Owners Win, Again

Let's give credit where credit is due. While most of us were watching reproductive rights demolished and gun rights sanctified.....

I don’t want to harsh anyone’s mellow but next up on the chopping block is the ability of the executive departments to regulate, well, anything, and that’s the one the Court’s owners really want.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) June 25, 2022

Six days later, as reported by the Texas Tribune the US Supreme Court ruled

that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have broad authority to require states to decarbonize their electricity sectors, a decision that is expected to dramatically slow the United States’ ability to reduce greenhouse gases and mitigate the effects of climate change.

The court’s 6-3 ruling on a case sparked by Texas and 16 other states — which addressed an Obama-era regulation aimed at coal-fired power plants, one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the nation — was a blow to President Joe Biden’s plan to reduce U.S. emissions and meet the country’s goals under international agreements.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was among 17 Republican state attorneys general who sued the EPA over an Obama-era regulation known as the Clean Power Plan, which never went into effect. It was repealed and replaced by what was called the Affordable Clean Energy rule under the Trump administration....

The decision, which limits EPA’s authority to implement regulations that cause shifts in fuel sources for electricity generation, will make it difficult for the U.S. to do its part to meet a 1.5-degree Celsius target that scientists have said is key to preventing extreme effects of climate change, experts said.

“We have to act rapidly to cut emissions in order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas. “And it’s unlikely that the natural or economic environment of these coal plants will happen fast enough to meet those emission goals.”

As a prediction, Pierce's tweet was accurate but arguably underwhelming because announcement of the ruling in West Virginia v. EPA was obviously upcoming, and expected to be decided in favor of the plaintiff. However, Pierce understood the wide-ranging implications at stake, including the "ability of the executive departments to regulate, well, anything, and that’s the one the Court’s owners really want." The Texas Tribune explains

The ruling could also open the door for more aggressive challenges to federal regulations at any agency, administrative and environmental lawyers said.

“I do think you’re going to see other federal agencies sit back [as a result of the case],” said Anne Austin, an environmental lawyer who was an assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation during the Trump administration. The ruling may cause federal agencies beyond the EPA to narrow regulations to avoid what could now be “shaky legal ground.”

“Federal agencies are more likely to be challenged [in court],” added Austin, a former EPA Region 6 administrator. States that want to prevent certain federal regulations are likely to take a broad view of the majority’s opinion, she said.

Once upon a time- three, four years ago- there was a major push for a Green New Deal. Those days are way gone, and much more may be headed for the chopping block.

                                            HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

 

Share |

Ostensibly, The Democratic Party Candidate

In May of 2019, as the Washington Post's Philip Bump noted at the time, Joe Biden stated

What’s happened is, between gerrymandering and unlimited campaign spending, we found ourselves in a position where an awful lot of Republicans have become intimidated by the president. f you notice, most Republicans — leaders, don’t lose from the left. They lose on the right. … I think there is not a middle ground.

That is a Joe Biden reluctant to sharpen, or even acknowledge, ideological differences with the Republican Party. one much in evidence at the debate in Cleveland, Ohio, where we heard

TRUMP: Joe, you agreed with Bernie Sanders's far left on the manifesto, we call it.

BIDEN: Manifesto? Look...

TRUMP: And that gives you socialized medicine.

BIDEN: Look, hey, I'm not going to listen to him. The fact of the matter is I beat Bernie Sanders...

TRUMP: Not by much.

BIDEN: I beat him by a whole hell of a lot. I'm here standing facing you, old buddy.

Maybe instead of boasting that he won't listen to the runner-up in the Democratic sweepstakes, Biden could have reminded the audience that Donald Trump (actually, the Attorney General's office) is in court trying to eliminate health care for pre-existing conditions, and that coverage still exists only because John McCain cast the deciding vote to protect them from Trump's scalpel.

If President Interruptus had allowed him to continue, Biden could have mentioned that the Democratic Party platform calls for a public option, as well as lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 60 to 65 because no American should go without health care.

 "Look, hey, I'm not going to listen to him" was a reference to a U.S. Senator whom tens of millions of Democrats voted for in 2016 and 2020 and whom has been a loyal supporter of Biden since the latter became the party's presumptive nominee. Bad form.

Biden renounced support for the Green New Deal, admitted he is "not opposed to the justice" (Barrett), and employed the word "Republican" merely four times. One time, he was cut off and the other three times struck a bipartisan note, once remarking "And I'll be a president not just for the Democrats, I'll be a president for Democrats and Republicans."

Bump concluded his column 17 months ago with

Maybe Biden doesn’t believe Republicans will have an epiphany but, instead, believes that voters want to hear that there will be. Or maybe he thinks there will be an epiphany and Republicans will seek to work with President Joe Biden. If he does, recent history suggests that he’s in for a surprise.

Joe Biden spent eight years serving a Democratic President whom many Republicans refused to acknowledge was born in this country, and whom even more charged was exercising dictatorial powers. Nonetheless, he still expected that post-Trump "You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends." It was extraordinarily naive at the time, is more so now, but apparently he still believes it.

Share |

Leading The USA Astray

Soon after President Trump's ill-advised decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, the request from Daily Kos came in to "take action today and tell Congress: It's time to put America first and take the climate crisis seriously before it's too late." Two days later, I was implored by DK to "Sign the petition to your state & city government. Fight climate change by agreeing to join the Paris climate agreement."

Then we were informed that as supporters of  the agreement, the governors of California, New York, and Washington had rapidly formed the United States Climate Alliance, which is to be "a forum to sustain and strengthen existing climate programs, promote the sharing of information and best practices, and implement new programs to reduce carbon emissions from all sectors of the economy.”

This is a good thing, not unlike if the GOP congress were to propose raising the minimum wage to $7.50 per hour, no strings attached (fat chance, that).  Hopefully, it will prove to be only a start, even if it indirectly helps pull Donald Trump's fat out of the fire (on this one issue) and smacks a little of states' rights.






Though doing more good than harm, it's not the primary problem with Trump's move.  Michael Grunwald explains

Similarly, it’s important not to exaggerate the substantive impact of Trump’s decision to bail on Paris, which will officially remove the United States from the agreement in late 2020 at the earliest. It’s a signal that the U.S. government no longer cares about the climate, but that’s been abundantly clear ever since Trump won the election and appointed an energetic fossil-fuel advocate named Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Leaving Paris won’t reverse the rapid decline of coal or the boom of cleaner energy in America, because the economics of coal have fallen apart while the cost of wind and solar have plummeted, and it won’t stop that same trend in China, India and the rest of the world. By the same token, if Trump had announced he was staying in the Paris deal, that wouldn’t have meant that Trump was abandoning his efforts to gut Obama’s climate regulations (like the Clean Power Plan for the electricity sector) and other climate policies (like those fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks). Really, it would have been pretty weird for Trump to remain in the deal while trying to undermine everything the U.S. was doing to live up to its commitments.

Meanwhile, the earth is still warming, the polar ice caps are still melting, and the seas are still rising, heedless of the inspiring words committed to paper in Paris, and just as heedless of a noisy American politician’s decision to reject them. Trump may believe climate change is a hoax manufactured in China, and congressional Republicans may continue to oppose any action to address it, but that won’t make the physical realities of climate-driven droughts, floods, pandemics and refugee migrations any less brutal. It’s reminiscent of the old riddle: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have? Four, because a tail is not a leg. Trump can call global warming a hoax, but 2014 was nevertheless the hottest year on record, until it was displaced by 2015, which was overtaken by 2016. That tail is not a leg.

The major issue is one of leadership. Trump wants to lead his base, or maybe the United States, but not beyond.  A trio of  Washington Post reporters notes that while there will be relatively miminimal concrete impact of Trump's rejection of the climate pact

it matters more that he’s announcing to the nations of the world that he intends to ignore an issue they consider vital to the planet. He is creating an intentional leadership vacuum, dispensing with the long-standing notion of the United States as the indispensable nation—just as he did when he withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in Asia, with his tepid commitments to NATO on his trip to Europe, and with his proposal for drastic budget cuts in foreign aid and international diplomacy. He is making it clear that America First means the problems of the world are not America’s problems. He’s opening the door for China and Europe to take over the role of global leaders on climate change, and maybe the world’s other major problems.

If he needed a nudge, though, one came from France over the weekend. Macron was quoted in a French journal talking about his white-knuckled handshake with Trump at their first meeting in Brussels, where the newly elected French president gripped Trump’s hand tightly and would not let go for six long seconds in a show of alpha-male fortitude.

“My handshake was not innocent,” Macron said. He likened Trump to a pair of authoritarian strongmen — Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — and said that he was purposefully forceful because he believed his encounter with Trump was “a moment of truth.”

Hearing smack-talk from the Frenchman 31 years his junior irritated and bewildered Trump, aides said.

A few days later, Trump got his revenge. He proclaimed from the Rose Garden, “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Embracing strongmen, talking the talk of Vladimir Putin, running down a mayor of the nation's biggest ally, giving the back of the hand to NATO in Brussels, and now boldly and unabashedly undermining U.S. military policy in the Mideast, President Trump has given whole new meaning to the word "weak."

In April, 1970 President Nixon (defending a policy which would end badly) declared that failing to take aggressive action against Cambodia would demonstrate "If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world."

Under the current President, the USA has become a pitiful giant while assisting the forces of totalitarianism, be they Russia, Saudi Arabia, or the Phillipines.   Donald Trump, Eugene Robinson observes, "is abdicating all moral power. The world has no choice but to move on."

Share |

Water And Voters Who "Have Had It"

In Washington County, Maryland, which a reporter says Donald Trump "won handily,"

from where James and Jess are sitting he is doing just fine.

“I love Trump,” James Zawatski said. “I give him credit for doing what he said he was going to do; a lot of politicians don’t. I’m 47 and I never voted in my life but I did this year. We needed someone with a set of balls to do what needs to be done. I’m tired of those liberals.”

Perhaps Trump has in fact been doing what he promised, for mlive reports

The White House is proposing to slash Environmental Protection Agency funding that pays for Great Lakes pollution cleanup by 97 percent, according to a budget document obtained by the National Association of Clean Air Agencies.

The potential cuts are part of President Donald Trump's initial 2018 budget proposal, detailed in a U.S. Office of Management and Budget "passback" to the EPA that outlines drastic cuts to an agency Trump has called a "job killer" and promised to reduce to "tidbits" as a candidate.

The proposal would virtually eliminate annual Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) funding, slashing it from $300 million to $10 million among other cuts that would altogether reduce the EPA's total budget by a quarter.

The Guardian found that in a debate a little more than a year ago

“Environmental protection – we waste all of this money,” he said. “We’re going to bring that back to the states. We are going to cut many of the agencies, we will balance our budget and we will be dynamic again.”

The promise was an echo of recent statements from Trump on the EPA. He has said there is “tremendous cutting” to be done because the EPA “aren’t doing their job, they are making it impossible for our country to compete”.

He has also accused the EPA of “going around causing damage as opposed to saving damage”, leading to “a tremendous amounts of money, tremendous fraud, tremendous abuse."

In a tweet presumably inadvertently leaving out "here" between "welcome" and "Michigan," Chris Hayes of "All In" comments "You're welcome Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania voters!"

He shouldn't expect a stampede.   In an interview alternately frustrating, annoying, and revelatory, ardent Trump supporter and CNN contributor Jeffrey Lord, interviewed by Bill Maher, made a couple of interesting points between approximately 1:38 and 2:46 of the clip below.

Lord stated that criticism of Trump supporters has led "many" of them to "look at Donald Trump as somebody who can get out here and dish it right back."  Further, "they think he is standing up for them and they've just had it."







Whatever "it" is, they have "had it," and most will go on believing Trump is dishing it right back at his critics and detractors who, notwithstanding the politically correct Lord, are far numerous and varied than "people in the media and the political world."

Incensed, Charlie Pierce remarks "Making America Great Again? Not by a damn sight. I hope the economically insecure voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania manage to live with this." But the majority of Trump supporters will manage to live with this.  They won't see it as their water which will be despoiled. It will be the water of downstate voters, or of liberals, or of those people in Detroit, Milwaukee, or Erie, the people they believe created the "carnage" their hero rants about.







Share |

Oil Man

On Saturday, Bernie Sanders tweeted "The United States has a decision to make: do we continue the exploitation of Native Americans or do we treat them with dignity and respect?"

I think the decision has been made.  PBS reports

President-elect Donald Trump supports completion of the disputed Dakota Access oil pipeline in the Midwest, based on policy and not the billionaire businessman’s investments in a partnership building the $3.8 billion pipeline, according to an aide’s memo.

Spokesman Bryan Lanza said in a memo this week to supporters that Trump’s backing for the pipeline near a North Dakota Indian reservation “has nothing to do with his personal investments and everything to do with promoting policies that benefit all Americans.”

It's possible, given Trump's fondness for fossil fuels and the corporations making a killing off them. Still

Trump’s most recent federal disclosure forms, filed in May, show he owned a small amount of stock in Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline builder, and at least $100,000 in Phillips 66, an energy company that owns one-quarter of the pipeline.

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in response to an AP story last week that it is her understanding Trump recently sold his Energy Transfer stock, but she provided no details. Neither Hicks nor other Trump aides have responded to repeated requests for information since then.

Given the cabinet nominations of Steve Mnuchin, Elaine Caho, Tom Price, Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Mike Pompeo, Jeff Sessions, and even Nikki Haley, Trump's preference for further enriching and empowering fossil fuel companies may be as much an ideological preference as looking out for #1.   Support for the Dakota Access oil pipeline dovetails nicely with both priorities.

With America's Populist, Donald Trump, to take office on January 20, 2017, the dignity and respect Bernie Sanders is looking for will be in short supply, other than for defense contractors, Wall Street firms, fossil fuel companies, and the like.  Activist and author of "The Militarization of Indian Country" Winona LaDuke goes into some detail about pipeline company Enbridge, then concludes

So I'm asking American labor to stand with us and to say "we want peipelines, we want infrastructure that goes for people, that goes for communities and not for companies that are going to destroy our environment and cause more climate change to our planet."











Share |

No Politics Here. Move On.

At Friday night's presidential debate, Fox News, anxious to dispense with the elephant in the room, asked of Marco Rubio a question nearly unavoidable at an event taking place in Detroit, Michigan. However, Baier asked it in the most comfortable, GOP-friendly way he could.  "Without getting into the political blame game here," Baier remarked, "where are the national Republicans’ plans on infrastructure and solving problems like this? If you talk to people in this state, they are really concerned about Flint on both sides of the aisle. So why haven’t GOP candidates done more or talked more about this?"

Rubio in part responded

And by the way, the politicizing of it I think is unfair, because I don’t think that someone woke up one morning and said, “Let’s figure out how to poison the water system to hurt someone"...

But accountability is important. I will say, I give the governor credit. He took responsibility for what happened. And he’s talked about people being held accountable...

... and the need for change, with Governor Snyder. But here’s the point. This should not be a partisan issue. The way the Democrats have tried to turn this into a partisan issue, that somehow Republicans woke up in the morning and decided, “Oh, it’s a good idea to poison some kids with lead.” It’s absurd. It’s outrageous. It isn’t true.

That was a good use of the straw man tactic, inferring that critics of the governor had claimed he wanted to poison children.  Snyder, of course, did not set out to destroy the bodies and minds of people, especially children. It was, however,  merely collateral damage.

Five weeks ago, Flint native Michael Moore wrote "10 Things They Won't Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy- But I Will."

It is an unfortunate title, referring to the decisions made as a mere "tragedy," not unlike a tornado, blizzard, or drought.  But it was only a semantic oversight, for Moore more than redeemed himself by inviting readers to sign a petition demanding Attorney General Lynch prosecute the Governor.

Among the ten things Moore described:

A few months after Governor Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The Governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one — and only one — address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.

The reference to General Motors bears significance given that, in response to a reporter's request in February 2015 to a request for comment about possibly returning Flint's water supply to Lake Huron, state treasury spokesman Terry Stanton had replied

“The city’s [emergency managers] have been unequivocal that doing so would cost at least $1m per month … per the [Detroit water system’s] ‘offer’ … and the city simply can’t afford that.”

Nearly an hour later, (then-Snyder chief of staff Dennis) Muchmore wrote that switching Flint back to Detroit would “probably be a good use of money as opposed to people refusing to use city water”.

“After all, if [General Motors] refuses to use the water in their plant and our own agencies are warning people not to drink it … we look pretty stupid hiding behind some financial statement,” he wrote.

But state officials did decide to hide some financial statement because

Flint would not return to Detroit’s system until October 2015, when Snyder conceded publicly that the water crisis was far worse than he initially realized, and several studies revealed the city’s lead levels had increased.

But even in the weeks leading up to Snyder’s announcement, high-ranking state officials appeared to be opposed to the $12m plan to switch Flint back to Lake Huron water.

In a 3 September 2015 email, the state deputy treasurer, Thomas Saxton, sent an outline of the cost to return Flint to Detroit’s water system in an email to Muchmore and two other state officials.

“I assume/hope no one is still seriously considering that option,” he wrote, “but if you need anything more give us a call.”

Thomas Saxton still is the state deputy treasurer, six months after his warning about that returning water to be filtered and treated at the Detroit Water Plant, which would have cost approximately $1 milion a month. Now the state has appropriated approximately $70 million to begin to correct the problem it welcomed.

Aside from the extraordinary human cost, the fiscal decision was disastrous, although a lesson in modern Republican economics.  Moore explained

When Governor Snyder took office in 2011, one of the first things he did was to get a multi-billion dollar tax break passed by the Republican legislature for the wealthy and for corporations. But with less tax revenues, that meant he had to start cutting costs. So, many things – schools, pensions, welfare, safe drinking water – were slashed. Then he invoked an executive privilege to take over cities (all of them majority black) by firing the mayors and city councils whom the local people had elected, and installing his cronies to act as “dictators” over these cities. Their mission? Cut services to save money so he could give the rich even more breaks. That’s where the idea of switching Flint to river water came from. To save $15 million! It was easy. Suspend democracy. Cut taxes for the rich. Make the poor drink toxic river water. And everybody’s happy.

Marco Rubio, however, declares "give the governor credit."   And "this should not be a partisan issue," maintains the man (or boy, as it were) who implies that Hillary Clinton, rather than Islamic terrorists, is responsible for the killing of four Americans at a diplomatic compound in Libya.   Say not much for Donald Trump, but say this much: because of him, after Marco Rubio's Senate term expires in January, he (assuming he's not elected President) can go anywhere he wants to talk (video from The Young Turks) freely, gleefully every day about the size of men's genitals.














Share |

That Manure Thing Would Be A Euphemism

US District Judge Edward R. Korman has ruled that the U.S. government cannot block an individual of any age, even if lacking a prescription or identification, from obtaining the emergency contraception pill.   One of the plaintiffs, Stephanie Seguin, responded by noting “This decision to grant immediate access to the Morning-After Pill is a huge step forward in the fight for women and girls to be able to control the course of their lives.”

Tell it to the President, Stephanie.  When HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in December, 2011 overruled the recommendation of the FDA  by banning Plan B One-Step sales to individuals under the age of 17, President Obama argued

As the father two of daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that, you know, we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine. And as I understand it, the reason Kathleen made this decision, was she could not be confident that a 10-year- old or an 11-year-old going to a drugstore should be able, alongside bubble gum or batteries, be able to buy a medication that potentially if not used properly could end up having an adverse effect.

The adverse effect is likely to be less than with aspirin, all manner of medication, and junk food, alongside those benign-sounding bubble gum or batteries.  And if you don't have children, don't even bother weighing in on the issue- your opinion is surely without merit and lacks legitimacy.    As Salon's Rebecca Traister wrote at the time,  "Obama’s invocation of his role as a father is an insult to the commitments and priorities of those on the other side of this issue. Are we to believe that those who support the increased availability of emergency contraception do not have daughters? That if they do, they care less about those daughters than Barack Obama does about his?"

After the Judge issued his ruling, Press Secretary Jay Carney said the President still "supports the decision" of the HHS Secretary. Apparently, the evolution of Barack Obama has been selective.  So, too, is some of his rhetoric designed (no accident) to reinforce conservative myths.  In February, 2011 the President asserted in a radio broadcast "Families across this country understand what it takes to manage a budget.  Well, it's time Washington acted as responsibly as our families do." A few months later, Bill Craighead blogged in the L.A. Times

Decisions about the federal budget are fundamentally different from those of individual households, because policymakers need to account for how their choices affect the economy as a whole. It is more appropriate to liken government budget deficits to prescription medicine. Just as medication can be helpful to a sick patient, deficits can aid a failing economy.

The U.S. economy slumped largely because of a reduction in spending by households and businesses. For households, this was a reasonable response to declining property values, job losses and insecurity. Likewise, it made sense for firms to cut back on investment as their customers spent less. If the federal government were to act this way, though, it would reinforce the decline in economic activity, not alleviate it.

To stabilize the economy, the federal government needs to counterbalance the swings in consumer and business expenditures by moving in the opposite direction. When consumers and firms cut back, government can help replace the lost economic activity through direct spending (on infrastructure projects, for example) and through indirect means, such as tax cuts, which increase households' disposable income.

Further, the federal government can print money.  Or it can borrow money- and not have to worry about paying it back soon.  The U.S. government never has reneged on its debt, and the bond buyers keep coming back.

There is a good chance the President understands he was promoting false equivalence.  So, too, is he aware that Social Security does not contribute to the deficit.  Apparently, however, that is not stopping him from including in his upcoming budget proposal a reduction in benefits by reducing the annual cost of living adjustment with use of the chained CPI, whose rationale is that people respond to price variations by adjusting their purchasing decisions. But as Dean Baker explains, elderly people are particularly ill-equipped to do so, both because of the nature of their purchases (e.g., health care) and their relative lack of mobility.

On to climate change (wait, there is a connection among all these issues.)  At a fund-raiser Wednesday night at the home of a well-healed opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, Obama commented "You may be concerned about the temperature of the planet, but it’s probably not rising to your No. 1 concern.  And if people think, well, that’s shortsighted, that’s what happens when you’re struggling to get by.”  Charles Pierce responds

This is the argument we get from the oil companies, the extraction industries, and all the politicians they have sublet over the past 40 years — that environmental concerns are the province of the liberal elites, as though small farmers are not being killed by drought, small businesses being killed by what's killing the small farmers, and small homeowners along both seaboards being killed by increasingly massive storms.

Pierce adds "The interested parties have done a good job selling this bag of manure to the American people. To see a Democratic president making essentially the same argument — And that's what he's doing here. He's not just assessing the lay of the land. — is more than simply distressing. It's downright mortifying."

This "Democratic" President is doing a good job selling a bag of manure to the American people on climate change.   On Social Security, which he has linked, inaccurately, to the national debt.  To the health of young women, which he implies only parents care about.  To deficit spending, comparing it to household debt, which anyone who has had Economics 101, and many who haven't, would know is ridiculous.  And then there are the dissolution of privacy, the crackdown on whistleblowers, and all manner of  unprecedented action taken by this President in the name of the war on terrorism.

To be fair, President Obama did advocate what is considered a progressive position on the matter of same-sex marriage- once his vice president and running-mate made his continued evolution on the subject untenable.  To which the old cliche (is there such a thing as a new cliche?), "God is in His heaven and all's right with the world," may be applied sarcastically.




Share |

A Waste Of Valuable Time



Reacting after the second presidential debate, Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution tweeted "We've had 4 hrs of debates and criminal justice & prison reform hasn't been mentioned once.  Think that says a lot abt our nat'l debate."

Yes, it does, as well as about the insufficiency of six hours of debates among the presidential and vice-presidential nominees.   But this from Barack Obama says more about our national debate:

The most important thing we can do is to make sure we control our own energy. So here’s what I’ve done since I’ve been president. We have increased oil production to the highest levels in 16 years.

Natural gas production is the highest it’s been in decades. We have seen increases in coal production and coal employment. But what I’ve also said is we can’t just produce traditional source of energy. We’ve also got to look to the future. That’s why we doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars. That means that in the middle of the next decade, any car you buy, you’re going to end up going twice as far on a gallon of gas. That’s why we doubled clean — clean energy production like wind and solar and biofuels.

And all these things have contributed to us lowering our oil imports to the lowest levels in 16 years. Now, I want to build on that. And that means, yes, we still continue to open up new areas for drilling. We continue to make it a priority for us to go after natural gas. We’ve got potentially 600,000 jobs and 100 years worth of energy right beneath our feet with natural gas...

The President, at least, gave a nod to "environmentally sound" policies and reducing demand.  Mitt Romney, informed that fossil fuel production has been rising, wasn't satisfied that the pace of global warming has been sufficiently rapid:

Well, let’s look at the president’s policies, all right, as opposed to the rhetoric, because we’ve had four years of policies being played out. And the president’s right in terms of the additional oil production, but none of it came on federal land. As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands, and in federal waters.

So where’d the increase come from? Well a lot of it came from the Bakken Range in North Dakota. What was his participation there? The administration brought a criminal action against the people drilling up there for oil, this massive new resource we have. And what was the cost? 20 or 25 birds were killed and brought out a migratory bird act to go after them on a criminal basis.

Look, I want to make sure we use our oil, our coal, our gas, our nuclear, our renewables. I believe very much in our renewable capabilities; ethanol, wind, solar will be an important part of our energy mix.

But what we don’t need is to have the president keeping us from taking advantage of oil, coal and gas. This has not been Mr. Oil, or Mr. Gas, or Mr. Coal. Talk to the people that are working in those industries. I was in coal country. People grabbed my arms and said, “Please save my job.” The head of the EPA said, “You can’t build a coal plant. You’ll virtually — it’s virtually impossible given our regulations.” When the president ran for office, he said if you build a coal plant, you can go ahead, but you’ll go bankrupt. That’s not the right course for America.

Let’s take advantage of the energy resources we have, as well as the energy sources for the future. And if we do that, if we do what I’m planning on doing, which is getting us energy independent, North America energy independence within eight years, you’re going to see manufacturing jobs come back. Because our energy is low cost, that are already beginning to come back because of our abundant energy. I’ll get America and North America energy independent. I’ll do it by more drilling, more permits and licenses.

We’re going to bring that pipeline in from Canada. How in the world the president said no to that pipeline? I will never know...

Perhaps because tar sands oil is particularly destructive to the environment, the pipeline would eliminate more jobs in tourism, ranching and agriculture than it would create in construction, the pipeline probably will raise oil prices in the Midwest, and most of the oil is slated to go to the same mainland China Romney gets so hot and bothered about otherwise.

No matter.   Even as the two candidates vie to outduel each other to prove he can make the bigger carbon footprint, one can only imagine how they would have handled prison reform.The American people- in the abstract- want all criminals put, as the late George Wallace put it, "under the jail."   No penalty can be so severe, in the collective mind of voters, and many (mistakenly) believe prisoners enjoy all manner of luxuries.   Overlay that with an economic slump and any discussion of criminal justice would be punctuated by weeping and gnashing of teeth over criminals having it so easy while unemployment is so high (as is true) and the budget deficit is crushing the nation (which is not true).

Criminal justice and prison reform?   No presidential or vice-presidential nominee, nor any candidate from either major political party for either position with a credible chance of being nominated, ever has advocated the end of the drug war, the legalization of marijuana, or even decriminalization of marijuana possession.    And a candidate who has never mentioned "inner city" or "poverty" and one who believes workers who earn a meager salary are freeloaders dependent on government who don't take responsibility for their lives will have anything sensible to say about convicted criminals?
  
Sure they would, and tomorrow it will snow in Miami.



Share |

The Air We Breathe

I know, I know- when President Obama suspended new anti-smog regulations it angered the Democratic Party base and left the GOP wanting more. Or as Digby puts it

Unfortunately, the Republicans will throw what they hate to the floor, gobble up everything they like and then beat the hell out of the Democrats until they get more. Meanwhile, what the democrats like is lying on the floor, so they eat what they hate (and) end up joining the Republican tantrum just to avoid getting pummeled.

Brad Plumer, substituting for Ezra Klein, described the process leading up to the President's strange and not-so wondrous decision last week (if you already know the backdrop, skip to my political take below. You'll be surprised.*):

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to conduct a review of national standards on industrial smog every five years. Ground-level ozone is formed when emissions from power plants, vehicles and factories reacts with sunlight. The resulting pollution can, as the EPA explains, “trigger a variety of health problems including chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and congestion. It can worsen bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma.”

The last time new ozone standards were set was back in 1997 — at 84 parts per billion. In 2006, the EPA reviewed the science on ozone and health, which had advanced considerably over the years: It wasn’t until the 2000s, for instance, that researchers realized ground-level ozone might actually be killing people, not just causing respiratory problems. Realizing that the old standards were woefully out of date, EPA scientists recommended a new level of 60 to 70 parts per billion. The Bush administration, however, decided to go with a less-stringent level of 75 parts per billion in its final rules, issued in 2008.

Groups such as the American Lung Association quickly filed a lawsuit to stop the Bush rules, which they claimed were too weak and would lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths and cases of respiratory disease. After Obama got elected, however, the new EPA said it basically agreed with the critics and would issue stronger rules by August 2010. At that point, the ALA agreed to hold off on its lawsuit. “We said, that sounds reasonable to us,” says Paul Billings, the ALA’s vice-president for policy and advocacy. “We basically trusted their intentions.”

But August 2010 rolled around. Still no rules. The EPA asked for a further extension. Then October. Then December. Still nothing. Then the EPA said it wanted to go back and look at the science again, just to double-check. Sure enough, EPA’s scientific review board said that a standard of 60 to 70 parts per billion was the most cost-effective way to protect public health. And EPA administrator Lisa Jackson announced that the final rules would be in line with the science.

Industry groups, obviously, weren’t pleased with this. They noted that complying with a stricter standard could cost them anywhere from $19 billion to $90 billion per year by 2020. (The EPA did, however, note that a tougher standard would yield benefits of $13 billion to $100 billion, and that the benefits would outweigh the costs.) Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor dubbed the ozone proposal “possibly the most harmful of all the currently anticipated Obama administration regulations.”

So now, today, the White House announced that it’s not going to have any new rules.

Obviously, this is a sell-out not only of environmental groups, which generally have been partial toward presidential candidate and President Barack Obama, but also of the broad spectrum of the American public, which has to breathe air. Neela Banerjee in the Los Angeles Times notes "The EPA estimates that up to 12,000 lives could be saved annually from heart attacks, lung disease and asthma attacks by implementing the new standards." The decision was announced on the same day as the disappointing and disturbing jobs report, presumably a nod and a wink to the Chamber of Commerce and other interest groups, assuring them that nothing will stand in the way of "job creators" generating the jobs they've so far refused to create (in this country, anyway). An expensive campaign awaits, and these groups, sitting on cash and whining about regulations instead of hiring Americans, are going to be looking to use unspent funds to buy a new, or sitting, president. (A rundown on reactions from the left and right here, from DailyKos.)

But they don't call Barack Obama "the smartest man in the room" for nothing. (He's also the smartest person in the room, but apparently the presence of women doesn't have to be acknowledged. Or at least not welcomed.)

Not because of the reaction of big business and its representatives on Capitol Hill. Speaker Boehner's spokesman termed it "only the tip of the iceberg" while House Majority Leader called it "a step in the right direction." Similarly, the Chamber of Commerce called it merely "a big first step" and its chief lobbyist, The Washington Post reports, "who said he is in frequent contact with White House Chief of Staff William Daley and other top officials, said the administration 'still has a heavy hand' with hundreds of regulations in the pipeline, from those affecting the environment to labor and capital markets."

Not with rank-and-file Republicans, who still would rush to the polls to vote against Obama, even if they realized this President's ozone standards represented less government intervention, and are more industry-friendly, than imposed by Republican George W. Bush. And not with independents (whose votes are those the White House is obsessed with) who generally have a preference for clean air.

This policy is geared in part to be the first stroke in building momentum toward convincing the left that, in a second term, President Obama will be that community organizer we thought were electing in 2008, the "change we can believe in." The ozone standard is due to be reconsidered- not early next year, nor in 2014 or beyond. It will be reconsidered (and strengthened, we're to believe) in 2013- the first year of Obama's second term, assuming the President is re-elected. Air pollution policy is one issue which the campaign will suggest to the left will be adjusted in its favor if President Obama is returned to office, facilitated by the enthusiasm and effort of liberal activists.

This theory is a little far-fetched, immediately. But some on the left place their hope in a second Obama Administration, freed from having to appeal to the center and thus able to find its inner progressive. That theory is no less far-fetched or, as Paul Krugman observes, "so, a lousy decision all around. Are you surprised?"

*manipulative marketing technique common to television and radio

Share|

Deregulation Lives

Someone had to take the fall, and it was Elizabeth Birnbaum.

On May 27 the head of the Mineral Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling, became the first casualty of the Gulf oil spill. Although she officially resigned, Birnbaum was pushed and should be only the first individual to lose a job over the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Obviously, the MMS was sloppy, ineffective, negligent. The Wall Street Journal found its

examination of the MMS's track record found several instances of the agency identifying potential safety problems and then either not requiring follow-up or relying on the industry to craft a solution. In some cases, the industry didn't do its part.

The Journal also found that the safety record of U.S. offshore drilling compares unfavorably, in terms of deaths and serious accidents, to other major oil-producing countries. Over the past five years, an offshore oil worker in the U.S. was more than four times as likely to be killed than a worker in European waters, and 23% more likely to sustain an injury, according to International Association of Drilling Contractors data, which is adjusted for man-hours* worked.

The agency conducts inspections of drilling rigs and platforms but, the paper added, the "number of rigs inspected has fallen significantly in recent years, according to agency data, from 1,292 in 2005 to 760 by 2009" and its inspections frequently are inadequate.
Further,

Over the past decade, the number of MMS enforcement cases that resulted in penalties ranged from a high of 66 in 2000 to a low of 20 last year. A report by the agency's inspector general in 2000 found that it seldom referred safety or environmental violations to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, even when it should have done so.

But this was not due primarily to the agency's ineptitude or its unique favoritism toward the industry it regulates. Itself,

the MMS in a 2005 rule change pointed to a 1996 law that encouraged federal agencies to "benefit from the expertise of the private sector" by adopting industry standards. Mr. Herbst also pointed out that the MMS often has a seat on panels setting industry standards.

The industry regulated itself- or, rather, has not regulated itself. Over the past thirty years, Congress and the President have periodically cooperated, or competed against each other, in breaking the nation's regulatory scheme. Regulations have been weakened,
penalties reduced for violation of those weakened regulations, and budgets cut for inspectors.

This plan has been promoted by 1.5 major political parties. It has been the ideology, rhetoric, and governing philosophy of the GOP, set on its path of undermining government when its patron saint declared "government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem." And Democrats largely have avoided challenging that mantra, rarely defending the importance of government in the lives of poor and middle class Americans.

And it has taken its toll for the last three decades. Among the instances which stand out is the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 by the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, wherein the divide between commercial and investment banking was torn down, initiated by the great free market conservative, Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas and signed into law by the neo-liberal, centrist Democrat, President Bill Clinton. Glass-Steagall helped prevent a second great depression; Gramm-Leach-Bliley helped usher in the great recession from which we have only barely begun to emerge.

Another would be the present environmental-energy-economic crisis of the British Petroleum oil spill. Here we have another neo-liberal, centrist Democratic President who, accordingly, trusted the giant oil company. It has the interests of the American people at heart, President Obama believed, at least initially. And it has the unique ability to solve the problem because, after all, government is "the problem," not "the solution."

As the federal government relies on BP to clean up its mess, the trail of incompetence and deception on the part of the energy giant pile up. As distrust of BP has grown, so has belief in the effectiveness of President Obama, an ironic twist for the man Republicans would like us to believe is a socialist.


*(Really, now, can we dispense with "man-hours" and replace it with "person hours?" If not, can we dispense with "chair" when we mean "chairman," "chairwoman," or "chairperson"? The only function of a chair at a meeting is to allow someone to sit.)

Share|

Quote of the Week


"And OF COURSE the old-guard Wall Street "so-last-century" GOP establishment power base is nervous. They courted the real deal, and now they GOT a LIVE one.... They grinned at their less-hip allies at the Prayer Breakfasts, and they smirked, because it didn't get in the way of free-market pollution of the environment or rapacious corporate profit-making.... Well, the old bosses brought it on themselves...." (emphasis Baitz's).

-Jon Michael Baitz, writing on TheHuffingtonPost.com on 12/18/07 about the role of GOP economic conservatives upon the rise of Mike Huckabee