Lake Trout, Mercury and a Bold Faced Lie

This is about fish, clean air and bold faced lies. You need to know something about lies first.

President Obama has spent most of the year pushing for higher taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.” These of course are individuals with annual incomes greater than $200 thousand and households exceeding $250 thousand.

As I blogged earlier in The American Peasant Tripping Down Stalin’s Path, taxing all household income above $200 thousand a year at a 100% tax rate would net the US Treasury about $2 trillion, just enough to cover current federal budget deficits with a little left over to begin retiring some of our national dept.

Nevertheless, the President has pushed this mantra hard enough and long enough that some 66% of Americans believe the rich are not paying their fair share in income taxes. It’s a bold faced lie.

In the table below, courtesy of the US Internal Revenue Service, those in the top 10% of adjusted gross income tax returns provided the treasury with of over 70% of its income tax receipts. The top 50% of personal income tax filers coughed up 97.75% of all personal income taxes paid.

Tax Year 2009

Percentiles Ranked by AGI	AGI Threshold on Percentiles	Percentage of Federal Personal Income Tax Paid
Top 1%	$343,927	36.73
Top 5%	$154,643	58.66
Top 10%	$112,124	70.47
Top 25%	$66,193	87.30
Top 50%	$32,396	97.75
Bottom 50%	<$32,396	2.25
Note: AGI is Adjusted Gross Income

Now, in politics if you repeat a lie often and with confidence, it becomes a political truth to drive policies that would otherwise be untenable. That is the sad truth infecting not only our legislative bodies, but permeating our regulatory agencies as well. Here is the bold, but veiled face of tyranny. So now for the truth about fish and mercury.

Just before Christmas, the US Environmental Protection Agency published its rules for toxic mercury emissions from coal and oil fired electric power plants. The EPA has full statutory authority to establish emission control standards for toxic air pollutants. But those standards have to reflect human health risks and environmental harm weighted with compliance costs.

Toxic mercury air emissions from coal fired power plant present minimal direct human health risks. Mercury is a bio-accumulating toxin which as it works its way through the aquatic food chain can accumulate to levels of some concern in larger aquatic species if we eat them. Hence, here in Milwaukee for example, we are warned not to eat more than one meal a week of wild caught Lake Michigan lake trout. Pregnant women and nursing mothers are warned not to eat it at all.

EPA’s new regulation was promulgated to address this problem. But here’s how, according to The Politico, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson unveiled the new rule:

““I understand the importance of protection … both my sons struggled with asthma,” Jackson said. “Fifteen years ago, my first son spent his very first Christmas in the hospital,” she said. “I can tell you, I think he was admitted almost 15 years ago to this day.”

EPA says the new standards will prevent 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks a year, along with 130,000 childhood asthma symptoms and 6,300 fewer cases of acute bronchitis in children.”

Suddenly the rule is no longer about mercury and fish, but is instead about childhood asthma symptoms. It’s bait and switch, the swindle and the big lie. Eating lake trout does not cause childhood asthma or bronchitis.

EPA estimates the rule cost’s to electric utilities and ultimately to consumers will exceed $10 billion. Critics contend the costs could reach $100 billion. According to IHS/Global Insight, the world’s largest economics consulting firm with more than 3800 clients in industry, finance and government worldwide, for every billion dollars spent in complying with the new rule, 16,000 jobs will be lost and the U.S. GDP will be reduced by up to $1.2 billion.  (Full Text – A summary of a cost/benefit white paper by the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council)

In short, if the rule withstands court challenges, what is likely to be one of costliest rules in EPA’s history is justified on a bold faced lie. It will not significantly reduce mercury concentrations in fish. A Wall Street Journal editorial pointed out the total benefits from removing the mercury will amount to less than $8 million. (Full Text)

The questionable health benefits result from the reduction in fine particulates that will also be stripped from the flue gasses in the course of meeting mercury standard. Even those benefits are statistically insignificant.

The AP reported the rule could force the shutdown of between some 30 and 60 coal fired power plants. Other than that, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal, on this news the Fourth Estate has remained silent.

On a more positive note, the USEPA has newly launched an internal reform effort. It is trying to reinvent itself as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Environmental Sustainability. (Full Text) It had to reach far back into environmental law to find the statutory authority to do so and could only manage legal justification with a grossly edited and truncated minor paragraph from the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.

Tyranny.