Trump Questionnaire Raises Concerns About Retaliation Against Energy Department Staff

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BRAKKTON BOOKER

Among the queries included in a questionnaire sent by President-elect Donald Trump's transition team to workers at the Department of Energy is a request for an inventory of all agency employees or contractors who attended meetings or conferences on climate change. Another question asks for a current list of professional society memberships of any lab staff.

The 74-point questionnaire has raised fears among civil rights lawyers specializing in federal worker whistleblower protections, who say the incoming administration is at a minimum trying to influence or limit the research at the Department of Energy. And at worst, attempting to target employees with views that run counter to the president-elect.

The questionnaire also asks employees for a listing of when the climate change meetings took place, and to provide any materials distributed to them "or materials created by Department employees or contractors in anticipation of or as a result of those meetings."

"This is a very scary indication of what might happen under a Trump administration," says Jason Zuckerman, a former legal adviser to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an agency which protects federal workers, particularly on matters of retaliation.

As we reported Friday, environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers issued a sharp rebuke over the intent of the survey.

Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts issued a statement that said:

"This request suggests that your administration may intend to retaliate against career employees who faithfully executed their responsibilities."

For his part, Trump has not announced who he wants running the Energy Department, but last week tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, an outspoken skeptic of climate change, to be the next head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Trump transition team did not respond to requests regarding this story.

As for whether the questionnaire violates any laws, however, Zuckerman does not think it has crossed that threshold."They're in for a rude awakening if they believe they can just order these experts to ignore the reality, all of the data, and just claim there is no such thing as climate science or global warming," says Zuckerman, who worked on the Obama administration's Whistleblower Protection Advisory Committee.

"I think we're probably not there yet, but the real issue will be, what will they do with that information?"

Tom Divine is the legal director of the Government Accountability Project and says he's represented thousands of whistleblowers over the years. He says the questionnaire has all the "symptoms" of trying to pin down employees' personal views.

"This type of action is designed to create the infrastructure to create an enemies list or a menu of federal workers who will be targeted and also to lay the foundation to engage in surveillance against potential whistleblowers," Divine says.

Divine also says information gleaned from the survey could potentially violate federal workers' rights afforded to them by the First Amendment.

"The First Amendment has a first principle, which includes freedom of association. And it means who you associate with, the organizations that you participate in, those are your business — not the federal government's."

Civil rights attorney Debra Katz agrees.

While Katz says federal workers are more limited in their speech compared to those who work in the private sector, there may be grounds for employees at the Department of Energy to take preemptive legal action against the incoming administration.

"If in fact there is an effort to determine if individuals not only did climate change activity in the course of their professional duties, but did this in other areas of their life — were environmentalists, participated in other groups, and decisions were being made to weed them out on that basis — that is clearly a First Amendment violation," Katz says.

So what about the employees faced with the question: Should they or shouldn't they fill out the questionnaire?

Zuckerman, the former Office of Special Counsel adviser, says employees at the agency don't have many easy options.

"One has to be very careful about this. In the U.S. government you don't want to engage in insubordination. If you are asked to do something that's reasonable and it's legitimate, you have to do it."

He adds that if there's evidence that certain employees get marginalized or have their responsibilities altered as a result of the information on the survey, then there may be grounds for action.

"At that point there would be a violation and those employees might be able to bring a claim."

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John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

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Fwd: This Morning's Dust of Snow

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Stewart Acuff <acuff.stewart@gmail.com>
Date: December 11, 2016 at 1:12:32 PM EST
To: Stewart <acuff.stewart@gmail.com>
Subject: This Morning's Dust of Snow

This morning's dust of snow

Portends the season of struggle now

It's love , joy, resistance we seek to sow

As we bond together determined not to bow

To the evil that confronts us from the depths below

And we begin to form the line of defense and offense now.

Sent from my iPhone

Fwd:

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Stewart Acuff <acuff.stewart@gmail.com>
Date: December 10, 2016 at 3:40:30 PM EST
To: Stewart <acuff.stewart@gmail.com>

What does resistance today mean?

And how do our shouts and cries to the dark universe at midnight get traction

In a place so frozen with shock and fear and threats unseen

But the call comes from ages before -- discernment must become action

We won't know how it ends till after we've given of ourselves for our kids and communities, the common good and all of us

We don't even know what it will cost

And the depth of loss

When we act to resist !!
Sent from my iPhone

Working Families Condemn Puzder Labor Appointment [feedly]

Working Families Condemn Puzder Labor Appointment
http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/Working-Families-Condemn-Puzder-Labor-Appointment

Working family advocates have strongly condemned President-elect Donald Trump's selection of Carl's Jr. CEO Andy Puzder as secretary of labor. Here are excerpts from their comments.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Why Trade Deficits Matter [feedly]

Why Trade Deficits Matter
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/why-trade-deficits-matter

Why Trade Deficits Matter

Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein
The Atlantic, December 8, 2016

See article on original site

However one feels about Donald Trump, it's fair to say he has usefully elevated a long-simmering issue in American political economy: the hardship faced by the families and communities who have lost out as jobs have shifted overseas. For decades, many politicians from both parties ignored the plight of these workers, offering them bromides about the benefits of free trade and yet another trade deal, this time with some "adjustment assistance.

One of Trump's economic goals is to lower the U.S.'s trade deficit—which is to say, shrink the discrepancy between the value of the country's imports and the value of its exports. Right now, the U.S. currently imports $460 billion more than it exports, meaning it has a trade deficit that works out to about 2.5 percent of GDP. Given that the job market is still not back to full strength and the U.S. has been losing manufacturing jobs—there are 60,000 fewer now than at the beginning of this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—economists would be wise to question their assumption that such a deficit is harmless.

Trump's intention in reducing the deficit is to boost factory jobs, since America's trade imbalance exists almost exclusively in manufactured goods. Putting aside how the Trump administration might go about this, is it smart economic policy? Is the U.S. trade deficit a problem whose solution would help American workers?

To start, it's not inherently a problem for a country to have a trade deficit. For example, a fast-growing economy pulls in more imports as it expands, which pushes a country's international trade account toward deficit. In that context a trade deficit is good for the economy, allowing the country to consume and invest more than if it maintained balanced trade. This was the story in 2000 when, after four years of strong growth, the American economy had an unemployment rate of 4 percent and a trade deficit that amounted to 3.7 percent of GDP.

But that story ended after the recession in 2001. The economy didn't get back the jobs it lost in 2001 until January of 2005—then the slowest employment recovery since the Great Depression (it's since been outdone in slowness by the recovery following the Great Recession). The trade deficit during this period continued to rise—the dollar was then over-valued, making U.S. goods less competitive internationally—eventually peaking at almost 6 percent of GDP in 2005 and 2006. In the early aughts, then, the growing deficit was not associated with a strong economy but a weak one.

In this context, the trade deficit was subtracting from demand in the domestic economy. Spending that could have employed people who needed jobs in the U.S. was instead employing people in Germany, China, and other countries from which America imports goods and services. In principle, the U.S. government could have looked to spur other channels of demand to offset the trade deficit, but as a practical matter this is often not easy to do: The most straightforward way to generate demand is through additional government spending, but there are major political obstacles to running large budget deficits even at times when it would be beneficial to the economy.

This problem became much worse as the economy faced a prolonged period of what economists call secular stagnation—meaning weak growth outside of a recession—in the years following the collapse of the housing bubble. While the U.S.'s trade deficit fell from its pre-recession peak, it has remained near 3 percent of GDP in the post-crash years. This deficit is a serious drain on demand, and does not stem from a strong economy pushing its limits. And with the Federal Reserve Board pushing interest rates down to zero, it had limited capacity to boost demand.

What effect does all this have on American workers? Trade deficits, even in times of strong growth, have negative, concentrated impacts on the quantity and quality of jobs in parts of the country where manufacturing employment diminishes. Even the economists who argue (incorrectly, we believe) that the trade deficit doesn't affect the total number of jobs do admit that it affects the composition of jobs. There is, for example, a lot of research confirming that deindustrialization in the Rust Belt is partly a result of the fact that America meets its domestic demand for manufactured goods by importing more than it exports. One oft-cited academic study found that imbalanced trade with China led to the loss of more than 2 million U.S. jobs between 1991 and 2011, about half of which were in manufacturing (which worked out to 17 percent of manufacturing jobs overall during that time).* Further, the economist Josh Bivens found that in 2011 the cost of imbalanced trade with low-wage countries cost workers without college degrees 5.5 percent of their annual earnings (about $1,800). Far from a small, isolated group, these workers represent two-thirds of the American workforce.

And trade imbalances have repercussions far beyond the labor market. They can produce significant macroeconomic distortions, and those who view deficits as benign frequently overlook this. Most importantly, as Ben Bernanke noted over a decade ago, a trade deficit can have a role in producing financial-market bubbles and the devastation that's caused when those bubbles burst. The problem arises when other countries suppress spending and investment, thereby boosting their savings rates and their trade surpluses. By the rules of basic accounting, those surpluses have to flow somewhere, and many flow into America. This further strengthens the demand for and value of the dollar, making American exports less competitive—and thus exacerbating the trade deficit. In the 2000s, these trade patterns helped provide the cheap capital that, in tandem with inattentive regulators, inflated the housing bubble. Almost a decade later, the country is still recovering.

Too many policymakers and their economic advisers have viewed trade deficits as harmless. Instead, at full employment, trade deficits mean the loss of good jobs, wages, and incomes for those in firms hit by competition from imports. In recent periods of weak demand, the trade deficit has been a drag on growth that's not been offset by monetary or fiscal policy. And when other countries suppress the value of their currency to artificially cheapen their exports, all these problems in the U.S. get exacerbated.

By ignoring the downsides of imbalanced trade, many establishment politicians created an opening for a demagogue like Trump to offer an unrealistic nostalgia for a 1950s economy that existed before the modern, global era. In fact, international trade today yields many benefits for consumers and workers, both in the U.S. and abroad. On American shores, people have access to lower-cost and often better goods as a result of international trade. And abroad, exports to the U.S. have often been part of development strategies that raise standards of living.

The goal of trade policy should thus be to push back on U.S. trade deficits without distorting current trade flows. Large tariffs like the ones Trump has proposed won't work, nor will preventing offshoring one company at a time, as he did with some of the jobs that the air-conditioning company Carrier was going to shift to Mexico. There are better ways to improve the U.S.'s trade balance—most importantly, the government could take steps to prevent America's trading partners from manipulating their currencies to make their exports to the U.S. cheaper and the U.S.'s exports to them more expensive. But until economists recognize the costs of running a trade deficit in the first place, it'll be hard for the country to address them.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Eliminating the Business Personal Property Tax Would Be a Fiscal Disaster [feedly]

Eliminating the Business Personal Property Tax Would Be a Fiscal Disaster
http://www.wvpolicy.org/eliminating-the-business-personal-property-tax-would-be-a-fiscal-disaster/

Not content with the recent $425 million in tax cuts passed in recent years, the legislature's attention has once again turned to the state's business personal property tax. The business personal property tax (sometimes short handedly referred to as the inventory tax) was the topic of the most recent Joint Select Committee on Tax Reform subcommittee meeting, and committee member Delegate Eric Householder recently called for the tax to be eliminated. If the tax is fully eliminated and nothing is done to replace the lost revenue, the state would have to raise taxes by $111.7 million due to the school aid formula, while local governments would lose $276 million.

As we've shown before, there is little evidence to support claims that eliminating taxes on business personal property would significantly boost investment and job growth. Instead, the massive tax cut would have a profound impact on state and local government finances, straining the ability of municipalities, county governments, and school districts to provide needed services and would likely lead to cuts in services or a dramatic tax shift, such as higher property taxes on homeowners or higher taxes on real property owned by small businesses. The tax cut would also add tens of millions to the state's already $400+ million budget gap.

In FY 2016, the property tax on business personal property (which includes business machinery and equipment, inventory, and other business personal property like computers and fixtures, as well as the working interest in oil and natural gas property) totaled $388.4 million, which accounts for 23 percent of total property tax revenue in the state.

Since property taxes are levied by the state, counties, school districts, and municipalities, the impact of the tax cut would be felt at every level of government in West Virginia.

If the business personal property tax were to be fully eliminated, counties and municipalities would lose an estimated $130.5 million in annual property tax revenue.

The state would lose an estimated $1.6 million in revenue, but would also have to pay out an additional $110.1 million through the school aid formula due to the loss of revenue by school districts, for a total annual fiscal impact of $111.7 million for state government.

School districts would be the hardest hit by the elimination of the business personal property tax. Schools would lose $256.2 million in annual property tax revenue. While $110.1 million would be replaced through the school aid formula, schools in West Virginia would still lose a total of $146.2 million annually. Since school levy rates are set by the legislature, and since most school excess levies are at or near the max rate, local school districts would be unable to fill this deficit, and the state would need to provide additional revenue to maintain the current educational system.

One of the biggest priorities for businesses looking to locate in or expand in a state is an educated workforce. Cutting property taxes in an effort to encourage job growth and investment is self-defeating, as that tax revenue largely funds the school systems that educate the state's future workforce. Without an educated workforce, created through a well-funded public education system, West Virginia will continue to experience its economic decline.

By including both real and personal property, West Virginia maintains a broad property tax base. This in turn keeps rates low, and ensures property tax payments are directly proportional to the amount of property a taxpayer owns. Eliminating the tax on business personal property would dramatically narrow the state's property tax base, likely leading to higher rates and introducing more inequity into the system. The state's ability to generate revenue has been compromised by tax cuts, low energy prices, and a slow growing economy, resulting in multiple rounds of budget cuts. Further eroding state and local revenues can only have more detrimental effects.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Why Productivity Growth is Faltering in Aging Europe and Japan [feedly]

Why Productivity Growth is Faltering in Aging Europe and Japan
https://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2016/12/09/why-productivity-growth-is-faltering-in-aging-europe-and-japan/

By iMFdirect

Many countries are experiencing a combination of declining birth rates and increasing longevity. In other words, their populations are aging. And graying populations pose serious issues for people, policymakers, and society. 

Health care costs rise, mainly because older people need more of it. Pension payments—whether from public or private plans—also increase at the same time there are relatively fewer younger workers paying into the pension systems. And there are also fewer people producing goods and services relative to the total population. The old-age dependency ratio—the number of people over 65 divided by the number of people between 15 and 64—rises. In other words, there are economic strains and many countries that haven't faced them yet will soon.

One way to alleviate those strains would be to increase the amount of goods and services each worker produces—that is to boost productivity. Productivity is a major driver of economic growth. When it is rising, more goods and services are produced from the same amount of input—giving society more output to divvy up. When productivity is falling, GDP growth is retarded.

How aging affects productivity

But two recent papers by IMF economists suggest that there are limited prospects for productivity to come to the rescue. That's because not only is the overall population aging, so are those still in the workforce. And the aging workforce is holding down productivity growth in both Europe and Japan.

The decline in productivity in Japan and Europe manifested itself in what economists call Total Factor Productivity, which is the portion of economic growth that is not the result of changes in inputs (such as capital and labor). Total factor productivity measures how efficiently capital and labor are used in the production process and is affected by such things as innovation, institutions and the quality of the workforce.

Productivity generally increases until workers are in their 40s, then tails off until they stop working. In Japan, for example, workers in the 40 to 49 age group were the most productive, with productivity declining after that. Authors Yihan Liu and Niklas Westelius calculated that the aging workforce could have reduced Japan's annual total factor productivity growth by as much as 0.7–0.9 percentage points between 1990 and 2005. The decline was largely due to the reduction in the 40 to 49 age group. Starting in 2010, the 40 to 49 group increased a bit, but after 2025 shifts in the working age population age will again reduce total factor productivity growth.

The story is similar for 28 countries in Europe. Authors Shekhar Aiyar, Christian Ebeke, and Xiabo Shao found that the growing number of workers aged 55 and older on average "lowered total factor productivity growth by about 0.1 percentage points each year over the past two decades." But that varied across countries. In Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, the Netherlands, and Germany, workforce aging shaved about 0.2 percentage points off annual total factor productivity growth.

Future could be worse

Under current demographic projections, the future will be worse. From 2014 to 2045 workforce aging will intensify in Europe and could reduce annual total factor productivity growth by 0.2 percentage points. But in countries where aging will be most pronounced—Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain—annual total factor productivity growth could be reduced by as much as 0.6 percentage points.

Aiyar, Ebeke, and Shao write that some of the effects of total factor productivity erosion from workforce aging might be offset in Europe by such policies as:

• Broadening access to medical services to improve the overall population health;

• Improving workforce training;

• Reforming labor markets to make it easier for older workers to change jobs; and

• Promoting technological innovation to improve overall productivity—among other things, through increased spending on research and development. To the extent that such changes (for example, devices that reduce physical labor associated with manufacturing) disproportionately benefit senior workers, they could mitigate the adverse effects of an aging workforce on total factor productivity growth.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed