Table of Contents
1.
Introduction
2. List of Eleven Proposals
3. Explanation of
Proposal #1 (List of Fourteen Disasters)
4. Explanation of
Proposals #6, #7, #8, and #9
6. Resources
Content
1.
Introduction
The
following article was written as my response to a question by the
environmental activist organization Stop EtO Lake County.
Stop EtO Lake County is dedicated to solving health and environmental problems caused by EtO (ethylene oxide, also abbreviated EO), a chemical which has been linked to cancer and mutation. EtO is flammable and explosive, it has been used as a pesticide, and it can result in irritation and central nervous system depression.
EtO
is used to sterilize medical devices, including face masks. Due to
the cheap start-up cost of using EtO, its compatibility with most
materials, and the fact that it is effective at room temperatures,
EtO is the most commonly used sterilizing chemical.
The drawbacks of EtO include inefficiency, which refers to a
“lengthy cycle time”, meaning that it takes a long time to go
through this process of sterilization. Another drawback is the fact
that EtO has more expensive long-term costs than alternatives
(although the short-term costs are lower, which makes the use of EtO
so appealing).
What
follows is my answer to the group's question about what I would do to
address this problem. In this eleven-point plan, I explain what I
will do personally, and what I would do in office politically, to
help solve the problems of EtO emission, the health effects
therefrom, and the dependence upon companies that use EtO for
employment.
Learn more about ethylene
oxide, and alternatives to it, by visiting the following links:
http://www.cdc.gov/infectioncontrol/guidelines/disinfection/sterilization/ethylene-oxide.html
http://noharm-uscanada.org/sites/default/files/documents-files/918/Replacing_Eth_Oxide_and_Glut.pdf
2. List of Eleven Proposals
#1. I will personally assist Stop EtO Lake County in creating a map of all EtO spills and non-EtO-related environmental disasters (whether one-time or ongoing) which have occurred or are occurring throughout Lake County over the past 10 or 20 years. I will publish this map to my personal weblog (at www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com), and share it with Stop EtO Lake County, its affiliates and members, and voters in my district.
[See Part 3 of this article for a list of those fourteen disasters]
#2. I will make it clear that I agree with Stop EtO Lake County's proposed solution of pressuring or requiring companies using EtO to either relocate to less densely populated areas, and/or start using less harmful alternatives (such as hydrogen peroxide, nitrogen dioxide, E-beam, and paracetic acid).
I
will join efforts to call for facilities continuing to use EtO to
relocate to lower population areas. I will recommend that any and all
such facilities be moved to either: 1) the least forested,
lowest-population, farthest-east areas in Lake County (near the towns
of Old Mill Creek, Rosecrans, Russell, and the western regions of
Wadsworth); or 2) northeastern McHenry County (namely, the least
forested and least populated areas, especially areas to the northeast
of the town of Spring Grove).
I will also
recommend that state legislatures around the country prohibit the
construction of nuclear energy facilities, coal-burning power plants,
and companies using EtO and other toxic chemicals, in areas with a
population density of 100 people per square mile or greater.
I will do whatever possible, on the federal level, to make sure that people and governments in Illinois are not prevented from taking the measures necessary to stop further pollution and additional cancer diagnoses.
#3. I will support all legal efforts, by the Illinois legislature and Stop EtO Lake County, to prevent companies from leaking EtO. These include statewide efforts to require any and all companies continuing to use EtO, to use a type of concrete (or other material) which is less permeable (and preferably impermeable) to EtO, when they build the walls of their facilities.
#4. I will support statewide legislative efforts to prevent and/or punish the construction of tall smokestacks, which spread pollution over a larger area than smaller smokestacks do. I will empower Illinoisans to set a maximum height for smokestacks, without regard to the federal government's stance on the issue.
I will additionally spread awareness that the smokestacks which are currently being used by Medline and Sterigenics, are too tall, and are emitting EtO, and thus constitute a threat to the health of the public.
I will also criticize my opponent, the incumbent Democrat Brad Schneider, for accepting donations from Medline after it has committed such egregious acts of pollution against the people of Lake County.
[More details on that follow in Proposal #10.]
#5. I will urge more towns and villages in Lake County –
especially Waukegan, North Chicago, and Willowbrook - to vie for
designation as one of the many “Tree City USA”s around the
country. I believe that this will bolster demand for companies using EtO to
either change their policies or relocate.
#6. I will make EtO pollution, and air pollution in general, into more visible issues, by making the environment into a more comprehensive issue that affects more issues in politics. I will do this by calling for a borders policy that is influenced by bioregionalism, and by calling for a taxation policy that is influenced by the contributions of Henry George and his students.
I want to teach voters about Georgism, Land Value Taxation, Community Land Trusts, air and water trusts, and bioregionalism. I hope that doing so will help people realize how important, and ignored, a factor of production land is (the others being labor and capital). Land Value Taxation could change the way we think about property taxes. I hope that teaching voters about Georgism will get people saying “Tax destruction, not production”.
Making land clean, affordable, and accessible is the key to reducing conflict between businesses and workers, while ensuring that future production will be sustainable in both an economic and an ecological sense.
Learn more about my views on what Land Value Taxation can do to improve Illinois's property tax problems, at the following link:
http://www.lclp.org/articles/geolibertarianism/
Learn more about my views on why bioregionalism will help the environment:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/09/ten-reasons-to-consider-bioregionalism.html
#7. To counteract the possible over-politicization of environmental issues which could result from Proposal #6, I will also support the intentional de-politicization of scientific issues such as health and environment. This will be helpful in decreasing partisan conflict over issues such as air pollution and the use of toxic chemicals in the medical industry.
If politicization of environmental issues is inevitable, I will recommend reconciliation between the left and the right, based on the ideas that: 1) environmental conservationism is compatible with conservatism; 2) the left and the right can unite in opposition to large energy and health monopolies, and corporate polluters receiving tax breaks; and 3) Georgism and Geo-Libertarianism are compatible with classical liberal ideals, and do not call for additional centralization of power in the hands of the federal government.
#8. I will support reforms to taxation, patents, and pricing, which will help solve legislative issues related to medicine that pertain to the health effects of EtO and to the cost advantages which help excuse its use.
[More details in Proposal #11]
#9. I will support the decentralization of the regulation of medical and environmental issues which pertain to EtO pollution in Lake County. I will do this in order to assist the State of Illinois, and other states, to set higher standards than the E.P.A. imposes upon the rest of the nation, if they wish (on issues such as chemical pollution, fuel emissions, clean and air water standards, etc.).
I will also support constitutional federal reforms to taxes and patents, which I expect to help reduce demand for, and justification of the use of, EtO.
I believe that calling for local solutions to be explored, independently by each locality, instead of promoting more E.P.A. regulations or new federal programs, will help reduce the risk that the reforms I promote will be criticized as unconstitutional or “socialist”.
I also believe that urging non-profit, non-governmental (or quasi-nongovernmental) organizations to solve the problem – instead of for-profit companies or explicitly governmental agencies – will help draw attention to an oft-overlooked sector of the economy; the non-profit sector (also known as the charity sector, the voluntary sector, and the non-profit third sector). I will call for issues directly related to land, air, water, and natural resources, to be “privatized to the non-profit third sector”.
#10. I will raise awareness that my opponent, the incumbent Democrat Brad Schneider, accepted $7,736 from Medline during his 2017-2018 campaign. In late 2018, Medline was revealed to be releasing EtO.
I will also criticize Schneider for accepting donations from Baxter and Abbvie, two other companies which have polluted Lake County's air and water in the last ten years.
The below image is from a pamphlet I designed in February, which criticizes some of Congressman Schneider's campaign donation sources.
The entire pamphlet can be read at the following link:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2020/02/where-does-congressman-brad-schneider.html
Click to enlarge
#11. I will draw attention to insidious legal and illegal activities which I believe are keeping the demand for, and prices of, medical devices, artificially high. I will do this because I believe that reducing demand and prices on medical devices, will reduce demand for cost-saving mechanisms, such as the decision to use toxic EtO because of how cheap it is.
I will fight the suppression of the idea that preventive medicine, and proper diet and exercise are essential to good health. I believe this will help reduce artificial demand for medical devices, because more of people's health problems will be taken care of earlier, before those problems get out of hand, meaning that it will be less likely that a medical device will be needed to perform a surgery or save a person's life.
Activities which I believe keep demand for medical devices artificially high, include insider trading of medical device stocks by several members of Congress, the commandeering of respirators by the State of New York, and medical device sales taxes which tax the trade of devices rather than profits therefrom.
I will also raise awareness of what I call the "medical device cartel"; that is the probability that politicians from Massachusetts, Minnesota, and California - the three top states that manufacture medical devices - are colluding to keep policies in place that artificially increase the demand for health goods and services. Such policies include the individual mandate to purchase health insurance (the penalty for which was removed in 2019).
I will call attention to the possibility that the following groups of politicians are part of this "medical device cartel":
- Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, Representative Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, Senator Richard Burr of Alabama, and Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma (the congressmen suspected of insider trading);
- Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota (two prominent senators, from medical device cartel states, who oppose Medicare for All);
- Mitt Romney (U.S. Senator from Utah, but formerly the Governor of Massachusetts), and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (the architects of PawlentyCare and RomneyCare, which are similar to HillaryCare and ObamaCare);
- Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York (who confiscated ventilators from private hospitals); and
- Barack Obama, and Rahm and Ezekiel Emanuel (whose Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, individual mandate to purchase health insurance, and medical device tax, all boosted demand for, and prices of, health care and insurance goods and services).
To learn more about the charges of congressional insider trading which were levied at the above-named four congressmen, please see the following links:
http://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/coronavirus-doj-investigates-burr-stock-sales-drops-loeffler-feinstein-probes.html
http://www.npr.org/2020/05/26/862692569/justice-department-closes-investigations-of-3-senators-burr-inquiry-continues
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/26/coronavirus-doj-clears-feinstein-loeffler-inhofe-stock-sales/5262375002/
http://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/coronavirus-doj-investigates-burr-stock-sales-drops-loeffler-feinstein-probes.html
To learn more about Cuomo's (compensated) confiscation of ventilators, visit this link:
To learn more about the medical device sales tax (which has been repealed), visit the following links:
http://www.medicaldevice-network.com/news/senate-medical-device-tax/
http://www.medicaldevice-network.com/features/us-medical-device-tax-future/
http://taxfoundation.org/medical-device-tax-repeal/
3. Explanation of Proposal #1 (List of Fourteen Disasters)
The list below details the names, functions, and locations of fourteen companies which are polluting Lake County, or have polluted it over the last 10 or 20 years.
I hope to expand this list, and turn it into a map, in order to achieve the goals I outlined in the first of my eleven proposals to counteract the harmful effects of EtO (namely, to spread awareness of the environmental and health impacts of the use of this chemical).
This list is available, in stand-alone form (with the rest of the text of this article excluded), at the following link:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2020/09/list-of-fourteen-environmental.html
1. NRG Waukegan Generating Station (coal burning power plant), 401 E. Greenwood Ave., Waukegan (Sunset / Greenwood & Sheridan)
2.
Zion Nuclear Generating Station (nuclear power plant), 100 Shiloh
Blvd., Zion [permanently closed, but nuclear material still being
stored on
site]
http://www.google.com/maps/place/Zion+Nuclear+Generating+Station/@42.4459579,-87.8042286,17z/data=!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x880ff38f2ed2218f:0x5ad9f4afa1970c12!2sZion+Nuclear+Generating+Station!8m2!3d42.445954!4d-87.8020399!3m4!1s0x880ff38f2ed2218f:0x5ad9f4afa1970c12!8m2!3d42.445954!4d-87.8020399
3.
Medline (3 locations) (emitting
EtO)
http://www.google.com/maps/search/medline+in+lake+county+illinois/@42.3206009,-88.0216294,12z/data=!3m1!4b1
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-lake-county-cancer-risks-pollution-20181028-story.html
http://theintercept.com/2019/05/07/medline-wendy-abrams-air-pollution/
4.
Abbott (4 locations + 3 clusters of
locations)
http://www.google.com/maps/search/abbott+in+lake+county+illinois/@42.3079607,-87.9611359,12z/data=!3m1!4b1
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-01-07-9001020483-story.html
5.
Abbvie (3 locations + 3 clusters of
locations)
http://www.google.com/maps/search/abbvie+in+lake+county+illinois/@42.3078329,-87.9611363,12z/data=!3m1!4b1
6.
Baxter (5
locations)
http://www.google.com/maps/search/baxter+labs+in+Lake+County,+Illinois,+IL/@42.3073001,-88.1712845,10z/data=!3m1!4b1
incl.
Long Lake / Round
Lake:
http://patch.com/illinois/grayslake/settlement-reached-long-lake-pollution-lawsuit
http://patch.com/illinois/deerfield/baxter-will-stop-dumping-water-long-lake-ceo-says
http://www.mddionline.com/business/illinois-sues-baxter-lake-pollution
http://www.dailyherald.com/business/20181126/baxter-to-pay-95000-for-polluting-long-lake
7.
Anhydrous ammonia gas (fertilizer) explosion at Green Bay Road and
Clarendon Street in Beach Park (April 25th,
2019)
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6904a4.htm
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/ct-met-beach-park-hazmat-spill-20190425-story.html
8.
Silicone plant explosion at AB Specialty Silicones, 3790 Sunset
Avenue, Waukegan (May 3rd, 2019)
http://www.andisil.com/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/ct-lns-waukegan-explosion-update-st-0810-20190809-vttkwlm7gvfnha6hbm3j5grp5i-story.html
9.
Reliable Concrete Pumping LLC at 700 E. Park Avenue, Libertyville
(near Libertyville's borders with Rondout, Green Oaks, and Lake
Bluff) (rock crushing)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Business-Service/Reliable-Concrete-Pumping-INC-724495167703480/
http://www.concretepumpers.com/content/reliable-concrete-pumping-inc-0
http://www.bbb.org/us/wa/snohomish/profile/concrete-pumping/reliable-concrete-pumping-inc-1296-22660041
10.
Ozinga concrete company, 30285 Skokie Highway, east Waukegan (rock
crushing)
http://www.google.com/search?safe=off&sxsrf=ALeKk03jqlo6Dv_yZos5JQ0vuMgG8Eqq8g:1600327753934&source=hp&ei=RhBjX8i4McHcswXEm7S4Cg&q=ozinga&oq=ozinga&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzIQCC4QxwEQowIQFBCHAhCTAjIHCAAQFBCHAjIICC4QxwEQrwEyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyCAguEMcBEK8BOgQIIxAnOgQILhAnOgsILhDHARCvARCRAjoLCC4QxwEQowIQkQI6CwguELEDEMcBEKMCOggILhDHARCjAjoICAAQsQMQgwE6DgguEMcBEKMCEJECEJMCOgQIABBDOgUILhCxAzoFCAAQsQM6BwguELEDEEM6BQgAEJIDULQBWOMSYM4TaAFwAHgAgAHtAogBwQqSAQcwLjUuMC4ymAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpeg&sclient=psy-ab&ved=2ahUKEwiWkLC61e_rAhVF-6wKHT2aA20QvS4wB3oECBEQIA&uact=5&npsic=0&rflfq=1&rlha=0&rllag=42219153,-87909538,9488&tbm=lcl&rldimm=13945019546349415580&lqi=CgZvemluZ2EiA4gBAVoQCgZvemluZ2EiBm96aW5nYQ&rldoc=1&tbs=lrf:!1m4!1u3!2m2!3m1!1e1!1m4!1u16!2m2!16m1!1e1!1m4!1u16!2m2!16m1!1e2!2m1!1e16!2m1!1e3!3sIAE,lf:1,lf_ui:4&rlst=f#rlfi=hd:;si:13945019546349415580,l,CgZvemluZ2EiA4gBAVoQCgZvemluZ2EiBm96aW5nYQ;mv:[[42.3179416,-87.67351939999999],[41.993770700000006,-88.3280861]];tbs:lrf:!1m4!1u3!2m2!3m1!1e1!1m4!1u16!2m2!16m1!1e1!1m4!1u16!2m2!16m1!1e2!2m1!1e16!2m1!1e3!3sIAE,lf:1,lf_ui:4
11.
Sterigenics (2 locations [Deerfield and Gurnee], 1 former location
[Willowbrook], and another in Oak Brook that's far from Lake County
but is still within the Des Plaines River watershed) (emitting
EtO)
12.
Vantage Specialty Chemicals, 3938 Porett Drive, Gurnee (released
6,412 pounds of ethylene oxide in 2014)
http://www.wexlerwallace.com/lake-county-facilities-emit-same-cancer-causing-chemicals-sterigenics/#:~:text=Within%20the%20past%20two%20months,Willowbrook%20is%20not%20the%20only
13.
Pollution at Grayslake Countryside Landfill (31725 IL-83, Grayslake)
in 2011
http://patch.com/illinois/grayslake/public-hearing-tonight-on-air-quality-at-grayslake-landfill
http://www.wmsolutions.com/locations/details/id/24
14.
Foxconn (3 locations in Wisconsin; 2 of which are in the Des Plaines
River watershed, most of which is located within the State of
Illinois)
Map showing details of Foxconn's locations
(the two southernmost of which are within
the Des Plaines River watershed)
Northern
location (13315 Globe Drive, Mt. Pleasant, WI; outside of the Des
Plaines River
watershed)
http://www.google.com/maps/place/Foxconn+ETC/@42.727865,-87.9254122,11z/data=!4m8!1m2!2m1!1sfoxconn+wisconsin!3m4!1s0x0:0x43a62bdb5eda9a71!8m2!3d42.720313!4d-87.9501057
Central
location (8418 Durand Avenue, Sturtevant, WI; inside the Des Plaines
River
watershed)
http://www.google.com/maps/place/FoxConn/@42.727865,-87.9254122,11z/data=!4m8!1m2!2m1!1sfoxconn+wisconsin!3m4!1s0x0:0x9f4211b63f924442!8m2!3d42.6900065!4d-87.9334116
Southern
location (in Mt. Pleasant; inside the Des Plaines River
watershed)
http://www.google.com/maps/place/FOXCONN+WISCONSIN/@42.727865,-87.9254122,11z/data=!4m8!1m2!2m1!1sfoxconn+wisconsin!3m4!1s0x0:0xfc6fb83bdc1d8f12!8m2!3d42.6765041!4d-87.9397631
dcreport.org/2018/08/14/foxconn-gets-a-pollution-pass-for-its-wisconsin-factory/?fbclid=IwAR0IOX0MPHJh1R-pOmP19w5X3HDSAElU7PKRywCu0mdg_i_LHEiO8L2l3yQ
http://madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/illinois-plans-to-challenge-epa-ruling-on-foxconn/article_1fbed7dc-1cc5-57cc-a40f-2c1b5c18b13f.html
http://apnews.com/8ac3c33e68274190a84b6154097c53e7/Illinois-officials-concerned-over-Foxconn-plant-impact
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-foxconn-indiana-smog-trump-epa-20190516-story.html
http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/07/illinois-attorney-general-files-suit-against-epa-ozone-rules-cites-impact-foxconn/586479002/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa-lawsuit/illinois-to-sue-epa-for-exempting-foxconn-plant-from-pollution-controls-idUSKBN1I52NB?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews
4.
Explanation of Proposals #6, #7, #8, and #9
What follows below are the details and purpose of proposals #6, #7, #8, and #9 (spread awareness of Georgism and bioregionalism to focus taxation and border issues on land, de-politicize environmental and health issues, reduce demand for medical devices through reforms to taxation and patents, and decentralize environmental issues).
I defend and explain why I believe that these reforms are needed; and why I believe that my approaches towards understanding these issues will be necessary and helpful to improving environmental and health policies going forward.
Georgism
and Bioregionalism (Proposal #6)
As part
of my issues-based, education-based campaign for the U.S. House of
Representatives, I will teach voters about Georgism and
bioregionalism, in order to increase the degree of public focus on
environmental matters. I will also support measures to reform taxes
and pricing, which will lead to increased affordability and
availability of medical devices, and in turn, to decreased demand for
dangerous low-cost sterilizing chemicals such as EtO.
Changing the way we think about the issues of taxation and borders, and re-focusing those issues on the environment, will cause people in Lake County and elsewhere, to talk about the environment more. This will, in turn, increase the attention which is paid to E.T.O. and other airborne pollutants, carcinogens, and mutagens.
I would draw more attention to environmental issues:
First, by urging more towns and villages in Lake County (especially those which now host Medline and Sterigenics) to vie for designation as one of the many “Tree City USA”s around the country.
Second, I would increase public awareness of the heavily land-focused economic system of Georgism, and the associated topics of:
1) Henry George and Georgism;
2) Land Value Taxation / the “Single Tax”;
3) the broader topic of environmental taxation;
4) Community Land Trusts (and water and air trusts); and
5) Bioregionalism (the ideology of the Cascadia independence movement).
The only way to get clean air, water, and land, is to impose punitive fees, or “environmental taxation”, upon air pollution, water pollution, land degradation, and natural resource extraction.
Teaching voters about Henry George and his proposals, will help governments around the country make taxation more efficient, by ceasing to parasitically tax income, sales, and consumption (taxing away what we trade and produce), and instead taxing forms of economic activity which are actually harmful to somebody or to the environment, and thus deserve to be taxed at high rates that will make what they are doing unprofitable.
The association of business, capital, and production, with monopoly, destruction, waste, and environmental degradation, causes significant antagonism between sectors of the economy. Taxing people and companies based on how much they waste, destroy, degrade the environment, or damage the value of the land they own – instead of how much they produce - will help decrease the conflict between workers and bosses, and between renters and landlords, by decreasing the costs borne by renters and property managers. Pollution, and keeping rent instead of spending it to improve your tenant's dwelling, will be treated as externalities; acts of externalizing problems onto third parties (that is, onto people who don't consent or aren't aware of it).
Treating pollution as an externality, will help communicate that pollution others' land, air, and water is a property rights violation. Taking this stance will help legitimize the need to compensate pollution in the eyes of people whose primary political concerns revolve around issues like property rights and the need to award damages for intentionally committing personal injuries against others.
These proposals will lead to more untaxed safe production, higher taxes on unsafe production, and easier access to work opportunities and opportunities to start a business for all Americans. They will also likely lead to an increased legitimization of environmental concerns in Libertarian, Republican, and constitutional conservative circles (especially if the Lockean proviso on homesteading is promoted as a part of teaching how Georgism and libertarianism are compatible).
Georgists want to tax land, not labor or capital; they want to tax the non-improvement of land, and the disuse and abuse of land, not improvements upon land.
Land hoarders, speculators, slumlords, and the owners of the largest amounts of wasted or unused land, would see the highest taxes in a Georgist system. Families who own large plots of land, and state and federal Bureau of Land Management and Department of Natural Resources -type agencies - as well as the National Park Service - would also pay high taxes.
The point of these taxes would be to make it too expensive to own land privately, or publicly; such that the largest public landowners would have incentive to convert public lands into common-pool resources, and that the largest private landowners would have incentive to sell their lands off (to common and collective management organizations) for more affordable prices. These lands would be preserved and developed, in a sustainable manner, according to the wishes of the people in each bioregion or watershed.
Taxing non-improvements instead of improvements (such as developing your land, cleaning it up, building a house on it, starting a business on it, earning income on it, etc.) would help reduce the demand for the taxation of income and sales, which are unnecessary.
Getting rid of these unnecessary forms of taxation will help reduce the prices of goods, which will help consumers in terms of affordability.
Taxes and Medical Device Patents (Proposal #8)
One example of a type of good whose price would decrease, as a result of eliminating unnecessary taxes, is medical devices; the type of medical devices which are sterilized by E.T.O.. I support eliminating the federal medical device sales tax, but I would understand keeping taxes on profits from the sales of medical devices, at least until the length (“lifespan”) of medical device patents is reduced significantly.
I would implement my E.M.P.A.T.H.I.C. plan as an early step towards decreasing demand for low-cost sterilizing chemicals. E.M.P.A.T.H.I.C. stands for “Eliminating Medical Patents to Achieve Technology for Human Immortality Cheaply”. I support decreasing the lifespans of medical patents, in order to increase the lifespans of human beings. Allowing pharmaceutical patents to expire sooner rather than later, will allow less expensive generic versions to come onto the market sooner. Similarly, allowing medical device patents to expire sooner, will help reduce the costs and waiting time for imitators. Three-dimensional printing stands to revolutionize medicine. As long as the materials used are safe, “medical device piracy” should not be treated as a serious concern.
I believe that patents are temporary monopolies, and that the only reason it is necessary for the government to tax profits, is because the government's creation of that temporary monopoly privilege (through assigning the patent) is what makes companies feel entitled to charge such high prices for medical devices (and pharmaceuticals) in the first place. These businesses are just trying to gouge as much as they can before they are taxed; they probably feel that the high taxes make the high profits justified. But don't the high profits make the high taxes justified too? We can fix this by making it clear to medical companies, what the government and the I.R.S. expect from them. Taxing profits but not sales (in regards to both medical devices, and consumer goods in general), will make it clear that producers are not the enemy of the people; monopolies are.
Once the charging of outrageous profits by medical device companies can be reigned in through patent reform and taxation reform, the high costs and consumer prices of needed medical devices will stabilize, and slowly begin to decline. This will lead to more affordable medical devices, which will help both medical patients, and hospitals, in terms of affordability.
I believe that increasing the affordability of medical devices, will lead to reduced demand for low-cost sterilizing chemicals such as E.T.O.. That's because funds which would have been spent paying taxes on the sales and manufacture of medical devices, will be freed-up. As long as C.E.O.s and investors can be prevented from pocketing too much of those funds, they will be available to be spent on higher-cost sterilizing chemicals which are more expensive because they are less deadly.
Companies would have no reason not to re-allocate funds in such a way. However, if Stop E.T.O. Lake County believes that it would be prudent to pass a law requiring medical device producers to use safer but higher-cost chemicals as a condition of receiving the sales tax breaks which I have described, then I would understand that concern.
My only caveat is that such a policy should take place at the state level, and that it should be implemented concurrently with, and as part of, a planned, smooth, orderly transition of the power to regulate environmental issues, back to the communities from the federal government.
Since health and environmental issues are not explicitly mentioned in the Enumerated Powers of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8), but the power to regulate patents is mentioned, the E.P.A. is on shaky constitutional foundation. But reforming medical patents, and switching to a more efficient taxation system, are much easier to justify as legitimate, constitutional goals, and they could solve the problem just as easily as creating a new federal program could, but without the additional cost.
Decentralizing Environmental Issues (Proposal #9)
The Clean Air Act (a phrase which may refer to the act passed in 1963, and/or the act passed in 1970) prohibits states from passing air pollution standards lower than the national standard, but allows states to pass standards higher than the national standard.
However, before a state can pass higher standards, it must apply for and obtain a waiver, wait for a period of public hearing, and for written comments to be made, and reviewed by the E.P.A.. Then, an E.P.A. administrator determines whether the state deserves the waiver.
During the late days of the George W. Bush Administration, the State of California was required to obtain a waiver, to exempt it from the Clean Air Act's standards on greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles. California wanted to raise its standards above the national standards, and the Clean Air Act forestalled that process. That is unacceptable.
Learn more about that story at the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_of_1963
As long as people are compensated for takings of their sub-standard vehicles which would have resulted from the enforcement of California's standard (as in a "Cash for Clunkers" -type program), states and communities should never be prohibited, nor delayed, from having higher standards than the national standard.
Decentralizing (#9) and De-Policitizing (#7) Environmental Issues, and Implementing Bioregionalism in the Great Lakes Region (#6)
As long as the E.P.A. is under threat of being gutted, and bought out or sold to corporate or pro-pollution interests, we must guard against the risks of that sabotage, by finding local solutions to environmental devastation in our own communities.
One way to do that is to call for the creation of “Community Air Trusts”, to augment the Community Land Trust (C.L.T.) and Community Water Trust movement. We should the economic future of each community, to the ability of that community to plan for sustainable development and production that does not harm the environment.
This likely means forming non-governmental, or QUAsi-NonGOvernmental (Q.U.A.N.G.O.) organizations - preferably run on cooperative, non-profit, or not-for-profit bases – that represent most or all of the groups in the community which are concerned with pollution. The more non-governmental the agency can be, the better; this will help de-politicize the issues of health and environment.
The less the environment, and our health, are seen as political issues - and the more they are seen as scientific issues that are too important to vote on - the better.
I recommend the creation of non-governmental Community Air Trusts (and C.L.T.s, etc.) as part of a mission to de-politicize environmental issues.
I believe that scientific issues such as health, environment, justice, elections, budgets, and other issues, could potentially be de-politicized, in the same manner in which the government of the United Kingdom has done, in its creation of "non-ministerial government departments".
In my opinion, non-governmental regulation of the environment should be achieved through a mix of, or any one of, the following: 1) joint regulation by consumers and workers (i.e., the members of the community and the employees of C.L.T.s, etc.); 2) boards of environmental scientists determining policy instead of voters; and/or 3) "bill of rights for the environment" -type legislation, which would recognize the rights of humans, animals, and other living things, not to be exploited.
Learn more about Q.U.A.N.G.O.s and non-ministerial government departments at the following links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ministerial_government_department
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government-organized_non-governmental_organization
This group of groups (i.e., syndicate) would ideally be untaxed. This is for two reasons: 1) because it would be non-profit, and would thus produce nothing which could be taxed; and 2) because this group would be the one doing the taxing. C.L.T.s (etc.) would not pay taxes; instead, they would pay dividends to the people (but only in communities that choose to run C.L.T.s in this manner). C.L.T.s could thus help create a basic income.
These “Community Air Trust” groups would get together to share information, and make outlines of legislative policy and activism protocols which will allow for preventive and punitive measures to be taken against air polluters in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. This will require public education about Georgist views on tax revenue sourcing policy, because the measures which will be considered, will likely include taxation and fines.
Activities which community land, air, and water trusts, should undertake, include (but are not limited to): 1) education on Land Value Taxation, bioregionalism, and recent issues in environmental policy and local pollution; 2) organizing the community to engage in mass cleanup efforts, and mass tree-planting, efforts, and other efforts to offset carbon emissions; 3) streamlining the gathering of legal resources to assist people interested in filing lawsuits against polluters); and 4) organizing efforts to solicit contributions to be spent relieving the medical needs of people harmed by pollution.
Learn more about community land trusts, including one in Lake County, by visiting the following links:
http://www.cpahousing.org/home-buying/community-land-trust-inclusionary-housing-programs/
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/affordable-housing-always/397637/
Education about bioregionalism will also be essential in these groups, because the boundaries of communities and counties overlap in a manner which often has almost nothing to do with the pre-existing geographical and topographical features of the surrounding environment. By taking advantage of the free gift which nature has given us, in the form of mountain ranges, we can make use of these natural borders. This will help drastically reduce the costs of maintaining, patrolling, and defending walls and fences; no enemy in his right mind would come over a mountain range.
Most importantly for environmentalists, bioregionalism will help reduce conflict over water, because all the water in each individual river system will be located in a single political jurisdiction. This will eliminate the occurrence of problems such as the situation involving Foxconn Technology Group.
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company with locations in southern Wisconsin. Those three locations process cell phone components, causing pollution which affects the air quality of people in the area, as well as the water supply of people living to the south. The two southernmost locations of the three, are located in Mt. Pleasant and Sturtevant, Wisconsin, at the extreme northern edge of the Des Plaines River watershed. Most of that watershed is, and the downstream areas of the Des Plaines River are, located in Illinois.
When all water pollution can be traced upstream, without crossing any political borders, then there will be no chance of the federal government claiming the right to intervene in conflicts over water, or disputes over water quality, based on interstate commerce clause grounds. Keeping all water pollution in a single jurisdiction, will help ensure that the environment - an issue which I believe deserves to be treated as an innately local issue, politically speaking - will stay a local issue.
[Note: It's possible to justify national or federal regulation of air pollution, based on the fact that pollution that goes into the air, can easily move across mountain ranges. However, the validity of that argument does not invalidate the case for bioregionalism, being that air pollution gets into the water and affects the water cycle, and that the spread of air pollution is still somewhat slowed by mountain ranges.]
I believe that these measures will help create a "common-pool resource" mindset of land, water, and air quality management, for the people of each bioregion and watershed (for example, the Des Plaines River watershed, and the larger Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River system watershed which borders on the Des Plaines watershed). I believe that these measures will also prevent the E.P.A. from unnecessarily intruding in local environmental issues in a way that lowers standards for communities wishing to increase their quality of living.
5. Conclusion
I believe that - by “hedging our bets” and creating local alternatives to the E.P.A. (to guard against sabotage and failure), and de-politicizing environment and other scientific issues - we can reduce conflict over the environment.
I hope that my proposals will be helpful in reducing not only partisan political conflicts, but also conflicts between central and local levels of government, as well as conflict over natural resources such as good quality land, water, and air.
Ensuring equal opportunity to access natural resources, and make use of them for survival, is crucial to reducing the risk that climate change, and the scarcity of resources which climate change intensifies, will lead to more violent conflict over those resources, and to more acts of "eco-terrorism" (which are increasingly being viewed as necessary to take decisive action in the face of the various threats to the health of the planet and the ability of human beings to survive in harmony with it).
6. Resources
Please visit the following links to learn more about Henry George and his ideas on land, economics, taxation, and wealth disparity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9WAMpM6e9Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUXyfVDyXlQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpqtfMraJvU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8l8w7hG8ho
Visit these links to learn about the Georgist organization Common Ground:
http://commonground-usa.net/
http://commongroundorwa.org/related-organizations/
Visit the following links to learn more about economist Scott Baker's views on Georgism, including why he thinks Land Value Taxation could drastically increase the amount of wealth taxable by the government:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3EmrqPfsJQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qphu3buTpmg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukXLpkn_UFY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zifxuH2NiKc
Written on September 14th and 17th, 2020
Published Incomplete on September 17th, 2020
Edited and Expanded on September 18th and 30th, 2020
Title Has Changed Since Original Publication
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