Alternate Explanations
Is The Real Cause Of Inflation Corporate Greed, Or Administration Policies?
Also on today’s menu:
Broadband Expansion
Landfill Setbacks
The standard explanation for this year’s high inflation is that it is the result of pent-up demand following the pandemic, coupled with supply-chain problems, and now exacerbated by the sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. We’ve also heard it blamed on President Joe Biden Jr.’s stance on combatting climate change by discouraging the use of fossil fuels — even though oil companies have thousands of leases they have failed to utilize because their stockholders want higher profits, rather than development of new drilling sites.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, took on the latter issue on April 5 as he called for a new tax on windfall profits. “Is it appropriate that, during this pandemic, during the war in Ukraine, during all of this instability, that this be a moment in which large corporations continue to enjoy huge profits?” he asked.
Citing statistics that show companies are raising prices despite realizing record profits, Sanders and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich said the companies are exploiting the crises and, in many cases, the lack of competition in order to squeeze the highest profits possible. “A large portion of that money is going to executives and major investors, so you want a windfall profits tax that stops them from doing that and actually rebates that money to consumers,” Reich said.
Inflation rates have hit heights not seen in four decades, yet corporate profits are at higher percentage rates than they have been in nearly 100 years. The legislation introduced by Sanders would impose higher taxes on companies’ profits that are in excess of their five-year average profit level prior to the pandemic, according to a summary provided by his office. As Sanders notes, similar taxes were enacted during World War Two and the Korean War. President Richard Nixon proposed such a tax on oil prices, saying, “It just isn’t fair, for example, for millions of Americans to make sacrifices in order to deal with the crisis we confront and for a few to make excess profits or what we would call windfall profits,” Nixon said in 1973.
Yet Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, the ranking Republican on the committee, called the idea of a windfalls profit tax “a disaster” and blamed inflation on the Biden administration’s policies, including the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that passed Congress last year without GOP support. “We’re trying to get our economy back on its feet after dealing with COVID throughout the world, and what I would say is that the best cause for inflation lives in the policy choices of this administration, more than any single thing,” he said.
Broadband Expansion
A $3.7 million American Rescue Plan grant will allow the Grafton County Broadband Committee to proceed with engineering plans for the entire 39-town region, a significant step in its goal of assisting every town in the county in providing high-speed internet service.
The committee formed to apply the lessons from Bristol’s pilot program to other communities that are under-served by existing cable companies.
Bristol Town Administrator Nik Coates, who serves as chair of the Grafton County Broadband Committee, said the grant will allow eX² — the Nebraska-based company that built the town’s network — to prepare plans for both “middle-mile” and “last-mile” fiber work.
Landfill Setbacks
Supporters of House Bill 1454 argued before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Tuesday that the legislation is sensible and necessary, while opponents argued that it is unnecessary because the state Department of Environmental Services already protects Granite State waterways from landfill pollution.
HB 1454 would replace the current 200-foot setback requirement for new solid waste landfills with a science-based approach that takes into account the rate at which groundwater can flow to a nearby river or tributary. Based on hydrogeological studies of the soil and bedrock below, a new landfill would have to be sited where polluted water would not reach a major water body for five years, giving the operator and the state time to remediate the problem before it contaminates rivers and lakes.
Prime sponsor Edith Tucker, D-Randolph, said, “Groundwater can move as slowly as one foot per year in soils with a high clay content or in bedrock that’s not full of fractures,” but, “In contrast, groundwater can move as quickly as 50 feet per day in soils high in gravel or sand content, and in fractured rock.”
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