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Climate Progress

Road to Copenhagen, Part 6: Tragedy of the commons vs. action by the uncommon

By Bill Becker on Nov 9, 2009 at 9:55 pm

Members of Congress are the custodians of a sacred trust: to protect the vitality and integrity of the extraordinary experiment the Founders began.  For example, the debate about climate change isn’t just about polar bears and energy prices. It’s about whether a free people will be a responsible people, a capitalist economy will be a caring economy and a democracy will protect the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone, even those not yet born.

Some of this sacred trust is codified in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Some is unwritten and implied. And although the Constitution dictates that we keep government and religion separate, there are places in public policy where secular values and moral values overlap. Stewardship of nature and its resources – called “creation care” in religious circles – is one of those places.

Government’s stewardship responsibility is recognized in the body of laws past congresses developed once we realized that burning rivers, poisoned water, dangerous air, carcinogenic fish and toxic wastes were not in the national interest.  In the  landmark National Environmental Policy Act, for example, Congress declared:

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Media

Murdoch: Glenn Beck Was ‘Right’ To Say Obama Is ‘A Racist’ With ‘A Deep-Seated Hatred For White People’

By Matt Corley on Nov 9, 2009 at 7:00 pm

After President Obama inserted himself into the July spat between Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Officer Jim Crowley, Glenn Beck infamously declared on Fox & Friends that Obama “exposed himself” with the incident “as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or white culture.” Challenged by co-host Brian Kilmeade, Beck claimed that he was “not saying that he doesn’t like white people,” just that he’s a “racist.” Beck’s comments led to a boycott of his program by Color for Change, which has resulted in 81 companies refusing to advertise on his show.

In an interview with Sky News Australia last week, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News’ parent company, stood by Beck. Though he claimed that Beck probably shouldn’t have said such a thing, Murdoch concluded that “if you actually assess what he was talking about, he was right”:

SPEERS: The Glenn Beck, who you mentioned, has called Barack Obama a racist and he helped organize a protest against him. Others on Fox have likened him to Stalin. Is that defensible?

MURDOCH: No, no, no, not Stalin, I don’t think. I don’t know who that, not one of our people. On the racist thing, that caused a grilling. But he did make a very racist comment. Ahhh…about, you know, blacks and whites and so on, and which he said in his campaign he would be completely above. And um, that was something which perhaps shouldn’t have been said about the President, but if you actually assess what he was talking about, he was right.

Murdoch apparently isn’t very familiar with the content of the network he owns. Numerous Fox News personalities, including Glenn Beck, have compared Obama and members of his administration to Stalin. Watch it (starting around 16:00):

Earlier in the interview, Sky News political editor David Speers asked Murdoch if “people who switch on Fox News know when they’re getting news and when they’re getting opinion.” “Oh, absolutely,” replied Murdoch, pointing to Glenn Beck at 5 p.m. and Sean Hannity, “a pretty academic conservative,” at 9 p.m. as the only examples of the network’s opinion programming. But as Jon Stewart pointed out last month, Fox only considers its programming to be news from “9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays.” “The only people you ever think about when you think about Fox News are not news,” said Stewart. “They’re Fox opiniotainment.”

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Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 9, 2009 at 6:15 pm

Cities change before they die:

— Matt Continetti seems to have forgotten that “being popular” was an important part of Andrew Jackson’s populist political strategy; everyone hates Sarah Palin.

— Fred Hiatt’s fuzzy math.

— Nancy Pelosi is a pretty canny strategist but the real difference between her and her intra-caucus critics is that many of them don’t actually have any policy goals they want to achieve.

— Macro policy catechism.

— Ben Nelson demanding Stupak language in Senate version of health care bill.

— How the Senate filibusters the world.

Song of the day is “Hell” from Tegan & Sara, the greatest lesbian pop duo to ever come out of Calgary.

Politics

Fred Hiatt employs fuzzy math to claim House health bill would bring ‘America a step closer to bankruptcy.’

By Igor Volsky on Nov 9, 2009 at 6:10 pm

In this morning’s Washington Post, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt argues that the House health care bill “could take America a step closer to bankruptcy” and harm “the poor and vulnerable.” But since the CBO’s analysis of the House health care bill doesn’t support Hiatt’s contention that it would bring America to the brink of bankruptcy, Hiatt relies on the CBO’s analysis of the President’s entire budget and implies that it’s Obama’s health “plan”:

The root difficulty is Obama’s insistence that the nation can afford a large new social program without raising taxes on anyone who earns less than $250,000 per year. Under his plan, according to a CBO analysis, the government will be spending 24.5 percent of gross domestic product — the total value of the national economy — by 2019 while raising only 19 percent in revenue: a huge, unsustainable gap.

The 24.5% of GDP isn’t a measure of government spending as a result of the House/Obama health care bill. It’s a measure of the outlays of all of the President’s policies in his 2010 budget in 2019 and does not capture the deficit-reducing effects of health care reform or the House bill. The Wonk Room has more.

Climate Progress

Senate Finance Committee Calls On Polluter Lobbyists To Defend Pollution Economy Yet Again

By Brad Johnson on Nov 9, 2009 at 6:02 pm

Senate Finance Committee

Tomorrow, Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-MT) Finance Committee will look at the effect of clean energy legislation on the “future of jobs.” Appearing before the committee are four industry or conservative lobbyists and one coal-industry union lobbyist, Abraham Breehey. The only economist to testify will be Margo Thorning, a lobbyist for the anti-tax American Council on Capital Formation. Also testifying is Carol Berrigan, a nuclear industry representative, Van Ton-Quinlivan of Pacific Gas & Electric, and American Enterprise Institute fellow Kenneth Green.

One could point out that Breehey’s union, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers, supports the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act in large part because it provides so much support for the coal industry.

One could point out that Berrigan’s organization, the Nuclear Energy Institute, is not satisfied that clean energy legislation will spur nuclear energy through free-market competition, but is demanding massive subsidies and tax breaks as well.

One could point out that ACCF and AEI have received millions of dollars in funding from Exxon Mobil alone, or that Thorning refuses to reveal her methodology and Green has tried to buy climate scientists for $10,000 a pop.

Instead, let’s just note that tomorrow’s testimony will likely rehash the talking points that these witnesses have delivered time and again for the past ten years. Other than Ton-Quinlivan, who is appearing for the first time before Congress, the witnesses are regulars on the Hill, testifying a combined 20 times on climate and energy policy since 2002. Thorning has been the most frequent guest over the years, and this will be Green’s fifth time testifying since June.

Margo Thorning:

Kenneth P. Green

Carol Berrigan:

Abraham Breehey

If the Finance Committee is really trying to learn something new about whether reforming our pollution-based energy infrastructure would create new jobs, one would think they could have put a little more effort in witness selection.

Politics

Anti-reform doctors seeking to rescind AMA endorsement are led by front group with insurer, GOP ties.

By Lee Fang on Nov 9, 2009 at 5:35 pm

The House passed historic comprehensive health insurance reform on Saturday with the help of endorsements from hundreds of community organizations, including the American Medical Association. However, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that former AMA president Donald Palmisano is leading an effort to force the AMA to rescind its endorsement of the bill. As ThinkProgress first reported back in July, Palmisano’s organization Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights is being managed by the infamous lobbying firm known as DCI Group, which specializes in creating “credible coalition partners” to advance the interests of corporations. ThinkProgress’ Victor Zapanta caught up with Palmisano, who told us he supports the “patient-doctor relationship” where uninsured patients and patients who cannot afford care should simply beg for charity:

PALMISANO: If you have a problem, you would just say ‘look I have a financial problem, can you help me’ and doctors will help you. If somebody couldn’t pay, we just send them a note, ‘you haven’t paid, is there a reason you can’t pay?’ All they have to do is give us any reason and we just wrote off the bill, forgot the bill. That’s what doctors do.

Watch it:

DCI Group, in addition to its record of setting up “Smokers’ Rights” fronts for tobacco companies, has worked closely the private health insurance industry in the past to thwart legislation to improve the health care system. Additionally, Palmisano has been working closely with Republican lawmakers, like Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), who are most interested in torpedoing health reform to score political points.

Climate Progress

Voters in Ohio, Michigan and Missouri overwhelmingly support action on clean energy and global warming

By Joe Romm on Nov 9, 2009 at 5:22 pm

The new polls also found that large majorities believe global warming is a serious or very serious threat.

Polling from 3 key states — and 5 key districts — finds strong support for the climate and clean energy bill.  Every major recent poll has come to the same conclusion (see Swing state poll finds 60% “would be more likely to vote for their senator if he or she supported the bill” and Independents support the bill 2-to-1).  Perhaps that’s why E&E News found “At least 67 senators are in play” on climate bill.

In the new polls, likely 2010 voters were asked:

“Congress is considering an energy plan that has two key parts. One part would require factories and power companies to reduce their emissions of the carbon pollution that causes global warming by 17% (20% in MO) by the year 2020 and by 80% by the year 2050. The other part would require power companies to generate 15% of their power from clean energy sources like wind and solar by the year 2025. Would you favor/oppose this entire plan?”

The results:

  • 75% of voters in Michigan favor.
  • 68% of voters in Ohio favor.
  • 67% of voters in Missouri favor.

And this matches every recent poll:

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Economy

Why Is Geithner Dead Set Against A Financial Transactions Tax?

By Pat Garofalo on Nov 9, 2009 at 5:00 pm

AP091107010794At a meeting of the G-20 over the weekend, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown turned some heads by suggesting that the cost of any future bank failures be funded by assessing a financial transactions tax (FTT) on all trades (assuming that other nations agree to implement such a tax).

While the idea that taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill when a bank fails was widely agreed upon, the FTT proposal ran into a wave of opposition, including from U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Saturday firmly opposed a proposal by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown for a global tax on financial transactions. “That’s not something we’re prepared to support,” Geithner said, speaking after meetings of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Scotland Saturday. He added that it is an idea that has been around a long time and has received mixed results.

While I don’t think that revenue from an FTT should contribute to the bank failure fund — because that would cause all traders, instead of just systemically-risky banks, to foot the bill — Geithner should be open to looking at an FTT as a general revenue raiser, particularly as Wall Street rebounds to record profits while Main Street stays in the doldrums.

The FTT, in theory, would be a fee of a fraction of a percent imposed on all trades. Regular investors likely wouldn’t notice it at all, but it could raise significant revenue from firms like Goldman Sachs, who are consistently churning paper back and forth.

Consider that, before the economic crash, financial service companies accounted for 41 percent of all domestic corporate profits. And just more than one year after Wall Street’s collapse, they’re back to making 31.5 percent. As Felix Salmon wrote, “financial services companies are meant to be intermediaries, middlemen.” But instead, they’re netting a huge chunk of domestic profit all for themselves, casting serious doubt on whether their activities are actually providing any social benefit.

As Dean Baker, the most outspoken advocate of the FTT, wrote, “if a financial transactions tax reduces the volume of trading, and therefore the resources used by [the financial] sector, without harming the sector’s ability to allocate capital, then it will be making the sector more efficient and freeing up resources for more productive uses”:

This could potentially be a very large benefit from an FTT. If it reduced trading volume by 25 percent (the middle scenario in Pollin et al.), leading to a corresponding reduction in resource use, it would free up more than $60 billion a year in labor and capital for productive uses.

So the tax could raise some deficit-reducing revenue, while giving us a more efficient financial system. That’s something that Geithner should be willing to spend a few moments contemplating.

Yglesias

Does The Media Give Islam A Pass?

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 9, 2009 at 4:44 pm

scott_roeder_060409 1

Jeffrey Goldberg spies a double-standard:

I do think that elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims. Here’s a simple test: If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Christian with pronounced anti-abortion views, and had he attacked, say, a Planned Parenthood office, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of the attack? Of course. Elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism. Quite the opposite. It would be useful to apply the same standards of inquiry and criticism to all religions.

Really? I don’t recall George Tiller’s killing—or Eric Rudolf’s before him—as having touched-off some kind of widespread social or intellectual attack on American Christianity. Indeed, the United States Conference of Bishops responded to the Tiller murder in a manner that, had it been used by CAIR, would have prompted cries of moral equivalence:

“Our bishops’ conference and all its members have repeatedly and publicly denounced all forms of violence in our society, including abortion as well as the misguided resort to violence by anyone opposed to abortion,” Cardinal Rigali said. “Such killing is the opposite of everything we stand for, and everything we want our culture to stand for: respect for the life of each and every human being from its beginning to its natural end. We pray for Dr. Tiller and his family.”

And, I dunno, it is what it is. After all, what are you really supposed to say about religion. After all, not only is the bishops’ statement kind of inadequate, but the central premise of Christian religion (the whole Jesus thing) is—according to me and to Jeff Goldberg too—totally false. Islam too! And yet at the same time we all need to coexist. And fortunately the vast majority of people professing every faith, along with the vast majority of those professing no faith, are rejecting violence and not killing people.

Yglesias

Votes are Tough for Republicans, Too

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 9, 2009 at 4:43 pm

190px-Castlemn

One of the oddest aspects of the legislative splits of the 111th Congress is that we’ve heard a ton about the political risks run by Democratic members who represent McCain-friendly districts who vote for the Obama agenda, but basically nothing about the risks facing Republicans from Obama-friendly districts who vote for the GOP leadership’s agenda’s of blocking everything. Take, for example, Representative Mike Castle of Delaware. Barack Obama got 62 percent of the vote in his at-large district. John Kerry got 53 percent. Al Gore got 55 percent. Bill Clinton got 52 percent in 1996. Castle only survives in the House because he has a reputation as a moderate. What’s more, he’s planning on running for Joe Biden’s old Senate seat. To win this seat, he clearly needs to convince people that he wouldn’t just be a rubber-stamp for a national Republican Party that can’t win anything in Delaware. And yet here he is voting against health reform. A big risk!

Beyond Castle and Joseph Cao who voted “yes” there are 33 other House Republicans representing Obama districts. And there used to be 34 until the Democrats won the open, but previously GOP-held, NY-23 seat. Some of these were narrow, but a bunch went heavily for Obama. He won 58 percent of the vote in Jim Gerlach’s PA-6, while Gerlach won just 52 percent. Obama got 56 percent in WA-8, and 61 percent in Mark Kirk’s IL-10. Meanwhile Kirk, like Castle, is vacating his seat to run statewide in a blue state. Under normal conditions you expect a popular incumbent president to win more bipartisan support for his initiatives. But that’s precisely because under normal conditions you expect legislators in this kind of situation to be afraid of defying the president. After all, Obama continues to be much more popular than the Republican leaders to whom these blue districts House GOPers are being so slavishly loyal.

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