out, the simple truth is that this tax bill is a "Red versus Blue" tax bill.  What the tax bill accomplishes is just short of cutting a $500 check to every Republican, and sending a $500 tax bill to every Democrat.  My son writes, "There are some hand-wavey claims about how it is good for gullible people, but I don't know anyone serious who believes any of that."  The provisions of this bill would not survive a change in control of the Government.  But how long can the country peaceably survive, lurching from policy to policy with every change of a percentage point in national polls?
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Justification for 2017 Corporate Tax Cut

The rationale for the deep cut in corporate taxes is based on the idea that higher after-tax profits for corporations will result in a higher rate of economic growth.  Also, the argument is that a higher rate of growth will be shared by wage-earners in the form of higher take-home pay.

Let’s look at that idea.

United States Corporate Taxes Compared to the OECD

In justifying the corporate tax cut, both of Alaska's Senators have said that American corporate taxes are "among the highest in the world".  They believe those high taxes render our corporations noncompetitive in global markets. As this blog has previously noted, a quick trip to the OECD database shows that idea is simply false.  Although US nominal corporate taxes are comparatively high, the corporate tax actually paid in the United States is less than the average for the OECD.   

GDP Growth, Corporate Taxes, After-Tax Profits and Wages

The general premise that higher after-tax corporate profits lead to higher economic growth is false.
The premise that higher after-tax corporate profits lead to higher wages is also false.

First we need some context.  American economic growth has been declining since World War II.

This is especially evident when we look at non-recessionary periods.  This chart has deleted all quarters with negative GDP growth.

Wages have declined since World War II, as a share of gross domestic income, GDI (or similarly, GPD).

Let's look at Corporate After-Tax Profits.  We can see that profits have soared since the 1980s as a share of GDP.  Higher corporate profits since 2004 (excepting the recession year) have not produced higher GDP growth, or higher wages.

Corporate taxes have also fallen as a percent of GDP, coincident with a falling rate of growth.

But the rise in After-Tax Profits has not resulted in a higher rate of economic growth, or higher wages for workers.  The argument that lower taxes will result in higher economic growth appears to be void.

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Tax Cuts and the Reagan Economy

The final argument for tax cuts is that tax cuts worked in the past.  The basis for that claim is generally in the mythology surrounding tax cuts enacted in 1981 and 1987 during the Reagan administration.  Close examination proves that economic growth during the Reagan administration was not extraordinary, and the growth that did occur was largely due to other factors. The actual performance of those tax cuts is complicated by eleven tax hikes that were also passed during the Reagan years, for the purpose of restoring lost revenues.

Let’s look at the Reagan economy.

First, the “economic boom” of the Reagan years looks less spectacular when viewed in the context of the total post-war economy.  American economic growth has been falling steadily since World War II, part of a general structural problem in the U.S. economy, reflected in GDP growth, wages as a share of the economy, and the time required for recovery after recessions.  [That should be the topic of another blog post.]  There were really only two years during the Reagan administration that had economic growth above the long-term, non-recessionary trend (1983 and 1984).

Still, the Reagan administration was marked by a period of fairly persistent and strong growth.  There are three reasons for that growth. 

1)      Interest Rates

I believe that the main reason for sustained growth during the Reagan years was falling interest rates.  Interest rates reached a singular, extraordinary peak in 1981 (see chart).  The Volcker Federal reserve had largely quelled inflation by 1981, and began to let interest rates fall.  The extraordinarily high interest rates at the peak probably caused the multiple recessions of 1980 – 1982.  As interest rates fell, economic growth which had been bottled up by high rates was released.  I believe the influence of falling rates far exceeded the influence of lower taxes.

2)      Serendipity

Secondly, there is simply the matter of good timing.  The Reagan administration was faced with recessions in 1981 and 1982, but afterwards enjoyed the benefit of the typical eight-to-ten year business cycle.  There is no particular policy which can be attributed to this aspect of success, except luck.  [See previous chart, with indicated recessions.

3)      Tax Cuts

Tax cuts do provide stimulus to the economy, and the Reagan tax cuts of 1981 were appropriately given during an economic recession.  Ultimately, though, tax cuts are literally borrowing against the future, and must someday be paid back in terms of later economic growth.  I believe that it is best to run budgetary surpluses when there is strength in the economy, to allow the government the ability to incur deficits when the economy is weak, without fear of destabilizing the economy.  The Reagan administration never fully funded the government to pay for the deficits it incurred.

The 2017 Republican Tax Reform Plan

The Republican Tax Plan passed by the House and the Senate must now be reconciled into a single bill.  The bills are very similar in scope, and the process should not result in significant changes to the plans, except where major errors are discovered in the assumptions and provisions of the bill.

My main objections to the plan are as follows:

1)      Debt

The plan runs large federal deficits, at a time when the total Federal debt is approaching 100% of annual GDP, and interest payments are starting to become a significant part of annual spending.

2)      Timing

The plan cuts taxes at a time of full employment, when fiscal policy should be to run surpluses.  

3)      Corporate Taxes

The plan awards long-term tax relief to corporations, at a time when corporate taxes are already low; corporate earnings are already soaring, and no gains in GDP have been observed.

4)      Lack of Middle-Class Tax Relief/Benefits for Unearned Income

Individual tax relief in the plan will accrue mostly to high income families, particularly those with unearned income.  The corporate tax reduction will flow through to investors, much more directly than to wage-earners.  The plan will not result in long-term tax relief for wage-earners, whose share of gross domestic income has been falling for 47 years.

5)      Abolishes ACA Individual Mandate

The tax plan eliminates the individual mandate aspect of the Affordable Care Act.  It is considered an important facet of the act, in encouraging younger people to participate in the insurance pool.  

Conclusion

The Republican tax plan is based on false ideas:  that American corporate taxes are higher than other countries; that higher corporate taxes produce higher economic growth and higher wages; that general tax cuts during the Reagan administration produced extraordinary growth.  All of these ideas can be demonstrated to be false, using economic data available to anyone.

The Republican tax plan will probably become law.  I expect that it is unlikely to survive the next administration and Congress.  But the debts incurred before it is overturned will last for a generation.

A copy of this post is available on my Science and Policy blog.

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Appendix

Summary of Important Changes in the Republican Tax Reform Bill

Business Tax Changes
1) Drops the nominal corporate income tax rate from 35% to 20%.  The current Senate bill, perhaps through an oversight, keeps the minimum corporate tax at 20%, eliminating exemptions by default.  It is expected that the reconciliation bill will restore those exemptions, dropping the actual corporate rate below 20%.

2) The tax rate for “pass-through” small businesses is reduced, excepting service businesses such as lawyers, accountants, and doctors.  The amount of the reduction is to be determined in reconciliation.

3)  Rules for expensing, rather than capitalizing, spending are relaxed, allowing quicker realization of tax benefits from business investment.

4)  Repatriated profits from foreign operations would be taxed at a much lower rate than US profits.  Cash assets would be taxed at 10% (Senate) or 14% (House), while non-cash assets would be taxed at 5% (Senate) or 7.5% (House). 

Individual Tax Changes

5) All classes of individual taxpayers will see a tax reduction in the near term, but those reductions will expire in ten years.  On the other hand, business tax reductions will be permanent.

6) The standard deduction is doubled, but personal exemptions are eliminated.  Child tax credits are increased, but the full value is only available to those with higher income to offset taxes.  For large families, the child tax credit may not fully offset the loss of personal exemptions.

7)  State & local tax deductions are eliminated; casualty loss deductions are eliminated.  The mortgage interest deduction is retained for all but the largest mortgages.

8) The estate tax may be eliminated, or the minimum threshold for the estate tax may be doubled.

9)  The individual mandate tax of the ACA is repealed.  Some fear that this will destabilize the insurance markets, by removing a large number of younger, healthy individuals from the insurance pool.

10) The fate of the Alternative Minimum Tax will be determined in reconciliation.

11) Waived tuition, common for graduate students, will now be taxed.  Colleges with very large endowments will have some earnings taxed.

Other

12) Drilling will be allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Area 1002, which was originally set aside for consideration for oil development.
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Appendix 2

As this blog has previously noted, American Federal taxes are among the lowest in the world, in direct contrast to Republican claims that American taxes are among the highest in the world.  Here is data from OECD and the World Bank, showing the relative ranking of American Federal taxes compared to other countries.  

United States Federal taxes as a share of GDP, compared to 34 OECD countries.

United States Federal taxes compared to 123 other countries; data from World Bank.

Countries with lower Federal taxes than the United States are Ethiopia, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Central African Republic, West Bank and Gaza, Lithuania, Oman, Nigeria, Bahrain, Estonia, United Arab Emirates.

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References

Summaries of the Republican Tax Plan

Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/30/what-is-in-the-senates-massive-tax-bill-and-what-could-change/?utm_term=.1864e4ff7721

Forbes

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2017/12/02/winners-and-losers-of-the-senate-tax-bill/#5bfdfe5b254d

CNN

http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/28/news/economy/senate-revised-tax-bill/index.html

Economic Reviews of the Tax Plan

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gop-tax-reform-bill-analysis-reviews-text-2017-11

Tax Policy Center – the plan will ultimately raise taxes on more than half of Americans.

University of Chicago Survey – only one out of 42 economists believes that the plan will significantly grow the economy.
University of Pennsylvanian/Wharton review – the tax plan will add about $1.3 trillion to the national debt.

https://www.aei.org/publication/the-gop-tax-plan-is-pro-growth/

This article attempts to put lipstick on a pig.  The article acknowledges that economic growth from the tax plan will be small, “but significant”.  The article recognizes that slower growth has occurred in the past two decades, when progressively slower growth has actually been going on for seven decades.  The article gives no explanation for why growth is slower now than in the past, or why tax cuts at a time of full employment will help. 

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gop-tax-plan-tax-economist-says-senate-bill-crazy-stupid-2017-11

A Federal tax expert says that the tax plan is stupid.

Historical Data

https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-corporate-profits.htm

OECD tax on corporate profits

US corporate tax among the lowest in the OECD

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/corporate-income-tax-share-gdp-1946-2015

Corporate Tax as share of GDP

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/source-revenue-share-gdp

Source of federal revenue

FRED

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RL1A225NBEA

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDIA#0

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A4102C1A027NBEA#0

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP#0

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FCTAX#0

You Own the Problem

Here is a letter I wrote to one of Senator Sullivan's staffers, regarding the mass shooting in Las Vegas.  I intend to communicate this message to other Republicans, including Senator Murkowski, in the near future.

In Las Vegas a single man shot nearly 600 people, killing 59 of them. The man was white, wealthy, middle-aged, previously law-abiding and showed no interest in politics or violence.  He used slightly modified assault rifles to create a rapid rate of fire like a machine gun.  There is an eyewitness video of the first two minutes of the attack, here: https://twitter.com/IzakPratt/status/914736465673965568

Please watch it.

AR15 with carry handle BCM, available for sale from Bravo Company for $125.  

Image from Google search. 

I recommend that you read stories and look at photos about the victims.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-las-vegas-shooting-friendship-20171003-story.html  

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/02/us/las-vegas-shooting-victims/index.html

For over twenty years, Democrats have advocated common-sense gun control, arguing to allow local option to prohibit the sale of Saturday-night specials, to improve background checks, and in particular, to prohibit the sale of assault rifles.  Republicans stymied those efforts.  Since the 1990s, Republicans politicized gun control, adopting a “no-compromise” strategy and used the issue to stir up millions in campaign contributions. In 2004, Republicans prevented the re-authorization of the ban on assault rifles. Republicans disrespected and denigrated Democrats who called for sensible limits on gun ownership and defeated them in elections.  Since 2004, roughly four million assault rifles have been purchased by the public, and may be owned by any lunatic on the streets.  And I guarantee that there are many, many unrecognized lunatics like the Las Vegas shooter among us.

Gun control has been a losing political issue for Democrats for over twenty years.  Democrats lost Congress over the issue of gun control in the 1990s; perhaps they lost the presidency in 2016 over the same issue.  I would not recommend that any Democrat mention gun control ever again.  Republicans won this debate; it’s a Republican problem now.

Very well.  You own this tragedy.  You own the deaths, the injuries, the lives shattered by this meaningless violence.  You own the problem of four million assault rifles sold since 2004, and you own the future mass slaughters which will be committed with those weapons.

Senator Sullivan, Senator Murkowski, Don Young and all the other Republicans who tout the Second Amendment for campaign contributions own this problem.

I have friends who are already afraid to go to concerts, sports events, or public gatherings.  They are afraid that a lunatic with an assault rifle will find that gathering an easy target, and so they curtail their lives to stay safe.  Thanks to Republicans, this is how Americans will now live, and how some of them will die.  It’s a Republican problem.  You own it.

Comments for Senator Dan Sullivan

Recently, Senator Dan Sullivan held a town-hall meeting in Anchorage to meet with constituents.  Senator Sullivan is to be complimented and thanked for holding the meeting; he is the only member of Alaska's Congressional delegation to hold an open meeting with constituents.

The majority of the attendees to the meeting seemed to be in political opposition to the Republican Senator, as has been the pattern in town-hall meetings in other states since the Presidential election. The convener of the meeting and the Senator asked for respect at the beginning of the meeting.  The crowd was boisterous on contentious issues, but generally well behaved.  The Senator invited attendees to speak to members of his team, if we had additional comments.  I spoke to one of his staff members afterwards, and met with her the following week to discuss my concerns.  The following document contains my talking points for my meeting with Senator Sullivan's staffer.  We discussed these issues for 50 minutes.  My meeting with the staffer was generally cordial, although there were a few moments when she simply glared at me.    I plan to follow up our discussion with an e-mail after one week, to see if our discussion had any impact at all on the Senator, or his staff.

I prioritized my talking points according to my guess about the likelihood of positive action by the Senator.

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Meeting with Staffer for Dan Sullivan

Issues and Talking Points

Thursday, June 1, 2017

War Powers:

Will Congress vote on the use of military force before an attack on North Korea or any other country, as required by the Constitution?  White House spokesman Sean Spicer has indicated that the President does not intend to seek Congressional approval before an attack on North Korea.  This seems to me to be a dereliction of Congress’ responsibility to declare war.

Science Funding and Climate Change:

I had a successful career as a petroleum geologist and I understand the importance of petroleum to civilization.  I also recognize the reality and inevitability of climate change.  The consequences range from severe to disastrous.  The remaining questions on climate change are how fast it will happen, and how bad will it be.  Answering those questions is in the national best interest, and requires continuing science funding for critical agencies and programs.

The most positive thing that I took away from the town hall meeting was that Senator Sullivan acknowledges the truth of Climate Change, unlike many others in his party.  I hope that he understands that Climate Change is primarily caused by human emissions of CO2 by burning fossil fuels.   I would be happy to spend several hours explaining that to him if he doesn’t.  In short, the theoretical and observed heating from greenhouse gases closely matches the observed heating of oceans, atmosphere and volumes of melting ice.  Further, the observed heating of the oceans and volumes of melting ice closely match the observed rise in sea level.  Forecasts based on projections of future fossil fuel use indicate significant and expensive problems involving our coasts, our agriculture, and our weather. 

We should not re-direct the agencies currently conducting climate-change research.  Each agency (including NASA, NOAA, USGS, and Energy Department) has a particular expertise.  USGS has the expertise of interpreting past environments.  NOAA has the expertise of monitoring oceans.  NASA has the expertise of remote observations from space.  The CDIAC of the Energy Department has the expertise of understanding carbon emissions.  Please do not cancel NASA’s “Mission to Earth”.  Specifically, please retain funding for:  The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite; the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) experiment; the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder; the Earth-viewing instruments aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft; and the Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI).

I support a carbon tax as the most efficient (and reversible) way to reduce U.S. carbon emissions.  I support remaining the Paris accord to improve international cooperation on Climate Change.

Economic Growth

Senator Sullivan seems to think that economic growth will raise workers’ stagnating wages.  Rather, the situation is the inverse in terms of cause and effect.  The economy is stagnating due to stagnating disposable income for workers.  It is necessary to first take steps to improve wages in order to fix the economy.

Internet Neutrality

Internet Service Providers are a natural monopoly, because of the capital required to connect homes to the internet.  Title II of the Communications act of 1934 provides strong Internet Neutrality, but the administration’s new FCC commissioner intends to revoke this protection.

Internet neutrality is exactly analogous to the regulation of natural gas pipelines as common carriers, established by the Natural Gas Act of 1938.  Natural Gas pipelines are required to treat all shippers equally, which provides for free and fair competition among all producers of natural gas.  In the same way, Internet Neutrality provides free and fair competition among all creators of Internet content.  Internet Neutrality protects against: 1) Monopolistic pricing and 2) Discrimination in favor of affiliated or preferred content providers.  I took that wording almost verbatim from a document on natural gas pipelines.

I support strong Internet Neutrality.   Is Senator Sullivan ready to act to preserve Net Neutrality, and fair competition on the Internet?

Tax Policy

I share Senator Sullivan’s concern about the United States deficit and debt.  We have undertaken a nearly 40-year experiment in underfunding the government, with mixed results.  Our government is already doing more with less, considering the comparison with other countries, and the fact that over 50% of the discretionary budget is taken by military spending.  It is clear that future debt increases are dangerous.  Why on earth is Senator Sullivan interested in cutting taxes?  Raising taxes is clearly imperative to restore fiscal responsibility.  I support higher taxes to reduce the U.S. debt burden.

Deficit spending is often necessary to stimulate the economy and to provide continuity of programs during economic downturns, when Government revenues fall.  This is why a balanced budget amendment is truly a stupid idea.  But the corollary is that taxes should be high enough to provide surpluses when economic times are good.  The economy is now near full employment – it is time to raise taxes, so we can afford deficit spending when times are bad.

As an aside, please excuse me for my error in a question asked at the town hall meeting.  I had erroneously calculated that the total Federal tax on capital returns was only half of the total Federal tax on wages.  I was mistaken about the breakdown of Gross Domestic Income, and attributed too much income to capital.  Nevertheless, please recognize the following facts:

1)  The nominal corporate tax rate is 35%, but actual tax paid is only 17.8%.  It is not appropriate to cite the nominal tax rate without acknowledging the actual rate paid.

[Actual figures for the year 2015 are $1583 billion for after-tax corporate profits (Federal Reserve database) and $343.8 billion in actual tax paid (Economic Report of the President, 2017).  Pre-tax profits are therefore $1927 billion.]

The Bush tax cuts on investment income were justified on grounds of double taxation of corporate profits and dividends.  If Congress reduces the corporate income tax, will it raise individual taxes on investment income to compensate?  How would Senator Sullivan propose to compensate for the loss of tax revenue?

2)  During the town-hall meeting, Senator Sullivan claimed that the United States had one of the highest corporate tax rate in the world.  According to the OECD statistical database, the United States has the 10^th lowest corporate tax of the 35 countries in the OECD (2015) as a percentage of GDP.   OECD countries with higher corporate taxes include Greece, Spain, Canada, Austria, Italy, France, Ireland, United Kingdom, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, Korea, Israel, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovak Republic, Iceland, Czech Republic, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, and Norway. 

3)  In Donald Trump’s acceptance speech for the Republican nomination, he said that America is one of the highest-taxed countries in the world.  This is very far from the truth.   Of the 35 OECD countries, the United States is consistently second-lowest in Federal taxes, and third or fourth lowest in total taxes (including payroll, state and local taxes).

In looking at the World Bank database, the United States had the 14^th lowest Federal tax rate out of 124 countries.  The list of countries with lower taxes than the United States is:  Ethiopia, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Central African Republic, West Bank and Gaza, Lithuania, Oman, Nigeria, Bahrain, Estonia, United Arab Emirates.

The Social Security is in long-term trouble, due to longer life-spans, and the declining number of workers supporting each retiree.  Expanding Social Security funding would help the situation.  I see no reason to cap the tax at a maximum wage, and I see no reason to exclude personal investment income from the tax. 

Workers are taxed from the first dollar for Social Security and Medicare.  By contrast, investment income is not taxed at all for Social Security.   Further, according to the Bush tax cuts, the first $75,000 in capital gains and dividends are tax-free to the individual.  As capital replaces more and more jobs, it makes sense to me to tax capital at a higher rate to put workers on an even playing field when competing for jobs against automation.

Tax deferral on unrealized capital gains contributes to wealth inequality, and deprives the Federal government of needed revenue.  If congress does away with the estate tax, how will unrealized capital gains ever be taxed?

Perhaps Senator Sullivan believes that wealthy individuals create jobs.  That is rarely the case.  In the modern economy, capital and technology are replacing jobs, not creating jobs.

Social Security and Medicare

Payroll taxes are about three times the burden they were when I was a young man.   The number of workers supporting each retiree has declined from about 9 to less than 3.  Wages have stagnated or declined for twenty to thirty years, and the costs for college, health care and even bicycles have increased at a rate far higher than inflation.  Today’s young people are having to make due with less; they are trying to raise children, and support families, and are necessary for the continuing well-being of society.  But we continue to tax young people to support old people.

Social Security funding is backwards.  We tax earnings from the very first dollar of income, and we have a cap on taxing people with high wages.   We have no tax on investment income of any kind. 

We should give tax relief to young wage-earners, by removing the earnings cap, by taxing capital returns, and putting a means test on benefits. 

We should do away with the whole concept that Social Security is an insurance program, in which a workers’ benefits are tied to contributions.  Individuals whose lives have not allowed them to earn wages should be granted a pension, too.   (For example, my sister dedicated her life to caring for her severely disabled daughter, who died at age 13.  She then cared for my elderly aunt, then my parents.)  We should take care of old people because we respect and honor old people.  I support higher taxes on capital returns to fund Social Security, and reduced taxes on wages.

Planned Parenthood and Abortion Rights

I support the continued funding of Planned Parenthood, as an essential part of delivering women’s healthcare and family planning.  If the Republican party wants to reduce abortions, sex education and greater access to contraception are necessary. 

Why would anyone force a woman to carry a pregnancy to full term, when a known birth defect would doom a baby to die on the day it is born? 

If abortion is prohibited, who will care for the nearly one million unwanted children who would be born annually, adding up to about 16.5 million children before adulthood?

I support a woman’s unqualified and unrestricted right to an abortion.  Efforts to restrict that right by restricting the availability of services are deeply misguided.

Health Care

American spending on health care is far above the spending by other countries, without noticeably better results.  

Image Credit:  Randomly Critical Analyses, https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/

Most of the recent increase in spending occurred between 2000 and 2009.  The ACA actually stabilized increases in health care spending (see attached figures, data from the World Bank).

Republicans have made no proposals to decrease the cost of delivering health care which do not involve restricting access to health care for some, or increasing costs to some.

Republicans had every opportunity to engage in a positive way in crafting the Affordable Care Act to make it a better law.   Republicans declined, and cynically tried to cause the legislation to fail.  Republicans continue to do everything possible to sabotage the ACA, without regard for the lives of those who will be physically damaged by the loss of access to health care. 

I expect Senator Sullivan, if he is an ethical human being, to seek out ways to provide health care to all Americans, and to takes steps to reduce the cost of delivering health care without denying care, or shifting costs to those who cannot afford it.

Reducing the actual costs of delivering health care should be a higher priority than the structure of insurance.   Some suggestions to actually reduce costs include:

1. Establishing a system of local health-care clinics, staffed by nurse practitioners rather than doctors. 
2. Establishing a medical school at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
3. Reform patent law, so the drug companies can recoup their costs over a longer period of time, and justify lower drug costs.  Also, regulate the pricing of drugs under patent as monopolies.
4. Conduct a study of the cost structure of health care, and apply regulatory solutions to the areas of greatest cost and least benefit. 

 Social Responsibility

The Senator made a statement in the town council that calls for a stringent rebuttal.  The Senator said that as a 60-year old man, he saw no reason why he should pay for women’s maternity care in his health insurance.  This is one of the most offensive things I have ever heard.  Was the Senator not born of woman?  Was he brought into the world by the Heritage Foundation fully grown?

Let me explain it to him.  The Senator owes a debt to those who paid for the maternity care of his mother, and ethically he is required to pay that debt forward to the next generation. 

All of us are part of a society.  We cannot and do not function as individuals.  The Senator did not make his own clothes, build his house, or harvest his food.  He didn’t build his roads, transport his goods, dig for minerals, or teach his own children.  The Senator has a debt to everyone who serves him in life, which is everybody.  That responsibility does not end by paying a few dollars for any particular service, but that responsibility includes giving everyone in society the basics of a decent life – food, health, education, housing and economic opportunity.  You educate people so that your supermarket checker is literate; you provide healthcare so that he is healthy.  You do these things so that society functions well and serves you well.   That includes a responsibility to illegal aliens who have lived among us, served us with honest work, and to their families. 

The Republican mantra seems to be, “I’ve got mine; everybody else is on their own.”  This ethos ignores the debt we owe to others for the benefits of living in society.   That debt means that we owe a decent life to everyone in society.   If not for the service of all of the unknown people supporting Senator Sullivan, and all of the unknown people supporting them, Senator Sullivan would be living in a mud hut. 

Respect

Senator Sullivan asked for respect in the town hall meeting.  But during Senator Sullivan’s tenure in office, the Senate refused to hold confirmation hearings for nominee Merrick Garland, and Republicans declared they consider ANY nominee for the Supreme Court by President Obama, for a full ¼ of his second term.  This is disrespect not only for the President, but for the voters who put him in office.   Merrick Garland should have been confirmed as Supreme Court Justice, and it was unethical and unconstitutional to deny President Obama that nomination.

Senator Sullivan’s letters are full of disrespect for Democrats, for the former president and for the Health Care plan that was the first and only effort by either party to solve our country’s health care problems.  Why should Senator Sullivan expect to receive respect, when he has not given respect where it is due?

Gun Control

I support reasonable restrictions on guns, as justified by the words “well-regulated” in the 2^nd amendment.  Thirty thousand Americans die every year from guns; two-thirds of them are suicides.  According to Politifact, there have been more than 1.5 million deaths by guns in the United States since 1968.  This is more deaths than the sum of all combat deaths in war in the history of our country.  Many of these deaths are preventable by reasonable gun regulations.   

The EPA and Business Regulation

I remember the time before the EPA.  I remember how snow would turn black in my hometown on the day it fell, due to coal soot in the air.  I remember when the air quality in Los Angeles, before regulations improved the air quality by 98%.  I support the continuing mission of the EPA to protect the environment.

Illegal Immigrants and Immigration Reform

We have many illegal immigrants in this country; in the range of ten million.  The majority of them have been here many years, living peacefully as neighbors, working to support our economy, paying taxes, serving us by taking low-paying and difficult jobs.  In many ways, we owe them a debt of gratitude for their service to us.  Yes, they broke the law.  I also had a few speeding tickets during my life.  In a practical sense, these people are essential to our economy and our housing market.  Currently, they are living outside the law, which creates opportunity for exploitation, and encourages crime in their communities.  Illegal aliens deserve to have a process whereby they can obtain legal residency in this country.

Refugees

Through actions of both Republican and Democratic administrations, we have participated in creating a civil war in Syria that has robbed ten million people of their homes.  Their homeland is destroyed, they have nothing to go back to, and nowhere to go.  We owe it to those we have harmed to accept and shelter some small percentage of these refugees in our country, and to contribute financially to the care of many of the others. 

Education

I do not approve of the use of taxpayer funds to support private schools.  The creation of charter schools funded by school vouchers is a charade for the purpose of religious education, with serious distortion in the teaching of science and history.

Separation of Church and State

One of the most important principles in the country is the separation of church and state.   I expect Senator Sullivan to honor that principle in law, education and all other matters involving the government.

Closing Thought

I am financially conservative; relatively wealthy, white, and middle-aged.  I do not place America First, but rather place humanity first.  I know that all nations and borders are temporary, and I do not care what side of an imaginary line someone was born on.  Our greatest obligation is to leave the world a better place for everyone living here.

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References:
http://www.nrlc.org/uploads/factsheets/FS01AbortionintheUS.pdf