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Climate Progress

Lorax Lesson Unlearned: The GOP Wildfire Strategy Will Destroy Our Great Western Forests

By Joe Romm on Jul 25, 2012 at 8:16 pm

I testified last Friday at a House hearing on the ever-growing crisis of bark beetles, drought, and wildfires. The full C-Span video is here.

My written testimony is here. I decided to practice what I preach in my forthcoming book and use the figures of speech to make my points in the oral testimony (which you can see here, with transcript).

Congressman Ed Markey, a man who understands the figures, especially metaphors, had a great chart on the explosion of players hitting more than 40 home runs during the steroid era. He and I talk about that chart in the clip below.

I also discussed the GOP strategy of dealing with our Western wild fires and droughts and bark beetles solely through thinning, while reject climate science and climate solutions. Apparently, the GOP missed the day in school when they read the Lorax (see “The Lorax Speaks For The Trees — Get Over It Conservatives“).

Here’s the video (and a partial transcript follows):

Read more

Politics

Romney Struggles To Distinguish His Economic Policies From Bush’s

By Igor Volsky on Jul 25, 2012 at 7:18 pm

Mitt Romney couldn’t substantially distinguish his economic policies from former President George W. Bush’s during an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams on Wednesday, saying only that he would “take action to get America on track to have a balanced budget.” Bush increased the national debt by trillions of dollars.

Rather than detailing specific differences with the former Republican president — whose deregulatory policies and massive tax cuts have been blamed for the nation’s current economic recession — Romney described his economic approach with his standard to his four-part talking points:

WILLIAMS: And let’s talk about domestic– the economy before we wrap things up. The major planks of your job plan, lower taxes, both corporate and marginal rates, and reduce regulation. Explain how that would be different from what George W. Bush tried to push through?

ROMNEY: Well, let me describe– actually, there are five things that I believe are necessary to get this economy going. One, take advantage of our energy resources, particularly natural gas, but also coal, oil, nuclear, renewables. That’s number one. A huge opportunity for us, and doing so is gonna bring manufacturing back, because low-cost, plentiful energy is key to manufacturing, in many industries.

Number two, trade. I want tre– to dramatically increase trade and particularly with– with Latin America. Number three, take action to get America on track to have a balanced budget. Now those three things, by the way, are things which we have not been doing over the last few years, which I think are essential to getting this economy going again.

Number four, we’ve got to show better training and education opportunities for our current re– workers and for coming workers. And then finally what I call restoring economic freedom. That means keep our taxes as low as possible, have regulations modern and up to date, get health care costs down. These things will restore economic freedom.

So my policies are very different than anything you’ve seen in the past. They’re really designed for an America which has some new resources, energy being one of them, trade with Latin America being another, and the need for a balanced budget now more urgent than ever before.

Indeed, Romney’s economic advisers are comprised of Bush’s old team, and his policies would double down on Bush’s failed economic approach.

In April, Alexandra Franceschi, Specialty Media Press Secretary of the Republican National Committee, argued that Romney’s policies are like the “policies of the Bush administration…just updated” — and in some cases they’re even worse. For instance, Romney’s tax cut plan is four times larger than Bush’s, more heavily weighted to benefit the ultra wealthy and he opposes increasing the minimum wage. Romney also supports turning Medicare into a voucher program for future retirees, while Bush enacted a historic expansion of the Medicare program.

Economy

Graduate Students At Private Universities Petition Labor Board For Right To Organize Unions

By Travis Waldron on Jul 25, 2012 at 6:15 pm

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is revisiting a previous decision that denied graduate students who work as research assistants at private universities the right to organize and collectively bargain, drawing protests from prestigious private universities and their allies. In 2004, the NLRB prohibited the unionization of graduate-student assistants at private universities when it ruled that they were students, not employees of the university.

A NLRB regional director ruled last year, however, that some graduate assistants at New York University have “a dual relationship” that is “both academic and economic,” a decision the would make them employees and gave the NLRB an opening to revisit its decision. Private universities opposed that decision and, in briefs reviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education, said giving labor rights to student workers would undermine the private graduate system:

“It is no exaggeration to state that the future of American private graduate education is at stake in these cases,” argued a brief submitted by Brown University, which faces the prospect of the board reversing a 2004 decision that prohibited the unionization of its graduate-student assistants.

The American Council on Education joined several other higher-education associations in arguing, “Students enroll in graduate school to complete their higher education, not to work for wages. Their relationship with the university is fundamentally one of a student and teacher, not master-servant.”

Brown’s claim that the system “is at stake” if the NLRB decides in favor of the student workers does seem to be an exaggeration, given that graduate student workers at public universities have had the right to organize and collectively bargain for decades, and those schools continue to grow and prosper. (Public graduate students are governed by state labor laws, not the NLRB.)

The ACE’s claim, meanwhile, that students shouldn’t have rights because they are students ignores that these students do, indeed, work for wages, a fact that would seem to grant them an economic relationship covered by labor law. The NLRB has also previously decided that other workers in graduate schools — such as apprentices — are subject to the National Labor Relations Act. Medical residents are also subject to labor law, though the ACE argues that their precedent does not apply because they have already graduated.

“Nobody who looks at the reality of the current university today can argue that graduate students are not employees,” Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University, told the Cornell Daily Sun in 2010. “Graduate students are used as workers in the University — they are hired to fill in wherever there are openings. The faculty doesn’t spend time teaching graduate students how to teach — they use them as employees to do the teaching for them.”

Health

French Official: Obamacare Is Not European-Style Health Care

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Jul 25, 2012 at 6:10 pm

French Minister of Health and Social Affairs Marisol Touraine

Republicans have long campaigned against the Affordable Care Act by calling it European-style health care. But French Minister of Health and Social Affairs Marisol Touraine said that wasn’t exactly true.

She explained that the Affordable Care Act creates a system that is very different from France’s more far-reaching universal health care system:

Among other differences, the U.S. system provides government-sponsored insurance coverage only to certain segments of the population. Historically, that’s been seniors, the disabled and the poor. Starting in 2014, the federal government will begin subsidizing private insurance for some low and middle-income Americans.

“This segmentation is quiet different than what we have,” said Ms. Touraine, given that France’s health coverage extends across age groups and income levels. Many French find it surprising that Americans would resist a system of near-universal health coverage, she said.

Similar to U.S. officials attempting to slow the growth of Medicare and Medicaid costs, France is trying to reign in health care spending. Because the French government pays for 75 percent of citizens’ health care, controlling the costs is part of the nation’s effort to limit spending while Europe tries to resolve the euro crisis.

Security

‘Quite Far To The Right’: Meet Mitt Romney’s Foreign Policy Team

By Zack Beauchamp and Ali Gharib on Jul 25, 2012 at 5:50 pm

Mitt Romney turned attention to his foreign policy this week, with a largely substance-free and fact-challenged speech on Tuesday and a European tour that will eventually take him to Israel. While Romney has gone to great lengths to avoid talking national security, it’s no secret that neither Romney nor his advisers appear capable of outlining a clear vision of a Romney administration’s foreign policy. What little specifics we do hear sound suspiciously like the Obama administration’s positions. So for those wondering what a Romney presidency might mean for U.S. troops and diplomats, there’s not much to go on.

But what’s troublesome about Romney on foreign policy is what’s cooking behind the scenes. Gen. Colin Powell recently complained that Romney’s foreign policy team is “quite far to the right.” Indeed, veterans of the Bush/Cheney administration “pepper” Romney’s foreign policy team and the so-called “Cheney-ites” are reportedly winning the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s ear. Here’s an in depth look at some of the key advisers a President Romney will hear from on foreign policy and what we might come to expect in a Romney administration:

JOHN BOLTON

Before advising Romney, Amb. John Bolton served briefly as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under a recess appointment — awkward from the start because of his lifelong disdain for anything multilateral. After leaving government and taking up a position at the American Enterprise Institute, he turned on the Bush administration for not being hawkish enough on Iran. It’s a note he’s been striking since as a Fox contributor, sometime presidential candidate, and frequent guest on right-wing conspiracy theorists’ radio shows. He cheers for negotiations with Iran to fail, a position that supports his “default setting” of wanting to bomb Iran for any old reason even though he has admitted it might not work. Ominously, Bolton even once suggested a nuclear attack against Iran.

ELIOT COHEN

Just months after the war in Afghanistan began, Eliot Cohen — who “was closely affiliated with the circle of hawks who surrounded Vice President Dick Cheney” — was agitating for a war in Iraq, calling it the “big prize.” As a co-founder of the Project for A New American Century, a neoconservative pressure organization critical to the development of the Iraq War, Cohen helped push the case for toppling Saddam. Though critical of the execution of the Iraq War, Cohen appears to have drawn only the most limited of conclusions, as he was seen as recently as 2009 making the case for a new war in Iran.

Read more

NEWS FLASH

Huckabee: LGBT Reaction To Chick-fil-A Is ‘Economic Bullying’ | ThinkProgress has thoroughly covered the incendiary religious condemnations of same-sex families made by Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy, as well as the National Organization for Marriage’s complete hypocrisy in terms of how it responds to corporate positions on LGBT rights. That being said, there’s little set-up necessary for this clip of NOM’s Brian Brown speaking today with Mike Huckabee. Both completely ignored the malevolence inherent in Cathy’s remarks, instead defending Chick-fil-A from what Huckabee called “economic bullying.” Take a listen:

Politics

Romney Falsely Claims Colorado Gunman Obtained Weapons Illegally

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Jul 25, 2012 at 5:15 pm

Mitt Romney revealed that he is unfamiliar with the details of the largest mass shooting in American history, during an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams. The former Massachusetts governor claimed that alleged gunman in the Aurora, Colorado massacare, James Holmes, illegally obtained his weapons, when in fact Holmes legally purchased the firearms through various national gun chains.

According to a transcript of an interview that will air Wednesday night on NBC Nightly News, the presidential candidate said “it was illegal for him to have many of those [weapons] already,” and suggested that stronger gun laws would not have prevented the tragedy. Instead, Romney claimed that the way to deal with such senseless violence is by “changing the heart of the American people”:

ROMNEY: Well this person shouldn’t have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them. And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won’t. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what’s essential, to improve the lots of the American people.

In fact, 24-year-old Holmes legally purchased every firearm, bullet, and piece of tactical gear that he used for the attack, according to local law enforcement. He bought most of it over the Internet. Mentally ill people are barred from purchasing firearms, but Holmes had no previous record of illness, and would not have been flagged in a background check.

Unfortunately, rather than addressing the inadequacies of the nation’s existing gun laws, Romney instead focused on “changing the heart of the American people” and successfully dodged the larger conversation about gun control.

Update

Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul attempted to clarify her comments in an email to National Journal Wednesday evening. She argued that “Romney was referring to the bombs the shooter set in his apartment, which police found and disarmed after the shooting occurred. Holmes allegedly used legal materials to make an illegal bomb.”

Economy

Republicans And Democrats Push For Preservation Of Tax Cut For 3,600 Multimillionaires

By Pat Garofalo on Jul 25, 2012 at 5:10 pm

The tax cut extension package that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) brought up for a vote today did not include an Obama administration proposal to reset the estate tax to the 2009 level. Senate Republicans, along with a handful of Senate Democrats — including Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AR), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Kay Hagan (D-NC) — balked at including the measure.

The Obama administration’s estate tax parameters already kept all but the nation’s very wealthiest estates from owing any tax at all. In fact, by refusing the increase, the Senate will spend $119 billion, to preserve tax breaks for just 3,200 estates:

This year, the per-person exemption is $5.12 million and the top rate is 35 percent. Obama agreed to those parameters as part of a December 2010 deal with Senate Republicans that also extended expiring tax cuts and created a payroll tax cut.

Under those numbers, which Republicans want to extend, 3,600 estates would pay taxes, or fewer than 0.2 percent of estates, according the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

Obama proposed a $3.5 million per-person exemption and a 45 percent top rate, returning to parameters that were in effect in 2009. That would require 7,200 estates, or about 0.3 percent, to pay taxes.

Even under the Obama administration’s proposal, just 0.3 percent of estates would be subject to the estate tax, all of them with estates larger than $3.5 million. Those estates that do owe tax will receive a $1.1 million tax break if the administration’s proposal is not adopted and the estate tax stays at its current level.

Meanwhile, the tax plan released by Senate Republicans would raise taxes on 20 million working families.

Alyssa

‘Homeland’ Trailer Goes Inside Carrie’s Head—and Living With Mental Illness

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jul 25, 2012 at 5:06 pm

I’m sort of sorry that Homeland is skipping ahead six months from the events of its season finale to the advent of its second, if only because there are few people I’d be more interested to see actually go through therapy and related mental health treatments than Claire Danes’ Carrie Mathison:

In its first season, Homeland got more attention for being about terrorism, intelligence, and national security, but it’s at least as interesting as a show that uses a national security framework to talk about what it means to be mentally healthy. The fact that Carrie is investigating a possible terror plot is a way of heightening the stakes for whether she is right or deluded, and whether the people around her are capable of overcoming their suspicion of her, rooted in her mental illness, and evaluate her work as they would if she was mentally healthy. But correctly executed, those would be fascinating and important questions, particularly given the misconceptions our society embraces about people with mental illness.

The Killing tried to do something similar this season, showing Sarah Linden buckling under the stress of the Rosie Larsen investigation. But the show turned Linden’s mental health issues into a shock plot, full of white gowns and hospital therapists, rather than a more nuanced exploration of how she maintains her mental health, and how her mental health plays into her style as an investigator and her experiences as a mother. NBC’s Do No Harm, a Jekyll-and-Hyde story about a neurosurgeon, which will debut in the midseason, has a similarly sensationalistic take: the show’s doctor becomes a sexually aggressive, drug-snorting, violent jerk when his other side kicks in. As S.E. Smith pointed out after The Dark Knight Rises shooting in Colorado, mentally ill people are victims of terrible violence more often that they are perpetrators. It’s braver and more interesting to explore what it means to live with mental health issues long-term, than to turn to mentally ill people solely to create fear and tension.

Climate Progress

Overriding Common Sense: An Attack On Energy Efficiency Standards

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jul 25, 2012 at 4:48 pm

by Andrew deLaski, via ACEEE

A new report published last week by the anti-regulatory Mercatus Center (an advocacy outfit associated with the Koch brothers) took aim at appliance and vehicle efficiency standards. In the report, the authors argue that standards reduce consumer choice and are not justified because the environmental benefits are small and consumer benefits are non-existent.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Efficiency standards have a long record as a commonsense way to save money for consumers and provide important societal benefits at the same time. The Mercatus report, entitled Overriding Consumer Preferences with Energy Regulations, is by two economists, Ted Gayer and Kip Viscusi. It’s so full of false claims, inaccurate assumptions, and misleading statements that it’s hard to know where to start refuting them. But I thought it would be useful to rebut some of their most egregious claims.

False claim #1: “[C]urrent energy efficiency initiatives do very little to address climate change”

Taking into account all U.S. appliance standards starting with the original round signed into law by Ronald Reagan and including those updated by the Department of Energy (DOE) under two Republican and two Democratic administrations and those added by both Republican- and Democratic-controlled Congresses, U.S. standards reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 200 million metric tons in 2010, and annual reductions will increase to about 450 million metric tons by 2025. That works out to about 3.5% of actual U.S. 2010 emissions and 8% of projected 2025 emissions. (See Figure 4 in the ACEEE report, The Efficiency Boom.) Vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for model years 2012-2016 are projected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 307 million metric tons in 2030, lowering car and light truck emissions by 21%. Standards now under consideration for model years 2017-2025 would deliver similar reductions. Undoubtedly, more can and should be done to address climate change, but to suggest that standards “do very little” is absurd.

False claim #2:  Efficiency standards restrict consumer choice

Refrigerators are the most regulated appliance in America, having been subject to no fewer than six rounds of improved state and federal efficiency requirements over more than 30 years.  Think about it for a moment. Do you have fewer choices in refrigerators than you did 10 years ago? For those who can remember, than 30 years ago? How about for clothes washers? Or for light bulbs?

For each of these products, consumer choices have increased even as standards have eliminated energy-inefficient models from the market. Refrigerators come with a wider array of configurations (the latest rage is French doors—GE just added a second shift at its Louisville, Kentucky plant to keep up with demand), ice and water dispenser options, built-in designs, and other features than have ever existed. Clothes washer buyers have an array of energy- and water-efficient front-loading and top-loading designs covering price points from $400 and up to choose from, many with features like steam cleaning unheard of a decade ago. For light bulbs, manufacturers report that the standards spurred them to introduce a whole new generation of energy-efficient incandescent bulbs so that consumers can now choose among energy-efficient incandescent, compact fluorescent, and newly-introduced LED options. Consumers have more choice than ever.

False claim #3:  Consumer savings are non-existent

The crux of the authors’ argument is that consumers and businesses maximize their own welfare in their everyday decision making, so, by definition, any government action that results in different decisions cannot make them better off. However, DOE has identified and assessed a variety of widely-recognized market and behavioral realities that explain why efficiency standards yield benefits for consumers. One such reality is that efficiency-related cost savings is only one of many features that define a product, and that optimizing across multiple attributes is complex, time-consuming, and costly for consumers. Another reality is that there are often transaction costs that get in the way of recovering investments in more efficient products, as in the case of split incentives among landlords and tenants, and for homeowners who are considering selling their property within a product’s lifetime. Energy cost savings for an individual consumer would often not justify the time and cost to gather and assess information, and when appropriate, to compensate for the transaction costs. It is by no means irrational for consumers to apply ”bounded rationality” in making decisions, a concept that explains reasonable consumer behavior in complex environments.

Oddly, Gayer also mentions that various “market failures” could result in underinvestment in energy efficiency (i.e., the “energy efficiency gap”): Read more

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