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Breaking: House GOP Cave on Tax Cut Extension Paves Way for Obama to Deny Keystone XL Permit

By Joe Romm on Dec 22, 2011 at 7:55 pm

House Speaker John Boehner conceded to the inevitable and agreed to approve the Senate compromise that extends the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance two months.

That bill also includes, at the GOP’s insistence, a requirement that Obama make a decision within 60 days on the tar sands pipeline, which is likely fatal to Keystone XL (see “GOP Threaten to Harm the Economy If Obama Won’t Embrace Tar Sands Pipeline“).

Tweet from Dan Pfeiffer

Jeremy Symons of National Wildlife Federation has the latest, including quotes from Bill McKibben of 350.org, Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska:

So what does this mean for the pipeline?  Speaker Boehner is trying to satisfy Big Oil’s lobbyists and some of the GOP’s top corporate donors by forcing the president to make a hasty decision, but it will backfire.   I am confident that President Obama will stand up to big oil and reject this dangerous and unnecessary pipeline because it is the right thing to do, and that the American public will support him.  Americans understand that it is wrong to play political games and strip families of our right to protect our land and our clean water from foreign oil companies, because you can’t drink oil.

I asked  Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska and Bill McKibben of 350.org, two of the leading fighters to stop this pipeline,  for their reaction today as well. Here is what they wrote me:

Bill McKibben:  ”The administration’s promise to deny this permit, if fulfilled, will be one of the rare pieces of good news for the climate in a year which saw America shatter all records for billion-dollar weather disasters. The president campaigned hard in 2008 on trying to slow the climate crisis, and this would be a strong sign he meant what he said.”

Jane Kleeb: “The pipeline is unnecessary and a scam that would export the oil while burdening our families with all the risks.”

Precisely.

Security

Israeli Defense Minister: Israeli-U.S. Defense Coordination Is ‘Absolutely Fine’

By Eli Clifton on Dec 22, 2011 at 5:55 pm

The GOP presidential field is quick to criticize President Barack Obama’s relationship with Israel. But concerns about Obama’s lack of support for the Jewish state are nowhere to be found in recent statements by Israeli officials. On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak praised Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security. Barak, who last month characterized Obama as an “extremely strong supporter of Israel,” told Israel Radio:

We are asked, sometimes, whether Obama is really a soft appeaser. To that, I say: ‘Go ask Osama bin Laden.’

Earlier this week, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta emphasized that “there are no options off the table” in dealing with a potential Iranian nuclear weapons program and General Martin Dempsey sought to dispel concerns raised in an interview last month in which he suggested the Israel might not warn the U.S. before undertaking a unilateral attack against Iranian nuclear facilities. Yesterday, Dempsey told CNN:

We are trying to establish some confidence on the part of the Israelis that we recognize their concerns and are collaborating with them on addressing them.

Barak also emphasized that Israeli-U.S. defense coordination was “absolutely fine” and sought to downplay rumors of tensions between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

They don’t have to love each other. It’s enough that they respect and understand that no one works as if they were alone, in a bubble.

Barak’s comments come as Republicans seek to portray Obama as weakening Israel’s security. Earlier this month, Bill Kristol, speaking through a press release for his far-right-wing pressure group, the Emergency Committee for Israel, said the White House “keeps acting to weaken the security of the state of Israel.” And GOP presidential candidates speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Candidates Forum took turns criticizing Obama’s handling of Iran and commitment to Israel’s security. Rick Perry accused the administration of a “torrent of hostility” toward Israel and Mitt Romney claimed, “Over the last three years President Obama has… chastened Israel.”

But Barak’s praise of Obama’s relationship with Israel and Netanyahu’s appreciation for the White House’s “unprecedented” security cooperation would seem to stand in direct contradiction with the right-wing voices seeking to portray the administration as insufficiently committed to Israel’s security.

NEWS FLASH

Administration Takes Heat Over Essential Benefits Guidance | Two authors of the Institute of Medicine report on essential health benefits criticized the Department of Health and Human Services’ pre-bulletin guidance granting states greater flexibility in designing essential health care benefits, arguing that the administration’s approach represented a “missed opportunity” for ensuring health insurance affordability. “By giving the states the option to pick the various plans, they in essence said any of the state mandates would be OK,” John Ball, chairman of the IOM essential benefits committee told Politico. In October, the IOM had recommended that HHS establish a premium target — “setting a dollar amount for coverage and then filling in the benefits to meet the limit” — or use “medical effectiveness to select benefits. Interestingly, an editorial in this morning’s Des Moines Register also notes that a federal standard would establish greater uniformity across the country and “guarantee a diabetic or autistic child had equal coverage, regardless of where they lived.” “It makes sense for the federal government to set details, because billions of federal dollars will be used to help pay for these insurance plans,” the paper says. “Also, compared to elected officials, executive branch workers are relatively free from the influences of special interests.”

LGBT

Zambian Leaders Slam Clinton For Promoting The ‘Ungodly Practices’ Of Gay Equality

By Igor Volsky on Dec 22, 2011 at 5:10 pm

Christian and political leaders in the African nation of Zambia are speaking out against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s global call to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. The Zambia Episcopal Conference, the Pentecostal Church’s Bishops’ Council of Zambia and the Zambia United Christian Action “said that it was unwise for the U.S. government to use its money to force other nations to permit ‘ungodly practices’ in their land” and insisted that “Donor aid should not be tied to promoting immorality”:

[T]he government’s information minister, Given Lubinda, assured that the country’s leaders would not bow to outside pressure to respect and tolerate homosexuality in the nation. He reminded western nations about the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and Accra Agenda of Action, which guide development aid distribution and do not mention acceptance of same-sex marriage as the basis for offering aid to the poor nations. Rev. Gibson Nyirenda, spokesman for the Pentecostal bishops’ council, urged Zambia to reject any donor aid that comes with conditions.

“For us as a nation, we cannot go in that direction because it is indecent and can erode our morals as society. Let’s remain a Christian nation by ignoring such assistance,” Rev Nyirenda said.

Homosexuality is considered a felony in Zambia, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, although the country’s constitution does include a general non-discrimination clause and few have been prosecuted for the “crime.”

During her landmark speech in Geneva, Clinton specifically addressed the concerns of religions leaders. “For many of us, religious belief and practice is a vital source of meaning and identity, and fundamental to who we are as people,” she said. “And likewise, for most of us, the bonds of love and family that we forge are also vital sources of meaning and identity. And caring for others is an expression of what it means to be fully human. It is because the human experience is universal that human rights are universal and cut across all religions and cultures.”

NEWS FLASH

One-Third Of Senators Support Repealing DOMA | Box Turtle Bulletin’s Timothy Kincaid points out that one-third of all senators have now signed on to legislation repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, including 13 Democrats who voted for the legislation in 1996 as senators or representatives. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was the latest Democrat to announce his support for repealing the law, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex couples married in one of the six states (and the District of Columbia). The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the repeal legislation — sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) — earlier this year. Look at the map:

Economy

Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, Poster Child For Tax Loopholes, Says Poor People Lack ‘Skin In The Game’ On Taxes

By Guest Blogger on Dec 22, 2011 at 4:00 pm

Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, Director of Fiscal Reform at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman

One of Mitt Romney top fundraisers and fellow 1-percenter Stephen Schwarzman was recently on television questioning the civic involvement of nearly half of Americans. Asked on Bloomberg TV whether he would be willing to pay higher taxes to help solve the country’s fiscal challenges, the billionaire Schwarzman responded by pointing at the approximately 45 percent of households who will not owe income taxes this year (an abnormally high number due to the recession) and said:

You have to have skin in the game….The issue is the concept that we’re all in this together, solving problems together…. The concept that half of the public isn’t involved with the income tax system is somewhat odd, and I’m not saying how much people should do, but we should all be part of the system.

This “skin in the game” myth, which implies that people who don’t owe federal income tax in a given year don’t contribute to the public good, is both factually misleading and fundamentally insulting. And it’s particularly offensive coming from a guy who’s been the most zealous defender of a loophole that allows billionaires like him to pay a lower federal tax rate than many middle-class workers.

First, all Americans pay taxes. The “tax system” Schwarzman refers to includes federal payroll taxes and state and local sales taxes, which claim a bigger share of income from those in the middle and bottom than from those at the top. All told, even the very poorest quintile pays about a sixth of their modest incomes in taxes. These other, more regressive taxes may not be noticeable to billionaires like Schwarzman, but the fact that everyone pays them shows that we are all already “part of the system.”

Moreover, it’s likely that many families won’t owe federal income tax this year precisely because they have too much skin in the game. Among the major reasons a household might not owe income taxes:

– They worked (paying both income and payroll taxes) for years or even decades but lost their jobs in the Great Recession and saw their incomes fall under the low thresholds where the income tax kicks in.

– They worked their whole lives (again, paying taxes on their wages) but are now retired and rely principally on Social Security benefits, which are mostly untaxed.

– They are students and their income-earning years are mostly ahead of them.

– They work at low-paying jobs while raising children, and qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit. (Tax data shows that most EITC recipients only claim the credit for short periods; on net, recipients pay hundreds of billions in federal income tax over time.)

What’s particularly galling is to hear Schwarzman, of all people, sermonize about how low-income people need to pay higher income taxes to prove that they have skin in the game. Schwarzman, co-founder of the Blackstone Group private equity firm, is the most zealous defender — and probably one of the biggest beneficiaries — of the “carried interest” tax loophole. Read more

Climate Progress

Climate Sensitivity Higher Than We Thought, Researchers Find

By Climate Guest Blogger on Dec 22, 2011 at 3:39 pm

JR:  There’s been a lot of confusion this year on how sensitive the climate is to greenhouse gases (see Media Misleads On Flawed Climate Sensitivity Study: Avoiding “Drastic Changes Over Land” Requires Emissions Cuts ASAP).  Given all the media attention given to one (flawed) study, a little attention to other studies seems worthwhile.

http://cdn.greenoptions.com/e/e1/1000x500px-e12af180_sensitivity-big.gif

 

by Rolf Schuttenhelm, reposted from Bits of Science

An international research group led by Gothenburg University looked at the impact of organic aerosol feedbacks on climate sensitivity

It serves to show individual climate sensitivity studies are never conclusive but add up bits of fresh understanding to an already enormous pile of data and knowledge.

Right in the middle of that pile is the IPCC. Should the entire pile shift or change shape – rest assured, then the official IPCC climate sensitivity range [now around 3 degrees Celsius for a doubling of atmospheric CO2] will do the same in their 2013 climate report.

The new Swedish climate sensitivity research has just been published (PDF) in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, the open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union.

The authors argue that climate sensitivity could be ‘greater than previously believed’ because in the initial phases of the current CO2-induced warming plant life has emitted larger amounts of precursor gases that lead to the formation of reflective or blocking* secondary organic aerosols (SOA) in the atmosphere, thereby acting as a negative climate feedback, and masking part of the ‘warming’ that’s occurring underneath.

Read more

LGBT

Interagency Homelessness Council Commits To Addressing Needs Of LGBT Youth

By Guest Blogger on Dec 22, 2011 at 3:35 pm

Our guest blogger is Jerome Hunt, a Research Associate for LGBT Progress at the Center for American Progress.

Youth homeless was one of the main focuses last week as the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) held their final meeting for the year. The USICH was briefed on the work being done by the Interagency Group on Youth, a collation of representatives from a variety of government agencies including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor, Justice, and the White House Domestic Policy Council. The group presented findings from its series of meetings with federal and state experts from the education, child welfare, housing, and juvenile justice sectors.

The Interagency Group on Youth acknowledged that certain sub-populations of youth — LGBT youth and youth exiting child welfare or the juvenile justice system — are at much higher risk for homelessness and pledged to collaboratively work together and “with service providers currently serving this vulnerable population to ensure that we have a better understanding of the size of the problem, the needs of different sub-groups, that successful strategies are implemented and progress is made.”

Indeed, a recent report by the National Center on Family Homelessness estimated that 1.6 million children lived on the street, in homeless shelters, with other families or in motels last year and that youth homelessness has risen 38 percent during the economic recession. Considering that an estimated 20 to 40 percent of homeless youth population is LGBT, this commitment by the USICH to work collaboratively across government and with the non-profit sector to help these sub-populations is definitely welcomed — particularly in the wake of a survey conducted by the DC Alliance of Youth Advocates (DCAYA) of close to 500 homelessness youth that resulted in 6 percent (or 19 people) of the respondents identifying as LGBT. (DCAYA believes this was due to the low number of participating sites that provide specific services to LGBT youth.)

Much work needs to be done to address the issues of youth homelessness, particularly LGBT youth homeless in this country. More programs need to provide specific services to the LGBT community, train staffs who may encounter LGBT youth, and collect more data about this population. Nevertheless, USICH acknowledgment that LGBT youth are a population at high risk for homelessness and commitment to addressing the issue is a major step in the right direction. Hopefully in 2012, the Interagency Group on Youth will bring some specific plans to the USICH that will help thousands of LGBT youth to no longer call the streets home.

NEWS FLASH

Study: Active Parental Involvement In Children’s Health Care Can Lower Costs | A new study finds that active parental involvement in children’s health care decisions can help improve outcomes and lower health care spending. According to research published in Pediatrics, “parents who report having an increased involvement in making decisions about their children’s medical treatment are more likely to see lower risks of their kids going to the emergency room or being hospitalized.” Health care spending also dropped from $2,000 in the first year to $1,700 in the second year “if families had a growing part in making decisions.”

Alyssa

‘Ender’s Game’ Continues Awesome Casting Streak With Valentine

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Dec 22, 2011 at 2:52 pm

My original choice for Valentine Wiggin would have been Chloe Moretz: thanks to Hit-Girl and Let The Right One In, we know she can play awfully tough when necessary while still retaining her girlishness. Plus, she and Asa Butterfield’s developed a really nice dynamic in Hugo.

But failing that, I’m delighted to hear that Abigail Breslin will be playing the part. Since her debut in Little Miss Sunshine, she’s been doing a series of roles that are solid but have none of the oddity, vulnerability, and conviction of that breakout part. Now, she has one.

I’m sure I’m not the only lady blogger, or lady nerd blogger, to feel like Valentine Wiggin is part of the reason we do what we do. I had no desire to manipulate the players in the Cold War when I was as young as she is. But the idea of finding a place where you can have a running conversation with anyone you want? Starting off playing pretend and finding your own voice–and then learning other people find it powerful? That’s a compelling pitch, particularly when you take away the potential-serial-killer-turned-world-leader older brother and the younger brother the state wants you to manipulate into committing xenocide.

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