The Obama administration is reportedly considering major reductions in the size the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The administration has reportedly asked the Pentagon to evaluate three options for further cuts: to approximately 1100, 800, or 400 weapons. Any of these scenarios would take the United States well below the ceiling imposed by the New START treaty, which requires the United States and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals to no more than 1,550 deployed weapons.

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that the strategic value of the U.S. nuclear stockpile has declined significantly in the 21st century. Nuclear weapons have been useless in all of the U.S.’s recent military campaigns — Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. And they offer no protection against terrorist groups and subnational actors, two of the most significant threats facing the United States today.

In fact, the Pentagon’s own strategic thinkers have noted that the strategic landscape has changed and that the U.S.’s Cold War-sized arsenal may exceed the country’s current needs. The Defense Department’s strategic guidance document, released in early January, states that “it is possible that our deterrence goals can be achieved with a smaller nuclear force, which would reduce the number of nuclear weapons in our inventory as well as their role in U.S. national security strategy.”

Moreover, according to strategists at the Air War College and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, the U.S. could draw down its arsenal to 311 survivable reliable weapons and still maintain a credible deterrent.

For two reasons, President Obama is wise to reevaluate the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. First, our massive nuclear arsenal is tremendously expensive and diverts funds away from programs designed to bolster the U.S.’s long-term health of the U.S. economy and military. The budget for “nuclear weapons activities” is projected to grow by 6 percent to $18 billion next year in FY 2013. It will be 20 percent higher in real terms than President Reagan’s largest nuclear weapons budget. Further, unless the Pentagon reduces the number of deployed nuclear weapons significantly, it will have to modernize all three legs of the triad at a cost of over $100 billion.

Protecting and modernizing our exponentially larger nuclear stockpile adds to the national debt and sucks up taxpayer dollars that could be used to bolster our economy, put people back to work, or invest in technologies that support our men and women serving around the globe. Adopting the Air War College recommendation would save the Pentagon at least $11 billion per year.

Second, significant reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal would give the Obama administration the moral authority to push for stronger international commitments control the spread weapons-usable nuclear technology and material. President Obama has called nuclear terrorism the “single biggest threat to U.S. security, both short-term, medium-term and long-term.” Demonstrating that the United States is serious about controlling the size of its own nuclear stockpile would breathe life into the global nonproliferation regime, thereby decrease the chances of a terrorist group acquiring a nuclear warhead without undermining U.S. security.

Given the fiscal problems facing our nation and historic highs in defense spending, the Obama administration has been right to downsize or eliminate out-dated weapons systems that do little to further American security, like the F-22 and EFV. Surplus nuclear weapons, which are expensive to maintain and protect, should be no exception.

Last week, State department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland criticized the Iranian government, stating it “would rather spend money on a nuclear weapons program than on the welfare of its people.” Reducing the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to more strategically reasonable levels will allow the Obama administration to practice what it preaches.

– Zachary Bernstein

– Zachary Bernstein

Roseanne Barr, best known for her role on the eponymous 1990s television sitcom, has in recent years taken up a slightly less glamorous job: running a 46-acre macadamia nut farm in Hawaii.

Now, she is officially running for President of the United States. Barr even pulled 6 percent in a national presidential poll that pits her against President Obama (47 percent) and Mitt Romney (42 percent). Barr, a Green Party candidate, has stated that the environment will be one of the main platforms for her campaign:

While Barr admits that she does not believe she will win the presidency, she tweeted recently, “I’m absolutely sure that Obama will win this election by a landslide- exp. If he takes a cue from the Green Party Platform.”

Barr, whose political past is of questionable sanity, may now be the best hope for addressing the environment in the 2012 election.

So far in this primary, discussion of the environment has been minimal at best, and even Fox News has noticed. Meanwhile, an iceberg the size of New York City is about to break off of Antarctica, and most of the country is experiencing one of the mildest winters on record.

On the Republican side, the environment has played virtually no role in the campaign. Rick Santorum has made clear that he believes climate change is a “hoax.” Newt Gingrich has consistently talked about environmental policy only as a barrier to the free market. And Mitt Romney’s most pointed comments on the environment came on the heels of Obama’s recent decision to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Romney spun the conversation from the environment to jobs.

Romney’s overall stance on the issue of global climate change is itself changing.

But the Republicans are not the only ones downplaying the environment this election season. Progressives have repeatedly expressed their frustration with Obama’s distance from climate policy issues. The State of the Union only mentioned the words “climate change” once.

A recent study from Graciela Kincaid at Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab shows that the climate rhetoric has changed in recent months. Obama has transitioned from “climate change” to “clean energy.” Kincaid writes:

What has caused this significant shift in rhetoric? Climate change is apparently politically tainted, a doomsday issue, and the administration has re-branded it under a clean energy and energy independence discourse. The administration has clearly responded to increasing hostility (on one end of the political spectrum) towards the effort to address climate change, scrubbing out words like global warming, cap-and-trade, and climate change from agency communication.

The expectations are low for any significant environmental legislation in 2012. Still, members of the environmental advocacy community see the opportunity for climate change to become a “wedge issue” in the election. Roseanne Barr may be just the character (with her 100,000 twitter followers), to put the environment on the agenda.

At all levels of government there has been a serious push for increasing access to food among low income households and fostering more nutritious eating habits in communities and schools.
Last July, First Lady Michelle Obama and the Partnership for a Healthier America secured pledges from Wal-Mart, Walgreens, SuperValu and several other stores to open or expand stores in “food deserts”, bringing healthy affordable food to approximately 10 million people over the course of five years. Any specific information on how many will be served in CA?

That same month the First Lady also announced the California FreshWorks Fund, a public-private partnership loan fund with $264 million available to support grocery stores and other healthy food retailers in low-income, underserved communities in California. The California Endowment and a team of partners that include banks, grocers, health care providers, and nonprofits lead this initiative. Modeled after a successful program in Pennsylvania, this loan fund provides grants to healthy food retailers willing to locate stores in “food deserts”, areas lacking access to fresh, healthy food.

On Feb. 1, the First Lady spoke at a community event in Los Angeles to celebrate the progress that the California FreshWorks Fund has made in bringing affordable and healthy food to neighborhoods around the city. As one of its initial projects, the California FreshWorks Fund committed more than $20 million in funding to Southern California grocer Northgate Gonzalez Markets for its first three projects: a San Diego location as well as stores in Inglewood and South Los Angeles. The President and CEO of the California Endowment, Robert K. Ross, MD, also spoke at this event and enthusiastically stated, “we all have a shared interest in ensuring our neighborhoods, grocery stores and school cafeterias contribute positively to the health of our communities. Today’s announcement marks the beginning of what we hope will be a robust effort to expand access to nutritious food for all Californians!”

These commitments are a step in the right direction in the effort to combat the country’s obesity and hunger epidemics. Approximately one in four children in the U.S. live in a household that experiences hunger. Additionally, 30 percent of children in the U.S. are overweight or obese and among African Americans and Latinos the number soars to an estimated 40 percent.

Although hunger and obesity are oftentimes viewed as two distinct problems, they are deeply interconnected. Hunger and food insecurity are key contributors to obesity as low-income Americans are forced to rely upon high calorie, low nutrition foods to quell hunger pangs. Notably, studies have consistently demonstrated the lack of supermarkets and other stores selling healthy, affordable food in low-income communities as compared to wealthier ones. Adults in California neighborhoods with low access to healthy food are 20 percent more likely to be obese than those in higher-access neighborhoods, increasing their risk of developing chronic diseases. The California Fresh Works Fund website features a very useful interactive map that displays “Grocery Gap” statistics for various counties throughout the US and can be broken down into detailed indicators. The California FreshWorks Fund was created to tackle these food access concerns, while also addressing additional challenges faced by communities in so-called “food deserts”. In addition to improving community health, drawing grocery stores into “food deserts” also creates opportunities for economic development. Grocery stores create jobs (an estimated 49 to 120 new jobs per store), attract other small businesses to the area, and increase the surrounding residential real estate values.

Additional benefits include increased property values in the surrounding communities and increased income and property tax. This increased economic activity and property value help relieve pressure on state and local budgets and increase community sustainability.

California’s Freshworks Fund serves as a model for an innovative public-private partnership loan fund with the potential to increase access to healthy and affordable food throughout the state. This new program is proving itself as a vital component in California’s fight against hunger and obesity, and as an important force in strengthening the economies of affected communities.

Katie Wilczak, CAP CA Intern, contributed to this piece.

– Zachary Bernstein

Syrians battle harsh weather in refugee camp (photo: Mhmad al Salh)

Inside the refugee camps, only 500 meters from the Syrian border, families were glued to television news reports from Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera. Laptops with wireless internet connections were on Skype where refugees connect with friends and families inside Syria. Refugees will often inquire about access to staples because in many cities such as Homs, the regime has cut off water, electricity and food supplies. Syrians in these camps organize and infiltrate the border to deliver food packages, medical supplies and water. The porous borders serve as a vital communication channel for the refugee community and play an imperative role in keeping the opposition alive.

One Syrian refugee I interviewed said he keeps track of the number of dissidents killed, detained or missing through underground networks and then relays that information to international media outlets. Refugees are central to coordinating protests in Syria; and Army defectors in these camps provide military intelligence to soldiers in the Free Syria Army.

The refugees are also faced with everyday challenges living in Turkey. The Hatay province in Antakya, Turkey at one time used to be a part of Syria and consists of a large Alawite community. Turkish Alawites have enjoyed a strong relationship with the Assad regime and many have benefited from sending their children to Syrian universities. Thus, the recent influx of Syrian dissidents has caused problems with the host community. Refugees have to be wary as many Turkish Alawites are suspected of spying for the regime. One refugee told me that a group of men severely beat him after he spoke openly against Assad and in favor of the revolution.

There are also concerns about the living conditions in the camps. Turkey has not developed a long-term strategy for hosting them. Consequently, their children have no access to public schools and there is no potential for legitimate employment. And harsh weather has wreaked havoc. Syrians living inside Turkey are in desperate need of winter clothes, blankets, new tents, and shoes to cope with winter weather. As the violence in Syria persists, more refugees have been crossing over to Turkey in need of basic essentials. Furthermore, access to health care is limited in the refugee camps where there is only one health tent for 3,000 people. The health unit is not equipped to treat severe wounds or infections.

The refugees continue to aid the opposition but it’s unclear, given worsening living conditions and security fears, how long their efforts will remain effective.

As we approach the town of Manatí, in northern Colombia, I look eagerly out the window for signs of change. When I was here almost a year ago, makeshift shelters and tents lined the sides of the road. Random pieces of furniture were piled nearby: a refrigerator or a rocking chair – anything people could save from the floodwaters.

Today the tents are gone. But just outside of town, we turn off the road and into a lot, where temporary shelters made of fiberboard and corrugated metal have been constructed. I see Irida emerge from one of them. Smiling and laughing, we embrace each other.

Irida is one of approximately 225,000 people who were affected when unprecedented rains in the fall of 2010 caused the nearby Dique Canal to rupture. The break in the canal, which connects Colombia’s coastal city of Cartagena to the Magdalena River, submerged half of the northern state of Atlántico under 80 million cubic meters of water. When I first visited Manatí in March 2011, half of the town was still underwater, and Irida was living under plastic sheeting after being evicted from the local school. Irida’s house, which she showed me by canoe, had water up to the rooftop.

To some extent, Irida was lucky. Hers was one of the first families in the town able to move into these temporary shelters last April. In many of the nearby towns we have visited, they were not completed until three months ago.

But the shelter where Irida now lives was designed to last only three months. She has been there for almost a year. Worse than that, the floodwaters have still not dissipated, and her house is still flooded. According to the state governor’s office, 60 percent of the area that flooded when the Dique Canal burst in 2010 is still underwater today. Pumping has proven ineffective because much of this area was once wetland and is now returning to its natural state. So Irida and the roughly 600 other families in Manatí who’ve lost their homes are now being told they will have to relocate.

The day after our reunion with Irida, we join a town hall meeting where the governor tells a schoolyard full of flood-affected families that his priority is to find land and build homes for the thousands still displaced more than a year later. But Irida tells me that she doesn’t want to take the piece of land being offered. It is too far away from the center of town, she says. Before the floods, she ran a small grocery shop out of her house. If she relocates, she will be unable to restart her business and will be isolated from her community.

Like so many other Colombians we are meeting on this trip, Irida is quick to smile and laugh. But the pain and anxiety are nevertheless visible on her face. Beyond the relocation troubles, she has many more immediate worries. The toilets at her temporary shelter do not work, and two of the plastic water tanks have recently ruptured in the heat. The Colombian government discontinued food deliveries to the area in November. Her husband has been unable to find work. Without permanent homes or work, how can the process of recovery even begin?

I am at a loss for words as we say our goodbyes. I hope things will be better for Irida the next time we meet; I wish I could be more certain.

President Obama submitted his budget for fiscal year 2013 to Congress this morning, with the explicit goal of “rebuild(ing) our economy and strengthen(ing) the middle class.” The $3.8 trillion budget includes $5 million to help individual states launch paid leave programs – similar to those in California and New Jersey – that allow workers to take paid time off from work to provide care to a new child or ailing family member.

While some have argued that government intervention into work-family policies will only increase the cost of employing women, and that the marketplace will respond by voluntarily providing policies in order to retain valuable employees, the evidence does not support these arguments. At present, there are huge gaps in access to maternity leave for working women. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2006 and 2008 about two-thirds of mothers with a bachelor’s degree or higher received paid maternity leave, but only 18.5 percent of those with less than a high school degree did. New mothers who have access to paid maternity leave are more likely to return to their previous employer, and 97.6 percent of those who return to the same employer do so at their previous pay level or higher. When women have to change employers after giving birth, often times because they are forced to quit or are fired in the absence of paid maternity leave, more than 30 percent experience a drop in pay.

New research on California’s Family Disability Insurance program illustrates how offering paid leave to women after childbirth helps individual workers and the economy as a whole. California’s program was passed in 2002, and became available to workers in July of 2004. Paid leave is administered through the State Disability Insurance program, and is funded through payroll taxes on employees. Eligible workers in California who take leave receive 55 percent of their regular pay, up to a maximum of $928 per week, for up to 6 weeks to bond with a new child or to care for a seriously ill family member.

California’s program has increased both job retention and the number of hours worked by employed mothers. More than 95 percent of workers who took leave in 2009 and 2010 returned to work; 80 percent returned to the same employer. Workers who made $20 an hour, meanwhile, returned to the same employer 83 percent of the time. And according to researchers from the University of Virginia and Columbia University, paid leave increased hours worked by mothers six to nine percent.

Working mothers are often the ones keeping their families afloat. The typical working wife now brings home 42.2 percent of her family’s earnings, and while married families with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker haven’t seen incomes rise since the 1970s (when adjusted for inflation), families with a working wife have seen incomes grow by 30 percent. Families where wives work, work longer hours, and receive higher pay are thus more likely to maintain their position on the income ladder or move up.

If every woman in America had access to paid leave when she had a baby, estimates are that this would increase employment by approximately 40,000 new mothers each year. Imagine how many families that would help raise up into the middle class, or secure their foothold there. If we are serious about repairing the economy, we must remember that a rebuilding a strong middle class is not just about helping the unemployed find work, but also about helping workers keep the jobs they already have. Paid family leave is one policy that can help us meet those goals.

In the first post in this series on the myth of the National Rifle Association’s power, I took apart the myth of the influence of NRA spending on congressional elections. In today’s installment, I will address the question of the NRA endorsement, something sought by not only Republicans but many Democrats as well. The organization’s stamp of approval, it is believed, not only sends a clear message to Americans who own guns, but brings with it indispensable grassroots organizing muscle that can make all the difference in House and Senate races.

The NRA endorsement, however, is seldom examined in anything resembling a systematic way. When we do so, we find that like the alleged power of the NRA’s money, the power of the NRA’s endorsement is largely a myth. There are some kinds of races where the endorsement might make a small difference, but these are only a tiny fraction of all the endorsements the group makes.

There are a few critical things to understand about NRA endorsements. First, they are overwhelmingly given to Republicans, as one might expect. But just as important, they are overwhelmingly given to incumbents. Over the last four elections, 86 percent of NRA House endorsements went to incumbents. In fact, not a single Democratic challenger won the group’s endorsement (though some certainly tried). And if you’re a Republican incumbent, the endorsement is almost guaranteed: 90 percent of GOP House incumbents got the endorsement in 2004, 91 percent in 2006, 96 percent in 2008, and 97 percent in 2010.

So contrary to what one might expect, the NRA endorsement isn’t delivered as a saving grace to a candidate struggling in a tough race. Instead, the typical NRA endorsee is a Republican incumbent from a strongly conservative district strolling to an easy victory. Over these four elections, 82 percent of NRA endorsees won their races by 10 points or more, and 62 percent won their races by 20 points or more. In other words, the NRA endorsement is mostly a reward for past service. In fact, in these four elections, the NRA endorsed a total of 106 House candidates who ran unopposed, and even donated money to 96 candidates with no opponent.

That isn’t to say an NRA endorsement can never have a positive impact on a candidate’s fortunes. But when I performed a series of regression analyses on these data to try to find such an impact, the results showed that an NRA endorsement has a significant effect in only a narrow sliver of races.

This regression analysis examined all House races where the margin of victory was 20 points or less (thereby excluding races that were not seriously contested), and controlled for the amount of money each candidate spent and the partisan character of the district (using a more precise version of the Partisan Voting Index developed by Charlie Cook, which averages the results of the last two presidential elections in each district). This allows us to see whether, holding constant the key measurable factors that should influence the outcome, an NRA endorsement is associated with better results for the endorsee. The results were as follows:

• Republican incumbents in contested races get no statistically significant advantage from getting the NRA’s endorsement; they do no better than those who are not endorsed.

• Democratic incumbents who are endorsed by the NRA get no statistically significant advantage from being endorsed.
• Republican candidates in open seat races get no statistically significant advantage from an NRA endorsement (the group endorsed only a few Democrats in open seat races, too few for meaningful statistical analysis).

So nearly every NRA endorsee gets nothing from the organization’s nod. There is, however, one group that gets a small boost: Republican challengers who get endorsed when they run against Democratic incumbents do about 2 percentage points better than similar candidates who don’t get the endorsement.

That may mean that in certain cases at certain times, an NRA endorsement can help a little (and one can be certain that since the organization endorses few challengers, it picks those candidates carefully, looking for ones it thinks have a good shot at winning). But those races form a tiny portion of their endorsements: only 5 percent of the NRA’s endorsements go to Republican challengers. In other words, in all but a tiny number of races, the NRA endorsement is essentially meaningless.

This finding of a 2-point boost for Republican challengers is consistent with the one prior study that directly examined the question of the NRA’s electoral effect, a 2004 study looking at the 1994 and 1996 elections. Those researchers also found that Republican and Democratic incumbents got no help from an NRA endorsement, but Republican challengers got an almost identical two-point boost. The NRA might argue that even that small and conditional an effect of their endorsements is still meaningful: after all, in a close race in the right district, it could make all the difference. And it could – but how often does that happen?

The answer is: not very often. In 2004, all of the 4 NRA-endorsed challengers lost to their Democratic opponents, as did all 4 NRA-endorsed challengers in 2006. In 2008, 11 out of the 12 NRA-endorsed challengers lost, and the one who won (Texas’ Pete Olson) won by 7 points. In 2010, there was a much larger group of NRA-endorsed challengers, 36 in all. Eighteen of them lost, and of the 18 who won, only 4 beat their incumbent Democratic opponents by 4 points or less (meaning a 2-point boost in the challenger’s total would have been decisive). That means that according to this analysis, in the last four federal elections, in which the NRA made a total of 1038 endorsements in House races, the group could claim credit for a grand total of 4 wins.

Obviously, each of these races had its own particular dynamic; the endorsement will not produce the same effect at all places and at all times (and there are some Democrats who attribute their own victories in part to the fact that their Republican opponent was endorsed by the NRA). But over the broad sweep of the country, it is clear that the NRA endorsement, and all the grassroots mobilization and get-out-the-vote effort that is supposed to come along with it, make virtually no difference.

Many interest groups endorse candidates, but it is fair to say that few find their endorsements as eagerly sought as the National Rifle Association. And there may be a few races here or there in which an NRA endorsement has a meaningful impact on an election’s outcome. But it seems clear that those cases are few and far between. Like the conventional wisdom about the impact of NRA money, the prevailing beliefs about NRA endorsements are more mythology than reality. In the next post in this series, I will address another area in which there are widespread misconceptions: the place of guns in American opinion and American homes.

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, the billionaire investor George Soros said that he thought he should be paying more in taxes and took aim at Republicans who are trying to stop the “Buffett Rule” from becoming law:

ZAKARIA: What about taxes? Do you support President Obama’s proposal to increase taxes on the wealthy?

SOROS: Yes, I very much do so, because it’s the big boom, the super-bubble that resulted in a great increase in inequality. Not only do we have the after effect where we have slow growth one way or the other, but if you have better distribution of income, the average American will be better off.

Soros would be “one of the biggest losers” from Obama’s plan, he said, but he’s “willing to pay that” for the good of the country. Over the last twelve years, tax rates for the wealthiest 400 Americans were cut nearly in half, even as that group’s income quadrupled. In 2007, 150 of the 400 wealthiest Americans paid an effective tax rate between zero and 15 percent.

Polls have shown a strong amount of public support for the “Buffett Rule,” despite Republican resistance – although at least one Republican is aware of the inequality that exists in our nation’s tax code.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has publicly raised objection to the measure, arguing that it will ultimately “kill the bill.” Passage of the highway bill is crucial, as the Highway Trust Fund faces insolvency in 2013, and the bill consists of much needed reforms that will ensure “current resources are used effectively so that Congress can continue investing in the Highway Trust Fund without adding to the federal deficit.”

Before taking the bill to the floor, both sides agreed not to attach controversial amendments:

The Senate’s $109 billion bill is a two-year bipartisan proposal that on Thursday survived a test vote of 85-11 on a measure that limits debate to 30 hours and prevents a filibuster of the bill.

The Senate bill also has the support of the Obama Administration.

In an effort to build bipartisan backing, from the start of their deliberations last year, the bill’s sponsors, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.), agreed not to include anything controversial in the measure.

The bill contains no new taxes, no changes to rail programs, and does not address truck weights or lengths, although it would mandate electronic onboard recorders for trucks.

The Senate bill is one of two transportation bills moving through Congress, but the House is also working on a version that is riddled with ill-effects for low- and middle-income Americans, making the Senate version the best option under consideration. The Keystone amendment, which would authorize construction on all but the most sensitive Nebraska portion of the pipeline, would jeopardize its passage.

Senate leaders are still trying to decide which amendments will get a vote, but if the Keystone XL pipeline reaches the Senate floor, the measure will require 60 votes for approval. At present, there are 47 Republicans in the Senate, although some Democrats have voiced support for the massive oil pipeline project in the past. Grassroots activists are mobilizing in opposition to the Republican Keystone push.

– Fatima Najiy

-Zachary Bernstein

Joe Nocera replies to his Keystone XL critics in “The Politics of Keystone, Take 2” in Saturday’s New York Times. He still doesn’t get it. Like many people, Nocera doesn’t seem to understand the relationship between energy use and energy prices. He writes:

The seemingly inexorable rise in greenhouse gas emissions is the result of deeply ingrained human habits, which will not change if the pipeline is ultimately blocked.

The truth of the matter is that human habits are not really all that deeply ingrained. In countries where energy prices are higher, people systematically use less of it. How much less is shown dramatically in the chart attached to my response to Nocera’s first defense of KXL. Wealthy countries like Japan and Germany that have much higher fuel prices than the United States use only a half to a third as much per capita:

Nocera plunges even more deeply into economic confusion when he writes, “The benefits of the oil we stand to get from Canada, via Keystone, far outweigh the environmental risks,” and then goes on to list, as one of the benefits, the fact that Canadian oil is currently selling at a discount from Saudi crude.

Yes, Canadian oil is currently selling at a discount, but that is not a valid argument for building KXL. An especially low price on oil from a relatively dirty source is not a “benefit” — it is bad energy policy and bad environmental policy. What is more, even fans of underpriced energy need to recognize that building more pipelines would allow oil from Canadian sands to mix more thoroughly into the world oil market, so its price would go up.

Nocera’s “Take 2” does make some valid points. One is that the oil export issue is a red herring. If KXL is good, then it is good whether the products refined from it are consumed in the United States or exported. The same goes if KXL is bad. The fact that some of it would be re-exported doesn’t make it any worse.

Nocera also catches out Robert Redford for saying that oil from Canadian sands is “the dirtiest oil on the planet.” The truth is more nuanced. Andrew Leach and other observers point out that not all oil sands are alike. Oil from some deposits, recovered using some techniques, is much dirtier than others. The worst of it is pretty bad; the best is cleaner than some U.S. domestic oil, for example, thermally extracted heavy oil from California.

Whether Canadian oil is or is not the dirtiest on the planet is not the real point. The real point has always been that we need a comprehensive energy policy that encompasses economic, security and environmental dimensions. At a minimum, such a policy would raise energy prices across the board by enough to cover all environmental costs. At best, it would use price signals based on carbon content that would provide incentives to use energy from the cleanest sources first, and at the same time, develop even cleaner technologies for the future.

That is the part Nocera just doesn’t seem to get.

So I got this green bag right here. And I filled it up with the black market light bulbs. And I brought them back to my office here in the Capitol. Whenever I need to put a bulb in the lamp, I reach in this green bag and I screw it in there and smile. A little bit of my liberty back. A little bit of our freedom back. And I want to challenge you to do the same thing. Bring back some of that liberty, some of that freedom.

Following his attack on energy-efficient light bulbs, Rep. King took on the water-saving showerhead in his shower, before bringing his tirade to a close with the declaration, “I want my liberty back!”

Watch it:

The new light bulb efficiency standards have faced strong opposition from members of the GOP, who consider the rules not only a ban on light bulbs, but as another example of unneccessary federal regulation. Environmentalists and energy-efficiency business groups disagree and are quick to point out that the standards do not ban incandescent light bulbs, but requires them to be more efficient. Despite the GOP’s best efforts to pass measures that would block funding for the standards’ enforcement, The Energy Department rules went into effect at the beginning of the year.

– Fatima Najiy

Christie has claimed that his plan is aimed at providing “across the board” tax relief. But as a new analysis of the proposal points out, those who will benefit most from the Governor’s plan would be the Garden State’s wealthiest residents, as its not income taxes, but property taxes that make up the bulk of the tax bill for Jersey’s middle-class:

A family earning $50,000 a year would save $80.50, and those making $100,000 would save $275, according to David Rosen, budget and finance officer with [the Office of Legislative Services]. Families who make $1 million would save $7,265, Rosen said.

The OLS analysis also examined a tax snapshot of 2004, the last time the Treasury Department married property and income tax payments by address. The data show that families in 2004 who made below $200,000 paid a greater share of their income toward property taxes than toward income taxes. For example, a family that makes $80,000 paid about 6 percent of its gross income for property taxes and about 1.6 for income taxes.

The opposite is true for the state’s wealthy, who pay a much higher income tax rate under the state’s progressive tax structure. A family that earned $500,000 in 2004 paid about 1.8 percent of its gross income for property taxes and 5 percent for income taxes.

The Newark Star-Ledger noted in an editorial that Christie’s plan “will primarily benefit New Jersey’s wealthiest class while doing little to ease the property tax burden on the middle class.” Already, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEC), New Jerseyans in the bottom 20 percent of earners — those making $12,400 on average — pay 10.7 percent of their overall income in taxes. Meanwhile, those in the top 1 percent — with an average income of $2,258,300 — pay 7.2 percent.

As Times of Trenton columnist George Amick noted, “it’s not the income tax that’s oppressing average New Jerseyans.” According to the ITEP data, property taxes in New Jersey are particularly regressive, while income tax rates are more progressive. Democrats have called for Christie to cut property taxes instead.

Christie’s plan is projected to cost the state $1.3 billion dollars by the time all of the cuts are phased in. In order to make up for that shortfall, some budget changes will have to be made, and if one of those changes is increasing property taxes, Christie’s plan could turn out to be even more regressive than it appears.

– Zachary Bernstein

Peter Brimelow

As noted by PFAW, this year, among the participants in the conference is Peter Brimelow and Robert Vandervoort. Brimelow is the founder and head of the White Nationalist hate website VDARE, a site known for publishing the works of racist and anti-Semitic authors. Robert Vandervoort is the director of ProEnglish, an English-only group, and is a former leader of the White Nationalist group Chicagoland Friends of the American Renaissance.

These aren’t just your average conservative activists. They have actively pushed the idea that our diversity is killing us, that Jews are destroying the American white majority, and that non-white immigrants are the cause for our economic problems.

We’ve already seen a GOP more than willing to use racially-coded language throughout the primary season. But is presumed front runner Romney really going to appear at the same conference as people who spew such hatred towards people of color and ethnic minorities? If he wants to be the president of ALL Americans and not just white Americans, Mitt Romney should refuse to speak today. And if he feels he must go on stage, then he needs to denounce Brimelow and Vanervoort’s odious beliefs from the stage. Anything less is tantamount to agreeing with what they say.

Critics of the mortgage settlement negotiated between the state attorneys general and five of the nation’s biggest banks have claimed that the $25 billion settlement is merely a drop in the bucket compared to the size of the overall housing market problems. But is this a fair characterization?

The settlement will help over a million households, and provide $25 billion in relief to struggling homeowners, including an average of more than $20,000 in principal reduction for approximately one million homeowners. This appears to be a relatively small number of homeowners being helped when compared with the 11 million households that are currently “underwater,” owing a total of $699 billion more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

But this simple comparison ignores the fact that this settlement is limited to mortgages that were originated for private label securitization. According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, approximately 35 percent of the nine million loans originated for Wall Street securitization are currently underwater, with an average negative equity balance of about $50,000.

In other words, one in three underwater homeowners with a mortgage originated for Wall Street securitization is going to receive loan forgiveness equal to nearly half of their negative equity.

Critics are also ignoring the fact that the settlement is narrowly tailored to claims around robo-signing and other foreclosure process violations, claims which have very uncertain litigation value and would have taken a long time to resolve. Under the terms of this deal, state and federal prosecutors are free to pursue all other mortgage fraud claims, of which there are many. As the banks themselves understand, they are still subject to an enormous amount of potential liability around their past and present wrongdoings.

When we take these items into consideration, yesterday’s settlement seems like a lot bigger deal than most of the critics are willing to acknowledge. Certainly, the state AG settlement is not a solution to the problems of the housing market, but it is clearly a good and important step towards rectifying the problems of the housing market and holding accountable those responsible.

A report released by the Center for American Progress points out the momentous challenges small employers face in providing affordable, high-quality health insurance plans for themselves and their employees:

Small businesses, which employ 42 million Americans, continue to struggle with the rapidly escalating costs of health insurance. Over the past decade, small-business owners have watched their health insurance premiums rise 133 percent—the same kind of premium growth large businesses have experienced. But because of their smaller scale and thinner margins, they are less able than larger businesses to absorb these increasing costs.

Other factors make it more difficult for small businesses to offer coverage than large businesses. For instance, on average, small businesses pay 18 percent more than big businesses for the same coverage—often due to high broker fees, fixed administrative costs, and adverse selection, which is the upward price spiral that occurs when one plan or market disproportionately attracts high-risk employees.

To combat this obstruction, the ACA has introduced the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP), which is intended to create a marketplace for small business owners to purchase health insurance for their employees. These proposed SHOP exchanges will allow small businesses to consolidate their buying power so they can purchase high-quality insurance with substantially reduced premiums. By spreading the financial risk associated with insuring high-cost enrollees across a wider pool of employers and employees, the exchanges will keep costs affordable, limit the burden posed by the insurance process, and reduce administrative expenses.

“The exchange is the most important component of health care reform for small businesses and it’s critical states set them up correctly so small businesses get the relief a strong exchange can provide,” said Terry Gardiner, Vice President of Policy and Strategy for Small Business Majority.

Under the ACA, open enrollment for SHOP exchanges should commence sometime in late 2013, while small employers and their employees can expect the exchanges to officially open for business on January 1, 2014.

– Fatima Najiy