Technocracy In Canada

The Beaver, the Canadian History magazine has a great article on Technocracy Inc. in Western Canada. Here is a short excerpt.

Walter Fryers lives in Edmonton and leads the Technocracy chapter here. Which meets at the Stanley Milner Library Tuesdays and Sundays at 1:30 Pm

THE LAST UTOPIANS
by Ray Argyle

Technocracy promised Depression-weary Canadians an end to their hardship. But the offer came with a catch.

The abandoned farms and empty streets of Depression-ridden rural Manitoba filled the view through the windows of the railway coach as Walter Fryers, a twenty-three-year-old university student, journeyed back to Winnipeg.

It was the fall of 1936 and Fryers had spent the summer trapping muskrats in the delta of the Saskatchewan River, working for little more than “board and a bunk.” Now he was anxious to return to his science studies at the University of Manitoba.

During the long train trip from The Pas, the young student took to heart the dark reality of the dust bowl. It had been the hottest North American summer on record. Across the Prairies, dark clouds of dust rose off the drought-stricken land, burying livestock that lay dead and dying in the fields, and caking the faces of the hungry and haggard families who grimly trekked to the cities, leaving their devastated farms behind. Against this backdrop, Fryers pondered the failure of society to provide a better life for the millions impoverished by the Great Depression.

This continued to weigh on Fryers’ mind after he arrived in Winnipeg, with its bread lines and its boarded-up businesses. Here, a chance encounter — spotting a poster for a lecture on something called “Technocracy” — was to rapidly change the direction of his life.

The lecture introduced the young man to a radical new doctrine that seemed to satisfy his yearning for a scientific solution to the world’s problems. Technocracy’s adherents claimed it would eliminate want by putting power in the hands of a capable few — not politicians, but an elite group of engineers and technicians, known as the Technocrats.

Within months, Fryers was himself preaching Technocracy’s merits to the media. The Winnipeg Free Press gave front-page space to his declaration that the existing economic system was the root of the problem, because, in order for it to work, “a scarcity must be created and maintained. That is why, in a world of plenty, we have widespread poverty.”

Technocracy flared like a comet in the darkness of the dirty thirties, promising to replace a collapsing capitalist system with a non-political government of scientists and technicians. It attracted thousands of members in Canada, survived a wartime banning, and enjoyed renewed, but brief, popularity after World War II amid short-lived fears that Canada might return to Depression-like conditions.

Of all the protest movements that flowered in the Depression, Technocracy was a unique creation. Largely overlooked by historians and neglected by most political scientists, the movement never elected an MP or fomented a riot. But to workers without jobs and farmers without crops suffering through the hungry thirties, Technocracy’s proffered world of plenty seemed a utopian paradise: Unemployment would be a thing of the past and all would share equally in the abundance of the machine age. Sir Thomas More’s sixteenth-century conception of a “happy island” stricken of all poverty and crime might at last become a reality, thanks to modern technology.

Founder Howard Scott’s design for what he called the “Technate of America” did away with borders and merged the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America into a single nation under a regime of engineers and technicians. Political parties, along with money and all the trappings of the present price-based economic system — which Scott saw as incompatible with the distribution of industry’s output — would be things of the past. The economy would be based on energy (the capacity to perform work) and the new currency would be “energy certificates,” qualifying every citizen to an equal share of the continent’s wealth. People would work four hours per day, four days per week, between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five.

Technocracy spread quickly in Canada — although its strength here, as in the United States, was concentrated in the West. Eight chapters were soon organized in Vancouver, and the magazine Technocracy Digest was launched. Branches were set up throughout British Columbia, as well as in Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Hamilton, and Toronto. For many, Technocracy served as a fraternal organization. The Winnipeg Free Press reported on a 1940 technocratic wedding, noting the groom and his attendants wore Technocracy grey suits and “twelve men in Technocracy grey formed a guard of honour.” In Vancouver, a Technocracy orchestra was formed.

I disagree with the authors claim later in the article that the idea of the Technate, technocracy's model of governance over production and distribution systems, is authoritarian and anti-democratic. He mistakes representative parliamentary democracy as being the only form of democracy.

It is a technical model for production and distribution.Indeed the idea of the technate is the administration of things not people. Technocracy did not offer up a political system to replace capitalism per se.

And in fact in a paper I presented on Technocracy, Socialist Industrial Democracy and Syndicalism, available upon request until I post it, I showed that it coincides with North American models of workers control. That is the Technate can be adapted to be used by worker controlled industries as an alternative to the wage system. Especially in light of the Norbert Weiners applications of cybernetics to industrial production that was attempted in Allende's Chile.

The fact that it was popular in Western Canada shows again that radical alternatives to capitalism were sown here for most of the early years of the twentieth century. And that radicalism was NOT conservative individualism as the right wing pundits and other neo-cons of today assert.

Today many of the predictions of Technocracy about the crisis of energy demand in an advanced industrial society are being accepted as common knowledge; namely their assertion of the crisis of Peak Oil.

SEE:

Technocracy Inc. Predicted Oil Crisis Over 50 years ago

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Veblen Technocracy, Energy

Flaherty's Tax Deception

The reason the Conservatives have a surplus is because income taxes remain high. The recent Flaherty roll back was only to the level that had existed under the Liberals.

Tax Fairness? Hardly. The rich continue to get tax breaks, the working poor face claw backs and the middle class pays more in taxes.

And other than the window dressing of rolling back the Conservative created GST (not eliminating it) not much tax relief came out of all the smoke and mirrors pre-election mini-budget.

Instead all that Flaherty did was dress up for Halloween as the Wizard of Oz.

The federal government's personal income tax cuts were relatively modest, and for the most part merely a rollback of the tax increases in his first budget, according to an analysis by a think-tank that was involved in preparing projections for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's recent economic statement.

And those measures will only temporarily ease the personal income tax burden, and not by much, and won't keep that burden from rising in the future, says the analysis Wednesday Global Insight's chief economist Dale Orr, which warns that burden will rise in the years to come.

"Finance Minister Flaherty is fond of telling us that Canadians pay too much tax," it said, noting that last week's economic statement promised about $60-billion in tax relief over the next five years.

However, almost 60% of that is the goods and service tax reduction, a cut that Global Insight say will do little to boost the overall performance of the economy.

"Only 18% is in personal income tax reductions," the report said. "From almost any perspective, the personal reductions in the economic statement were very small, smaller than they could have been, and smaller than they should have been."

The economic statement, which was widely perceived as a pre-election mini-budget, reduced the lowest personal income tax rate to 15% from 15.5%, retroactive to January 1, 2007. It also increased the amount people could earn before being taxed, providing $10.9-billion in personal income tax relief over the 2006- 2013 period, with about about half of it this year and next.

"What the Finance Minister Flaherty didn't tell us is that the lowest marginal rate was 15% in 2005, and in 2006 until the Conservative government raised it to 15.5% in budget 2006, to help finance the first GST reduction," Orr said, adding that the rollback of the earlier Tory tax hike accounted for almost 80% of the total personal income tax relief .

"Thus, this personal income tax 'relief' is relief only because the Conservative government took it away in their budget 2006, to have it restored again in the November, 2007 economic statement."

And the amount of "relief" is tiny relative to its impact on the personal income tax burden, which is measured as the proportion of personal income paid in personal income tax, and it's temporary, the analysis argues.

The rollback of the earlier tax hike reduces that burden slightly to 9.8% this year from 10.1%, but the tax burden will rise back to 10.1% next year as the projected increase in after-inflation earnings pushes more income into higher tax brackets, it said.

While tax brackets rise with inflation, any real or above-inflation increase in incomes, means more of that income is taxed at higher rates, Mr. Orr explained in an interview, adding that were it not for the re-indexing of the income tax system, which occurred under the former Liberal government, the tax burden would rise even faster.

"Roughly speaking, if personal income increases by five per cent, federal personal income tax collections will increase by about six per cent of $7-billion a year if the increase in personal incomes is evenly spread across the income distribution," it said. "Personal income tax collections ... are the proverbial 'cash cow'."

In fact, in recent years the faster growth in incomes at the upper-income level has resulted in personal income tax collections rising by closer to eight per cent for every five per cent increase in personal incomes, it said.

The analysis, for example, calculated that for every $100 increase in income an individual's income the government collects an extra $29 from an upper income tax-filer but just $15 from a low-income one.

The analysis was prepared for Global Insight clients which include governments of virtually all stripes and corporations, Mr. Orr said.

Canada's rich pay less in taxes than poor, report finds

OTTAWA — The era of tax cuts ushered in by federal and provincial governments in recent years have made Canada’s tax system so regressive that the country’s richest now pay the lowest rates of all income groups, says a report to be released Thursday.

The report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, an advocacy research group that has pressed in the past for more social spending and bigger taxes on corporations and higher-income Canadians, looked at what percentage of income Canadians pay in taxes to all levels of government.

The study shows that Canada’s progressive tax system has become less so between 1990 and 2005, and for the richest Canadian families — those with annual earnings of $266,000 a year and more — the era of tax cuts since the turn of the century has been like manna from government.

Those very rich Canadians paid 30.5 % of their income in federal, provincial and municipal taxes in 2005, as opposed to the 30.7 % for those with incomes under $13,523, the lowest 10 % of family earnings.

That’s a big difference from 1990, when the top 1 % of earners paid 34.2 % of their incomes in taxes, as opposed to 25.5 % for families in the bottom 10 %.

“The tax system as gotten less progressive,” said the group’s senior economist Marc Lee.

“There’s something in the overall tax system now that most people would find offensive. The idea that someone who is in the upper middle class is paying a higher tax rate than someone much wealthier is not fair.”

In last week’s mini-budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty cut the GST as well as personal, corporate and other taxes by $60 billion over five years, declaring that “Canadians pay too much tax.”

In recent years, several provincial government have also cut taxes, but in many cities, property taxes and users fees have been rising as local governments try to cope with rising costs and service demands.

The highest taxed Canadian families are those earning between $120,000 and $151,000, who pay 36.9 % of their income in taxes. This group is followed closely both those earning $57,460 and $72,299 — whose tax bill represents 36.5 % of their total income.

Lee said his report is different from other such analyses in that he included all sources of income, including salaries, inheritances, employer provided benefits and capital gains. As well, the report calculates all taxes, including property and corporate taxes and user fees charged by governments.

He said he chose the 1990 to 2005 timeline because the last time a similar methodology was used to analyze the Canadian tax system was in 1988, and because the 15 years covers a time of government deficit cutting and tax hikes, followed by several years of tax cuts.

The main finding is that on average, tax rates dropped by 2 % between 1990 and 2005 as both federal and provincial governments undid the tax increases of the 1990s with deeper and broader reductions.

But the relief wasn’t spread equally. Those in the top 1% of earners actually saw their tax bill drop by about 4%, whereas those at the very bottom saw the take rise by 5%.

Lee said although the lowest income earners generally pay no or very little income tax, they do pay a disproportionately high amount in relation to their income in sales taxes, property taxes and other government revenue generators, such as gaming and liquor sales.

Tax cuts by provinces was the main impetus behind the flattening of the system, says Lee, although federal cuts, such as the elimination of the 5% high income surcharge after 2001 also reduced progressivity.

Provincial taxes are less progressive than federal levies because of their greater reliance on sales tax and fees for such things as driver’s licences. As well, provinces generally have flatter provincial income tax rates.

“Provincial income tax cuts are the major culprit behind Canada’s eroding tax fairness, an important consideration given allegations by the provinces of a fiscal imbalance in Canadian federalism,” the report finds.

Upper-income earners benefited from a 2001 federal decision to eliminate the 5 per cent "high-income surtax" and from preferential treatment of capital gains from the sale of stock market shares and real estate.

The affluent were also better able to take advantage of increased allowable tax deductions for RRSPs, Lee said.

At the other end of the scale, low-income earners saw their tax rates accelerate as a result of increases in payroll, consumption and property taxes, as well as user fees.

The analysis concludes that there is scope for raising income taxes at the top of the income ladder to make the system fairer.

"Such changes would help to ensure those who can afford to contribute more for public goods and services valued by all Canadians can do so," the study says.

Tax cuts won't buy a cup of coffee
Analyst says savings for low-income earners are, at most, 39¢ a day

Unveiling tax goodies on mini-budget night, a beaming Finance Minister Jim Flaherty declared to a national audience that "these tax cuts will move some 385,000 people off the income tax rolls altogether."

Sound good?

It should. This kind of thing has been a staple of federal budgets for many a year.

But analysts scoff at this supposed manifestation of a government's goodwill toward Canadians at the bottom of the financial scale.

In fact, there's widespread agreement the tax changes introduced by Flaherty do little to improve the lot of low-income earners.

"Don't get sucked in by that," says TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond when asked about Flaherty's claim 385,000 people won't pay federal tax as a result of the Oct. 30 mini-budget. "Most of those people were paying $5 or $10."

He said he completely agrees with the idea that someone earning under about $14,000 should not be taxable. "But just bear in mind the amount of taxes they are paying. It's not a very meaningful statistic."

The main lever used in Flaherty's mini-budget to ease the tax burden on low-income Canadians was raising the basic personal amount that can be earned without paying federal taxes to $9,600 – an increase of $671.

The people supposedly removed from the tax rolls, then, are those whose taxable earnings would have been slightly higher than the old threshold of $8,929.

"There are people who would be just barely above the amount of the non-refundable credit, so, in effect, you put them in a zero tax position," says Hugh Mackenzie, a research associate with the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. "They're not eliminated from the tax rolls. The position that they find themselves in is that when they go through the tax calculation, they find at the end of it they don't owe anything.

"It's not as if these people are exempted forever from paying tax," Mackenzie added. "As inflation goes on and economic circumstances change, you could have a very similar income and find yourself taxable again."

In his mini-budget, Flaherty also said he is helping taxpayers by dropping the lowest personal income tax rate to 15 per cent from 15.5 per cent. This helps all taxpayers but is proportionately more helpful to those with low incomes.

But Flaherty's budget measures still aren't great news.

Cutting the lowest tax rate will return about $1.3 billion a year to taxpayers, notes Drummond. "When you've got 20 million paying taxes, $1.3 billion doesn't go very far."

However, he says, the Harper government decided to spend the money it had for tax cuts on reducing the GST another percentage point to 5 per cent.

With a GST cut, "there's no incentive to work, save and invest. In fact, if it gives any incentive, the incentive is only to spend more and consumption is not one thing the Canadian economy is short of by any means," Drummond said.

As a result, Flaherty's income tax moves do little for Canadians with the smallest earnings packets, economic analysts say.

First of all, it's universally noted the reduction in the lowest income tax rate to 15 per cent only reverses a tax increase brought in by Flaherty in his 2006 budget. Taxpayers are getting a benefit they would have received anyway had he not raised income taxes last year.

It's a similar situation with the increase in the basic personal amount to $9,600. Flaherty is only moving forward increases in that tax break put in place by the Liberals in 2005.

Taken together, the Oct. 30 measures will provide only very modest help for low-income earners.

The CCPA's Mackenzie estimates the mini-budget changes will result in a maximum income tax reduction for individuals of $242 in 2007, $187 in 2008 and $144 in 2009.

For a single parent, the maximum reduction is $298 in 2007, $184 in 2008 and $94 in 2009, he said.

And those savings will be less for anyone with an income below about $38,000 a year, Mackenzie said. So, as a result of the way taxes are calculated, Flaherty's income tax changes will amount to a gain of at most 39 cents a day for a single individual and 25 cents a day for a single parent, he estimates.

It marginally helps people with very small incomes, says Rob Rainer, executive director of the National Anti-Poverty Organization.

"But we're not going to see any major, substantive visual evidence on the streets, so to speak, of people really having their financial fortunes reversed by this," Rainer said.

Analysts and anti-poverty advocates agree that Canadians must go way beyond tax cuts if they are going to use government fiscal measures to effectively reduce poverty.

Reducing taxes for those at the low end of the income ladder only helps if governments refrain from cancelling out any benefits by clawing back income supports and social assistance as taxpayers' incomes begin to rise above the subsistence level, economists stress.

These clawbacks, designed to keep support programs from becoming too expensive, act as a disincentive for low-income workers to extend their hours or upgrade skills because the reduction in social benefits, combined with rising tax rates, leave them with less money. As a result, what economists call their marginal effective tax rate can reach the same level or higher than top income earners.

"You really have to get the effective rates on low-income people down," says Dale Orr, an economist with Global Insight. "Some of these people are subject to very high effective marginal rates because they lose tax credits and subsidies and things. So we really have to do something better for them."

The federal Conservatives have taken a step in this direction, introducing the Working Income Tax Benefit, a $550-million-a-year program designed to help eliminate some disincentives for low-income earners. However, critics say it needs to be expanded to be of maximum value to working families.

Federal government shows no interest in making Canada better
Lana Payne
The Telegram

Before kids even go to school, we expect them to connect the dots.
My daughter has been doing it for years and she’s only 6. When she’s finished connecting the dots, she is left with a clear picture that she then colours a multitude of shades and hues.
You soon learn, though, that children are very good at connecting other kinds of dots. At Thanksgiving, like most kids in the city, she was asked to bring items to school for the food bank. We talked to her about food banks and explained that not everyone had enough money to buy food, pay bills and buy clothes for their kids. And that food banks help, but they are not the answer.
This must have stayed on her mind, as a few days later she asked, out of the blue, if we had food banks because “rich people didn’t share enough.”
Canada’s not-so-new prime minister and his blustery finance minister are counting on us having forgotten to connect the dots.
They certainly don’t want us questioning their tax-cut agenda and the damage it is causing and will continue to have on the country’s social fabric.
They most certainly do not want Canadians contemplating this failed and flawed public policy.
Because if Canadians start connecting the dots, they may discover that despite tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars in tax cuts, they are still not feeling that financially secure.
Despite a 30-year unemployment low, despite more than a decade of government surpluses and despite unprecedented economic growth, Canadians are a worried lot — at least according to polling by the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives.
It may have something to do with all the debt families are carrying and a lack of household savings. Or it may be because real wages, excluding inflation, have not increased since the recession year of 1981-82.

Not shared
It’s no wonder Canadians are feeling a little shaky. After all, the country is generating more wealth than ever before, they see politicians giving away billions, but it isn’t filtering down to them.
And despite this failed and unimaginative economic policy of tax cutting, the federal Conservatives persist with the finance minister announcing at the end of October another $60 billion in tax cuts — almost 25 per cent going to corporations.
This is what Canadians do know and what Stephen Harper ought to fear.
They know how expensive it is to send their big kids to university or college because taxes haven’t been used to reduce the cost of post-secondary education.
They know that only the lucky and the fortunate can access affordable child care and early learning programs for their smaller kids. They know that tax cuts won’t repair mould-infested schools. They know tax cuts won’t build bridges or pave roads. Nor will they build hospitals, buy cancer-treatment equipment or pay home-care workers a decent wage. Tax cuts do nothing for homeless people, except keep them homeless.
And tax cuts for corporations do even less, except feather a few already cushy nests.
Canadians know that the last thing hugely profitable corporations need is more of their hard-earned cash. Yet the Harper Conservatives have done just that, handing over another $14.8 billion in corporate tax cuts, including to obscenely rich oil and gas multinationals.
It’s no wonder a study last week by the Centre for Policy Alternatives discovered that Canada’s tax system is becoming less and less progressive. According to the report, by economist Marc Lee, the richest one per cent of families pay a lower percentage of their income to governments than the poorest.
Lee’s conclusion was that Canada’s tax system, after years of cuts, now fails a basic test of fairness.
And this was before the Conservatives’ latest round of tax cuts, which had many economists warning that Harper had slammed the door on any new major programs.
What a waste. This money could have made a real difference in the everyday lives of Canadians. An average $200-a-year individual tax cut won’t buy a coffee a day. But collectively, it could have done a lot of good.
That’s, of course, if you are interested in making that difference in the first place.

Government doesn’t care
What is becoming increasingly clear is that Canada’s slightly used Conservative government has no interest in that. They are much too busy managing the public relations of a war, shutting out the media and playing politics.
And while they play politics — fencing with each other over who is the sharpest politician in the lot — another child’s sense of wonder is dimmed by poverty because government chose tax cuts over action.
And that is the whole problem. We have a federal government that doesn’t believe in government, and so most days are spent dismantling and diminishing government as a force of change.

The message to Canadians is: don’t look to Ottawa to be part of the solution.

Unfair burden on poor

EDITORIAL
TheStar.com

Whether taxes are high or low, they ought to be fair, with those with the greatest ability to pay contributing a larger percentage of their income than those with less ability to pay. Such a progressive tax structure has long been a core Canadian value – at least in principle.

But the reality of our current tax system tells a far different story.

In 2005, the richest Canadians actually paid a smaller share of their income in taxes than those who earned the least. In a country that prides itself on fairness, all levels of government took a combined 30.7 per cent of income in taxes and fees from those with incomes under roughly $13,500, but only 30.5 per cent from the top 1 per cent of Canadians, those with incomes of more than $265,800 a year.

In the broad middle between the poorest and the richest, the tax system was mildly progressive, which means that the very richest Canadians paid a lower overall tax rate than any other group.

These findings come from a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which looked at changing taxes from 1990 to 2005, a period when the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer. Astonishingly, it found tax cuts had exacerbated that trend.

During this period of big tax cuts, the overall tax rate for most Canadians fell 2 percentage points. For the wealthiest, the drop was 4 percentage points. But while others were getting tax breaks, the poorest Canadians saw their tax rate rise more than 5 percentage points.

By their very nature, some taxes are regressive, hitting the poor harder than the middle class and the rich. Property taxes are one such tax and while they took a diminishing share of everyone else's income over the period, for the very poor they took a rising share, increasing to 5.9 per cent in 2005 from 5.1 per cent in 1990.

Sales taxes, which are also regressive, had the same effect. Rising more slowly than income for most Canadians, they increased significantly relative to income for the two lowest-income groups.

But if that wasn't bad enough, cuts in progressive federal and provincial personal income taxes favoured those with higher incomes, particularly the rich, at the expense of the poor. To create greater fairness, Marc Lee, the study's author, suggests hiking taxes on the rich.

But taxing the rich would do nothing for the poor. It is far more important to tackle poverty head on, and raising incomes of the 10 per cent of Canadians who live on less than $13,500 a year.

See:

Flaherty's Smoke and Mirrors

Tax Cuts For All

Tax Cuts For The Rich Burden You and Me

Tax Fairness For The Rich

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You Don't Need A Weatherman

To know which way the wind blows.

It's been blowing since yesterday. I know my wind chimes haven't stopped ringing.

This is what the American 24/7 cable channels call 'severe weather'.

Except it's Alberta. It's Edmonton. It's November. When we should have snow. We have above average temperatures. Rain. And now wind storms.

90 km an hour that's a hurricane by any other name. Except we are landlocked.

I call it Weird Weather.

Wind warning for: City of Edmonton-St. Albert-Sherwood Park

Issued at 5:11 AM MST TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007

STRONG NORTHWEST WINDS OF 60 GUSTING TO 90 KM/H HAVE DEVELOPED.

AN INTENSE LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM MOVED EASTWARD THROUGH CENTRAL ALBERTA OVERNIGHT. IN THE WAKE OF THE SYSTEM GUSTY WESTERLY WINDS HAVE DEVELOPED AND WINDS OF 60 GUSTING TO 90 KM/H ARE EXPECTED ACROSS THE WARNING REGIONS UNTIL MID AFTERNOON.

PLEASE REFER TO THE LATEST PUBLIC FORECASTS FOR FURTHER DETAILS.


SEE:

Environmentalists Caused Wildfires

Black and White

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Not So Green Apple

And what are the chances that Apple will blame China, where their phones are produced, for this? After all China bashing is all the rage in the US of A.

Apple’s iPhone contains hazardous chemicals and materials, according to the results of scientific tests commissioned by Greenpeace and released today. This is the first testing of an Apple product following the commitment by Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, to a ‘Greener Apple’, in May 2007.

An independent scientific laboratory tested 18 internal and external components of the iPhone and confirmed the presence of brominated compounds in half the samples, including in the phone’s antenna, in which they (1) made up 10 per cent of the total weight of the flexible circuit board. A mixture of toxic phthalate esters (2) was found to make up 1.5 per cent of the plastic (PVC) coating of the headphone cables.

The insight into the components of the iPhone is presented in the Greenpeace report, ‘Missed call: the iPhone’s hazardous chemicals’ This is the third time that Greenpeace has tested an Apple product since 2006. Similar analyses of a MacBook Pro and an iPod Nano also revealed the presence of brominated flame retardants and PVC in some components.

(1) Bromine: Whether in additive or reactive form, the presence of high proportions by weight of bromine in electronic components is of concern with respect to the disposal or recycling of end-of-life iPhone handsets, as even cross-linked organic-bound bromine can contribute to the formation of toxic chemicals, including persistent and bioaccumulative brominated dioxins and related compounds during thermal destruction or processing.

(2) Phthalates: The European Directive 2005/84/EC prohibits the use of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate(DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and benzyl butyl phthalate(BBP) in all toys or childcare articles put on the market in Europe (with a limit of 0.1% by weight).

SEE:

PC is 25 years old

Slaves To Ipod

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Mattel In China

The problem is not with China but with the outsourcing by American Corporations who then do not take responsibility for either worker or consumer protection for their products as the Mattel recalls showed this summer.

The fact is production in China is no different than production anywhere else. It is the corporations responsibility to insure safety standards are met both for workers and consumers. Instead cheap production has also meant a lowering of those standards.

In order to avoid responsibility for recalls the corporations, and the ineffectual Consumer Protection Agency in the U.S. would rather blame China.

Twenty years of the ideology of contracting out/outsourcing for profit meant that corporations relied on making record profits from lower standards abroad for quicker and higher profits. Now the chickens come home to roost. And again as typical of corporate bosses they look for others to blame.

Mattel did not meet safety standards for it's products and spent the summer allowing the blame to fall on China.

"China has received a lot of blame for the recalls in the West," said Hari Bapuji, assistant professor at the University of Manitoba in Canada and lead author of the report, "Toy Recalls -- Is China the Problem?"

"They do have problems, there is no doubt. But I think the blame they received was larger than their share of their responsibility for the problem."

This paper analyzes the data on toy recalls over the last 20 years and
finds that the number of recalls and the number of recalls of Chinese-made
toys have witnessed an upward trend. We examine the increase closely and
find that the number of defects attributable to design issues is much higher than those attributable to manufacturing problems. We contextualize these findings in light of the latest recall of toys by Mattel and make two major suggestions: first, ensuring the accountability of toy companies to improve their product designs and second, encouraging the development of global standards to enhance product safety.

Our analysis of toy recalls revealed that an overwhelming majority of the recalls
could have been avoided with better designs. Therefore, it is important to focus efforts on learning from the recalls that occurred in the past and minimize their recurrence. Our analysis also revealed that the presence of excess lead paint is a result of differences in the standards of exporting and importing country. These could be avoided through legislation and education.

Mattel sorry for 'design flaws'

Mattel says it was mainly to blame

Mattel has admitted that most of the toys recalled in recent safety scares had "design flaws" and that Chinese manufacturers were not to blame.

Why Mattel Apologized to China - TIME

BBC NEWS | Business | Chinese province 'may sue Mattel'

China's Guangdong province is likely to join a planned libel suit against the US toy giant Mattel, according to the China Daily.

Mattel recalled more than 21 million Chinese-made toys this summer, but later said that 85% of the recall was due to its own design faults.

Responsible Shopper Profile: Mattel

MONITORING MATTEL IN CHINA

By Stephen Frost and May Wong

Recently the Asia Monitor Resource Center published a report which assessed the way in which Mattel monitors its code of conduct. We called it Monitoring Mattel: Codes of conduct, workers and toys in southern China, and in it we tried to show the limitations inherent in the implementation and monitoring of codes in China (and perhaps elsewhere). We discussed many issues, but here I want to raise three of our major themes.

The first is that a chasm separates what we might call corporate Mattel and production line Mattel. The second theme, arising out of this, is that Chinese workers do not have a voice in the formulation, implementation, or monitoring of Mattel's code of conduct. The final theme is that despite some major steps on Mattel's behalf, there is still some way to go before the code and its monitoring could be called transparent.

Strengthening of Consumer Agency Opposed by Its Boss - New York Times

The top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation that would strengthen the agency that polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.

On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency’s authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.

Ms. Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistleblowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.

The measure is an effort to buttress an agency that has been under siege because of a raft of tainted and dangerous products manufactured both domestically and abroad. In the last two months alone, more than 13 million toys have been recalled after tests indicated lead levels of almost 200 times the safety ceiling.

Ms. Nord’s opposition to key elements of the legislation is consistent with the broadly deregulatory approach of the Bush administration. In a variety of areas, from antitrust to trucking and worker safety, officials appointed by President Bush have sought to reduce the role of regulation and government in the marketplace.

Nord clinging to her job as head of commission amid dangerous toy recalls

Nord also told a House Energy and Commerce panel that she did no wrong by accepting three free trips from industry worth thousands of dollars, saying it had been common agency practice with approval from CPSC attorneys.

“This practice, not common by me, is legal ... and was in place for 20 years, long before I came to the commission,” she told lawmakers who questioned her independence.

“Faced with limited enforcement dollars,” Nord said, “I would much rather spend $900 in a laboratory than on airfare and hotel.”

Profits valued over children's safety

By MARIANNE MEANS
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON-- It's a national embarrassment.

The Consumer Products Safety Commission is ordinarily not a controversial agency -- it is so small it operates largely in obscurity. But it has suddenly become a public outrage, a symbol of the Bush administration's cavalier attitude toward the public good when it conflicts with big business interests.

We have always known this is President Bush's basic notion of how to govern, but up to now we had seldom been hit smack in the face with it. The acting chairman of the CPSC, Nancy Nord, testified recently on Capitol Hill that the commission opposed congressional efforts to expand the agency's budget and powers in order to get a handle on tainted toys and other products flooding the U.S. from China.

Her indifference to the threat from lead-contaminated toys and other consumer items created a firestorm. It forced the administration to rush forth with an alternative plan that had been languishing for months. That plan would set up a system allowing most industries to police themselves but add more inspectors for companies with particularly dangerous products or bad safety records.

It is, predictably, far more limited in scope and authority than the congressional plan. But it will temporarily serve the administration's purpose of muddying the issue.

The decline of the CPSC is a shame. Congress proposed the agency at the peak of the consumer movement in the late 1960s, when the country was rebelling against the traditional concept of caveat emptor -- let the buyer beware. The public was tired of business getting away with shoddy practices and shoddy goods.

The major champion of the cause, Ralph Nader, was listed in a magazine as one of the nation's 10 "most admired" men and consumerism enjoyed support across political and philosophical lines. But then Nader, full of himself, made a major mistake. He endorsed the 1972 presidential candidacy of George McGovern and dragged his cause to the far left. As a consumer crusader, he was popular; as a potential presidential candidate, he was a disaster.

(And still is -- Democrats loathe him because his pitiful 2000 candidacy got just enough votes to do in Vice President Al Gore in Florida's tight contest. Yet he recently mused that he would like to run for president again next year because he saw no difference between GOP and Democratic principles. The man is an egomaniac.)

Meanwhile, the CPSC continues its drastic fall. Nord and her predecessor, Hal Stratton, have made several trips around the world on junkets financed by the industries they are supposed to be regulating.

Nord rejected the congressional offer of more money and authority. She warned that the bill "would harm product safety and put the American people at greater risk."

Nord's logic seems a little nutty.

The bill would increase the agency's budget from $63 million to $142 million by 2015 and increase its staff by 20 percent. It would raise the cap on penalties for safety violations from $1.8 million to $100 million, ban lead in kids' products and make it illegal to sell recalled goods. It would add whistleblower protections.

But she is used to viewing the world from the one-sided viewpoint of business. She is a lawyer who worked for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and in private practice for clients such as General Electric and other leading manufacturers and retailers.

Her agency is responsible for overseeing more than 15,000 types of products. But it has only 400 staffers, fewer than half the number when the agency was formally established in 1973. It has only one full-time toy tester.

The CPSC has been without a chair for more than a year. In March, Bush nominated Michael Baroody, a manufacturing industry lobbyist, to become chairman. He withdrew his name two months later rather than reveal his severance agreement with the National Association of Manufacturers.

Democrats are now calling for Nord to resign. She is certainly in an inappropriate job. But Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., warned that if she leaves, Bush might just forget to replace her and leave the commission rudderless and helpless. That seems to have been Bush's goal all along. To get real consumer protection, we will have to wait for a Democratic president.

Marianne Means is a Washington, D.C., columnist with Hearst Newspapers. Copyright 2007 Hearst Newspapers.

SEE:

NAFTA Poisioning

Turning Lead into Gold

Made In U.S.A. Food Recall

Criminal Capitalism: Pet Food Scandal

Fish Contamination


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Pipelines Are Safer

Then transporting oil by tanker. Three tanker spills in under a week, one in Ukraine, one in San Fransisco Bay and one in Hobart, Australia.

Long stretches of Russia's Black Sea coast face an ecological catastrophe, local authorities said on Monday, after a fierce storm broke up a tanker, disgorging hundreds of tons of oil on to the shore.

Emergency services crews are attending an accident in Hobart where a petrol tanker rolled late this morning. Fire fighters arrived at the scene just before midday to find the tanker leaking some of the 14,000 litres of diesel on board.

About 58,000 gallons of oil has spilled from a South Korea-bound container ship that ran into the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Wednesday in dense fog.

It's not a popular sentiment I know, but pipelines are safer. Safer than train or truck transport and certainly far safer than ocean tanker transportation.

Oil spill inevitable, islanders hear
Queen Charlotte Islands Observer, Canada - 24 Oct 2007
Both speakers said once a spill happens, it could take several days before response teams reach it. "There are only two tugs.to rescue a disabled tanker, ...

Compare the amount of tanker accidents that have occurred and the ecological damage to the ocean and shore line compared to the one recent pipeline accident.

Table 1: Number of spills over 7 tonnes

Year	7-700 tonnes	>700 tonnes
1970	6	29
1971	18	14
1972	48	27
1973	27	32
1974	89	28
1975	95	22
1976	67	26
1977	68	17
1978	58	23
1979	60	34
1980	52	13
1981	54	7
1982	45	4
1983	52	13
1984	25	8
1985	31	8
1986	27	7
1987	27	10
1988	11	10
1989	32	13
1990	51	14
1991	29	7
1992	31	10
1993	31	11
1994	26	9
1995	20	3
1996	20	3
1997	28	10
1998	25	5
1999	19	6
2000	19	4
2001	16	3
2002	12	3
2003	15	4
2004	16	5
2005	21	3
2006	14	4

While the BP pipeline break was irresponsible, it was a rare event.

Oil From Pipeline Breaks Enters a Wildlife Refuge

AP

Published: October 31, 1984

Workers set up portable dams today to stem flows from two broken pipelines that poured some 1,500 barrels of oil into a wildlife refuge and a lake.

One of the spills came from a line owned by the Mobil Pipeline Company and the other was from a pipeline belonging to Total Petroleum Corporation. A Mobil spokesman said the company believed the spills were under control. Other booms were placed to prevent the oil from spreading farther into Lake Texoma and the Tishomingo Wildlife Refuge near the Oklahoma- Texas border.

State officials said no dead fish or oil- coated birds had been reported.

Compared to the irresponsible use of old out dated sea going tankers that cross the globe. And we only hear about the spills that occur near shore lines.

US navy to stage oil spill exercise at Bahrain port

The BP pipeline accident could have been avoided if the "Green" oil company had actually bothered to maintain its pipeline properly. Which it didn't. But even then the amount of oil spilled pales in comparison to that of oil tankers. And the ecological damage was far easier to contain.

BP fined $20 million for Alaska oil spills

JEANNETTE J. LEE
The Associated Press

ANCHORAGE - BP America will pay $20 million and plead guilty to a misdemeanor violation of the federal Clean Water Act for a crude spill on Alaska's oil-rich North Slope, Justice Department officials said Thursday
The company's long-standing pattern of cost-cutting and mismanagement at Prudhoe Bay, the nation's largest oil field, was a major cause of the 200,000-gallon spill in March 2006, U.S. Attorney Nelson Cohen said in a news conference.

"The company failed to invest enough money, in time and people, to maintain the integrity of the pipeline," Cohen said. The spill was the largest ever in the North Slope fields, which border the Arctic Ocean.

The agreement was one of several struck between the London-based oil and gas giant and federal investigators in the resolution of probes across the U.S.

"These agreements are an admission that, in these instances, our operations failed to meet our own standards and the requirements of the law. For that, we apologize," BP America Chairman and President Bob Malone said in statement.

In Alaska, federal attorneys said the company has admitted its failure to adequately monitor and clean its transit pipelines despite the challenging operating conditions in the Arctic oil fields it co-owns with Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips. BP operates the fields on behalf of all the owners.

When compared to the amount of oil tanker accidents that have occurred pipelines are far safer for transporting oil and natural gas. And San Fransisco home of the latest spill which has huge refining operations is a good example.

"Human error factors" probably were involved in a ship crash and oil spill that killed nearly 400 birds in San Francisco Bay and prompted a federal criminal probe, the U.S. Coast Guard said Monday.

A spill of this nature always seems to conjure up images of the Exxon Valdez, the big tanker that ran aground in Alaska in 1989. ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) is involved in litigation concerning that incident to this day.

Spills can occur in a variety of ways. For instance, last year a BP (NYSE: BP)resulting in a spill and a shutdown for repairs.
pipeline serving the Prudhoe Bay field crumbled,

More bizarre was the February 2002 spill 17 miles southwest of the Golden Gate Bridge. That spill was attributed to the SS Jacob Luckenbach, which had sunk 50 years earlier, only to have its fuel begin seeping to the surface after half a century.

Here is a look at major oil spills in or around the San Francisco Bay Area.

— 2007: About 58,000 gallons spill into San Francisco Bay after a ship strikes into a tower on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

— 2004: More than 120,000 gallons spilled in Suisun Marsh from Kinder Morgan pipeline.

— 1996: 40,000 gallons spilled from a military vessel near Pier 70.

— 1988: 400,000 gallons spilled when Shell refinery drain line breaks.

— 1984: 1.5 million gallons spilled just outside the Golden Gate Bridge when an explosion damages a tanker ship.

— 1971: 840,000 gallons spilled when two Standard Oil tankers collided.

— 1937: 2.7 million gallons spilled when an oil tanker collided with a passenger ship

And what are the legal results of these spills? Well not what you think. The laws around clean up are not clear and governments are playing both catch up and catch the culprit. Despite the long history of tanker spills.

A revised rule that forces shipping companies to shoulder the cost of cleaning up pollution from maritime accidents, such as oil spills, in China's waters, is likely to take effect next year, if not sooner, a senior official with China Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) said Wednesday.

If the revised regulation is approved by the State Council, companies such as Sinopec, PetroChina and the China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) will be required to contribute to a special compensation and clean-up fund, Liu Gongcheng, executive director of China MSA, said.

Figures showed more than 90 percent of China's oil imports - 145 million tons last year - is transported by sea. Some 163,000 tankers of all sizes sailed into and out of China's ports last year, an average of 446 every day.

"The size of oil tankers is also getting bigger, up to 300,000 tons, which has added to the risk," Liu said. "If only 1 percent of the oil is spilled, we will be confronted with a catastrophe."

Oil spills can wreak havoc on sea life, fishing and tourism. They cost millions of yuan to clean up and even more in compensation and damages, he said.

The oil spill from the tanker Prestige, which sank off Spain in November 2002, leaked 77,000 tons of oil that caused several billion dollars worth of damage.

In the past year, there have been several oil spills in domestic seawaters that involved 500 to 600 tons of oil, but didn't cause serious pollution due to emergency response, Liu said.

EU court annuls ship pollution law on technicality

The European Union's top court struck down an EU law holding captains and shipowners criminally responsible for polluting the sea on Tuesday, saying the legislation had not been properly drafted.

The law was agreed in 2005, shortly after oil tanker spills damaged coastlines in France and Spain.

The legislation will now have to rewritten after the Luxembourg-based court said in a statement that national governments had ignored the executive European Commission during the legislative process.

Under the law, captains, owners or companies chartering ships could be prosecuted and fined heavily for major sea pollution.

It was introduced after the tanker Prestige spilled over 60,000 tonnes of oil off northwestern Spain in 2002. In a similar environmental catastrophe, the tanker Erika discharged about 20,000 of oil in 1999 off the French coast.

Puerto Rico Investigators Search for Oil Spill Culprit As Coast Cleanup Ends

Crews have completed a cleanup of an extensive oil spill that fouled rocky shoreline and mangrove thickets along Puerto Rico's southwest coast, but pollution investigators are still searching for the spill's cause.

Roughly 19,000 gallons of contaminated water have been siphoned from the Caribbean Sea since the spill slicked miles of coastline in late August, and 1,000 cubic yards of oily debris have been gathered by cleanup crews clad in protective suits and boots, the U.S. Coast Guard said Monday.

"We will continue to thoroughly investigate this incident and monitor the affected area in case any new recoverable oil is identified that needs to be cleaned up," said Capt. James E. Tunstall, commander of Coast Guard operations in the eastern Caribbean.

Marshland and mangroves in the western section of the town of La Parguera are still surrounded by a floating absorbent boom, but the protective barrier is expected to be removed before the end of the week.

"We're definitely happy they did such a good job cleaning the area up," said Angel Rovira, owner of a dive shop that ferries tourists and locals to a pristine coral reef several miles off the southwest coast of the U.S. Caribbean territory.

The nearly two-month effort to clean more than 30 miles of coastline from Guayanilla Bay to La Parguera cost more than $6 million.

Coast Guard investigators have indicated that New York-based General Maritime Corp., which owns and operates a fleet of crude oil tankers, is the likely source of the spill. A tanker owned by the company, the Genmar Progress, was anchored in the area when drifting bands of oil were first reported.

In late September, U.S. pollution investigators boarded the 1991-built tanker while it was docked in Port Arthur, Texas.

In a Monday phone interview, General Maritime spokesman Darrel Wilson said the company is cooperating fully with authorities, but stressed it has yet to be determined that its ship is definitely to blame.

A whistle-blower's courage and federal prosecutors in Alaska have given Washington state some extra protection against oil spills in local waters

And their actions have resulted in something that didn't happen after a mysterious spill blackened Vashon Island beaches three years ago: criminal accountability for ConocoPhillips, the nation's third-largest oil company.

None of the new requirements is the direct result of the October 2004 spill in Dalco Passage in southern Puget Sound, which was discovered in the middle of the night by a tugboat captain.

But instead, ConocoPhillips got tagged for a much smaller spill, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in January 2004. After that spill, ship's officers conducted an elaborate cover-up that was caught on videotape.

Two and a half billion dollars isn't a lot of money if you're Exxon Mobil.

That's the amount the oil company may be ordered to pay as punishment for the Valdez oil spill in Alaska 18 years ago. The 11-million-gallon spill soiled 1,200 miles of pristine coastline and, according to some locals, permanently disrupted the fishing business in the area.

A case to make Exxon Mobil pay punitive damages has been snaking through the courts since 1994. Originally, the damages were set at $5 billion, and an appeals court later cut them to $2.5 billion.

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether Exxon Mobil has to pay anything at all.

Regardless of how the court rules, the answer is the same: not really.

Even if the Supremes let stand the lower court decision and demand Exxon Mobil pay up immediately, the company would, in effect, pay nothing.

Exxon Mobil could pay most of the judgment from the interest it would have earned on the money during the time the case has been pending.

An Exxon Mobil spokesman said the company believes the punitive damages will be set aside, and therefore it hasn't set aside any money to pay the judgment.

At the end of last year, Exxon Mobil had a cash hoard of $28 billion. So it's not hurting for funds. But what if it had earmarked a $5 billion slice of those reserves to pay the Valdez damages when they were first awarded in 1994, just on the chance it might lose the case?

And then there is the idea of shipping Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) instead of using a natural gas pipeline.

Safety Concerns Tie Up LNG Development

Fall River, Massachusetts, has long drawn its identity from the water. First it came from the textile trade, and lately it's because of opposition to one of the nation's first land-based liquefied natural gas, or LNG, terminals slated to be built in the coastal enclave of nearly 100,000 people.

Longtime mayor Ed Lambert, who left office on Friday, has led the opposition to an LNG terminal in the city's backyard. Nine thousand people live within one mile of the 73-acre industrial site along the Taunton River where Weaver's Cove Energy, a subsidiary of energy giant Hess, hopes to build the terminal.

"To put them in the middle of an urban neighborhood, simply to enhance the profit margin of the energy industry, is significantly wrong," Lambert told us when we surveyed the proposed plant site earlier this year. Houses begin a block away, many lying on dead end streets with no outlet in the direction away from the site.

"It truly is like needlessly painting a bulls-eye on a working class community," Lambert says.

The fear, in a post-9/11 world, stems from what might happen if an LNG tanker were attacked or even it suffered an accident, such as a collision at sea. According to a Government Accountability Office report issued earlier this year, all but one of 19 experts surveyed believe an LNG spill could "present hazards to the public."

The debate over LNG safety is increasing as clean-burning natural gas now accounts for almost 25 percent of all energy consumed in this country. In the past year, 95% of all new electricity generated in the U.S. came from natural gas, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency which reviews all LNG proposals and green-lighted

So when folks oppose projects like the Mackenzie Valley pipeline and the Alaska Gas pipeline for 'ecological' reasons let's remember that pipeline breaks are far rarer and their ecological impact has been far less than the alternative; rusty outdated ocean going tankers.

At around 00:45 GMT on 01 December 2003, a rupture in the pipeline occurred at approximately 120 km south of Grande Prairie, Alberta. 14 hours later, another rupture and fire occurred 15 km downstream from the initial incident. According to TransCanada PipeLines, the breaks were immediately isolated, and any already escaped gas was allowed to burn off.

This is not to say that pipeline companies like TransCanada are any less jerks when it comes to the folks whose land they want to build on. They are after all Big Oil.

But for most Green activists the bottom line is that they would prefer the end of all reliance on gas and oil, period. Which of course is not going to happen any time soon since oil and gas fuels capitalism.

The victory of the Entente in the World War was in the last analysis a victory of the superior war technology of America. For the first time oil triumphed over coal for the heating of the submarines and ships, of the aircraft, motors, tanks, etc., was accomplished with oil and by a technology which had undergone especially high development in America and opposite which the German technology was backward. After the ending of the World War, the most pressing imperative for America, if it did not want to lose again the hegemony won over world economic domains, was to bring the oil production of the world into its hands in order to thus monopolise the guarantees of its ascendancy.

From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution by Otto Ruhle 1924

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