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A Shocking Amount of E-Waste Recycling Is a Complete Sham (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Forty percent of all U.S. electronics recyclers testers included in [a study that used GPS trackers to follow e-waste over the course of two years] proved to be complete shams, with our e-waste getting shipped wholesale to landfills in Hong Kong, China, and developing nations in Africa and Asia. The most important thing to know about the e-waste recycling industry is that it is not free to recycle an old computer or an old CRT television. The value of the raw materials in the vast majority of old electronics is worth less than it costs to actually recycle them. While consumers rarely have to pay e-waste recycling companies to take their old electronics (costs are offset by local tax money or manufacturers fronting the bill as part of a legally mandated obligated recycling quota), companies, governments, and organizations do. Based on the results of a new study from industry watchdog Basel Action Network and MIT, industry documents obtained by Motherboard, and interviews with industry insiders, it's clear that the e-waste recycling industry is filled with sham operations profiting off of shipping toxic waste to developing nations. Here are the major findings of the study and of my interviews and reporting: Real, environmentally sustainable electronics recycling can be profitable only if recycling companies charge a fee to take on old machines; the sale of recycled materials rarely if ever covers the actual cost of recycling in the United States. Companies, governments, and other organizations have a requirement to recycle old machines; because there is little oversight or enforcement, a secondary industry of fake recyclers has popped up to undercut sustainable recyclers. These "recyclers," which advertise themselves as green and sustainable, get paid pennies per pound to take in old TVs, computers, printers, and monitors. Rather than recycle them domestically, the recycling companies sell them to junkyards in developing nations, either through middlemen or directly. These foreign junkyards hire low-wage employees to pick through the few valuable components of often toxic old machines. The toxic machines are then left in the scrapyards or dumped nearby. Using GPS trackers, industry watchdog Basel Action Network found that 40 percent of electronics recyclers it tested in the United States fall into this "scam recycling" category.
I see this on receipts in California for some electronics. Where is this going? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... The retailers collecting this fee sure as hell have no collection dept for anything. Once in a while there's a notice in the mail for an electronic waste collection center one or two times per year.
... Now stop reminding me about it.
Where they found a battery with enough juice to power a GPS (Radio) device for the months required to cross the ocean, through the hull of a ship, and then have the GPS unit pass undetected through customs etc?
I think it's more likely someone found the GPS unit, and sold it on Ebay, raising a false positive when it was powered up. Or, the entire article could be a sham to begin with.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I don't know about elsewhere, but in California when you buy any sort of large electronics (TV, computer, monitor, etc.) there's a recycling fee added as a line item on the receipt to cover recycling the device when it's discarded. Recyclers in California should be getting paid for every device they take with money that's already been collected for that purpose. Maybe that recycling fee needs to be increased and applied nation-wide, with payment going only to those recyclers who actually recycle the equipment and can prove it.
Sure, it did not save the environment, but at least made you feel like you cared.
We apologise for the faults in the summary. Those responsible have been sacked.
Even if you require them to charge a fee, it is always going to be cheaper to ship it overseas to a landfill than recycle it properly, and the monetary incentive means there will always be someone breaking the law. The only solution is proper enforcement.
Seriously, the ONLY way to solve this, is for us to stop allowing ANY garbage to be exported. Then capitalism will find solutions rather quickly. Most importantly, it will help bring back manufacturing since we will then have resources that need to be used, and can not be exported.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I always debated this with people that think that everything must be digital because "dead-tree stuff is bad and will kill our planet (tm)". Come on! First trees are renewable and I prefer having papers and books in a landfield than laptop, cell, TV, batteries, ... Don't get me wrong. I work in IT for 21 years and I love it, but the problem is that people change their e-stuffs almost every year because their e-stuffs became obsolete, slow like hell because the latest OS updates (I'm talking to you Apple and Microsoft), ...
PS: Sorry for my English quality.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
The editors were replaced with dancing llamas a looong time ago (and not at great expense, either).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And just in case you're not sure, take apart all the printers and scanners you can get your hands on. Salvage the stepper motors and the smooth rods, including the rods used to hold rubber rollers. They may not all be 8mm rods but lots of different 3D printers can use anything from 6 to 12mm rods, you just have to modify them a bit. And nothing prevents you from using bigger, heavier NEMA 23 steppers for the Z-axis and Y-axis. For a bowden printer you could also use one for the extruder.
I much prefer the eBay / local company route (like Re:PC). Instead of just scrapping old hardware, it is serviced into other older machines to keep them running.
an example I bring up all the time is the HP 2100 LaserJet printers from the late '90s. These things still work GREAT. They have 3 DIMM slots though, so I've salvaged extra RAM for them from eBay over the years. Who the hell else wants old 16MiB DIMMs anyways? So someone puts them up on eBay, and I buy them. They get a little extra side cash, and the printers I service get a little extra push in performance for larger modern documents. \
a kid wants to get into tech and start learning computer? sure, I'll just hit up the eBay or Re:PC again and get an old HP Core 2 Duo workstation for about $100. now they can have something to learn to install windows/linux on over and over again.
It is true that computer garbage is worthless crap, except when you re-use parts (or whole items). In some countries, people repair even dumb phones.
Basel is a mouthpiece for the recycling industries, they're paid to make high profile stories once in a while. The industries want for all US garbage to be destroyed in the US. This would expand their business, that's all. They want to make it illegal that your dead laptop's LCD panel ends up in some African kid's laptop.
Because there is little oversight or enforcement, a secondary industry of fake editors has popped up to undercut sustainable editing. These "editors," which advertise themselves as green and sustainable, get paid pennies per post about old TVs, computers, printers, and monitors. Rather than edit them domestically, the editing companies sell them to editors in developing nations, either through middlemen or directly. These foreign editors hire low-wage employees to pick through the few valuable components of often toxic old stories.
It's all about who pays for what how. The fact that it is far easier to chuck the broken kit and buy new than get the upgrade / repair is a result of the incredible efficiency of mass production. If you want to avoid waste, you have to make the waste worth something - a standard trick in the Chemical industry, but one not associated with electronics because of the speed of change - or make visibly recycling electronics a mandatory requirement, to be paid for by a visible tax on electronic items. Which is the problem; the price of virtue is too high...
At least my carbon credits are on the up and up.
Politicians like this scheme because there's graft involved. They can get contributions from the companies that participate in this.
The so-called environmental politicians would prefer to see something scrapped than for someone to get some use out of used electronics.
I'm typing this right now on a HP laptop that was thrown out. It had HP's infamous lead free solder ball grid array problem. Taking the motherboard out, putting it in a toaster over at 350 for 10 minutes, and then blowing a heat gun on the graphics chip until it reached 200 deg C. got it reattached. I had the same problem with a HP printer.
Every LCD TV in my house has been something that I repaired. I don't strip out the boards from TVs I can't use the make a buck on eBay. I give the extra TVs I fix to friends and to non-profit organizations. But that's really against the law here.
The best thing I got was a Jura coffee maker. It just needed a valve replaced at $28 shipped from Germany. New ones sell for $1400, and used ones are at least $300. (Not that I would pay that much for a coffee maker.)
How about making electronics stuff that, you know, lasts? And that can be economically repaired? Why don't we, as a culture, forego the latest bit of shiny in favour of, I dunno, 4-or-5-year-old devices that still do what they're needed to do, even if they're slightly slower, slightly bigger or smaller, and a bit lower in resolution? And while we're at it, let's make it fucking illegal to sell products whose batteries can't be easily and readily replaced by the user.
The three R's of conservation are, in descending order of preference, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. We should make the first one the highest priority, followed closely by the second. If we're relying heavily on the third to save our asses from environmental destruction and material depletion, we've already failed. If we're tossing items into landfill when they contain precious metals and non-renewable petroleum products, (not to mention all the energy that went into making those items, from raw material to finished products), then we're committing a crime against the Earth and its future inhabitants. But hey, it's all good, because voodoo economics has almost totally removed environmental damage and resource depletion as cost factors in production, and my, those bonuses are going to be really sweet this year.
We've made a god of the giant Ponzi scheme we call the economy, and we're scared shitless of even acknowledging to ourselves, (much less pointing out to each other), that not only does this emperor have no clothes, he's on fucking life support, and we're mortgaging our descendants' lives to keep him going.
My apologies for the mixed metaphors.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
It seems to me that finding these kinds of things should be the job of the FBI. I propose a new law that states that any time a major corruption scandal is uncovered by citizens ahead of the FBI, that the director of the FBI (and possibly others) get a paycut for the next fiscal year.
We pay a fee at the time of purchase in Canada. Have to do it then. If it was at the time of disposal, people would throw it in a ditch.
The electronics aren't being dumped in Africa, they're being sold second-hand in Africa. Used Western/Japanese/Korean brands are more valuable than new Chinese brands.
I realized 10 years ago that ALL recycling is just a money making scam.
Why not chuck these minerals back into Nature's hotpot? aka volcanos...
In 10,000 years we'll have new gold seams to send child labour into to exploit!
Simple.
Maybe if it leaches into your ground water but with the amount of computer your average slashdotter has had his hands in, this website would have a much smaller user base.
I mean, you're right about capitalism finding solutions. We'll dump it in the south (where our poor disenfranchised live) or in Flint, Mi. It's just more convenient to send it over seas. You don't have to listen to 60 minutes do an expose and you don't have to bother folding the corps you set up to give yourself plausible deniability.
What we are absolutely _not_ going to do is properly dispose of it. There's always an underclass you can shit on. If all else fails there are 5 little words that end any discussions about it: Whose. Gonna. Pay. For. It.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
EOMA68 is a computing card standard where the computer is literally in the shape of a physical card that can then be plugged into different types of housing. The benefit of this is if you upgrade your CPU/ram/computer in your laptop you don't have to replace the main components like the LCD screen, keyboard, touchpad, battery, etc. And after you upgrade the main component by ejecting the card and inserting the new one (at a fraction of the cost of replacing the whole computer) you can re-utilized the older computer card in a different type of devices such as a tablet housing, router housing, or similar. Or you can sell it on eBay. There are even use case for hosting providers to provide real cheap cost effective lower power full computers instead of virtual machines. The benefits to that are great- improved security- security you control, etc.
Strip the useful components and send them over seas without the extra heavy metals that are ending up in some kid in Africa (or Flint, Mi's) water supply? Of course, that raises the one question nobody in America ever likes to answer: Who's gonna pay for it?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I beg to differ
Wrong!
"The value of the raw materials in the vast majority of old electronics is less than it costs to actually recycle them."
or
"The raw materials in the vast majority of old electronics are worth less than it costs to actually recycle them."
At the bottom of the
And the transition was so seamless that barely anyone noticed it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
By mandating the use of politically correct solder in place of lead solder, governments have replaced electronic equipment that lasted decades with new equipment that lasts months or a few years at most, thus multiplying the amount of waste and the need for (fraudulent) recycling.
Similar to Germany's car industry, all manufacturing producing physical waste (and potentially recyclable) should have the reclamation/recycling cost covered by the manufacturer. That means the full cost of the item from build to final teardown and recycling is incorporated into the cost of the item... this also incentivises the manufacturer to think about the products full lifecycle and design in better reuse and recycling into the product, including such things are reducing number and types of plastics, metals and other materials and clearly labeling them all as well as making the product easier (cheaper) to disassemble.
OMG! Thirld world countries took all our good jobs, now they are stealing our trash!
I'm sure President Trump will know how to solve this with a wall or something....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
People pump out documentaries on this stuff just as frequently as we ship our junk out to other countries. Has it not been common wisdom to flat out assume your old waste is being shipped out to China, India, etc. for people to pick through?
It's pretty much the reason that we have it beaten into our heads to manually remove, destroy, and dispose of our hard drives before recycling our e waste, no?
If anything, the real story would be that the practice is less prevalent than the media has exaggerated it to occur for the past decade and a half, rather than how "shocking" the amount exported is. In all honesty, 40% is a pretty shockingly low figure to me given all the campaigns I've seen through much of my life.
Who edited and proof-read this summary? Oh, wait, nevermind...
Proof-read? Who even read it? It is a wall of text.. Just insert some new-lines for crist sake.
Been telling people (on here even) this for years.
Some companies do do it properly. A lot just ship off to China to someone who signs a form to SAY they are compliant when they are quite obviously not.
There are documentaries galore where they GPS-tag junk and it ends up in landfill.
There's no way to make things profitable that aren't, unless you break laws, cut corners or don't do what you say you will.
In previous years, I shipped 100 old dead CRT's to a WEEE-authorised disposal firm. Some guy came round and picked them up for nothing. He charged me nothing. He loaded them on a van, supplied the official WEEE disposal forms all filled out, and then drove off.
Before he left, I asked him what he does with it all. He drives them to London Heathrow (I work in London). Some guy gives him 1GBP per monitor. They load them into containers, sign HIS official forms and then put them on planes. The 1GBP pays the van guy's fuel cost. Anything else (e.g. copper cables, salvageable hardware) pays his wages. He used to LOVE me because I gave him a box of old power leads each time. That was "his profit" as he would say.
Why on EARTH would you pay 1GBP for an old CRT? Why would you then pay to ship it out at cargo-rates to ANY country via a plane, effectively multiply the cost by ten times or more? What do you think you're going to make at the other end to make that profitable?
I always suspected they are paid subsidies to dispose of it. They give the guy 1GBP of that. They ship it out to landfill and pay some company out in the middle of nowhere with lax laws to sign their forms and bury it. The guy in the van pretty much suspects the same, but doesn't care.
There's almost no salvageable material. The hazardous waste more than cancels out any profit from it even if there is. Then shipping, handling, etc. costs a fortune. Where is that money coming FROM? Who's paying, say, 1000GBP for the useful metal out of 100 CRT's? It's all a fraud to hide people landfilling waste but because "the paper says so", it's hushed up.
Then include things like toasters that cost 5GBP to buy, so have a pittance of salvageable metal or wire, and who the hell is profiting from broken toasters?
The guy in China who's just burying them, signing a form in a language he doesn't understand and which isn't legally binding on him in his country, who just loads it on a truck to the local tip while some idiot country pays him a fortune to do what they could do themselves.
Great.
Tell me when every computer chassis is like that, every laptop chassis, and I can pick up the upgrade boards in PC World (not that I would, but there you go).
Until then, it's nothing more than "yet-another-standard"
They could have just copied from the last time this same story was posted back in May... or this one on the same topic from April of last year... or maybe this same story from December of the year before (2013)... or the Australian version from 2010... the UK version from 2014?... Or maybe from this one in 2009... or this other story in 2010?... or this other version in 2008... or a charitable version in 2010.
I knew I'd seen this "story" somewhere before, but at that point, I admit I got bored and stopped looking for more.
If this is still considered news, or newsworthy... well, let's just say it takes the concept of repeated stories on the same topic to a new level...
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Why can't we attach some of those 2-year GPS trackers to planes, such as MH-370?
Nobody in this country wants to keep using my old Pentium 4, which is why I threw it out. But in 3rd world countries, for free, that's a hell of a useful item.
You are making the potentially (likely) faulty presumption that it is economically worthwhile to send it there or that crappy, beat up, second hand electronics would have substantial utility there. In all likelihood by the time you refurbish the gear, ship it halfway around the world, and by some miracle hope that there is someone on the other end with an economic interest in doing something with the gear, the "lucky" recipients would probably be better served by getting something new for similar amounts of money that actually fits their needs which you probably know nothing about.
I know all those older WiMax cell phones are considered trash in the US, but other countries still have WiMax networks, so why disallow exports to where they can keep being used?
If they have that sort of network chances are 100% they already have equipment available to use it. The probably do not need your beat up old second hand equipment. After all there IS a reason you are getting rid of it. I've been to more than a few "third world" countries over the years and most people here have a hugely mistaken idea about what life there is actually like. Geeks hear a few anecdotes about clever cases of re-purposing old gear and falsely extrapolate that this is something that can be economically repeated on a large scale. Reality is that your old gear is in most cases not terribly useful, requires substantial expensive labor to set up into something useful, is expensive to transport, has no one at the other end of the line with an economic interest in doing something with it, and wasn't asked for by the people you are trying to help.
Export of used vehicles to 3rd world countries seems to work wonderfully...
Used vehicles work wonderfully domestically too because the economic model for them makes sense. Basically if you cannot economically sell/donate used equipment here with all our advanced infrastructure and distribution channels and technological expertise, what makes you think it is going to make economic sense to send a device halfway around the world to a place with limited infrastructure, limited distribution and limited IT manpower? You're just hoping that there will be someone on the other end of that chain that somehow miraculously will find a use for your old equipment so you don't feel guilty about getting rid of it. I respect the impulse to not want to waste something with residual value but I don't think you are really thinking the economics of this through properly.
The reason people are getting rid of their WiMax equipment, is because the network is being shutdown here. How does that translate to other countries that still have active networks? Your logic there... needs some work.
I'm sure they "have equipment". Just as they have cars to drive on their roads. Does that mean they're full-up and don't want any more? Do you really think nobody would buy working used equipment for pennies?
More often, people with a trivial amount of experience mistakenly think their own personal anecdotes are actually significant. There's a LOT of 3rd world country out there, I'm sure you haven't been to much of it. I've seen the shops where they salvage working systems out of scrap and sell them to locals, precisely because new equipment is orders of magnitude more expensive.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
. . . . just isn't there for most ***CONSUMER*** materials. other than Aluminum cans. Or to quote Penn and Teller:
Recycling is. . . bullshit
Now, for metals, on an industrial level, recycling can make sense, steel also makes particular sense, in sufficient quantity.
For consumer recycling, things are hard to recycle ON PURPOSE. Just like they're impossible to repair: giving the consumer no option than to go out and buy a new one.
I'm showing my age, but I can still remember when there were vacuum tube testers in most hardware stores: you'd pull a tube you suspected was bad, test it, and if it WAS bad, you'd buy a replacement from the rack built underneath the tube tester.
The entire consumer industrial base is designed around obsolescence and replacement, rather than repair and/or upgrade. . .
This is why I just destroy the hdd and dump my computers in the ocean. And Mercury, too.
According to the summary, it's not profitable to recycle e-waste.
But, profiteering companies are able to profit by shipping the e-waste overseas, where it is recycled by someone else?
The whole thing doesn't really add up. The story, very much, seems to have an underlying agenda.
I can tell you, by way of my own anecdote, that there are no government incentives for recyclers in my area. Yet, there are a couple or three e-recyclers(some come and go) in my area that I frequent. They're always very busy separating out various components and materials and shredding the rest into "gravel" piles of metal, plastic and whatever. They take e-waste fro free and even shred my hard drives for me while I watch.
That at least one of them has survived for years suggests that they are making some form of meager profit, without government assistance. I see them as no different than the numerous scrap metal companies collecting (even paying) for scrap metal.
I think that is generally a good idea. Although America has the most innovative slimy corporations in the entire world, its really what we do best. It should be a simple matter of creating a shell company, moving the extra revenue set aside for recycling away from it and then spinning it off so it can fail to alleviate the problem of actually paying for your own mess.
That's cos there's no transmission of smell in the browser. With all that fluff, a dancing llama builds up a really stinky sweat dead quick, particularly given that they mostly dance to upbeat Latin American rhythms.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Smells like teen spelling....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
While there are dupes a lot of those stories are actually different stories on the same subject.
It is important for consumers of recycling services to be informed of this (It would be more useful to
have a list of bona-fide recyclers) and not everyone reads every article in the feed, so it's not
a huge deal to have periodic reminders on the subject -- though, the actual dupes we could do well
without. In other words if we all just pointed a problem out once when it is first discovered and then
never mentioned it again, a lot less people would know about it.
Reminds me I have a cellar full of old PCBs to eventually figure out who to dispose it with.
Someone had to do it.
Ok, the recycled stuff is sent overseas. So? If those people can find value in it, good for them. They are exposed to toxics? Not our fault. Instead, lean on their govts to regulate the industry to limit exposure. BTW, you don't think US recycling workers are exposed to toxics? Hahahaha.
More and more counterfeit parts are showing up in consumer, automotive, industrial, and any other industry that relies on electronic components. Federal law has been passed to confront the problem at the supplier end, but only for the military industry.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
The push to "recycle" old CRTs by sending them to places that claim to properly dispose of them is probably misguided to begin with. There's a mentality that CRT = ancient, worthless technology. But until 2006 or so, these were still being manufactured and sold in stores. The dropoff in sales was sharp and sudden, once LCD and plasma technologies took hold.
The fact is, you still see a number of motel chains using CRT TVs in the rooms. And why not? They're perfect for that purpose! Being heavier/bulkier and known as of "no value", it prevents theft, while still serving their intended purpose just fine.
And the concerns that they contain toxic substances are overblown too. By the time the personal computer was invented, the front glass of CRTs stopped using lead and replaced it with barium. Monochrome CRTs don't even contain enough lead, period, to fail an EPA test for it. The *rear* glass of a color CRT is still often leaded glass, but that lead won't ever leak out of intact glass. You'd have to crush it up to release the lead that's vitrified into the glass itself.
Instead of spending money to tear these things apart, I think it'd make more economic sense to hang onto the working ones and to refurbish the defective ones using parts from broken ones. Especially as time passes, there will surely be some renewed interest and fascination in the technology. (Maybe even collectors and enthusiasts wanting to buy one to watch at home, just like we saw the resurgence in popularity of vinyl records?)
You mean people actually believe that waste is taken care of environmentally??? Those are the people who don't care and don't listen to facts anyways.
I live in a small town in a typical modern fascist dictatorship with an illusion of freedom in the northern of the fascist union (EU). The local newspapers announced that a new Recycling Plant(TM) would be opening in our little town. This was apparently huge local news because start-up that employed more than five people.
The news articles detailed how this Recycling Plant(TM) would Recycle old mobile phones and computer equipment.
The CEO explained: There are small amounts of gold and other metals in all electronics. We will burn the electronics we receive up to slightly above the melting points for the metals we are interested in (primarily gold?) and harvest them.
I still wonder how the word "recycle" could possibly apply.
Here are some figures to consider: 1000 kilograms of cell phones can yield around 280 grams of gold, around 140 grams of platinum and palladium, and 140 kilograms of copper. That means that there is a lot of "stuff" that's just burned and not recycled.
The local "recycling" plant didn't make it. They lasted less than a year before going under.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
E-waste is not landfilled in China. They salvage all the metals by molten salt immersive extraction. The copper and aluminium are too valuable to throw away.
Just read a few of these. https://www.google.ca/search?q...
And yet ores that are far less rich cost less? How do mining companies do it?
Have you ever READ the budget of a state? Thought not. Nobody does, not even the lawmakers.
Every state, and particularly California, places all sorts of "fees" on all sorts of stuff they can easily convice a slight majority to tolerate as a "good thing" (recycling fees, fees on "premium" services which it is asserted are mostly for the rich, etc). The dirty little secret that no Republicans or Democrats want you to think about is this: There's only on type of money and only one budget. All state taxes and fees, no matter how they were justified, flow into that state's single state budget and become part of one huge pile of money where nobody can tell which dollars came from which source. Each state then has a budget which chops up that pile of money and allocates it to various spending programs. Each annual budget is a LAW, which can contain "fine print" clauses that override any other laws on the details. No matter how much the voters are told otherwise, there is nothing that forces state lawmakers to actually spend that money anywhere other than where they WANT to spend it. If somebody complains that a particular fee was supposed to go to children's health programs, the lawmakers can simply put a clause (which the public never notices) into the budget that makes an exception. The same thing happens at the Federal level with the Federal budget and taxes and spending.
As long as people are stupid enough to keep feeding the beast, there will be no end to the number and scope of niche "fees" (targeted taxes) that lawmakers will heap onto the backs of taxpayers in order to raise the money needed to support the groups who in-turn support the incumbent politicians. In California, the vast majority of political money flows to politicians from two sources: government employee unions, and indian tribes. Two things that will never be reduced in California are (1) the number of unionized government workers and their benefits, and (2) indian casinos.