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How would you spend $50 billion to stimulate the economy AND energy efficiency, Part 1

By Joe Romm on Dec 4, 2008 at 8:11 pm

We are going to have a huge economic stimulus package soon after Obama becomes President. And a big piece of it is going to be aimed at energy efficiency and renewable energy, as the NYT reported today in “Proposal Ties Economic Stimulus to Energy Plan.”

I have asked a bunch of my wonk ee friends for some energy efficiency ideas, which I’ll be posting in the coming days. I’d love to hear some ideas from you — please try to keep them practical. Focus on spending that creates jobs in the next two years AND that either saves energy (like weatherizing low-income homes) or helps jumpstart the transition to a clean energy economy (like ‘green’ transmission).

I’ll even send one or two the best ideas to the various transition folks I know. Realistically, it would be very hard to actually get into the stimulus package, but a good idea might still find its way into the huge energy bill that is equally inevitable for 2009, but on a somewhat slower track.

Try not to duplicate stuff in the Center for American Progress’s plan, “A Strategy for Green Recovery” (which is a good guide for how to write up an idea). Nor should you duplicate ideas in the NYT piece:

Read more

Security

Rove, Kristol Laugh At Idea U.S. Arrested American Muslims Without Trial: ‘We Didn’t Do It!’

By Ali Frick on Dec 4, 2008 at 8:00 pm

rove.jpgOn Tuesday, Karl Rove and Bill Kristol debated journalists Simon Jenkins and Jacob Wiesberg at an event sponsored by BBC. The debate was whether “President Bush is the worst president of the last 50 years“; Jenkins and Weisberg argued in favor of the resolution, while Rove and Kristol argued against it.

At one point, Weisberg said that the Bush administration had never convinced the world that it had “not taken out Muslims as a particular group.” Kristol and Rove literally laughed at the idea that the United States had targeted and arrested American Muslims as part of its “war on terror” effort:

KRISTOL: What have we done to Muslims in America? What has happened?

JENKINS: Arrested them.

KRISTOL: We’ve arrested Muslims in America? [LAUGHTER]

JENKINS: Incarcerated them without trial.

KRISTOL: We’ve incarcerated Muslims in America without trial?

ROVE: Rounded them up? Rounded, rounded them up? Name one?

KRISTOL: Nonsense.

ROVE: Name one instance.

JENKINS: The, [UNCLEAR] belabor me all day with lists of people who have vanished. Vanished.

ROVE: You know-

KRISTOL: Well, that-

ROVE: This is on the border of lunacy, with all due respect.

JENKINS: But you didn’t need to do it, you didn’t need to do it-

ROVE: We didn’t do it!

Posting the exchange — to highlight what he saw as Jenkins’ idiocy — on Contentions, Abe Greenwald dismissed Jenkins’ claims as “therapeutic mythologies” that were part of “Bush-villification.” “With their vanishing Muslims, torture chambers, and evil corporate overlords, Bush haters are better suited to the Dungeons and Dragons, sci-fi convention circuit than to the political sphere,” Greenwald wrote.

The specific targeting of Muslims in America is hardly a myth: Read more

Yglesias

Parking Meters

By Matthew Yglesias on Dec 4, 2008 at 7:11 pm

parking_meter_1.jpg

Felix Salmon writes a bit about Chicago’s somewhat backdoor effort to increase its street parking meters from their current $0.25 an hour to $1.00 an hour next month and $2.00 an hour in 2013:

Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, is absolutey on the side of the angels when it comes to green initiatives, and nothing would be greener than managing to reduce the amount of auto traffic downtown. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet — Chicagoans are more attached to their cars than ever. And so maybe this parking-meter initiative is the municipal equivalent of a CEO hiring McKinsey to come in and recommend job cuts: it’s a way of doing what needs to be done while somehow managing to blame someone else.

In any event, Chicago should get much more than $1.157 billion in benefit from this deal. Underpriced on-street parking is the bane of many large cities’ existence: it results in a huge amount of needless congestion as drivers circle around endlessly, looking for a spot to park. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the benefits from lower congestion are larger than the up-front cash that Chicago is receiving.

This is true, but it should be said that the positive environmental benefit of reduced idling isn’t close to being the main benefit of pricing your street parking correctly. The main benefit is just the fact that if parking is priced correctly — i.e., in relationship to the supply and demand — then parking will be widely available. It ought to be the case that if you drive up to any block in the city, there will usually be a parking space available there for you. On some blocks at some times of day, that may mean that parking is very expensive. But that would merely mean that ability to park on that block at that time is very valuable and that making it available is having large social benefits.

In general, the market price of street parking should be very similar to the market price of garage parking. Since a garage is more secure and protected from the elements, that has certain advantages. But a street spot might be more convenient. So you’d be looking at rough similarity. And in parts of the city where there’s no viable market in garage building, that’s a market signal that parking demand is low and therefore street parking should be very cheap. But where garages are charging a lot, street parking should also be expensive. Among other things, that would reduce the need for new construction to be accompanied by expansive parking garages.

Perhaps more important, it would reduce the tendency for conversations about any new development to become immediately dominated by people’s fear of parking shortages. The whole shortage phenomenon is (as shortages tend to be) a symptom of bad pricing policy. Chicago is a big city with a vibrant downtown and tons of economic activity. Space is limited and expensive. Unless you charge more than a quarter for it, you’ll get shortages.

Health

UnitedHealth Group’s Continuity Product Is Money Down The Drain

By Igor Volsky on Dec 4, 2008 at 7:00 pm

unitedhealth_group.jpgSeveral blogs have highlighted UnitedHealth Group’s new ‘Continuity’ insurance plan, a “first of its kind” product that gives consumers “the right to buy an individual health policy at some point in the future even if you become sick.” As Stand Up For Health Care explains:

To be clear, the product is not health insurance. It’s more like a bribe. You’d be paying the insurance company now – 20 percent of the annual premium, at that – just for the right to purchase their policy later, if you lost your job or retired early, for example.

Sound like a great deal? Well, no. But it’s actually even worse than it sounds at first. If you’re sick and need to be sure you have coverage, you probably can’t buy this plan. And if you’re healthy enough to buy it, but get sick later, you may not be able to afford it when you need it.

Not only does the plan — open only to the healthiest Americans — not guarantee affordable coverage in the future, it exploits the country’s anxiety over access to affordable health care to convince consumers to buy a completely unnecessary product. Smart marketing for the company, but a bad investment for anyone looking to guarantee access to affordable coverage in the future.

In fact, under current COBRA and HIPAA laws, most individuals with “credible coverage” are protected from instantly losing health insurance coverage when they change or lose their jobs, regardless of preexisting conditions. COBRA allows individuals previously employed by a firm with 20 or more full-time employees on the payroll to receive health care benefits for 18 to 36 months, provided they pay the full cost of the premium and administrative fees.

Similarly, HIPAA guarantees that individuals can purchase coverage in the individual market if they have had “creditable coverage” in the group market. For consumers in the individual market, HIPAA requires guaranteed renewability of coverage in most situations. “This means that an insurance issuer must renew an individual’s policy regardless of the individual’s health status unless the individual no longer wants it.”

There is some uncertainty in the current system and UnitedHealth Group is trying confuse consumers by offering protections that are already available. But as the NYT points out, ‘Continuity’ may become even more obsolete if Congress adopts comprehensive health care reform. “As an individual, you’re betting against health reform.”

Politics

Bush’s new ‘ranch’: A $2 million estate in Dallas.

By Ryan Powers on Dec 4, 2008 at 6:35 pm

The Bush family has purchased a new home in Dallas, TX, a White House spokesperson said today. While they will still own and “spend time” at their ranch in Crawford, TX, the new home fulfills the First Lady’s reported desire to return to Dallas where the family lived prior to her husband’s election as the governor of Texas. The Dallas Morning News provides this photo of the $2 million property:

bush_home.jpg

The Smoking Gun has an aerial view, while Google Maps captured the home on Street View.

Climate Progress

Calif. agency approves SoCal Edison’s first solar baseload contract

By Joe Romm on Dec 4, 2008 at 6:17 pm

http://gristmill.grist.org/images/user/8/esolar2.jpg

E&E News PM has the news on the reemergence of this essential form of solar power:

SAN FRANCISCO — California regulators today approved a solar thermal contract for Southern California Edison, the first such project for the utility and the first to count toward its state-mandated renewable energy target.

The state Public Utilities Commission approved Southern California Edison’s purchase of power from the 105-megawatt Gaskell Sun Tower project in Kern County, located in the southern part of the Central Valley. The plant is being developed by eSolar Inc., a renewable energy startup backed by Oak Investment Partners, Idealab, and Google’s for-profit philanthropic arm, Google.org. One of Google.org’s goals is trying to get the cost of wind and solar power below that of coal-fired power; it has invested at least $130 million in eSolar this year.

Kudos to Google for backing solar baseload. More details below:

Read more

Politics

UBS sponsors posh Miami art show while under federal indictment for tax fraud.

By Ben Armbruster on Dec 4, 2008 at 6:01 pm

Last July, a federal grand jury in Florida “indicted the head of UBS’s worldwide wealth management business, Raoul Weil, for his alleged role in helping thousands of Americans hide their money in secret accounts set up by UBS.” Yet, despite the investigation, ABC News reports that the Swiss bank is back in business in Florida this week “as the main sponsor of one of the great gatherings of the super-rich, the Art Basel exhibition in Miami.” One tax expert questioned whether UBS should be allowed host extravagant parties in the U.S. while under indictment:

“They sent their salespeople here. They have encrypted computers. They smuggled assets out of the country to help those people conceal what they should have paid the IRS,” said Jack Blum, a Washington tax lawyer and consultant to the IRS. “So the question is, why should a bank like that be allowed to continue in business?” said Blum of UBS.

Politics

Bank of America to stop financing mountaintop coal mining.

By Satyam Khanna on Dec 4, 2008 at 5:20 pm

Today, Bank of America announced it would begin phasing out financing of mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia. The bank is making the change after activists from Natural Resources Defense Council flew executives over coal mine sites and personally introduced them to local residents affected by mountaintop removal. From Bank of America’s release:

mountaintop23.jpgBank of America is particularly concerned about surface mining conducted through mountain top removal in locations such as central Appalachia. We therefore will phase out financing of companies whose predominant method of extracting coal is through mountain top removal. While we acknowledge that surface mining is economically efficient and creates jobs, it can be conducted in a way that minimizes environmental impacts in certain geographies.

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