I'm no tax expert, but...

Barack Obama’s at some fancy G-20 Summit in Cannes right now, pissing me off.

Nineteen countries – including Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia and Saudi Arabia – and the European Union are meeting right now to discuss financial markets and the world economy. Some are pushing for a global “financial transactions tax” – a small tax on trades of stocks, bonds and derivatives – but the Obama administration opposes it.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates – who would have been Forbes magazine’s richest man in the world in 2011 if he hadn’t poured $28 billion into his charitable foundation, which promotes health and fights hunger and poverty around the world – supports an FTT. (I’ve got to think Gates and his chum, Warren Buffett – who’s worth around $47 billion – know a little bit about finance.)

The governments of France and Germany support it.

The hippies occupying Wall Street support it.

Even the Archbishop of Canterbury supports a financial transactions tax. (I concede that the leader of the Church of England might lack credibility when it comes to international finance but it’s fun to mention the dude.)

Michael Moore

Anytime you have Germany’s conservative Angela Merkel and liberal rabble-rouser Michael Moore singing the same song, you might want to give it a listen.

Here’s the rub: an FTT won’t really work unless it’s adopted globally because activity would move to regions that don’t assess the tax.

Earlier this week, two U.S. lawmakers – Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) introduced legislation that proposes a 0.03 percent tax on financial transactions that could raise $150 billion annually to “invest in our future, our infrastructure and our middle class.”

That’s a lot of clams for bridge, school and road repair. That’s a lot of “put people back to work” cash.

DeFazio points out that the United Kingdom already imposes a 0.25 percent transaction tax on the sale or purchase of stocks which “has very little impact on people who buy stock with the intent of holding it for a long period of time” but will deter those who participate in high frequency trades that exacerbate or lead to market crashes. The policy, he says, helps return Wall Street to its days as a place “where people with good ideas go to raise capital” for production rather than a place for “gambling” schemes.

Of course the financial industry opposes the proposal, calling it “a sales tax on investors” and insisting it would impede the efficiency of markets. These are the same dishonest pricks who insist that the richest one percent are “job creators” and government regulation is what’s killing the economy.

I wish I were surprised that Obama is siding with these guys, but I’m not.

I woke up this morning to someone on NPR pointing out that the incomes of the richest one percent have quadrupled in the last decade while everybody else’s have remained stagnant.

So by all means, let’s keep reaffirming our national motto and trying to control women’s bodies.

Sources: Wall Street Journal, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Thinkprogress.com, Reuters.

John Lennon - Imagine

Bully for you, Republicans!

Matt Epling was just 14 years old when he killed himself in 2002.

He was on the honor roll at his middle school. His fellow eighth graders voted his smile and personality the best and decided he was most likely to become an actor. He was into writing, poetry, art and drama, had a great sense of humor and enjoyed the outdoors.

Matt Epling

On his last day of eighth grade, Matt was assaulted by upperclassmen as part of a "Welcome to High School" hazing. Officials did nothing, and a little over a month after the attack – the night before Matt’s parents were going to the police to press charges – Matt committed suicide.

Sadly, this wasn’t an isolated incident. Thirty-two percent of middle and high school students say they have been bullied during the school year. Twenty-one percent say they were made fun of; 18 percent said they were the subject of rumors; 11 percent say they were pushed, shoved, tripped or spit on; six percent say they were threatened; and five percent say they were intentionally excluded from activities.

If you think bullying is no big deal, just something that toughens a kid up, think again. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, bullying adversely affects children's mental health, academic success and ability to relate to other kids, and has lasting emotional consequences.

Because I have four sensitive, school-aged children and Michigan is one of three states that have not enacted anti-bullying legislation, I’ve been following this issue. And yesterday, I found myself disgusted yet again by Republican politicians.

The GOP-controlled State Senate passed Senate Bill 137 by a vote of 26-11. (Every Democrat opposed it.) The legislation, known as “Matt's Safe School Law,” includes the following language: “This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil’s parent or guardian.”

I’m no expert, but it seems to me that these 29 words represent a permission slip, a crater-sized loophole that any anti-gay or anti-whatever individual can use to freely harass anyone they don’t like.

Kevin Epling, Matt’s father, told Senate Republicans, "I am ashamed that this could be Michigan's bill on anti-bullying when in fact it is a 'bullying is okay in Michigan law.’”

Nathan Triplett, an East Lansing city councilman who works for a state lawmaker, said, “This is the gutted version of anti-bullying legislation that has been debated in Michigan for over a decade. The bill is nothing more than window dressing. It won't make one student in Michigan safer. Students deserve better than this.”

Senator Whitmer

Senate Democratic Leader Gretchen Whitmer of East Lansing, an attorney who spent six years in the Michigan House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate in 2006, was incensed. She passionately explained her “no” vote this way:

"I personally have had some pretty hard days here in the Senate in this term. Whether it was what happened to the School Aid Fund or raising pension taxes or the continued assault on the middle class, I think this is my lowest point personally. Because here today you’re claiming to be protecting kids and you’re actually putting them in more danger...You may be able to pat yourselves on the back today and say that you did something. But in actuality you’re explicitly outlining how to get away with bullying...As passed today, bullying kids is okay if a student, parent, teacher or school employee can come up with a moral or religious reason for doing it.

But bullying is not okay. We should be passing public policy that protects kids. All kids. From bullies. All bullies. But instead you’ve set us back farther, creating a blueprint for bullying. So this might solve a political problem that the Republicans have, but be clear. You are papering over the problem that is a reality faced by hundreds of kids in Michigan schools every day. In fact, not only does this not protect kids who are bullied, it further endangers them by legitimizing excuses for tormenting a student. And the saddest and sickest irony of this whole thing is that it’s called ‘Matt’s Safe School Law.’ And after the way that you’ve gutted it, it wouldn’t have done a damn thing to save Matt. This is worse than doing nothing. It’s a Republican license to bully."

The legislation now goes to the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. Given the tendency of today’s Republicans to do the exact opposite of what’s in the best interest of their constituents, I expect state representatives to concur with their senate cronies. I hope I’m wrong.

Get legislative contact information here:

Michigan State Senate

Michigan State House of Representatives

Sources: Detroit News, National Center for Education Statistics, MattEpling.com, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Marvin Gaye - Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)

Talk about a growing problem...

You probably heard that the number of people riding this big, beautiful Blue Marble through space just reached seven billion, according to the United Nations. But did you know that the earth’s human population increases by 10,000 every hour?

Or that we reached the point of consuming land, water, air and other natural resources faster than they could be replenished back in 1983, when the global population was at a measly 4.7 billion?

I knew that China has long been overpopulated – but I didn’t know that it’s actually Qatar, Saudi Arabia’s neighbor to the north, that is the fastest growing country in the world. More than 500 new inhabitants populate that Middle Eastern country each day.

How about this? More than two and a half billion people around the world lack sanitation. Ninety percent of the sewage in developing countries is released directly into oceans, lakes and rivers. And 1.4 million children die each year because of it – one child every 20 seconds.

This means three kids died in the time it took you to read this far.

Yes, we can discuss the population explosion and pursue technological advances and plant trees and recycle cans. But that’s clearly not enough. The majority of us aren’t living sustainable lives or even thinking about doing things to slow the destruction of our shared home – in fact, some of us are still arguing about whether we’re impacting the planet or not and how limited the earth’s resources really are.

I’m not on a high horse here. I have a big family, and I don’t do much anymore. We recycle a bit and Anita and I aren’t having any more babies, but that’s about it. I know I should pay attention to how the items I purchase are packaged and whether I really need them or not. I know I should drive less and bike more. I know I should teach my kids about consumptive consumerism and reducing their carbon footprint.

The Nature Conservancy offers a handy tool to calculate our footprint and our impact on the climate.

I can’t do anything about the sewage in developing countries or the population in the Persian Gulf region but I can make a difference in my own home. It’s not about politics. It’s not about being a self-righteous tree hugger. It’s about finite natural resources and threats to public health. I want to be part of the solution, not the problem.

Sources: The Week, the Nature Conservancy.

R.E.M. - Losing My Religion

This one's for Joy

Whenever I write something about God – whether it’s questioning his or her existence, assailing those who do terrible things to others in his or her name or lamenting the fact that there’s really no such thing as separation of church and state in this country – I always worry that I’ll offend my friend Joy.

Joy and I have been friends for 15 years. We were estranged for a bit – I do the estrangement thing well, unfortunately – and we’ve grown apart in the past few years but we still communicate via the occasional Facebook post and she reads “What’s the Diehl?” sometimes, I think. She’s a good person and her faith is really important to her so whenever I write about religion, she’s always in the back of my mind.

Like now.

I received some snail mail yesterday from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a pro-separation of church and state organization headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. I had stumbled upon its website a week ago and requested one of its complimentary information packets. I was particularly interested in how this organization responds to the claim I hear all the time that the United States is a “Christian nation.” The foundation has an answer to that:

• The U.S. Constitution is a secular document. It contains no mention of “God” or “Christianity.” Its only references to religion are exclusionary, such as “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust” and “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

• The presidential oath of office, the only oath detailed in the Constitution, does not contain the phrase, “So help me God” or any requirement to swear on a bible.

• Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, was a Deist opposed to orthodox Christianity and the supernatural.

• The words “under God” did not appear in the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954, when Congress, under McCarthyism, inserted them.

• Congress mandated that “In God We Trust” appear on all currency only in 1955 and adopted it as our national motto in 1956. The original U.S. motto, chosen by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, is “E Pluribus Unum” (meaning “Of Many, One”), which celebrates plurality, not theocracy.

In other words, this is not an exclusively Christian nation.

And in a 2008 poll by the Barna Research Group, only 12 percent of Americans said religion was the most important thing in their life, compared with 45 percent who said family was paramount in their life and 17 percent who said money and their career were paramount.

So more Americans worship money than God. What a surprise. No wonder Wall Street is the center of attention right now.

The last time I referenced the Bearded One Who Floats on Clouds and Awards Grammys – I wrote a post entitled, “You take this one, Big Guy” in which I pointed out that given all the pain and suffering and violence in the world, now would be a good time for some divine intervention if there is such a thing – Joy suggested I survey religious leaders to get their take on the whole “Where is God when bad things happen?” question.

I assumed this had already been done so I googled the series of tubes but was distracted by a survey of Americans’ religious affiliations that popped up. Interestingly, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that most Americans are Evangelical Protestants (26.3 percent) and Catholics (23.9 percent). Just over 16 percent are “unaffiliated,” 1.7 percent are Jews, 0.7 percent are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and only 0.6 percent are Muslims.

Given how Fox “News” bashes Muslims all the time, I sure thought there were more than 0.6 percent of ‘em building mosques at Ground Zero and foisting Sharia Law upon us.

Another friend enhanced my last Facebook exchange with Joy by sharing a powerful anecdote about the time she was driving down the road, feeling sorry for herself and asking where God was, when another car pulled out of a synagogue parking lot – not Meijer’s or Costco but a temple – and slammed into hers, breaking her hand and reminding her, she said, to be grateful for what she had.

I try to be grateful every day. I guess I just don’t send my gratitude to some all-knowing white guy in flowing robes who lets children die and people like Dick Cheney grow old.

I promise I’ll get to that survey, Joy.