As the BP oil disaster drags on, the public’s desire for clean energy investments and increased oversight of corporate polluters has greatly intensified. CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss and intern Ariel Powell have the important data and charts from a major new poll.
Fox News commentator Sarah Palin now believes that the Obama administration needs to crack down on “oily corruption” and hold “oil executives accountable” before the industry can be trusted to “drill, baby, drill.” This is, of course, how President Obama has responded to the BP oil disaster — by establishing new moratoria on offshore drilling, launching criminal investigations into the catastrophe, breaking up the Minerals Management Service, creating a presidential investigatory commission, and calling for comprehensive legislation to cap fossil fuel pollution. In a Facebook post, Palin promotes her record as a half-term governor of Alaska, claiming she has made government regulation of oil drilling a “constant refrain“:
Unless government appropriately regulates oil developments and holds oil executives accountable, the public will not trust them to drill, baby, drill. And we must! Or we will be even more beholden to, and controlled by, dangerous foreign regimes that supply much of our energy. This has been a constant refrain from me. As Governor of Alaska, I did everything in my power to hold oil companies accountable in order to prove to the federal government and to the nation that Alaska could be trusted to further develop energy rich land like ANWR and NPR-A. I hired conscientious Democrats and Republicans (because this sure shouldn’t be a partisan issue) to provide me with the best advice on how we could deal with what was a corrupt system of some lawmakers and administrators who were hesitant to play hardball with some in the oil field business. (Remember the Alaska lawmakers, public decision-makers, and business executives who ended up going to jail as a result of the FBI’s investigations of oily corruption.)
Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) “energy expert” failed to mention that she used Exxon-funded studies to fight protecting the polar bear from oil pollution, and claimed offshore drilling is “safe and environmentally friendly” on the campaign trail:
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who sued the government over health reform just moments after President Obama signed reform legislation, has filed a response to the federal government’s motion to dismiss that state’s independent lawsuit. Over at the main site, Ian Millhiser mocks Cuccinelli for producing “an often-incoherent brief” that “argues that a 236 year-old colonial boycott of British products somehow renders the new health care law unconstitutional.” But judging by the 25-minute conference call Cuccinelli hosted last night about the suit and the detailed press release his office released, the AG is taking this thing very, very seriously:
Of all the controversial items on Cuccinelli’s agenda, he has said his most important initiative is this lawsuit. It also happens to be the issue that tends to get him the most hearty support from the public–though certainly not a few detractors as well.
Maybe all those reasons explain why he has seemed so particularly eager to discuss his position on this case. Along with this evening’s call, his office also put out a a press release that walked through the case’s legal issues in an unusual depth for such documents. In a grid, the release shows each of the federal governments six arguments for dismissal, along with Cuccinelli’s response for each.
The call continued for close to 25 minutes. Cuccinelli discussed why his suit is ripe now, even though the mandate doesn’t go into effect until 2014, why he believes the constitution’s “necessary and proper” clause does not give Congress constitutional authority for the law, why the fine citizens will face if they do not buy insurance should be considered a penalty and not a tax and why that would matter legally. He also explained why his suit should be heard separately from a 20 state suit against the law filed in Florida but why the cases will likely be heard together at the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Virginia has a sovereign interest which has been infringed and we therefore have standing in this case,” he said.
What’s strange is how sincerely concerned Cuccinelli seems about a piece of legislation that doesn’t kick in until the very end of his four-year term in 2014. Cuccinelli charges that the state of Virginia is injured by reform “[b]ecause the federal health care law purports to invalidate a Virginia law (the Health Care Freedom Act).” But the injury is self-imposed. Virginia purposely passed a law that contradicted the federal bill, knowing full well that the supremacy clause would invalidate the measure. Rather than deal with other more pressing problems, the state government manufactured standing and is now determined to spend taxpayer dollars and time arguing a highly improbable case.
Roll Call is also reporting that “28 Republican Representatives, including top GOP House leadership, Tuesday signed on to an amicus brief filed in support of Virginia’s constitutional challenge to the law.”
Back in February, President Obama created a debt commission by executive order, which is tasked with crafting a proposal to reduce long-term deficits through a combination of revenue increases and spending cuts. Theoretically, the package crafted by the commission will then be voted on by Congress, but in order for it to ever see a vote, 14 of the 18 commission members need to approve it.
One of the concerns about the commission is that it will inequitably favor spending cuts (particularly to entitlements like Social Security) and eschew common sense tax increases. This is particularly worrisome because the commission includes some members — like Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) — who fearmonger about any kind of tax increase.
Today, at the America’s Future Now conference, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) — who is also a commission member — said that success for the commission is “unlikely” because conservatives members are refusing to consider tax increases. In an interview with ThinkProgress, she said that she’s worried conservatives are giving “some lip service” to increasing revenue, but “are closing that door and taking it off the table” when it comes to specifics:
[Conservatives] give some lip service to ‘everything should be on the table,’ then, when it actually comes to what kind of revenue can we raise, are closing that door and taking it off the table, and saying that they’re not really willing to consider those things. The problem, in their view, is all about spending, and of course, that’s not the case. Actually, discretionary spending has been pretty darn flat over the years. We’ve seen a growth of wealth among the wealthy already and flat income for ordinary people…It may mean that the commission really deadlocks.
Watch it:
Currently, taxes are the lowest that they’ve been in 50 years, and the U.S. has the fifth lowest taxes as a share of GDP among economically developed nations. Even if we tried to balance the budget entirely on tax increases (which no one is suggesting), the United States would still be in the bottom ten. Balancing the budget entirely on the back of spending cuts, meanwhile, would require draconian reductions that will have the greatest negative impact on the most vulnerable populations.
For her part, Schakowsky said that its unconscionable that Congress is considering spending billions of dollars to cut the estate tax, at the same time that the debt commission is putting Social Security cuts on the table. She also pushed back against the notion that deficit reduction should take precedence over job creation in the short-term. “Leaving our children debt free — does that mean leaving them sick, uneducated, and unemployed?” she asked.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
Back in February, President Obama created a debt commission by executive order, which is tasked with crafting a proposal to reduce long-term deficits through a combination of revenue increases and spending cuts. Theoretically, the package crafted by the commission will then be voted on by Congress, but in order for it to ever see a vote, 14 of the 18 commission members need to approve it.
One of the concerns about the commission is that it will inequitably favor spending cuts (particularly to entitlements like Social Security) and eschew common sense tax increases. This is particularly worrisome because the commission includes some members — like Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) — who fearmonger about any kind of tax increase.
Today, at the America’s Future Now conference, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) — who is also a commission member — said that success for the commission is “unlikely” because conservatives members are refusing to consider tax increases. In an interview with The Wonk Room, she said that she’s worried conservatives are giving “some lip service” to increasing revenue, but “are closing that door and taking it off the table” when it comes to specifics:
[Conservatives] give some lip service to ‘everything should be on the table,’ then, when it actually comes to what kind of revenue can we raise, are closing that door and taking it off the table, and saying that they’re not really willing to consider those things. The problem, in their view, is all about spending, and of course, that’s not the case. Actually, discretionary spending has been pretty darn flat over the years. We’ve seen a growth of wealth among the wealthy already and flat income for ordinary people…It may mean that the commission really deadlocks.
Watch it:
Currently, taxes are the lowest that they’ve been in 50 years, and the U.S. has the fifth lowest taxes as a share of GDP among economically developed nations. Even if we tried to balance the budget entirely on tax increases (which no one is suggesting), the United States would still be in the bottom ten. Balancing the budget entirely on the back of spending cuts, meanwhile, would require draconian reductions that will have the greatest negative impact on the most vulnerable populations.
For her part, Schakowsky said that its unconscionable that Congress is considering spending billions of dollars to cut the estate tax, at the same time that the debt commission is putting Social Security cuts on the table. She also pushed back against the notion that deficit reduction should take precedence over job creation in the short-term. “Leaving our children debt free — does that mean leaving them sick, uneducated, and unemployed?” she asked.
The Associated Press is reporting that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed Sergio Adrián Hernández Huereca, a 14-year-old boy on the U.S. side of the Paso Del Norte bridge in El Paso, Texas. According to the FBI, border patrol agents were assaulted by rock throwers across the border in Mexico. T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, believes the use of “deadly force” was a justified response. “It is a deadly force encounter,” Bonner told the Associated Press. “One that justifies the use of deadly force.”
Despite the border patrol agent’s undeniable “deadly use of force,” reports confirm that he was not injured and it still is not known whether Hernández Huereca was directly involved in the alleged rock throwing.
Rock-throwing assaults represent a diminishing, but persistent threat that border patrol agents have faced over the years. In 2007 the Associated Press reported that U.S. officials equipped Border Patrol SWAT teams with tear gas, “flash bombs” that emit blinding light and “sting ball” grenades that disperse hundreds of tiny rubber pellets to “spare lives” when responding to such assaults. However, the violent, and potentially deadly treatment of Mexican migrants has not been avoided entirely. In March 2007, an agent shot and killed a 20-year-old Mexican man whose arm was cocked back in a location where rock attacks frequently occurred. Two years before that, an agent fatally shot a rock thrower at the San Diego-Tijuana border. Just this past Saturday, U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and injured two individuals in San Miguel, Arizona following a rock-throwing assault. Last week, a different U.S. Border Patrol agent pleaded guilty to assaulting and violating a Mexican man’s civil rights by kicking the victim, striking him in the stomach with a baton, throwing him down to ground, and punching him. Innocent families caught in the middle of the crossfire have long been complaining about the indiscriminate use of tear gas and pepper spray.
The shooting of Hernández Huereca also comes just days after the death of Anastacio Hernández, a father of five U.S. born children who was shot with a stun gun by a Customs and Border Protection officer two weeks ago at the San Ysidro border crossing as he resisted being deported. While Customs and Border protection maintain their actions were necessary to “subdue the individual and maintain officer safety,” the victim’s family and immigrant advocates believe his death was a result of a failed immigration system. Last week, the San Diego County coroner ruled that his death was a homicide. Once again, reports suggest that the agent who fired the shot was virtually unharmed.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has condemned what some officials like Bonner apparently view as a reasonable use of deadly force, expressing “energetic protest of the torture and death of Anastasio Hernandez, a Mexico who died at the hands of North American migration authorities.” “[A] death with that degree of violence is a truly unacceptable violation,” Calderon said. “We need to raise all our voices, not only for Mexico but for human rights, because the cause of migrants is a cause that affects us all.” While some have slammed Calderon’s criticisms, it’s hard to believe that the U.S. would not respond even more harshly if an American citizen had been treated similarly by Mexican agents.
Back in 1997, a completely innocent 18-year-old, Esequiel Hernández Jr., was accidentally shot by a U.S. Marine in Redford, Texas, one mile from the Mexican border. His death, which was widely considered a “casualty of the [militarized] drug war,” sparked outrage and led Defense Secretary William Cohen to temporarily suspend troop patrols near the U.S.–Mexico border. Despite the fact that the U.S. side of the border is presently “one of the safest parts of America,” Republicans today continue calling for more boots on the ground to combat dangerous drug cartels.
Before it adjourned for its Memorial Day recess, the House of Representatives passed a scaled down tax extenders bill, that didn’t include extensions of COBRA health insurance subsidies for unemployed workers, or an extension of FMAP funding to help states meet their Medicaid responsibilities. The bill also only extended unemployment benefits through November, instead of December as had been originally planned.
Despite 9.7 percent unemployment, and long-term unemployment at record highs, the bill was cut down because of concerns regarding its effect on the deficit, as only part of it was offset by revenue raisers. A group of Blue Dogs and freshman Democrats, as well as lockstep Republican opposition, helped to produce legislation with significantly less impact.
Today, ThinkProgress posed a couple of questions regarding such deficit hysteria to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who appeared at the America’s Future Now conference to advocate more robust job creation measures from Congress. Trumka said that those more concerned with the deficit than the fact that 15 million Americans are currently out of work have “been reading too much fiction or they have their head in the sand”:
We do not have a short-term deficit crisis, we have a short-term jobs crisis in this country. And anyone that doesn’t believe that has either, I think, been reading too much fiction or they have their head in the sand. Every economist I know says we have a jobs crisis, and yet the people on [Capitol] Hill say we can’t really fix the crisis, we have to worry about deficit reduction.
Watch it:
Later on, when ThinkProgress asked why Washington is so focused on deficits when the country is much more concerned with unemployment, Trumka blamed “timid leadership. Timid leadership gets any kind of pushback, they say we’ll stop. What they need to do is stand up and explain that if you really want to cure deficits, put people back to work.”
It’s true that short-term concern over the deficit and favoring deficit reduction over job creation is counterproductive. As CAP’s Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden wrote, in the face of the Great Recession, short-term deficits “are both inevitable and highly appropriate at a time when the economy is weak.”
It should also be noted that, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll, Americans do not prioritize deficit reduction over job creation. Only 5 percent of respondents to the poll cited it as their top concern, while 35 percent said job creation is the most important policy priority of theirs.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
You split my heart in two:
— Lindsey Graham abandons climate bill, planet doomed.
— Poland implementing chemical castration law.
— SCOTUS right-wing takes further steps to enhance the political clout of rich people and big business.
— One man’s excessive health spending is another company’s profits.
— How Orly Taitz might win in California.
— China boosting internet access while remaining committed to large-scale censorship.
The climate situation may be totally hopeless, but at least there’s still Swedish pop. To wit: Robyn, “Fembots”.
Before it adjourned for its Memorial Day recess, the House of Representatives passed a scaled down tax extenders bill, that didn’t include extensions of COBRA health insurance subsidies for unemployed workers, or an extension of FMAP funding to help states meet their Medicaid responsibilities. The bill also only extended unemployment benefits through November, instead of December as had been originally planned.
Despite 9.7 percent unemployment, and long-term unemployment at record highs, the bill was cut down because of concerns regarding its effect on the deficit, as only part of it was offset by revenue raisers. A group of Blue Dogs and freshman Democrats, as well as lockstep Republican opposition, helped to produce legislation with significantly less impact.
Today, The Wonk Room posed a couple of questions regarding such deficit hysteria to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who appeared at the America’s Future Now conference to advocate more robust job creation measures from Congress. Trumka said that those more concerned with the deficit than the fact that 15 million Americans are currently out of work have “been reading too much fiction or they have their head in the sand”:
We do not have a short-term deficit crisis, we have a short-term jobs crisis in this country. And anyone that doesn’t believe that has either, I think, been reading too much fiction or they have their head in the sand. Every economist I know says we have a jobs crisis, and yet the people on [Capitol] Hill say we can’t really fix the crisis, we have to worry about deficit reduction.
Watch it:
Later on, when ThinkProgress asked why Washington is so focused on deficits when the country is much more concerned with unemployment, Trumka blamed “timid leadership.” “Timid leadership gets any kind of pushback, they say we’ll stop. What they need to do is stand up and explain that if you really want to cure deficits, put people back to work,” he said.
It’s true that short-term concern over the deficit and favoring deficit reduction over job creation is counterproductive. As CAP’s Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden wrote, in the face of the Great Recession, short-term deficits “are both inevitable and highly appropriate at a time when the economy is weak.”
It should also be noted that, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll, Americans do not prioritize deficit reduction over job creation. Only 5 percent of respondents to the poll cited it as their top concern, while 35 percent said job creation is the most important policy priority of theirs.
Felix Salmon and Kevin Drum ponder the American middle class’ implacable opposition to taxing the rich as a means of closing the budget deficit. Their comments are interesting, but I’m seeking evidence that any such opposition exists. On March 29, Quinnipiac University asked “Do you think – raising income taxes on households making more than $250,000 should or should not be a main part of any government approach to the deficit?” The answer? People think it should:
When they asked about raising income taxes on households making more than 1 million dollars, support was overwhelming, 72 of respondents including a majority of self-identified Republicans said it was a good idea.
More from PollingReport:
CBS News/New York Times Poll. April 5-12, 2010. N=1,580 adults nationwide:
“Do you regard the income tax which you will have to pay this year as fair, or not?”
Fair, 68 / Not fair, 30 / Unsure 8Bloomberg Poll conducted by Selzer & Co. Dec. 3-7, 2009. N=1,000 adults nationwide:
“I’m going to mention some specific government programs that add significantly to the federal deficit. For each, please tell me if the spending is justified and should be continued, was justified but should be cut dramatically, or is not justified at all. . . .”
“Tax cuts for the very wealthy”
Justified, continue, 27 / Justify, cut, 12 / Not Justified, 60 / Unsure 1Gallup Poll. April 6-9, 2009. N=1,027 adults nationwide:
“As I read off some different groups, please tell me if you think they are paying their fair share in federal taxes, paying too much, or paying too little. How about [see below]?”
“Upper-income”
Fair share, 23 / Too much, 13 / Too little, 60 / Unsure 3
Higher taxes on the rich is basically the only deficit-reducing policy measure the public supports.
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