Volunteer Mountie has 'business relationship' with company featured on 'Greta' decal: RCMP


Alex Antoneshyn Digital Journalist
Kelsey Dyer CTV News Edmonton
March 11, 2020
Greta Thunberg is interviewed by The Associated Press in Plymouth, England Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2019. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)


EDMONTON -- A person connected to the Alberta oilfield company whose logo appeared on a heavily criticized 'Greta' decal volunteered with the RCMP detachment that investigated and found the sticker did not meet the threshold for child pornography, Alberta RCMP have confirmed.

RCMP Alberta addressed the situation on social media after being directly asked about the connection.

We can confirm this individual is a volunteer with the Auxiliary program. You can find more information about the program, here: https://t.co/a2XgBHxFPf— RCMP Alberta (@RCMPAlberta) March 6, 2020

Related Stories
'Shame on you, people': Tattoo artist whose design was altered for Greta stickers speaks out
'We will do better': X-Site Energy apologizes for 'Greta' decal
Greta Thunberg responds to graphic decal bearing Alta. oilfield company logo
'Greta' decal condemned in House of Commons
Disturbing 'Greta' decal bearing Alta. oilfield company logo drawing criticism

RCMP said the person has a "business relationship" with Red Deer-based X-Site Energy Services but did not specificy his role. The company's logo featured on the sticker, which was reportedly distributed at X-Site Energy worksites.

RCMP did not make it clear whether the person continues to volunteer as an auxiliary, but didn't say he wouldn't be allowed to in the future pending a review of the auxiliary program in Red Deer. The program, mentioned on Twitter, was suspended in the Alberta city in 2015 following the death of Const. David Wynn.

"Red Deer RCMP General Investigative Services only investigated whether the image depicted could be considered Child Pornography under the Criminal Code," K Division media relations manager Fraser Logan told CTV News Edmonton.

"Red Deer RCMP would not have pursued any further line of investigation past that determination, as the complaint made was only about the depiction on the decal."

He added auxiliaries are never involved in investigations, whether criminal or not.

"There was nothing ever to suggest, leading into this investigation, that an Auxiliary with the Detachment had this business relationship."

He also said there was "absolutely nothing to suggest he was involved" in the distribution of the 'Greta' sticker.

At other locations across Canada, the two-year-old auxiliary program helps with community policing and crime prevention. It has three tiers where members have varying levels of responsibility, supervision, and duties, ranging from public education to participation in patrol calls and check stops. There are national training standards for each tier. Auxiliary members are not paid.

DECAL 'DISRESPECTFUL' BUT NOT CRIMINAL: RCMP

On March 5, Mounties said Red Deer RCMP's general investigative section contacted the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams (ALERT) after finding there were "insufficient grounds to pursue charges."

ALERT confirmed a member reviewed the report from the Red Deer RCMP, but said it was not involved in the investigation.

Red Deer RCMP also consulted with members from the Internet Child Exploitation Unit (ICE), concluding no charges would be pursued related to what they called the "distasteful decal."

They said the image did not meet the criteria in the Criminal Code to be classified as child pornography.

"The Alberta RCMP take the exploitation of children very seriously, and we believe the image in circulation is extremely disrespectful.

"However, in this case and at this time there are insufficient grounds with which to pursue charges."

The decal allegedly depicts a sex act with a female figure who appears to be 17-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg. The image shows a pair of hands holding the braids of a female figure from behind. "Greta" is scrawled across her back. Directly below sits the logo of X-Site Energy Services.

The company issued an apology on its website on March 2 and committed to recovering and destroying the stickers.

ALERT was created in 2006 to combat organized crime. The system sees municipal and RCMP officers across the province work together on cases like drug trafficking, child exploitation and gang violence.

Orphan Wells Association to receive $100M loan bump help speed up reclamation

KENNEY CLAIMS ITS A JOBS PROGRAM

Solutions to oil patch unemployment and abandoned wells are one in the same, the Alberta government is saying.

POLLUTER PAY? NOT IN ALBERTA. ALBERTANS PAY FOR RECLAMATION

CLEAN UP

Alex Antoneshyn Digital Journalist Monday, March 2, 2020

Province loans $100M to clean up oil wells

Solutions to oil patch unemployment and abandoned wells are one in the same, the Alberta government is saying.

EDMONTON -- Solutions to oil patch unemployment and abandoned wells are one in the same, the Alberta government is saying.

Expanding on a promise made in Budget 2020, Alberta announced Monday morning plans to increase its loan to the Orphan Well Association by up to $100 million. 

READ MORE: Budget 2020: Here's what's in Alberta's new jobs plan

The reclamation work will create 500 jobs and address between 800 and 1,000 abandoned sites, Premier Jason Kenney estimated.

"There is a path forward for growth in our energy sector, but we know we need to give a lifeline to some people who are out of work right now," he said at the announcement at Total Energy Services in Leduc, Alta.

Alberta had previously lent, interest free, $235 million to the OWA, which it had begun repaying in 2019 with funds from the Orphan Fund Levy.

Energy Minister Sonya Savage added she would reveal in the coming weeks policy changes that would give the OWA more flexibility regarding ownership and control, as well as sale and management, of wells.

She said the government recognizes the "pressing need to turn the tide on growing oil and gas liabilities."

There are 6,500 abandoned wells throughout Alberta, the OWA estimates.

The loan extension got a nod of approval from Opposition and NDP Leader Rachel Notley.

"It's a continuation of what we were doing before. It was a good idea when we did it, and it continues to be a good idea."

However, she called the United Conservative government's "Blueprint for Jobs" plan, a part of which the orphan well announcement was made, "words and empty ideas that have not created any jobs at all."

The blueprint plan, the government says, consists of:
"Unleashing the private sector" through things like the Job Creation Tax Cut;
Reducing red tape;
Building infrastructure that supports the economy;
Renewed focus on skill development, such as the Skills For Jobs program; and
Promotion of Alberta as a place to invest in and visit.

AND ONE WEEK LATER KENNEY SAYS THIS

Alberta premier says layoffs loom as oilpatch warns of 'catastrophic' impact from low prices

CBC March 11, 2020

ONE YEAR OF KENNEY IN ALBERTA

WHAT DID HE PROMISE OH YEAH JOBS AND 

AN OIL BOOM

It's now Jason Kenney's turn to deliver on jobs, pipelines and ...

https://www.cbc.ca › news › business › alberta-kenney-pipelines-1.5101547

Apr 18, 2019 - For weeks, Jason Kenney framed Alberta's election around three key issues: ... Kenney regards Rachel Notley's efforts to win political and public support ... One big challenge for the new government is many oilpatch jobs that ...

Oil and gas sector applauds Kenney government as pipelines ...

https://www.ponokanews.com › provincial-election › oil-and-gas-sector-ap...

Apr 17, 2019 - Alberta's oilpatch is celebrating the election of a pro-business ... victory in the Alberta election over Premier Rachel Notley's NDP government, ...

Alberta Election Fact Check: UCP claims NDP's plan killed ...

https://globalnews.ca › news › alberta-election-fact-check-ucp-job-loss-une...

Mar 21, 2019 - United Conservatives say nearly 50000 full-time jobs have been lost in Alberta ... UCP Leader Jason Kenney shared a message on Twitter on March 9, ... READ MORE: Alberta's 2019 election underway as Premier Notley drops the writ ... READ MORE: Low oil prices to have negative effect on Canadian ...

Kenney takes blowtorch to NDP policies in 2019, aims for jobs ...

https://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com › news › local-news › kenney-takes-bl...

Dec 30, 2019 - EDMONTON — In 2019, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney made good on his promise to take a blowtorch to core policies enacted by the former NDP government. ... Kenney promised rapid action to liberate an oil-and-gas-based ...

HEY KENNEY WHERE ARE THOSE OIL PATCH JOBS

KENNEY BLAMED THE NDP FOR THE OIL CRASH OF 2014

WILL HE TAKE THE BLAME FOR THE OIL BUST THIS WEEK?

LETS LOOK BACK AT WHAT HE SAID ABOUT THE NDP GOVT IN ALBERTA


EDMONTON
‘Albertans were promised jobs by this premier now — not 10 years from now’: Politicians trade barbs as legislature resumes
DB
By Dean BennettThe Canadian Press
Tues., Oct. 8, 2019timer2 min. read


EDMONTON—Alberta’s fall legislature sitting began on full boil, with Premier Jason Kenney accusing the former government of trail-blazing economic incompetence while NDP Leader Rachel Notley told him to stop throwing tantrums and take the wheel.

With Kenney promising spending restraint in the Oct. 24 budget, he told the house during question period that cuts his United Conservative government makes are a result of high-deficit, high-debt bungling of the NDP and its former finance minister Joe Ceci.

“Every single dime of spending restraint by this (UCP) government is ultimately the responsibility of that member and his gross fiscal irresponsibility,” Kenney said Tuesday while Ceci sat across from him in the chamber.

“The record of that member was the record of the worst finance minister in Alberta history. He drove down business tax revenues. His policies (and) his tax hikes killed tens of thousands of jobs.”

Kenney and his UCP won a majority government in April’s election, defeating Notley’s NDP with a promise to slash corporate business taxes to galvanize the economy and create jobs, particularly in the oil and gas industry.

Kenney’s government has since cut the corporate tax rate to 11 per cent from 12 per cent, and will lower it to eight per cent by 2022.

Notley, now Opposition leader, attacked the tax cut as a sweetheart deal for Kenney’s corporate pals.

She told the house that despite Kenney’s promise, key consumer spending and job creation numbers are flat or going backward, and that the upcoming budget will force ordinary Albertans to pay for it in higher fees and cuts to education and health care.
 

'Albertans were promised jobs by this premier now — not 10 years from now,” said Notley.

“When will the premier admit that his plan was only ever about lining the pockets of wealthy shareholders?”

Kenney said the economic rebound is hampered by a shortage of pipelines and by new energy project approval policies by the federal Liberals that he said will make it harder to get big projects off the ground.

The premier also pointed a finger at the NDP’s tax hikes and big-ticket spending, which he said left the economy in a mess of multibillion-dollar budget deficits and ballooning debt.

“The reality is this, it’s going to take us a long time to undo the damage of the NDP,” Kenney said.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN...


EDMONTON
Calgary MLA under investigation for fraud and bribery appointed to Alberta Heritage S
Notley said blaming others doesn’t help.

“Yelling a lot clearly doesn’t create jobs, because we’ve actually lost jobs. Things are absolutely no better in the oilfield,” she said.

She told Kenney: “When will you admit that you have a job — not somebody else who is not doing a job, but you. And then do it.”

The NDP says cutting corporate taxes from 12 to eight per cent means $4.5 billion in foregone tax revenue by 2022, money that must be made up elsewhere.

Kenney’s government disputes the figure, saying it’s far less, citing research of University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe.

Tombe, in an interview, said it’s difficult to estimate the effect of the tax cut given there are multiple factors at play, including the fact reduction would spur economic growth.

He estimates cutting the tax from 12 to eight per cent would cost the province about $500 million a year.

© Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. 1996 - 2020The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6

SHOE OTHER FOOT  

Alberta premier says layoffs loom as oilpatch warns of 'catastrophic' impact from low prices

WHEN THE NOTLEY NDP WON ELECTION IN 2015 THIS IS WHAT THEY FACED TOO

AND THEY DID NOT CUT LIKE KENNEY IS AND THE PROVINCE WAS BETTER OFF

BECAUSE OF IT, BUT NOT IF YOU LISTENED  TO KENNEY AND HIS CREEPS FROM UCP

CBC March 11, 2020


Alberta premier says layoffs loom as oilpatch warns of 'catastrophic' impact from low prices

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney warned Wednesday that job cuts are expected to hit the province's oil and gas sector in the comings weeks as a struggling industry grapples with a sharp plunge in crude prices.

"Energy companies, as a result of the price collapse, are massively cutting their capital budgets for 2020. This is going to have a very negative effect on working women and men in the energy services sector," Kenney said.

"Unfortunately, [we] do expect to see a number of layoff announcements coming from the energy sector in the next two or three weeks."

Kenney made the comments in Calgary as he prepared to fly to Ottawa to attend the first ministers' meeting.

The meeting in Ottawa comes as officials in Canada and around the world develop plans to cope with the health-care challenges and economic impact of the spread of COVID-19.

The premier met with executives from Alberta's oil and gas sector on Tuesday to discuss the impact of the plummeting oil prices, which have seen some of their biggest losses in years this week.

On Wednesday, West Texas Intermediate, the North American benchmark price for oil, closed at $32.98 US per barrel, down $1.38 US per barrel from Tuesday. Less than a month ago, oil was trading near $54 US per barrel.

Meanwhile, the list of oil and gas companies slashing their spending plans continues to grow.

Oilsands producer MEG Energy announced it is cutting its 2020 capital spending plan to $200 million from the $250 million it announced in November 2019.

MEG also trimmed its full year 2020 production guidance range to 93,000-95,000 barrels per day compared with its earlier guidance for 94,000-97,000 barrels per day.

Calgary-based Seven Generations Energy is lowering its 2020 capital investment budget by $200 million — or 18 per cent — to $900 million.

A day earlier, oilsands giant Cenovus Energy announced it was cutting its capital spending by 32 per cent to between $900 million and $1 billion, down from between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion.

With oil production also expected to fall in the province, Kenney said he anticipates the amount of crude shipped by rail to also fall from an expected 500,000 barrels per day in March to 100,000 barrels a day next month.

"That may backup inventories to tank tops and then that stands the risk of blowing out inventories," he said.

"We will not allow that to happen. We will use the curtailment tool responsibly to ensure at least a survival price for our producers to get through this period."

The Alberta government implemented a production curtailment program, limiting oil output, last year.

Now, Alberta needs similar support to what the federal government gave the auto sector during the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, Kenney said.

"We've contributed $600 billion net to the rest of Canada over the past five decades. It's time for Canada to have Alberta's back."

Kenney said energy companies have become more lean and efficient over the last five years, but some aren't likely to survive.

"There are a range of companies that are not well prepared for this downturn. That's part of the problem. This is after five years of fragility, when a number of companies have been leveraging themselves in debt," he said.

"A lot of them cannot cut operating costs any further and they cannot raise equity."

Tristan Goodman, president of the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada, said earlier on Tuesday that if oil prices stayed low for a prolonged period, the results could be "catastrophic."

"It's an incredibly serious situation," he told the Calgary Eyeopener.

"It's going to take some time here, a few weeks at least, to figure out exactly what's happening here as we're caught in the middle between two countries."

Crude prices dropped dramatically this week as Saudi Arabia and Russia began an oil price war and concerns grew about the impact of COVID-19 on the world economy.

Global oil prices have plunged 45 per cent since start of the year and there's no certainty around how long the situation will last.

"It's going to be a challenging year for the Canadian industry," said April Read, a senior analyst with Wood Mackenzie in Calgary.

Wood Mackenzie believes 2.7 million barrels per day of demand has fallen away in the first quarter of the year due to the impact of the novel coronavirus alone.



"Having this price war on top of that is definitely going to create some challenges going forward," Read said.

Saudi Arabia, which has already announced it would hike supplies to a record 12.3 million barrels per day in April, said Wednesday it would boost production capacity for the first time in more than a decade.

Read said production from Alberta's oilsands will probably flatten out and companies will defer making final investment decisions on growth projects until prices improve.

"If we see sustained prices at this low level, it will go back into kind of a survival response again in the industry," she said. "And that's where everything discretionary is cut to the bone."

MEDIA’S SLANT ON ALBERTA ECONOMY HELPED KENNEY’S CAUSE

IT'S BEEN ALMOST A FULL YEAR OF KENNEY AND UCP IN POWER AFTER THEIR FOUR YEAR CAMPAIGN TO CREATE A NEW RIGHT PARTY AND KICK OUT THE NDP GOVERNMENT

THAT CAMPAIGN WAS HELPED BY THE POSTMEDIA AND ITS RIGHT WING PRESS BOTH THE SUN AND THE OLD SOUTHAM CHAIN PAPERS LIKE THE ED JOURNAL AND CALGARY HERALD AND BY THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SEPERATE FROM POSTMEDIA.

HERE IS AN ARTICLE FROM THAT TIME TO REMIND YOU OF WHAT WE FACED IN ALBERTA AS WE FINALLY HAD AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE CONS

MEDIA’S SLANT ON ALBERTA ECONOMY HELPED KENNEY’S CAUSE


Posted by Richard Starr | Apr 18, 2019 | Politics | 1 |


The fact it was predictable didn’t make the election result in Alberta any easier to take. Despite distant echoes of homophobia and misogyny, current allegations of electoral corruption and a clutch of dodgy candidates, Jason Kenney and his United Conservative Party won in a landslide. Albertans threw out Rachel Notley, a leader widely admired, and replaced her with someone many people, for good reason, can’t abide.

A reason for this, we were told repeatedly, is the dreadful state of the Alberta economy. As many would have it, since world oil prices started to fall in 2014, Alberta’s been in an economic death spiral, a downward trajectory Notley’s NDP government failed to reverse.

The dire narrative began years before the election and continued afterward, with reporters and pundits explaining the outcome as the result of a “battered economy,” “stuttering economic growth,” “a recession that left looming shadows” and “years of economic pain.” All of that hyperbole was in just the first few paragraphs of the Globe and Mail’s morning-after report. For its part, the National Post informed readers that Alberta has been a recession since 2016 while columnist and oil fan Rex Murphy, blaming that on Trudeau, referred to “massive losses “ of jobs ”during the full three years of his government.”

The fact that this sad tale told by the national media relies on gross exaggeration of some facts and disregard of others will not be news to my readers. The tendency of the media to magnify Alberta’s economic problems in general and those of oil and gas workers in particular is a theme I’ve been writing about for a while, all the way back to January 2016.

At that time a story on the front page of the Globe, relying only upon employment numbers for the month of December, claimed that 2015 was the worst year for employment losses in Alberta “since the dark days of the national energy program.” The fact was, employment actually increased in 2015. There was a significant drop in 2016, but as I noted at the time “any job losses that take place will be to employment totals that have increased by about 130,000 since 2012.”

Distorted as it was, that Globe story was a harbinger of the media’s propensity to ignore longer-term trends while cherry-picking short-term dips in employment or oil prices to support their bleak recital of Alberta’s economic situation.

Employment grew

Alberta’s economy has indeed come down from the heady days of a decade ago when real GDP was growing at close to four per cent a year and Atlantic Canadians were moving to Alberta in droves to work. But the economy has rebounded since 2016, something the media and Conservatives in Alberta and Ottawa overlook. I wrote again about that tendency last December, when Stats Canada put a damper on daily cries of doom and gloom in the House of Commons with its monthly jobs report showing a big increase in Alberta jobs in November. The agency later revised those numbers downward, but the fact remains that average monthly employment in Alberta for 2018 was higher than it was in 2014, before the oil price drop, as Table 1 shows.

2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
Population	3,281,800	3,353,800	3,398,800	3,428,800	3,470,400
Labour Force	2,386,200	2,449,200	2,464,600	2,481,700	2,494,800
Employment	2,274,600	2,301,100	2,263,800	2,286,900	2,330,700
Unemployment	111,700	148,000	200,800	194,700	164,100
Unemployment Rate	4.7	6.0	8.1	7.8	6.6

(The table – compiled from CANSIM 14-10-0090-01 – shows that despite the increase in employment, unemployment was significantly higher in 2018 than it was in 2014. That was due to an increase of more than 100,000 in the labour force, a problem that provinces like Nova Scotia would no doubt like to have).

The percentage increase in jobs in Alberta between 2014 and 2018 was 2.47 per cent. Table 2 (from CANSIM 14-10-0018-01) shows that’s about half the national average. But it’s much better than oil-producing Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador, not to mention New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. By far the largest increase is in British Columbia, burdened with the “job-killing” carbon tax.

Canada	4.80%
Newfoundland and Labrador	(-5.57%)
Prince Edward Island	2.70%
Nova Scotia	1.85%
New Brunswick	(-0.01%)
Quebec	4.99%
Ontario	5.30%
Manitoba	3.38%
Saskatchewan	(-0.02%)
Alberta	2.47%
British Columbia	9.45%

Another media staple has been to focus on oil’s capital, Calgary, with its double-digit commercial office vacancy rate presented as a surrogate for economic despair, pain and what have you. But according to Stats Canada Table 14-10-0090-01, average monthly employment in the Calgary region in 2018 was 892,500, up 4.12 per cent from 2014. Edmonton was up by 4.47 per cent over the same period. Even the beleaguered Wood Buffalo area, directly hit by the oil sands price slump and the devastating Fort McMurray forest fires, has seen a small increase in employment since 2016.

Such inconvenient facts don’t seem to matter. Last week, under the headline “Albertans prepare to elect a government in a climate of deep anxiety,” the CBC reported “job losses have been staggering. Alberta lost almost 17,000 jobs in January alone.” The CBC report not only ignored the immediate past – that is a 44,000-job increase in 2018 – but also failed to mention that there have been several positive developments just since January. Those included an 18,000 increase in full-time employment and a 10,000 drop in unemployment in March. Those facts were part of the monthly Labour Force Survey released on April 5, but not fitting the media frame, were ignored in the CBC report.

Oil workers

Of course, the overall improvement in jobs would be cold comfort to oil industry workers who have lost their jobs. However, the number of individuals directly affected has also been exaggerated in the media and by Kenney and his Conservative allies in Parliament The latter frequently claim the loss of 100,000 oil industry jobs, and a front page article in the Globe and Mail last week went even further, claiming that “the collapse in oil prices wiped out 133,000 jobs.”

If the latter reference is to overall employment, then, as Table I showed, those jobs have come back, and then some. As for oil and gas industry employment, specific numbers for Alberta are not easily available. Stats Canada’s reports combine oil and gas industry employment with mining and quarrying, showing a decrease in payroll employment in that sector from 133,053 in 2014 to 104,458 in 2018. That’s a big loss, but a far cry from the numbers being tossed around in the media.

Another source on line is PetroLMI which focuses strictly on the oil and gas industry. The company predicts that nationally the oil and gas workforce will decrease by 12,000 in 2019, dropping to 173,300 from 226,500 in 2014, with Alberta accounting for 80 per cent of the projected job loss.

Applying that same 80 per cent factor to overall oil and gas industry reduction would suggest that if the predicted job losses do occur, the total loss in Alberta would be about 43,000 from 2014 levels – still well below the doom-and-gloom estimates. And the notion that those jobs will magically return with the rise of a more industry-friendly government is highly questionable in an environment in which operators are striving to increase efficiency by reducing jobs. Bob Weber of the Canadian Press, departing from media group think, reported the observations of economist Marc Jaccard, who pointed out that the job losses between 2014 and 2016 occurred despite a 10 per cent increase in oil sands production.

Price gap

The media have also been complicit in hyping the notion that pipeline capacity is the major cause of troubles in the oil patch. I’ve challenged that argument a number of times, including here. Pipeline proponents went ballistic in the fall when temporary pipeline bottlenecks and refinery shutdowns contributed to a huge increase in the differential between oil sands bitumen and the North American benchmark price. Although the discount has lessened significantly since last December and sat below $10 U.S. last week, the media frequently harked back to the two-month period last fall when the differential averaged around $40-$50.

The differential began to narrow sharply after the NDP government ordered a production cut to ease the glut that caused the differential to jump temporarily from the $10-$12 range that had prevailed prior to 2018. In a different world, Rachel Notley would have won plaudits for taking action to slash the discount. Her government might also have been given credit for the increased employment that took place despite the sharp drop in world oil prices. Or she could have been hailed for what she rightly describes as her proudest achievement – a nation-leading reduction in child poverty from 10.0 per cent in 2015 to 5.0 per cent in 2017.

Those are economic achievements, but in Alberta’s Petrostate, economic stewardship means such achievements are not good enough. The great failing of the Notley government was that it was deemed insufficiently devoted to the great god of fossil fuels. Notley campaigned energetically (and somewhat disingenuously) in support of the Trans-Mountain pipeline and promised to spend $3.7 billion to buy rail cars to move oil sands bitumen to market. And she convinced Ottawa and the other provinces to buy into a carbon emissions plan that essentially handed oil sands operators a license to dump into the air another 35 megatonnes of GHG emissions (more than produced by all three Maritime provinces)

But that wasn’t enough to appease the oil fanatics with their yellow vests, truck convoys, “build that pipe” chants and their media enablers whose sloppy reporting magnified the economic challenges, thereby fanning popular fear and anger to the great benefit of Jason Kenney and his dangerous crowd.

-30-

RICHARD STARR has had careers as a journalist, public servant, broadcaster, political staffer and freelance policy adviser. He is author of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, a former radio and TV producer and weekly newspaper editor, and the author of three non-fiction books. Starr has lived in Dartmouth for more than 30 years.

Top Science journal fires off 

an unusual barrage against

 Trump for his ‘dangerous’

 distortion of coronavirus facts

EDITORIAL/OPINION
Do us a favor

H. Holden Thorp
Science 11 Mar 2020:

DOI: 10.1126/science.abb6502


“Do me a favor, speed it up, speed it up.” This is what U.S. President Donald Trump told the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference, recounting what he said to pharmaceutical executives about the progress toward a vaccine for severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Anthony Fauci, the long-time leader of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been telling the president repeatedly that developing the vaccine will take at least a year and a half—the same message conveyed by pharmaceutical executives. Apparently, Trump thought that simply repeating his request would change the outcome. China has rightfully taken criticism for squelching attempts by scientists to report information during the outbreak. Now, the United States government is doing similar things. Informing Fauci and other government scientists that they must clear all public comments with Vice President Mike Pence is unacceptable. This is not a time for someone who denies evolution, climate change, and the dangers of smoking to shape the public message. Thank goodness Fauci, Francis Collins [director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)], and their colleagues across federal agencies are willing to soldier on and are gradually getting the message out.

While scientists are trying to share facts about the epidemic, the administration either blocks those facts or restates them with contradictions. Transmission rates and death rates are not measurements that can be changed with will and an extroverted presentation. The administration has repeatedly said—as it did last week—that virus spread in the United States is contained, when it is clear from genomic evidence that community spread is occurring in Washington state and beyond. That kind of distortion and denial is dangerous and almost certainly contributed to the federal government’s sluggish response. After 3 years of debating whether the words of this administration matter, the words are now clearly a matter of life and death.

And although the steps required to produce a vaccine could possibly be made more efficient, many of them depend on biological and chemical processes that are essential. So the president might just as well have said, “Do me a favor, hurry up that warp drive.”

I don’t expect politicians to know Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism or the Diels-Alder chemical reaction (although I can dream). But you can’t insult science when you don’t like it and then suddenly insist on something that science can’t give on demand. For the past 4 years, President Trump’s budgets have made deep cuts to science, including cuts to funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIH. With this administration’s disregard for science of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the stalled naming of a director for the Office of Science and Technology Policy—all to support political goals—the nation has had nearly 4 years of harming and ignoring science.

Now, the president suddenly needs science. But the centuries spent elucidating fundamental principles that govern the natural world—evolution, gravity, quantum mechanics—involved laying the groundwork for knowing what we can and cannot do. The ways that scientists accumulate and analyze evidence, apply inductive reasoning, and subject findings to scrutiny by peers have been proven over the years to give rise to robust knowledge. These processes are being applied to the COVID-19 crisis through international collaboration at breakneck, unprecedented speed; Science published two new papers earlier this month on SARS-CoV-2, and more are on the way. But the same concepts that are used to describe nature are used to create new tools. So, asking for a vaccine and distorting the science at the same time are shockingly dissonant.

A vaccine has to have a fundamental scientific basis. It has to be manufacturable. It has to be safe. This could take a year and a half—or much longer. Pharmaceutical executives have every incentive to get there quickly— they will be selling the vaccine after all—but thankfully they also know that you can’t break the laws of nature to get there.

Maybe we should be happy. Three years ago, the president declared his skepticism of vaccines and tried to launch an antivaccine task force. Now he suddenly loves vaccines.

But do us a favor, Mr. President. If you want something, start treating science and its principles with respect.

Trump is using the coronavirus crisis to to launch a stealth attack on Social Security


March 11, 2020 By Nancy J. Altman, Independent Media Institute- Commentary


Donald Trump’s proposal to cut the payroll contribution rate is a stealth attack on Social Security. Even if the proposal were to replace Social Security’s dedicated revenue with deficit-funded general revenue, the proposal would undermine this vital program.

The proposal is a Trojan horse. It appears to be a gift, in the form of middle-class tax relief, but would, in the long run, lead to the destruction of working Americans’ fundamental economic security. While the goal of the proposal is stated in terms of fiscal stimulus, its most important impact, if not its intent, is to do what opponents of Social Security have been unable to do—end Social Security as we know it.

The supposed purpose of a reduction in payroll contributions is to address the coronavirus crisis. Tax cuts do not meaningfully address the coronavirus, or even the resulting market panic. We do want to ensure that people have the cash they need while they face massive uncertainties around employment and other costs. We want people to stay home as much as needed without having to worry about paying their rent or other costs. What we need most is a robust public health response, which the Trump administration is utterly failing to provide.

Alongside that vital public health response, there are better options for economic stimulus. These include a one-time progressively structured direct payment, restoring and expanding the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, or expanding the existing Earned Income Tax Credit and provide greater economic stimulus, are more targeted and equitable, and place no administrative burdens on employers. The only reason to support Trump’s proposal above those others is to undermine Social Security.

As revealed in this chart, cutting the payroll contribution rate is a deficient stimulus. Most of the benefit would go to the wealthiest Americans—including CEOs, senators, congresspeople, and members of the Trump administration—who are the least likely to spend the extra money. The other big winners are the nation’s largest corporations and other employers. The lower workers’ wages are, the lower their benefit. Moreover, those state and local employees who do not participate in Social Security would get nothing.

What Trump is proposing to cut, to be clear, are Federal Insurance Contributions Act payments. As the name indicates, these payments are not general taxes, but insurance contributions, or, in today’s parlance, insurance premiums. By law, they can only be used to pay Social Security insurance benefits and their associated administrative costs. Social Security has no borrowing authority. Consequently, Social Security does not and, by law, cannot, add even a penny to the deficit. If Social Security were ever to have insufficient revenue to cover every penny of these costs, those benefits would not be paid.

The late President Ronald Reagan eloquently explained, in his words, “Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit.” This proposal would change that, at least temporarily, if Social Security’s dedicated revenue were replaced with general revenue. (Of course, more accurately, the dedicated revenue would be replaced with borrowed money since the general fund is running unprecedently large deficits.)

The proposal would either undermine Social Security’s financing or employ general revenue, both of which would set the stage for future demands to cut Social Security. And it likely would not be temporary. When the cut would be set to expire, opponents of Social Security would undoubtedly characterize its expiration as a middle-class tax increase.

Too many Americans believe, understandably, that their Social Security contributions have been stolen. Using their contributions for economic stimulus would reveal that their elected officials indeed do not respect the fire wall between their contributions that are held in trust and can be used only for their dedicated purpose and the taxes they pay to the federal government that are held in the general fund and can be used for any constitutional purpose that Congress chooses.

On March 8, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released an excellent list of steps we should take to combat the coronavirus. Their plan includes paid sick leave, free coronavirus testing, and treatment for all. Our government should enact these measures, not undermine Social Security by slashing its dedicated revenue.

Nancy J. Altman is a writing fellow for Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. She has a 40-year background in the areas of Social Security and private pensions. She is president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition. Her latest book is The Truth About Social Security. She is also the author of The Battle for Social Security and co-author of Social Security Works!

---30---