Repost from Scribd
[Editor: Below you will find the title, then the downloadable 5-page Resolution. – RS]
Resolution Calling on Resignation of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt by Tom Udall on Scribd
About 200 (and up to 400) high school students walked out of Benicia High today, joining a national walkout for gun safety and legislative gun control reforms. (See more on CNN. See more on VOX.)
Those whose parents phoned the school in advance were granted an excused absence. Others were given an unexcused “cut.”
The large contingent marched up Military West, chanting and carrying signs, and accompanied by a Benicia police escort.
Many observers thought they would stop at City Park, but the students continued down Benicia’s main commercial strip, First Street, and gathered near the Carquinez Strait at Marina Green.
There, students created a group poster, registered to vote and cheered for speeches given by their peers.
No one can remember a time in Benicia’s history when students left school in these numbers for a protest.
(See also coverage in the Benicia Herald and the Vallejo Times-Herald]. See more on the national walkout on CNN. And see more on VOX.)
Repost from Pacific Standard
[Editor: Valero Energy’s windfall of DIRECT ONE-TIME 2017 TAX SAVINGS from the Trump tax law was $1.9 BILLION, according to Valero’s 4th quarter 2017 SEC filing . See chart below. See also Valero’s Feb 2018 press release and Valero’s detailed SEC 2017 Year End Fiscal Report. – RS]
Last month, during a retreat in West Virginia, congressional Republicans set out their 2018 party goals. Their primary objective is to hold onto their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the key mechanism for doing so is to ride the coattails of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. “The tax bill is part of a bigger theme that we’re going to call The Great American comeback,” said Representative Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “If we stay focused on selling the tax reform package, I think we’re going to hold the House and things are going to be OK for us.”
More than 50 percent of the tax bill’s benefits will go to the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, and more than 25 percent to the wealthiest 1 percent, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. As Businessweek put it, “President Donald Trump and Republicans sold their $1.5 trillion tax cut as a boon for workers, but it’s becoming clear just two months after the bill passed that the truly big winners will be corporations and their shareholders.”
Pacific Standard‘s original analysis finds that it is the oil and gas industry, including companies that backed the presidency of Trump and whose former executives and current boosters now populate it, that are among the tax bill’s largest and most long-lasting financial beneficiaries.
Just 17 American oil and gas companies reported a combined total of $25 billion in direct one-time benefits from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Many of the companies will also receive millions of dollars in income tax refunds this year. Looking forward, the Tax Act then reduces all corporate annual tax bills by a minimum of 40 percent every year in perpetuity, while adding new benefits that function as government subsidies for the oil and gas industry. The companies’ activities in the United States are made less expensive, thereby encouraging a further expansion of oil and gas operations.
Pacific Standard reviewed the Annual 10K and Fourth Quarter Reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for 2017 by 17 U.S. oil companies, looking at the largest companies in production, refining, and pipelines that also clearly specified the impacts of the Tax Act in their results. Private companies, such as Koch Industries, which undoubtedly benefit from the legislation, could not be included because they are not required to make these financial reports publicly available.
Continue reading INSIDE THE TAX BILL’S $25 BILLION OIL COMPANY BONANZA
Repost from Mother Jones
[Editor: For more on this story, see Our Children’s Trust, and Climate Liability News. – RS]
“We the people are ready to leave,” sang a small choir of climate activists in downtown San Francisco, “’cause the White House makin’ it hard to breathe.”
That was the rallying cry in support of the 21 plaintiffs, ages 22 and younger, who are suing the federal government for causing climate change damages and thereby violating their constitutional rights. Last year, on December 11, a crowd of around 100 people gathered across the street from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco where oral arguments were being heard as the government defendants tried to argue the case should not go to trial.
But the court ruled in favor of the young plaintiffs last month, and on Thursday, a US magistrate judge set a trial date for October 29 in Eugene, Ore. Continue reading These Teens Just Won a Victory Over the Trump Administration in Court
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