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VIEWPOINT: How A Very Smart Senator Showed Us Everything Wrong With The Modern GOP In One Week

By Zack Beauchamp on Feb 3, 2013 at 4:26 pm

It shouldn’t have been this way.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is an undeniably smart man. Cruz is by all accounts a brilliant litigator, one talented enough in the courtroom to clerk for a Supreme Court justice and win a number of difficult cases as Texas’ Solicitor General. It wouldn’t have been crazy to expect that Cruz would bring a degree of argumentative rigor into the Senate after his victory in the 2012 election.

Well, Cruz had two golden opportunities to showcase his keen analytical mind, as he sits on both Senate committees that held high profile hearings last week, one on gun violence prevention, the other on Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE)’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense. And Cruz distinguished himself alright. Just not in the way one might have hoped.

The Senator misrepresented official documents to the point of falsehood, placed the words of an raving call-in viewer on a television show in Hagel’s mouth, and played “six degrees of guilt by association” with Hagel’s record in a manner that would make Sen. Joe McCarthy blush. And yet, Cruz’ behavior, embarrassing as it was, was by no means irrational. Rather, it’s a perfect illustration of how the Republican Party’s internal structure, particularly its allied media and electoral base, incentivizes the replacement of real policy thinking with fact-free paranoic fantasism.

Let’s begin with Cruz’ monologue at the gun hearing. The proposed assault weapons ban bore the brunt of his ire. He leaned heavily what he claimed were two Department of Justice papers — one from what he sneeringly characterized as the “Janet Reno Department of Justice under President Clinton” — that had proven the 1994 ban failed to reduce gun violence. In his words, the Senate was about “to reenact a law that, according to the Department of Justice, did absolutely nothing to reduce gun violence.”

Literally every claim in that sentence is false.

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Politics

Mayors Against Illegal Guns Calls Out NRA In Dramatic Super Bowl Ad

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Feb 3, 2013 at 4:00 pm

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a gun violence prevention group chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, will air an advertisement during the Super Bowl calling on Congress to pass universal background checks. The ad is part of the group’s “Demand A Plan” campaign, which focuses on convincing elected officials that stronger gun regulations are needed.

The spot features pictures and voices of children — a harsh reminder of the 20 first-graders killed in December in Newton, Connecticut. The kids single out the National Rifle Association for backtracking on its earlier support for background checks on all gun sales.

Watch it:

Current U.S. law allows people to buy guns through private sales without undergoing the otherwise-mandatory background check. That means that anyone who finds a firearm through Craigslist — or shops for one at a gun show — can walk away with a weapon undetected. Eighty percent of guns used in crimes seem to have been bought privately, and 40 percent of all gun sales are purchased without a check.

What’s more, universal background checks are widely supported. Just eight percent of the country agrees with the NRA’s position against such a measure; 92 percent support background checks for all. That’s likely to make the Super Bowl ad — which will air “on CBS, the network broadcasting the Super Bowl, in the Washington DC market in the third-quarter break coming out of halftime” — quite popular.

Economy

Paul Krugman Destroys GOP’s Talking Points On Government Jobs

By Jeff Spross on Feb 3, 2013 at 1:34 pm

On Sunday, economist Paul Krugman hit back against GOP claims that public sector employment has increased under Obama, and that such jobs consist mainly of wasteful bureaucrats and somehow count less economically than private sector ones. Back in September it was tea party Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) toeing that line, and this morning it was former Republican gubernatorial candidate Carly Fiorina.

The exchange commenced immediately after Krugman made the point that, had government employment in the current recovery followed the same path it followed under previous recessions in the Bush and Reagan years, unemployment now would be slightly above 6 percent:

CARLY FIORINA: I think it’s important to remember, when we talk about the economy, that a private sector job and a public sector job are not the same things. They’re not equivalent. I’m not saying public sector jobs aren’t important. But a private sector job pays for itself. A private sector job creates other jobs. A public sector job is paid for by taxpayers. [...]

PAUL KRUGMAN: But when we say public sector jobs, it is not a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.

FIORINA: Oh, it is, actually.

KRUGMAN: When we talk about public sector jobs — when we look at the ones that have been lost in large numbers in this — it’s basically school teachers. Don’t think about bureaucrats. It’s school teachers. What we’ve laid off hundreds of thousands of school teachers. And when we talk about the cuts in public spending that have happened, they are not, you know, some god awful who knows what. It’s actually public investment. It’s largely fixing potholes and repairing bridges.

So, you know, you have this image of these wasteful bureaucrats doing god knows what. What we’ve seen is an incredible drought of basic infrastructure, and laying off hundreds of thousands of school teachers.

FIORINA: It is a fact that virtually every department in every organization in Washington, D.C. has seen its budget increase for the last 40 years. That money is being paid to hire people. The number of people who are — of course there are some teachers…

Watch it:

Public sector jobs at the federal level have actually remained pretty stable over the last forty years. They began and ended the period around approximately 2.8 million, with a bounce to about 3.1 million circa-1990. Public sector jobs at the state and local levels increased significantly over those forty years, peaking at a bit over 19 million total when President Obama entered office. (They’ve fallen since, accounting for the decline in overall public employment.) But nearly all of that growth was in teachers and support staff for the education system, who now total nearly 7 million of those state and local workers.

The other major categories of jobs in state and local public employment are, as Krugman noted, police, firefighters, health care workers, and maintenance workers and drivers for the country’s transportation infrastructure. And the overall population of the country has also been growing, so even though the raw number of state and local workers increased significantly, the ratio of those workers to the overall population did not — 59 per 1000 in 1980 versus 65 per 1000 today.

In fact, the hit the U.S. economy took in the fourth quarter of 2012 was almost entirely due to a drop in government spending, and the economy is in for another blow should the sequester cuts kick in. We’ve been cutting jobs that provide demand in the economy and invest in the country’s potential for future economic growth, at a time when both are sorely needed to help the economy recover.

Climate Progress

New Mexico Utility Agrees To Purchase Solar Power At A Lower Price Than Coal

By Jeff Spross on Feb 3, 2013 at 12:29 pm

The economic viability of solar power is advancing rapidly. It’s actually already more than competitive within certain markets, and the price of solar panels saw a precipitous decline over the last four years.

In fact, solar technology has been advancing so rapidly that analysts have had trouble keeping their models up to date. When the Electric Reliability Council of Texas revised the circa-2006 assumptions about the state of technological development in its economic models, it found massive increases in the economic viability of wind and solar power, making them competitive with natural gas within the state over the next twenty years. Former Energy Secretary Steven Chu predicted in 2011 that, along with wind, solar would be no more expensive than oil or natural gas by the end of the decade.

The latest evidence of solar power’s rise comes via Bloomberg: El Paso Electric Co., a southwestern utility, has agreed to purchase electricity from a New Mexico solar project owned by the solar panel manufacturer First Solar, for a price lower than the going rate for coal:

First Solar bought the 50-megawatt Macho Springs project from Element Power Solar, according to a statement yesterday. El Paso Electric Co. (EE) agreed to buy the power for 5.79 cents a kilowatt-hour, according to a Jan. 22 procedural order from the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission.

That’s less than half the 12.8 cents per kilowatt-hour average price for new coal plants, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Thin-film photovoltaic power typically sells for 16.3 cents a kilowatt-hour, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The price would be “the lowest solar power purchase agreement price we have ever seen,” Aaron Chew, an analyst at Maxim Group LLC in New York, said in an e-mail. It’s less than half the price that First Solar will get for its Antelope Valley, Topaz, and Agua Caliente projects, he said.

The Macho Springs project is just the latest in over 50 megawatts worth of solar projects First Solar has built in New Mexico since 2011, and the company is slated to install another 21.5 megawatts by late 2013. First Solar even developed the first solar project to reside on public U.S. lands: the 50-megawattSilver State North installation outside of Primm, Nevada, which began generating electricity this past May. And its 250 megawatt installation in Yuma County, Arizona was the largest solar plant operating in the world as of October, 2012.

First Solar is also the largest maker of thin-film solar panels in the world, and its panels — which will be used in constructing the Macho Springs project — boast the smallest carbon footprint and shortest energy payback time of any solar technology currently available.

Zooming out to the larger picture, analysts anticipate American solar power will soon account for 10 percent of the world market, given the industry’s 70 growth rate over the course of last year. Installations of solar panels surged in 2011 as industry analysts predicted the price of solar-generated electricity would quickly come to rival that of coal. By December 2012, U.S. solar installations had increased 116 percent over the same period in 2011, bringing sufficient capacity to power about half a million average American homes. And according to a census by the Solar Foundation, the sector currently employs over 119,000 Americans — an increase of 13,872 workers over 2011.

Update

An important caveat: One factor that’s bringing down the price of the Macho Springs plant’s electricity is the array of federal and state subsidies going to solar power. For example, New Mexico’s state production tax credit will add something between 2.5 to 2.7 cents per kilowatt-hour to the system’s revenue for its first decade. There’s also a 30 percent federal investment tax credit to consider. Add all that in and it brings Macho Springs’ price alongside that of comparable projects in California, which generally clock in a bit above 8 cents per kilowatt-hour — though still lower than Bloomberg’s average price for new coal plants.

Security

Secretary of Defense: Iran Has Not Made A Decision To Pursue A Nuclear Weapon

By Hayes Brown on Feb 3, 2013 at 12:24 pm

If you watched Chuck Hagel’s Senate confirmation hearing to become Secretary of Defense, you’d assume that Iran is at most days away from obtaining a nuclear weapon, requiring an immediate decision on the use of force. “If your position is truly prevention and not containment, Chuck, what is the redline [on Iran], what is the point?” asked Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). “We know there’s some things happening over there right now that are very serious.”

But on Sunday morning, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, reiterated that Iran has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons, dispelling the narrative being put forward by Senate Republicans.

Speaking to guest host Chuck Todd, Panetta and Dempsey both made clear that they believe that Hagel will be confirmed and said that previous analysis about Iran still holds true:

PANETTA: What I’ve said, and I will say today, is that the intelligence we have is they have not made the decision to proceed with the development a nuclear weapon. They are developing and enriching uranium, they continue to do that —

TODD: Why do you believe they’re doing that?

PANETTA: I think it’s a clear indication — They say they’re doing that to be able to do their own energy source. I think it is suspect that they continue to enrich uranium because that is dangerous and that violates international rules.

TODD: You believe that they are probably developing nuclear weapons, but you don’t, the intelligence doesn’t —

PANETTA: No, I can’t — I can’t tell you they are in fact pursuing a weapon, because that’s what not intelligence say they’re doing right now.

Watch Panetta’s statements here:

Panetta also lamented the inability of Congress to ask a range questions about matters that the next head of the Pentagon will face, instead concentrating on Hagel’s past comments. The focus on Iran and Israel, according to Panetta, crowded out discussion on military budget, combating terrorism, and the still ongoing war in Afghanistan. “We just did not see enough time spent on discussing those issues. And in the end, that’s what counts,” Panetta said.

To illustrate the disparity in questioning, the Washington Post’s Max Fischer conducted a word count of Hagel’s hearing’s transcript. Throughout the three rounds of questions, “Iran” was brought up 169 times and “Israel” mentioned 178 times. Meanwhile, “Al Qaeda” was only mentioned twice.

Despite the opposition put forward by the Senate GOP, it seems unlikely that Hagel’s nomination will be filibustered. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) on Friday indicated that a majority vote alone should be able to move Hagel to the Pentagon, while Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) threat to hold Hagel’s confirmation fizzled with the announcement of a coming Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Benghazi.

Justice

NRA Head Fearmongers About Background Checks: ‘I Just Don’t Think You Can Trust These People’

By Travis Waldron on Feb 3, 2013 at 12:18 pm

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre offered a litany of excuses for his organization’s opposition to universal background checks on gun sales and purchases this morning, telling Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that the American Medical Association and other organizations were to blame for thwarting an expanded background check system. He also warned that universal checks could lead to a national registry:

LAPIERRE: I think what they’ll do is they’ll turn this universal check on the law-abiding into a universal registry of law-abiding people, and law-abiding people don’t want that.

WALLACE: Forgive me sir, but you take something that is here, and you take it all the way over there. There is nothing anyone in the administration has said that indicates they’re going to have a universal registry.

LAPIERRE: And Obamacare wasn’t a tax until they needed it to be a tax. I just don’t think you can trust these people.

The NRA has consistently used this as an excuse to oppose expanded background checks, even though federal law prohibits agencies from retaining information on people who pass background checks, making a national gun registry virtually impossible.

The gun lobby backed expanded background checks following the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, but LaPierre reiterated during a hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that the organization no longer supports those checks and told Wallace that the mental health community is also against them. “I have finally become convinced, after fighting to get the mental records computerized for 20 years and watching the mental health lobby, the HIPAA laws, and the AMA oppose it, I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said. “The mental health lobby won’t let it happen.”

In addition to computerizing mental health records, LaPierre told Wallace that he would “change civil commitment laws” and “interdict” more mental health patients, an approach that would blatantly ignore concerns about patient privacy and the stigmatization of mental health patients, which drove the AMA’s opposition to some elements of universal background checks in the past. President Obama, meanwhile, issued an executive order last month that sought to rework the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to make it easier for states to report information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System while addressing concerns about privacy and stigmatization.

Climate Progress

See The ‘Green Soda’ Ad Banned From The Superbowl

By Joe Romm on Feb 3, 2013 at 11:43 am

This is the SodaStream commercial CBS banned from airing during the Superbowl:

Sodastream is a home carbonation system that touts itself as “Earth Friendly”:

  • SodaStream is an “Active Green” solution that minimizes the huge eco-footprint caused by the manufacture, transport and waste of plastic bottles.

SodaStream says its “vision is to create a world free from bottles.” They claim that ”since January 2009, we have saved the world from over 1 billion plastic bottles.”

Now it is is hard to see why CBS banned that ad gently ribbing the competition (albeit two Superbowl sponsors) — especially since last year NBC ran this ad by Chevy that (humorously) suggests you won’t survive the Mayan apocalypse if you drive a Ford truck [insert line here about trucks and the real apocalypse that's coming].

You shouldn’t shed a tear for SodaStream, however, since they will reportedly be airing a different commercial — and this ban has been a marketer’s dream, with the above ad being viewed more than 2.5 million times this week already.

Indeed, it was ad man Alex Bogusky who dreamed up this tweet to spotlight the ban:

Now the only reason I add all of this detail is that in October, Bogusky “partnered with The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) to launch a public info project called The Real Bears … to highlight the far-reaching affects of soda marketing.”

Now this is an ad that should air during the Superbowl:

Here is Bogusky again:

“This project attempts to contrast the marketing hype around soda with the stark reality, and it is my hope that it makes some small contribution to a critical cultural awakening. We need to begin to connect the dots between what we are sold, what we eat, and how sick we have become.”

Seriously!

And this all loops back to the connection between obesity and global warming, explored in a recent study featured in Scientific American. Guess I’ll have to do a separate post on that study after all.

Justice

GOP Rep Compares Gun Regulation To ‘Banning Spoons’

By Ian Millhiser on Feb 3, 2013 at 11:08 am

In an exchange on ABC’s This Week this morning with Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) was outraged that lawmakers reacted to the mass murder of school children by an armed gunman by trying to prevent similarly disturbed individuals from obtaining guns. The Congressman claimed that limiting firearms will have as much impact on reducing gun violence as banning spoons will on preventing obesity:

BARLETTA: This is a perfect example why people believe Washington is broke. This horrific incident in Newtown, and here what is our debate? It’s focusing on guns when there is not one person at this table who really believes that that’s the root of what happened there and — when we have people that get into the mind-set that they want to harm people, as a former mayor, I know people will get guns no matter what laws we pass, just like the illegal drug –

KRUGMAN: I caught you on a false statement there because at least I do believe that guns are the root. There are crazy people everywhere, but mass murderers are a lot more common here than –

BARLETTA: You believe guns are more important than dealing with mental health and our culture. Is our culture lending itself that we’re raising children that are desensitized to murder, to killing people.

KRUGMAN: I look at the international differences — countries that have effective gun control have a lot fewer –

BARLETTA: Would banning spoons stop obesity?

Watch it:

Krugman is correct that America gun violence dwarfs that in most other developed nations. Indeed, among the 34 nations that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only Mexico — which is currently caught in a drug war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives — has a higher rate of gun homicides. Indeed, no other OECD nation even approaches the level of gun violence present in Mexico with its vicious drug gangs or in the United States with its permissive gun laws:

The simple truth is that spoons don’t kill people. Guns do.

LGBT

Harry Reid Predicts Immigration Reform Will Pass, Says It Must Include Protections For Same-Sex Families

By Igor Volsky on Feb 3, 2013 at 10:56 am

Senate Majority Leader Harry (D-NV) expressed support for including gay and lesbian families in comprehensive immigration reform, during an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, insisting that they should have the same protections as everyone else.

The United States is home to at least 28,500 same-sex couples in which one partner is a citizen and the other is not, but federal law does not recognize these relationships and prohibits gay and lesbian couples and their children from seeking visas on the basis of same-sex unions. The Obama administration’s framework would allow families to apply for visas on the basis of their permanent unions, while the bipartisan senate principles do not. Reid characterized the GOP resistance to including the equality amendment as an excuse to avoid supporting comprehensive reform:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (HOST): One of the other big issues, the President said he wants gay and lesbians to be able to have a family preference. Senator McCain has said we shouldn’t come up with legislation for what he calls social issues.

REID: If we have gay folks in this country who have children, or they come from some other place they should be protected just like any other child.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s the position the Republicans are saying that’s too heavy to lift.

REID: If they’re looking for an excuse not to support this legislation, this is another one, but the American people are past excuses. They want this legislation passed.

Watch it:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), one of the 8 bipartisan senators, has characterized equality for gay and lesbian families in immigration reform as a “red herring” and compared it to supporting tax payer funding for abortion services.

Reid seemed to dismiss such rhetoric and predicted that immigration reform is “certainly going to pass the Senate.” “It would be a bad day for our country and a bad day for the Republican party if they continue to stand in the way of this,” Reid said.

Climate Progress

Government’s Legitimate Role: A Football Analogy

By Climate Guest Blogger on Feb 3, 2013 at 10:16 am

Referee Jeff Triplette checks on Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

By Stephen Hiltner

One seemingly bottomless source of national pessimism today is the notion that government can’t do anything right and that regulators are by nature the enemy of freedom and commerce. This pessimism, deeply rooted in the ideology that took hold in the 1980s, is a core impediment to action on climate change.

President Obama took a different view in his inauguration speech, saying we’ve learned from the nation’s history that “a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.” Today’s Super Bowl will confirm this view, as players in a thriving NFL demonstrate that immersion in a closely regulated playfield environment is no impediment to high performance, spirit and invention.

Sports in general provides a fine analogy for what government’s role should ideally be. The athletes and their teams, motivated to beat the competition, bring to their game the same energy and creativity that entrepreneurs and businesses bring to the marketplace. But though the players and coaches may dispute a call now and then, they don’t make the mistake of perceiving regulation as the enemy. Rather, a good game requires clear rules and regulations that are fairly applied.

Boundaries in sports do not constrict action so much as channel it, challenging the players to refine their skills to make the most of the freedom and opportunities the game’s framework provides. Without a net and clear boundaries, tennis would never have produced the likes of a Federer or Djokovic. Similarly, manufacturers have responded to the combination of a competitive marketplace and rigorous government standards by greatly increasing the efficiency of appliances like refrigerators, while also lowering costs. Environmental regulations, then, are falsely maligned when in fact they can motivate manufacturers to dramatically improve their products and save consumers money.

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