This is pretty obvious, but as you can see below having a high level of unemployment means workers don’t get paid very much:
Put this in your “progressives need to care about monetary policy” file.
Unemployment and Compensation
Why are Obama and Salazar pushing a massive expansion of coal production?
This weekend’s question may have no good answer.
On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced plans to auction off 758 million tons of coal in Wyoming over the next few months. Then on Friday, the Bureau of Land Management explained they will be selling off another 1.6 billion tons of coal at a future date.
Salazar claims coal could play a role in the “clean energy future,” but that isn’t true, of course — except in an alternative universe where CO2 has a high and rising price and carbon capture and storage pans out — neither of which seems likely even if Obama weren’t now indifferent to serious climate action (see Harvard: “Realistic” first-generation CCS costs a whopping $150 per ton of CO2 “” 20 cents per kWh! and Studyfind leaks from CO2 stored deep underground could contaminate drinking water).
The coal represents a staggering amount of future CO2 emissions, as Wild Earth Guardians, Sierra Club, and Defenders of Wildlife explain:
Arizona Bill Would Allow People To Bring Guns To ‘Disney On Ice’
Already the bellwether of radical policy, the Arizona legislature is now poised to outdo other GOP-led states in the competition for most extreme gun legislation. Yesterday, a House panel approved a bill to let anybody bring their guns into “public establishments” and “public events.”
While current law allows public agencies to declare buildings as gun-free zones by “putting a sticker on the door,” SB 1201 will allow public buildings to keep guns out “only if there are metal detectors at each entrance with a security guards.” Without those measures, which can cost over $100,000, anyone may bring in their own gun.
Under the bill, “public establishments” and “public events” include buildings owned or leased by the state (including courts and libraries) and events conducted with a license or permit from a public entity. While the law exempts events or facilities that serve alcohol — making them provide “gun lockers” if they want to ban guns — events without alcohol would likely have to allow firearms without restriction. Such public places would include “major events such as Arizona Cardinals and Phoenix Suns games or rock concerts.” Or, as one major concert promoter noted, “Sesame Street Live” and “Disney On Ice”:
[President of major concert promoter Live Nation Southwes Terry] Burke said it appeared the bill would allow guns at family shows that don’t serve alcohol, such as “Sesame Street Live” or “Disney on Ice.”
Bob Merlis, an agent for rock stars John Mellencamp and ZZ Top, “couldn’t imagine” an artist agreeing to perform in front of a gun-toting audience. “The fear of every performer onstage is that some nut will shoot them,” he said. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce also balked, saying the legislation “could infringe on the rights” of building owners “to keep guns out.”
Sports and entertainment executives said the bill could affect venues like Phoenix’s Chase Field, US Airways Center, Comerica Theatre, Ashley Furniture HomeStore Pavilion, Glendale’s University of Phoenix Stadium, and the Mesa Arts Center — all “facilities are owned, leased, operated or controlled with an element of public funding.” Incidentally, Comerica Theatre will be home to Sesame Street Live this spring.
Defending his bill, state Sen. Ron Gould (R), the bill’s sponsor, said “stickers don’t really protect anybody” because they “[do] not really keep a criminal or a psychotic from walking into this meeting and shooting each and every one of us dead.” But letting anyone and everyone walk into the room with a gun somehow does.
The Case Against The AT&T Merger
Interestingly, The Economist is among those urging the Obama administration to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger:
The suspicion is that Mr Obama, desperate both to build some broken fences with big business and to make progress on connecting every American home to the internet, will give in. In fact he should push the FCC to promote more competition—by, for instance, allowing other firms to buy bulk wireless capacity from AT&T and resell it, by freeing up underused spectrum and by making local phone and cable firms share their wires. A duopoly would in the end reduce choice for American consumers, and be hard to reverse. Best to block it.
Meanwhile, just about everyone seems to agree that a huge underlying problem here is spectrum scarcity caused in part by so much of it being taken up by broadcast television operators who didn’t pay for it and can’t sell or lease it.
Weekend Open Thread
Opine away. Or pine away. Or pie away? Or pi away? Or”¦.
The End of Overfishing in America
A key step toward sustainable marine life — but many more remain
By Michael Conathan, CAP’s Director of Ocean Programs.
Eric Schwaab, the administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS, stood before a crowd of fisheries experts on Monday at the Boston Seafood Show. Schwaab had made many forays to New England””home of some of the squeakiest wheels in our nation’s fishing industry””since taking over the job about a year ago. But this time was different. He came bearing a remarkable message: We are witnessing the end of overfishing in U.S. waters.
