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Breaking: Carol Browner, Obama’s energy and climate ‘czar’, to leave White House

By Joe Romm on Jan 24, 2011 at 9:26 pm

Carol M. Browner, President Barack Obama’s energy adviser, plans to leave the White House in coming weeks, White House officials said Monday night.

Browner, who is Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, was EPA administrator for all eight years under President Bill Clinton, and is one of the most experienced Washington hands in the West Wing.

Well, that’s a bombshell.

This is a big reversal from the rumors.  Earlier this month, the NYT‘s John Broder reported the conventional wisdom, “Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate policy, is rumored to be moving to a new post, possibly deputy chief of staff.”

That said, the catastrophic failure of the administration to pass a climate bill — heck, the failure to even get a vote in the Senate or one damn speech from the President on the gravest threat to the health and well-being of our children and future generations — must have taken its toll.  And that’s without factoring in months and months of dealing with the BP oil disaster or the prospect of two years of a hostile House of climate zombies.

Here’s more from The Politico on Browner:

Read more

LGBT

Ohio Governor John Kasich Breaks Pledge, Excludes Gender Protections From Non-Discrimination Order

By Igor Volsky on Jan 24, 2011 at 8:00 pm

Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) has finally issued an executive order barring discrimination in state-based employment, after allowing his predecessor’s EO to briefly expire. Like former Gov. Ted Strickland’s EO, the measure prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin (ancestry), military status (past, present or future), disability, age or sexual orientation, but does not include protections for gender identity — which Kasich specifically promised to extend during the gubernatorial campaign. (The measure does add a new category for genetic information.):

Kasich had said in response to a Dispatch questionnaire that he would continue Strickland’s 2007 order, and the question specifically mentioned gender identity.

Asked why Kasich decided to omit it, spokesman Scott Milburn replied: “The governor is opposed to discrimination in state employment and has made that clear in this executive order in the way that he feels is most appropriate.”

As Autumn Sandeen of Palm’s House Blend notes, “So apparently it’s now ‘appropriate’ to discriminate against those state employees in Ohio who were who were once protected by the gender identity provision of the previous governor’s antidiscrimination order.” “Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but feel that Republican Governor John Kasich threw a bone to social/religious right conservatives — he singled out a very small minority population that were once protected by the state’s antidiscrimination policy, and has now has left them vulnerable. The chances of a large and effective enough protest against the change of policy means he gives his socially conservative base something to be pleased about that won’t be effectively countered by a broad coalition of people on the left. ”

The Ohio House passed a measure prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in, but the legislation never came up for a vote in the Senate. The state does not offer non-discrimination protection for LGBT employees.

Politics

VIDEO: Republicans Oppose Government Investments In American Economy

By George Zornick on Jan 24, 2011 at 8:00 pm

Previewing his State of the Union speech, President Obama made clear this weekend that he wants to outline a “vision for how we as a people will win the future.” Many reports indicate Obama will focus on how the government can invest in several key sectors in order to improve the country’s economic future, with a recent speech in North Carolina as a template, in which the President pledged to “continue to fight for those investments that will help America win the race for the jobs and industries of the future — and that means investments in education and innovation and infrastructure.”

Leading conservative voices have already gone on the record rejecting Obama’s calls for renewed investment before he has even delivered the address. Republicans have made it clear they view any government spending as unnecessary, and they believe Obama’s calls for “investment” are simply a conspiracy to increase federal spending:

– Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “When you hear — and with all due respect to our Democratic friends — anytime they want to spend they call it ‘investment,’ so I think you’ll hear the president talk about investing a lot on Tuesday night. We’ve got a huge spending problem here.” [Fox News Sunday, 1/23/11]

– House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA): “When [Obama] talks about investing — I think even someone from the White House this week had said that this is going to be a cut and invest White House. We want to cut and grow, because when we hear invest from anyone in Washington, to me that means more spending.” [Meet the Press, 1/23/11]

– Rush Limbaugh: “All this talk about investments… that’s what all the new spending is going to be called….How many decades have we been investing in all of these things, and all we’ve got to show for it is a nation in debt; we’ve got no winning performances, leading performances, in our education system. In fact everything we’ve been investing in is falling apart.” [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 1/24/11]

Watch a compilation:

For once, a conservative conspiracy theory is entirely accurate: obviously, government investment in education, energy, infrastructure and other areas would necessarily involve federal spending, and Obama is not attempting to hide that. But the spending is indeed an investment in America’s future. As Limbaugh notes, the American education system is not displaying “winning performances.” That is exactly the reason the federal government needs to invest in education, and the Center for American Progress has outlined how Obama can call for “a national initiative and conversation about school investments and educational efficiency to help school districts make better use of their educational dollars.”

For the energy sector, CAP Senior Fellow Daniel Weiss hopes that, along with other investment measures, Obama will call for a $2 barrel fee on imported oil that would raise over $9 billion annually for clean energy investments and deficit reduction. CAP is also calling for the creation of a “green bank” to help companies take new technologies from successful R&D to the marketplace.

These issues seem worthy of investment. If Republicans disagree, they should engage the merits instead reflexively recoiling at the sound of “investments.” President Bush, in his State of the Union addresses, repeatedly called for government investment in key areas that “showed some rapport with Obama. Bush called for what seemed like government support for advanced energy technologies.”

Update

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) revealed to local reporters today that “[w]hen the President talks in his speech about investment, the American people need to understand that translates into spending.”

Economy

Sen. Isakson: Raising The Retirement Age ‘Painlessly’ Reforms Social Security

By Guest Blogger on Jan 24, 2011 at 7:00 pm

In an address to the Cobb Country Chamber of Commerce today, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) called one of the most regressive changes that could be made to Social Security — raising the retirement age — a painless fix for keeping the program solvent in the long-term:

The deficit commission said, you know, if you just change [the retirement age] and by the year 2075 you make that 69 years for the eligibility age and you take the cap and raise the cap by five percent on the taxable income that you apply to the payroll tax, you save Social Security. Now there are people, interest groups that are out there, who don’t believe in shared sacrifice, are already saying that destroys Social Security. It doesn’t destroy it, it saves it…Social Security is fixable, actuarially and painlessly.

Watch it:

Contrary to Isakson’s assertion, an increase in the retirement age would actually be quite painful for many Americans. Raising the retirement age would cut benefits for middle-class retirees, exasperate income inequality and disproportionately affect low-income earners whose life expectancies have stagnated in the past three decades (as changes in life expectancy have largely mirrored changes in income inequality).

Yet Isakson and other Republican leaders such as Govs. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) and Mitch Daniels (R-IN) have enthusiastically endorsed raising the retirement age while ignoring its impact on low-income workers. Isakson’s other proposed reform — raising the cap on taxable income for Social Security — would be a much more progressive and effective change that would help the program keep paying full benefits for the next 75 years. Even with no changes, Social Security will pay full benefits until 2037 and close to full benefits for decades after that.

Isakson — the 46th richest member of Congress — even went as far to call opponents of raising the retirement age “interest groups who don’t believe in shared sacrifice.” Yet recent polling has shown strong support even among Tea Party members for raising the income cap rather than cutting benefits.

– Kevin Donohoe

Politics

67 Percent Of Tea Partiers Would Rather Raise Taxes Than Raise The Social Security Retirement Age

By Zaid Jilani on Jan 24, 2011 at 6:45 pm

There appears to be some growing consensus among some of the political elite that there should be major regressive changes to Social Security, like cutting back on benefits and/or raising the retirement age. Building on this consensus, Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) are expected to release legislation soon that would involve raising the retirement age to 69. Yet a new poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP) finds that one group that does not support these regressive cuts is the American people themselves. The PPP poll found that 77 percent of Americans would rather “pay Social Security taxes on salaries above $106,800,” essentially lifting the income tax cap, instead of seeing their “benefits cut and the retirement age increased to age 69.” Surprisingly, however, even 67 percent of self-identified Tea Partiers said they would rather raise the tax cap than cuts benefits and hike the retirement age:

Currently, workers pay social security payroll taxes on up to $106,800 of their salary. To ensure the long-term viability of Social Security, would you rather have people pay social security taxes on salaries above $106,800, or would you rather see benefits cut and the retirement age increased to age 69?

Raise payroll cap Cut benefits
All 77 10

Dem 84 4
GOP 69 17
Ind 77 11

Tea Party 67 20

Those who advocate for raising the Social Security retirement age often claim that they are pursuing “moderate” paths for reform. As this poll and others demonstrate, the course they are choosing is far from centrist.

Economy

Top Financial Services Committee Republican Says Foreclosure Prevention Efforts ‘Need To Stop’

By Pat Garofalo on Jan 24, 2011 at 6:10 pm

Last month, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) — who has now officially been named the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee — explained that, in his view, “Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.” And it seems that the rest of the Republicans on the Financial Services Committee are coalescing around their chairman’s philosophy.

Last week, Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ), who is chairing the Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises, said that he wants to implement a mortgage finance system that is entirely private, jeopardizing the very existence of the 30-year mortgage on which so many families rely. And in a speech today, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said that he wants all foreclosure prevention efforts to be halted immediately:

“All these foreclosure mitigation initiatives we’re taking need to stop,” he said, speaking at an event co-hosted by the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and the NYU Stern School of Business. Neugebauer said the private market should be allowed to work through the problems in the housing market without “administration pressure” to avoid foreclosures. “Markets aren’t kind, but they’re very efficient,” he said. “There were people who were put in their homes that probably never should have been there before.”

Neugebauer is parroting the conservative vision of the housing crisis — which to them was caused entirely by government policies encouraging homeownership amongst those who couldn’t afford it — so it’s not surprising that he thinks the government should get out of the foreclosure prevention business. But the actual problems in the housing market bear little resemblance to those Neugebauer outlined.

For one thing, leaving aside that many of the borrowers who faced foreclosure early in the housing crisis were hoodwinked by predatory lenders, the foreclosure crisis long ago migrated out of subprime loans and into prime loans, as people lost their jobs in the Great Recession. So a crisis created in large part by the shenanigans of bankers then walloped homeowners, who become unemployed through no fault of their own. Neugebauer’s prognosis also ignores the problem of underwater homeowners, who, again, through no fault of their own, now owe more on their mortgage than their home is currently worth, due to plunging home prices.

Meanwhile, one million homes were foreclosed upon last year, and real estate analysts say that another one million will go into foreclosure this year. This not only harms the individual borrowers, but the wider economy, dragging down home values for everyone else and blowing holes in bank balance sheets.

The administration’s foreclosure prevention efforts have, admittedly, left a lot to be desired, but that’s because they involve lots of carrots for banks to modify mortgages, but few sticks, while banks have institutionalized systems biased in favor of foreclosure (like their use of “robo-signers“). Neugebauer’s approach would simply remove the limited help current foreclosure prevention efforts provide, leaving homeowners to the mercy of the very banks whose negligence helped drive the housing crisis in the first place. For some ideas on how to properly reform foreclosure prevention programs, visit here, here, and here.

Politics

Stephen Moore: GOP ‘Hypocritical’ For Taking Gov’t Health Care, They ‘Should Give Up Their Pension’ Too

By Ben Armbruster on Jan 24, 2011 at 5:41 pm

Seeming to maintain a consistant position on the issue, several GOP lawmakers who campaigned on and support repealing the new health care reform law have turned down their federally subsidized health insurance plans. ABC News reports that 14 House Republicans have waived their federal plans. All 242 House Republicans voted to repeal the law last week, leaving dozens, if not hundreds, more GOPers benefiting from government subsidized health care while voting to repeal it for everyone else. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said last week that this “could be” hypocritical. But on the online-only “Overtime” segment of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, conservative commentator and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore went a bit further:

MAHER: Isn’t it hypocritical of Congress to repeal the health care reform bill but not their own government health care? Now, I don’t know how you can defend that as not hypocritcal.

MOORE: It’s hypocritical. … Repeal both.

MAHER: Really? Repeal both. You think they should’ve given up their health care?

MOORE: Yeah. The Congress should give up their pension, their health care, all those things.

MAHER: That’ll make you popular on Captitol Hill.

Watch it:

Today on a local radio show, freshman Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) — a fierce opponent of the new health care law — said that she will participate in the government plan because, otherwise, it’s too “expensive.” “Unfortunately, being here in Washington is very expensive,” Ellmers said, who is set to make $174,000 this year. “Yes we do have a salary and we do have benefits. It costs a lot of money to be here. I’ve signed on to the private plan, just like so many in America are on. The benefit is available to me. People need to understand out there it costs a lot money to be here in Congress.”

Yglesias

The Confusion

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 24, 2011 at 5:27 pm

I didn’t find The Confusion, Book Two of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, nearly as enjoyable as volume one. That’s largely because the picaresque “Bonanza” sections of the novel don’t seem to me to really add anything thematically to what we’ve previously seen of the adventures of Jack Shaftoe. I think this character simply isn’t as fascinating as Stephenson thinks he is and it gets tedious at a certain point.

But the “Juncto” plotline dealing with the politics and economics of late 17th century Britain and Europe is great. Among other things, it contains an excellent narrative account of the seemingly mysterious fact that a shortage of money can lead to declining output of real goods and services. This is an idea people find highly counterintuitive for the very good reason that in your personal life you get more money by increasing your output of goods and services, so it seems clear that a national shortfall of money must be caused by insufficient production rather than vice versa. As Stephenson highlights, particularly at a time when people were walking around using little pieces of commodity metal as the medium of exchange this could easily become a very acute problem even in an otherwise advanced society. Given our current economic situation, for this reason alone I wish more people would read it.

Related Posts

LGBT

Joel Osteen: Homosexuality Is A ‘Sin’, God Gives Gay People ‘Grace To Change’

By Igor Volsky on Jan 24, 2011 at 5:15 pm

CNN is teasing this segment from Piers Morgan’s upcoming interview with Pastor Joel Osteen, in which the usually jovial TV evangelist says he believes that that homosexuality is a “sin” and that God can give gay people the “grace to change”:

OSTEEN: I’ve always believed Pierce, that the scripture shows that it’s a sin, but I’m not one to bash homosexuals or tell them that they’re terrible people and all that. There are other sins in the bible too. …I don’t believe that homosexuality is God’s best for a person’s life. [...]

MORGAN: And when you see civil partnerships sanctioned, you think that’s wrong, presumably?

OSTEEN: Yes, I think it’s wrong, but I’m not going to bash those people. I’m not going to be against those people, they’re good people. I say it’s wrong because that’s what the scripture says. [...]

MORGAN: Say a friend of mine like Elton John watching this at home, who with his partner – a civil partner, David Furnish – have just had a surrogate child which was born on Christmas day. They’re going to be pretty angry what they hear. They’re going to think who are you to call them a sinner.

OSTEEN: Yes.

MORGAN: But why are they sinners in your eyes?

OSTEEN: Well, it’s strictly back to what the scripture says. I mean, I can’t grab one part and say God wants you to be blessed and live an abundant life, and not grab the other part that says, you know what? You know, live that kind of life. So it comes back to the scripture. I’m not the judge. You know, God didn’t tell me to go around judging everybody.

MORGAN: I’m not so sure though, you see. I think you are a kind of judge, I think you can’t abrogate that responsibility — because of your influence. Seven, eight million viewers every Sunday. When you say things like homosexuality is a sin, it’s a big statement to make. You are a judge. And you’re encouraging your congregation to believe that. [...]

V. OSTEEN: We’re not judging the person. [...]

MORGAN: You are judging the person, aren’t you?

OSTEEN: Well, to me, I’m not the one to judge and say who’s bad or who’s good….I don’t know that God is judging sins on different levels, but we pick out that one. If you listen to my message, they’re about lifting people up and so it’s not, I mean I really talk about homosexuality when we get on the interviews.

MORGAN: Yea, but now I’m curious, what would you say to a homosexual watching this? How do they change? What do they have to do to change to be better people?

OSTEEN: Well, I don’t know that I understand it all. I believe that it’s a process. But I believe that God can give us grace to change. We’ve seen people break addictions, and do other other things as well.

Watch it:

Osteen has been criticized by some members of the evangelical community for not stressing “sin” enough. During a 60 Minutes profile in 2007, one Christian reverend said that Osteen “tells only half the story of the Bible, focusing on the good news without talking about sin, suffering and redemption” and went so far as to accuse him of teaching “heresy.”

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