US taxpayers subsidising world's biggest fossil fuel companies
“Big oil, gas, and coal have huge influence on politicians and governments and they get that influence the old fashioned way – they buy it,” said Kretzmann. “Through campaign finance, lobbying, advertising and superpac spending, the industry has many ways to influence candidates and government officials seeking re-election.”
He said fossil fuel subsidies were endemic in the US: “Every single well, pipeline, refinery, coal and gas plant in the country is heavily subsidised. Big Fossil’s lobbyists have done their jobs well for the last century.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -companies
I also prefer to only fly on a Boeing I paid for.
Boeing: Biggest state subsidy in U.S. history
Based on the limited information available, Good Jobs First Now in its study estimated that each job created cost taxpayers $456,000.
-snip-
With the 777X deal — if Boeing and the Machinists reach an agreement — Washington will be giving a big tax break to keep something it already has.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepoliti ... s-history/
Competition you know.
How about something on topic that was totally subsidized that happen to shop around for on a weekly/monthly basis -- my ISP:
Oh shit. Here's something we didn't notice in 2011.
Telecom carriers oppose proposed subsidy cuts
Cuts in the USF would make it difficult for small rural carriers to continue to roll out broadband to their customers, said John Rose, president of OPASTCO (Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies). The proposed cut would redirect nearly a quarter of the USF's $4.5 billion high-cost fund, which subsidizes telephone and broadband service in rural areas.
The proposed cut would "hurt a lot of our companies' ability to serve their customers with broadband," Rose said.
The USF is supported by fees, about 15 percent of a telephone customer's long-distance service. If Congress takes that targeted fee and gives it to the general treasury, "then you're really imposing a totally new tax," Rose said.
https://www.infoworld.com/article/26220 ... -cuts.html
Well, I know you could actually go on -- on your own actually using the power of this here subsidized infrastructure and *mostly free* content about all the other things you use that the cost to make shareholders rich is indeed subsidized and then repackaged and resold back to you. This is not competition and not only that, who the fuck cares if there has to be competition. My fucking brother was trying to outrun a hurricane this year that wound up not hitting him at all but was running out of gas and needed to buy gas cans, while his wife was checking via this here Internet one exit ahead of him in gridlock of who has gas and still has gas cans in stock. There was a lot of use there in a shit ton of FIRST WORLD issues to be sure, but a lot of use of shit that was built not by competition at all, but by smart egalitarians that really wanted to solve problems/puzzles -- redundancy, reliable, scalable etc. Almost as if they who designed the Internet and the networking of fuel pipelines designed it to make it work first and then profit a distant second.
It's almost as if karma were at work. I use Linux and have for forever and it is something that was mostly built with egalitarianism and absolute freedom in mind. You got your Internet that way. Pulling a rabbit out of the hat here, but 90% of the Internet and all of this "competition" would not work at all were it not for the subsidies and the existence of the GPL. Here's a cool quote I just yanked out of wikipedia (GPL):
In May 2005, Daniel Wallace filed suit against the Free Software Foundation in the Southern District of Indiana, contending that the GPL is an illegal attempt to fix prices (at zero). The suit was dismissed in March 2006, on the grounds that Wallace had failed to state a valid anti-trust claim; the court noted that "the GPL encourages, rather than discourages, free competition and the distribution of computer operating systems, the benefits of which directly pass to consumers".[86] Wallace was denied the possibility of further amending his complaint, and was ordered to pay the FSF's legal expenses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Gener ... ic_License
Anyhow, end of the day, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Clearly they are not fixing shit. But I use the Internet much differently than most newcomers. It still continues to amaze and must always be treated with respect along with the people who use it.
