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SAN FRANCISCO — State regulators plan to fine Pacific Gas & Electric Co. $16.8 million for failing to perform gas leak surveys in the wake of a deadly pipeline explosion in a San Francisco suburb in 2010.

The California Public Utilities Commission announced the fine Friday, as part of a new citation program that gives its staff oversight muscle to fine natural gas companies for safety problems spotted on their lines.

The Sept. 9, 2010 blast on the transmission line in San Bruno ignited a fireball that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes.

Last year, PG&E self-reported to the commission that the company did not perform pipeline leak surveys in several locations, in violation of state regulations. PG&E has 10 days to pay the fine using shareholder dollars, or appeal.

The FDIC shuttered four additional banks today bringing the 2012 count to seven. The four banks closed were BankEast in Knoxville, TN, Patriot Bank Minnesota in Forest Lake, MN, Tennessee Commerce Bank in Franklin, TN and First Guaranty Bank and Trust Company of Jacksonville in Jacksonville, FL. The general pattern of the FDIC closing banks with weak operating characteristics and deepening asset quality troubles continues. All four banks found buyers and will be spending the weekend changing over to their new owners.

Forensic analysis pages for these banks can be found here.

First Guaranty Bank and Trust Company of Jacksonville – Jacksonville, FL 1/27/2012

Patriot Bank Minnesota – Forest Lake, MN 1/27/2012

Tennessee Commerce Bank – Franklin, TN 1/27/2012

BankEast – Knoxville, TN 1/27/2012

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Entergy Corp.’s Vermont Yankee nuclear plant once again is refusing the state’s request that it conduct more tests for radioactive tritium in a former drinking water well on the plant grounds.

Christopher Wamser, site vice president for plant owner Entergy, says in a Jan. 20 letter to Public Service Commissioner Elizabeth Miller that such testing would be inappropriate because it could contaminate the bedrock aquifer at the bottom of the well and might not produce reliable results.

“We do not see how the incremental value of the results from such testing would outweigh the risk, particularly when there is already extensive testing information available from numerous other wells on- and off-site (including drinking water wells),” Wamser wrote in a letter released by Miller’s department.

A key issue in the dispute is what type of testing would be most appropriate.

The plant says it would want to use a method that requires purging the well, which could increase the chances of the bedrock aquifer becoming contaminated. Wamser said the state’s suggestion that a “grab sample” be taken from the well wouldn’t produce reliable results.

Wamser wrote that “vertical flow within the well and insertion of the sampling equipment would cause mixing within the well column and would not tell us the location of tritium, if any, within that column.”

Laurence Becker, the state geologist, said in an interview that Wamser’s reading of the situation is wrong. He said he had checked with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and been told that the amounts of tritium in the well water would be consistent.

“The EPA got back to us about sampling for tritium in a water column. It’s mixed very completely,” Becker said. “You can take a grab sample from what is sitting in the bore hole right now and get a sense of what the tritium levels are.”

Becker said the state is especially interested in new results for the well, which is deeper than other test wells dug around the plant since tritium was first discovered to have leaked in late 2009.

Entergy officials had produced a conceptual site characterization showing that water flows up from the bedrock into shallower underground depths where tritium has been found. The theory was that with water flowing upward, tritium — essentially a radioactive form of water — would not be flowing downward to the bedrock.

That’s why testing of a well dug into bedrock is important, Becker said, especially when one earlier test showed tritium in it.

“Maybe it’s an anomaly, maybe it’s not,” he said.

Gov. Peter Shumlin first requested follow-up tests of the former drinking water well in late 2010, while he was still governor-elect. Several requests by the state since then also have been rebuffed.

Wamser’s Jan. 20 letter came one day after a federal judge in Brattleboro issued a ruling saying Vermont may not force its lone nuclear plant to shut down when its initial 40-year license expires March 21.

Recent comments by Mitt Romney, still the probable Republican nominee for president, all but guarantee the inequality issue will remain front and center this election year.

When asked whether people who question the current distribution of wealth and power are motivated by “jealousy or fairness,” Romney insisted, “I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare.” And in this election year he advised that if we do discuss inequality we do so “in quiet rooms” not in public debates.

A public debate, of course, is inevitable. And welcome. To help that debate along I’ll address the five major statements that comprise the Republican argument on inequality.

1. Income is Not All That Unequal

Actually it is. Since 1980 the top 1 percent has increased its share of the national income by an astounding $1.1 trillion. Today 300,000 very rich Americans enjoy almost as much income as 150 million.

Since 1980, the income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans has increased a meager $303 or 1 percent. The top 1 percent’s income has more than doubled, increasing by about $500,000. And the really, really rich, the top 10th of 1 percent, made out, dare I say, like bandits, quadrupling their income to $22 million.

Meanwhile a full-time worker’s wage was 11 percent lower in 2004 than in 1973, adjusting for inflation even though their productivity increased by 78 percent. Productivity gains swelled corporate profits, which reached an all time high in 2010. And that in turn fueled an unprecedented inequality within the workplace itself. In 2010, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, the average CEO in large companies earned 325 times more than the average worker.

2. Inequality doesn’t matter because in America ambition and hard work can make a pauper a millionaire.

This is folklore. A worker’s initial position in the income distribution is highly predictive of how much he or she earns later in the career. And as the Brookings Institution reports, “there is growing evidence of less intergenerational economic mobility in the United States than in many other rich industrialized countries.”

The bitter fact is that it is harder for a poor person in America to become rich than in virtually any other industrialized country.

3. Income inequality is not a result of tax policy.

Nonsense. A painstaking analysis by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Stefanie Stantcheva found “a strong correlation between the reductions in top tax rates and the increases in top 1% pre-tax income shares from 1975-79 to 2004-08.” For example, the U.S. slashed the top income tax rate by 35 percent and witnessed a large ten percent increase in its top 1% pre-tax income share. “By contrast, France or Germany saw very little change in their top tax rates and their top 1% income shares during the same period.”

4. Taxing the rich will slow economic growth

An examination of 18 OECD countries found “little empirical support for the claim that reducing the progressivity of the tax code has spurred economic growth, business formation or job growth”.

Indeed, Piketty, Saez and Stantcheva’s rigorous analysis came to the opposite conclusion. Our economy may be growing more slowly because we are taxing the rich too little, not too much. Economists Peter Diamond and Saez estimated the optimal top tax rate, that is the tax rate that would maximize revenue without slowing economic growth, could be as high as 83 percent.

Redistributing income stimulates economies in part because when 1% make more they save whereas when the 99% make more they spend. As a result, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s, a dollar in tax cuts on capital gains adds .38 cents of economic growth while a dollar in unemployment benefits gives the economy a boost of $1.63 and a dollar of food stamps adds $1.73.

5. Taxing the rich would not raise much money

Of course it would. If only the richest 400 families, whose average income in 2008 was an astounding $270 million, actually paid the statutory rate of 39 percent (revived as of next January 1) an additional $500 billion would be raised over 10 years, putting a substantial dent in the projected deficit.

In 2010 hedge fund manager John Paulson made $5 billion. That year, according to Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, Paulson paid no income taxes. Am I envious, Mr. Romney? You bet I am. But I’m also angry at the stark injustice of it all. And terrified of the power such wealth can wield in a country that allows billionaires to spend unlimited sums influencing legislation and elections.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that two-thirds of Americans now believe the conflict between rich and poor is our greatest source of tension. I agree. It is a conflict that deserves to be aired fully and in public.

As the global elite gathers for the World Economic Forum this week, the “Occupy” igloos popping up around Davos, Switzerland should serve as a great visual reminder that inequality can no longer be ignored.

For the last several years I ticked the box “Inequality” in the pre-Davos survey checking out what participants are most concerned about — while fervently wishing (though doubting) it would then appear as a major trend in the summarized results. Before and after the crash of 2008, other issues topped the agenda, but last year, for the first time, a majority of invitees shared disquiet about the rising levels of inequality in the world. Of course, this might be because the captains of industry and world leaders attending were probably not the ones dutifully filling out surveys, but still…

Last year was also the first year that an issue more squarely in the sights of global development organizations — cutting maternal and child mortality rates — finally made it to the main stage (the norm being that health, education, and poverty discussions take place in the margins). It was great to see government and business leaders pounding fists over real life-and-death issues that affect millions of too-often-unheard women and children at the bottom of the economic scale. This helped set the agenda for the win later in the year, when funding pledges for the (at-the-time-ailing) Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunization actually exceeded the target. And that primed the pump for a much-needed push toward universal coverage to guard against killer diseases such as measles, even in the poorest communities.

At the same time, it was disappointing how poorly the world’s elite grasped the significance of what was then unfolding in Tunisia. I recall the words of a young Iranian-American woman I met, who promised that this was the kick-off and that momentum was building right across the Arab world — but no one was listening to her then. Given the tumultuous year that followed, it’s no surprise that the theme for this year’s forum, “The great transformation — shaping new models,” virtually admits that last year’s challenge to agree on “shared norms for the new reality” was pretty much overtaken by events.

In the run-up to this year’s conference, the issue of inequality has gone mainstream in a big way — at least it seems that way in London, where the media, the politicians, and even some brave bankers are vying to respond to the sense of injustice and inequality permeating the economic gloom. But will this translate in the global arena? Despite the Occupy movement, the discourse was quite different in the United States when I visited last month, and I notice many more U.S. companies signed up for Davos this year, for some reason. Brazil, Russia, India, and China — those large, emerging economies known as the BRICs — will see it differently, too. But the truth is, inequality is a major problem in all these countries. And as UNICEF’s 2011 report on global inequality demonstrated, “inequality is also strongly associated with political instability.”

However, even if the argument to address inequality is well-made at Davos, many will argue that the priority has to be growth, and that development assistance can’t be afforded in a downturn, or that increased domestic investment in social sectors needs to wait for growth. I’ll be arguing for health and education investments in the next generation, not just as a moral obligation or a political necessity but because it’s smart economics. The evidence is there: between 30 and 50 percent of Asia’s growth between 1965 and 1990 has been attributed to improvements in reproductive health and to reductions in child mortality and fertility rates, and malaria alone is estimated to cost Africa $12 billion a year in lost revenue. It’s one thing when Save the Children makes this argument, but fortunately, an increasing number of business leaders are getting behind the message. They are responding to what their employees and customers are looking for: a more holistic interpretation of their mission and a more intuitive sense that building a fairer world has got to be good for business.

We’ve never been shy about our love for SFO’s terminal two. (Between the LEED certification, a cafeteria that rivals the Ferry Building and a vintage record exhibit, who would?) But the terminal’s newest addition takes the cake.

On Thursday, SFO opened the doors to its new yoga room — the jewel in the terminal’s collection of truly San Francisco amenities.

(SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS AND VIDEO)

The “zen room” will be open free-of-charge to ticketed passengers past the security gate. The room is dimly lit and is a shoe, noise and mobile phone-free zone, complete with yoga mats.

See pictures of the new yoga room in our slideshow and watch NBC’s video below:

View more videos at: http://nbcbayarea.com.

The CEO of one of the country’s largest investment banks has some choice words for any employees upset about the prospect of a smaller paycheck this year.

James Gorman, the head of Morgan Stanley, said that if his workers are so angry about their latest, trimmed-down paycheck, it’s probably time for them to go. Gorman stands in contrast with many of his executive counterparts, who have largely stayed silent on the issue of declining compensation, despite an industry-wide restructuring.

“I say [to disgruntled Morgan Stanley employees], listen, you’re naive, read the newspaper, number one,” Gorman said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “Number two, if you put your compensation in a one year context to define your overall level of happiness, you’ve got a problem that is bigger than the job. And number three, if you’re really unhappy, just leave. Life’s too short.”

Morgan Stanley announced earlier this month that it would cap cash bonuses for 2011 at $125,000 and that its executives — including Gorman — wouldn’t be getting any cash bonuses, according to The New York Times.

Gorman and his employees at Morgan Stanley aren’t the only ones on Wall Street contending with smaller paychecks. Anxiety over the state of the global economy, slow dealmaking and a boost in public anger over the financial industry’s high pay have likely pushed firms to slash their compensation pools to the lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reports.

And that’s for those that’ve kept their jobs. All told, Wall Street laid off more than 200,000 employees in 2011 alone.

“The world has changed and the banking industry has gone through a fundamental change and we have to readjust,” Gorman said in the interview.

Many workers have had trouble coming to terms with the new reality. Bonus day at Goldman Sachs last week was a “bloodbath,” one mid-level employee told CNBC, as some workers learned they would be taking home smaller bonuses this year — and some none at all. In addition, the firm cut the pay of some if its senior workers in half.

Investment bankers at Bank of America also found out earlier this week that their compensation would be slashed by 25 percent. That’s part of a larger push to cut total costs at America’s second-largest bank by as much as $8 billion per year.

President Obama last night unveiled a new twist on an old idea in his State of the Union address to Congress — limit the loopholes and tax giveaways that very wealthy people use to reduce their taxes far below the rate honest workers pay. Obama called for a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on income over one million dollars. To some, this sounds like a radical idea, but it really isn’t. It is merely a refinement of a part of the tax code that has been with us for decades: the Alternative Minimum Tax.

The A.M.T. was enacted for precisely the same reason Obama is calling for a 30 percent tax rate on every dollar made over and above the first million per year — fairness. The ultra-wealthy have always been able to afford spending money to use tax shelters and tax attorneys to move their dough around so they avoid paying what they should be paying — the same rates everyone else pays. So the A.M.T. was introduced to fix the problem. If you make a substantial amount of money, you must figure your income taxes two ways: the traditional way, and using the A.M.T. worksheet. Whichever’s higher, in essence, is what you must pay (if you fall under the rules for using the A.M.T.).

Now you may be thinking, “I’ve heard of the A.M.T. before… something about Congress ‘fixing’ it… ” This is where we get into some massive budgetary fiction, or (if you prefer) blatant hypocrisy by our lawmakers (of both parties, it bears mentioning). The problem stems from the fact that the A.M.T. has not been truly modernized in quite a while. The income limits it set when it was enacted covered people who made a lot of money back then — but when you fast-forward three or four decades, the same dollar amount now regularly hits people in the middle class (and really hits people in the upper middle class), rather than its intended target: the truly wealthy.

This is where the hypocrisy comes in. Why don’t the folks in Congress just up the limits? It’s common sense, right? If there’s a problem with the dollar limits to the A.M.T., then adjust the limits and it works as intended again. Simple!

Well, that’s what does indeed happen. Every single year, like clockwork, Congress passes an “A.M.T. fix,” usually late in December when they think nobody’s paying attention. They do not do this by honestly fixing the law, but instead by only carving out an exemption for a single year. There’s a reason for this, which is where the budgetary fiction comes in. When Congress puts together a federal budget, they project it out for ten years into the future. These projections are nothing more than smoke and mirrors to begin with, because nobody — that’s nobody, no matter how many economic degrees they have — can accurately predict the future, whether economically or otherwise. Putting that fiction aside, though, the A.M.T. is a fiction on top of this basic budgetary fiction. Because the A.M.T. — if not “fixed” — is scheduled to take in billions and billions of dollars in tax revenue. To put it another way, by using the outdated A.M.T. formula in the ten-year projections, it makes the budget picture look rosier than it actually is. If the A.M.T. were permanently fixed — instead of year-to-year, the way it is done now — then the deficit projections would be a lot larger. The fact that this is closer to actual reality matters little, because most people aren’t aware of the fiction and the hypocrisy Congress regularly operates under.

So we continue “fixing” the A.M.T., and Congress pretends that they’re not going to fix it for the next nine years, and the budget numbers are easier to work with — even though Congress does indeed fix the A.M.T. each and every single year, and the tax revenues in the budget projections never actually appear. Once again, to be clear: both political parties are in on this scam. They both use the fictional numbers, while they know full well it is nothing more than a pipe dream that this money will ever materialize in the U.S. Treasury.

Which brings us back to Obama’s suggestion in the State of yhe Union. While to some it might sound like a brand-new program, it really isn’t. It would just be beefing up and modernizing the A.M.T. so that it works as it was originally intended — to make sure the ultra-wealthy are paying the same rates as everyone else. But there’s a golden opportunity here as well, because Obama’s plan would bring in more money — actual, real money and not fictional, budgetary-dream money. Because more money would be coming in, it would be the prime time to institute a permanent “fix” on the A.M.T. — because the new income could balance out the “loss” of the fictional income in the ten-year budget projections.

It is silly and (at its core) dishonest to “fix” the A.M.T. every single year as if it is some sort of emergency situation. It should be fixed once and for all. If Obama’s new “Alternative Millionaires’ Minimum Tax” were combined with such a permanent fix, it could also be a lot easier to sell politically, since it would be “lowering taxes” on millions of households (in the ten-year projections), while only forcing a relative few households to “pay their fair share, just like everybody else.” I realize this is no more than political rhetoric, and I also realize the chances of Obama actually passing this scheme are extremely low this year.

Whether it passes or not, it’s an idea that most Americans are going to agree with — even more so if the threat of paying the A.M.T. is removed entirely for (say) all households making less than $250,000 (Obama’s usual dividing line for the middle class). End the A.M.T. on the middle class, and beef it up considerably on the millionaires and billionaires. Tying the two together is the logical way to go, and it also has the benefit of removing the yearly hypocrisy over the fictional budget numbers for nine out of ten of the projected years. It’s time to end this scam — perpetrated by both parties — once and for all. Obama should go ahead with his A.M.M.T., and at the same time reform the A.M.T. so that Congress won’t have to perform this fudging of reality every single year.

Chris Weigant blogs at:

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