Herald Readers on School Bond; Climate Inaction; Bob Dylan

In This Issue:

The Wisdom of Herald Readers

The Brutal Cost of Climate Inaction

Bob Dylan on You Tube 

    Bob Dylan And Johnny Cash - Girl From The North Country

    Bob Dylan and Tom Petty - Knocking on Heaven's Door

North Baker School

The Wisdom of Herald Readers

There are a lot of bright people in Baker County, and most of them didn't just fall off the turnip truck. That is becoming clear as the well financed campaign for Measure 1-88 is considered by the whole community, and not just the elites pushing the measure.

In following the letters to the editor in the Baker City Herald, there have been many good points made as to why residents would be foolish to vote yes on Measure 1-88, the $48 MILLION, 30 year, school bond issue. Below are the pertinent portions of two excellent letters that expose two serious problems with the measure, one of which has also been pointed out by other letter writers.

The earliest was a September 14, 2018 letter by Joyce Hunsaker,  "School bond measure too much of a financial burden," where she points out that a NO vote is not a vote against kids, but is a vote for "fiscal responsibility and creative problem solving." Perhaps more importantly, she (and others) point out that a 30 year commitment is one heck of a long time in the current challenging and uncertain economic environment. As she put it:

"Many home-owning families in our town must already budget creatively just to cover the basics, as the cost of those basics continue to rise: groceries, heat, electricity, gasoline, clothing, medical costs, insurance, etc. Thirty years of an additional tax that is non-negotiable, non-modifiable, and — if passed — mandatory, is not a good solution."

As Alain Shertier pointed out on CBS' "MoneyWatch" on September 15th:

"The lesson is clear: Deepening income inequality today should give pause in pondering where things may go tomorrow. Because while the U.S. economy has rebounded since the housing crash, in one way it remains deeply vulnerable -- the gap between the rich and everyone else in the U.S. today is roughly where it was in 1928 [Just before the crash of the great depression]. Just a few of the warning signs:

• The share of national income captured by the richest 10 percent of Americans rose from 34 percent in 1980 to 47 percent in 2016.

• Between 1980 and 2016, the share of America's income going to the top 1percent nearly doubled, while that going to the bottom 50 percent plunged.

• After declining following the Depression, the top 1 percent's share of wealth in the U.S. has shot back up roughly to where it was in the 1930s.

• Between 1970 and 2016, the gap between the richest and poorest Americans jumped 27 percentage points.

• As of 2017, by some measures, CEOs at large companies on average earned more than 300 times what the typical worker made, up from 58 times in 1989 and 20 times in 1965.

30 years?  You get a recession on average every 4 years or so, and the current expansion has been going on for 9 years or so. How long is your luck going to last in an economy of independent contractors and part-timers working 3 jobs?  Do you remember what happened to the 301ks and the homes of 8 million Americans in the "Great Recession" ten years ago?  The stock market correction of the last few days may also remind people of the uncertainty of things, but if that doesn't do it for you there is the New York Times article "The Recovery Threw the Middle-Class Dream Under a Benz. "[Mercedes Benz, that is]

". . . [What] she seeks out again and again is a bound diary of the events of the financial crisis and their aftermath.

“It’s useful to go back and see what a chaotic time it was and how terrifying it was,” she said. “That time is seared in my mind. I looked at it again recently, and all the pain came flooding back.”

A decade later, things are eerily calm. The economy, by nearly any official measure, is robust. Wall Street is flirting with new highs. And the housing market, the epicenter of the crash, has recovered in many places. But like the diary stored in Ms. Swonk’s basement, the scars of the financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession are still with us, just below the surface.

The most profound of these is that the uneven nature of the recovery compounded a long-term imbalance in the accumulation of wealth. As a consequence, what it means to be secure has changed. Wealth, real wealth, now comes from investment portfolios, not salaries. Fortunes are made through an initial public offering, a grant of stock options, a buyout or another form of what high-net-worth individuals call a liquidity event.

. . . . In short, the people who possess tradable assets, especially stocks, have enjoyed a recovery that Americans dependent on savings or income from their weekly paycheck have yet to see. Ten years after the financial crisis, getting ahead by going to work every day seems quaint, akin to using the phone book to find a number or renting a video at Blockbuster.

. . . . In 2016, net worth among white middle-income families was 19 percent below 2007 levels, adjusted for inflation."

 So recovery is working quite well for the rich and those retired on top-tier PERS incomes, and especially so for those on retirements plus their OTEC Board payments like Aletha Bonebrake and Charlene Chase (around $23,000 & $24,000 respectively from OTEC in 2014 on top of their retirements), both of whom were on the committee recommending this grandiose schools plan. OTEC CEO Les Penning's wife, treasurer of the Yes For Kids Committee, also contributed $300.00 to the YES for Kids committee PAC, but then her husband makes a couple hundred grand a year, so I'm thinking these folks can afford the bond payments. 

The Herald reports that the "Kids" PAC had received $5,164.00 as of August 8, $1000.00 of which came from Superintendent Mark Witty, who may have crossed the line on ORS 260.432 restrictions for activities of public employees by taking biased recommendations of the planning committee to State employees on both his and their employer's time this last summer. Given that most of those opposed to the measure are struggling financially, there, of course, is no PAC to finance a campaign against the proposed extortion.

Recovery? How about you--How are you doing? 

And what about the future? Thirty years of bond payments during what promises to be a future more challenging than anything faced since the Great Depression?

Can you say debt? 

According to The Balance- Consumer Debt Statistics, Causes and Impact:

In July 2018, U.S. consumer debt rose 5.1 percent to $3.918 trillion. That surpassed last month's record of $3.901 trillion.

Of this, $2.881 trillion was non-revolving debt, and it rose 6.4 percent. Most of non-revolving debt is education and auto loans. In June 2018, school debt totaled $1.53 trillion and auto loans were $1.13 trillion.

Credit card debt totaled $1.037 trillion, increasing 1.5 percent. It exceeded the record of $1.02 trillion set in 2008. But credit card debt is only 26.5 percent of total debt. It was 38 percent in 2008.

 And then there is this:

 

Trump tax cuts carry a big price tag: Huge debt and risk of another financial crisis, budget office warns

The tax cuts championed by President Trump are helping push the nation toward an unprecedented level of debt, heightening the risk of another financial crisis, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The budget office’s annual look at the government’s long-term financial outlook paints a grim picture, projecting soaring deficits in the coming years, with debt ultimately peaking at more than 152% of the nation’s gross domestic product.

“The prospect of large and growing debt poses substantial risks for the nation and presents policy makers with significant challenges,” Keith Hall, director of the budget office, said in a statement.
The federal debt currently stands at about $15 trillion, or 78% of the size of U.S. economy. If current trends continue, it will roughly equal the size of the economy within a decade, the budget office said. 

 

The last time the debt burden hit that level was just after World War II.

The biggest problem in the coming decade stems from last year’s tax cut. It is estimated to increase the deficit by more than $2.3 trillion over the decade.

And that’s under an optimistic scenario. Under the tax law, individual income tax rates are slated to increase sharply at the end of the decade, while corporate taxes remain low.

 

 So OK, Yes for Kids thinks we need to add more debt to the unbalance sheet when we might not get through the next few years. But wait--it's only thirty years!

And then there is this: "JP Morgan Predicts Next Financial Crisis Will Strike in 2020" and others think it may come sooner. Slam Dunk! (like the Iraq WMD)  It's only thirty years. Your financial insecurity is guaranteed, so, like they say, good luck with that.

 

And what will the mitigation costs to prevent more climate change bring you in the interim.  Surely you are saving for your share of the coming carbon tax. And then, of course, there will be the continuing increases in sewer and water bills to pay for the water line and sewage treatment. Oh damn, and then there is PERS swallowing up tax money. But hey, you can handle it!

 

As Joyce Hunsaker warned: "Thirty years of an additional tax that is non-negotiable, non-modifiable, and — if passed — mandatory, is not a good solution."

 

Her sensible solution: "Can’t we address some of these elements separately, in a prioritized manner, without the $48 million price tag?" 

Well, yes we could.

The other special letter, Solution to school issue is to use the buildings we have, by Judith Head, went to the heart of the school district's absurd argument in favor of the outrageously expensive school bond.

"In the beginning there were four: Churchill, North Baker, South Baker and Brooklyn.
Then there were three: North Baker, South Baker and Brooklyn. Now there are two:
South Baker and Brooklyn. 

 

Surprise! Overcrowding!

Remedy: Move the high school programs now housed in North Baker to the half-empty high school and return North Baker to an elementary school. North Baker School can house approximately 350 students which would take care of the overcrowding now existing in the elementary schools and would also provide room for population growth."

 

Bingo! Judith nailed it. The expansion of programs, including the sometimes failing "Web Academy," at North Baker, soaked up the spaces at North Baker, when those programs could be at the High School if the District didn't want to isolate certain "problem" students from the general school population.  North Baker could once again become a neighborhood school.     

 

A big thanks to Joyce Hunsaker and Judith Head for pointing out the problems and solutions to our alleged school crowding problem.

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Oil Field near Maricopa, California--Still Kicking After All These Years

A few Miles NE of Maricopa, Kern County, California, March 12, 2016

My grandfather got taken in an oil investment scam near here many, many decades ago.

The Brutal Cost of Climate Inaction

Just for the record, I hold out little hope that humans are up to the challenge for preventing the climate change catastrophe that will wipe out much of biological creation, including humans. From one perspective of what is just and moral, the other members of the biosphere might applaud the departure of the species that has created the ongoing catastrophe and say good riddance. Hard for some self-centered humans to see it that way. [Edited 10/18/18]

 
Report Details Brutal Cost of Climate Inaction--If we don’t stop digging up fossil fuels, who will die?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report today showing the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees — and the consequences if we don’t.

The warning is clear: The world’s carbon budget is nearly overspent, and we’re facing a future fraught with climate change-driven death and disease.

To reverse course and keep global warming below 1.5 degrees, we must take swift action to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Failure to stem both fossil fuel production and consumption will cause untold human suffering and condemn polar bears, coral and other species to extinction.

According to the report, the difference between just 1.5 and 2 degrees of warming is stark. That extra half of a degree would almost entirely wipe out coral reefs. It would cause 10 more centimeters of global sea level rise. It would make heat waves deadlier. It would expand the range of mosquitoes carrying disease like malaria and dengue.

Extinction risk would increase dramatically. Of 105,000 species studied, the number of vertebrate, insect, and plant species projected to lose over half their geographic range would double or triple when warming increases from 1.5 to 2 degrees.

The report calculates that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees would require global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050.

This requires a global, coordinated effort to reduce emissions across all major sectors. The report names shifts to less meat-intensive diets, reductions in food waste and increased building efficiency as important emission reduction actions.

But a rapid end to fossil fuels is key. There is more than enough carbon in the world’s already developed oil, gas and coal fields to push us past the Paris agreement’s goal of “well below” 2 degrees of warming. To limit warming to 1.5 degrees, most of these fields must be shut down before they are fully depleted, even assuming no new fossil fuel development gets approved.

Ramping down fossil fuel extraction has been made more difficult with a climate denier in charge of the U.S., currently the second largest annual carbon emitter in the world. From moving to expand drilling on public lands and in our oceans to trying to dismantle the Clean Power Plan and clean car rules, Trump is pushing the world closer and closer to the edge of catastrophe.

But equally problematic is that even some leaders at the forefront of the fight against climate change aren’t doing enough. In fact, many are setting the bar for climate leadership dangerously low.

For example, California’s governor Jerry Brown has continued to support fossil fuel development in his own state.  Behind its green image, California is one of the nation’s top oil-producing states, extracting some of the dirtiest crude in the world. Three-quarters of the oil produced in California is at least as climate-damaging as Canada’s tar sands crude. Yet Brown’s regulators have issued more than 20,000 permits for new oil and gas wells since the governor took office in 2011.

The emissions from every barrel of California’s oil burned make it more difficult to curb warming to 1.5 degrees. California must not be seen as a model of climate policy while oil producers in the state continue to extract millions of barrels per year of incredibly dirty crude.

Today’s report draws a line in the sand — real climate leaders must keep it in the ground. The choice is clear: A world that is unlivable for most of us or a just transition to 100 percent clean energy and a safer world for all of us.

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A Young Bob Dylan (before 1966 motorcycle accident) And Johnny Cash - Girl From The North Country

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  Bob Dylan and Tom Petty - Knockin' on Heaven's Door

 Hang in there folks.