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Maryland To Sue Chesapeake Energy For PA Fracking Blowout

By Brad Johnson on May 3, 2011 at 5:50 pm

On April 19, a natural gas hydrofracturing well owned by Chesapeake Energy in Bradford County, PA suffered a blowout, spewing “thousands and thousands of gallons of frack fluid over containment walls, through fields, personal property and farms, even where cattle continue to graze.” The spill drained into the Susquehanna River watershed, which feeds Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. Maryland’s Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler now “plans to sue the company for violating federal anti-pollution laws” including the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the Clean Water Act (CWA), as a press release issued yesterday explains:

On April 19, thousands of gallons of fracking fluids were released from a well owned and operated by Chesapeake Energy into Towanda Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna River, which supplies 45% of the fresh water in the Chesapeake Bay. In his letter, Attorney General Gansler notified the company that at the close of the required 90-day notice period, the State intends to file a citizen suit and seek injunctive relief and civil penalties under RCRA for solid or hazardous waste contamination of soils and ground waters, and the surface waters and sediments of Towanda Creek and the Susquehanna River. The State also intends to seek injunctive relief and civil penalties under the CWA for violation of the CWA’s prohibition on unpermitted pollution to waters of the United States.

“Companies cannot expose citizens to dangerous chemicals that pose serious health risks to the environment and to public health,” said Gansler in the press release. “We are using all resources available to hold Chesapeake Energy accountable for its actions.”

Climate Progress

AP: Warren Buffett “says he doesn’t believe greenhouse gases represent a material risk for Berkshire’s insurance operations”

By Joe Romm on May 3, 2011 at 5:32 pm

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett appears seriously confused about the risks posed by greenhouse gases.  Two years ago, the sage of Omaha wrote, “Doubling the carbon dioxide we belch into the atmosphere may far more than double the subsequent problems for society.” Duh.

But now the AP reports:

Read more

Politics

VIDEO: Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) Denies Existence Of Billions In Special Oil Subsidies

By Lee Fang on May 3, 2011 at 5:20 pm

Earlier this year, the GOP voted in lockstep to extend billions in tax breaks to oil companies. The subsidies include special tax breaks only available to oil and gas companies. For instance, there is the “Intangible Drilling Costs” tax break ($7.8 billion over ten years); a deduction for “tertiary,” or enhanced oil recovery methods ($67 million over ten years); and the percentage depletion allowance for owners of oil wells ($10 billion over ten years).

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), a staunch ally of polluters and top recipient of oil industry campaign contributions, was asked last week at the Toole County Republican convention if he supports such tax breaks to big oil. An incredulous Bishop retorted that “there are no special subsidies or tax breaks for oil companies, period.” Rather, Bishop claimed that there is a media conspiracy to fool the public into believing in oil subsidies:

BISHOP: There’s no subsidies for oil companies, oil companies get the same tax breaks that every other business gets. There are no special subsidies or tax breaks for oil companies, period.

CONSTITUENT: Why is that reported in the newspapers and on the–

BISHOP: They liked to spin it that way. Any change in oil companies was to give them the same tax structure as as every other manufacturing business gets. There is nothing that is that special or new or unique for these oil companies. And there are a lot of people who want to throw that spin out there. It’s spin, it’s crap.

Watch it:

It is true that oil companies, like every major corporation, will reap a windfall from Republican-proposed reductions in the corporate tax rate. But Bishop and his party are also extending billions in subsidies only available to companies in the oil industry.

A few Republicans, like Rep. James Lankford (R-OK), are stepping up to defend targeted subsidies to big oil. But Bishop’s defense is perhaps the most novel. In the past, Bishop used climate change denial as a strategy to defend oil company pollution. Now, he’s apparently using subsidies-denial to defend taxpayer giveaways to the wildly profitable oil industry.

However, more and more Republican lawmakers are regretting, or in some cases, forgetting their vote. Rep. Dan Webster (R-FL) told us that he now thinks oil subsidies are “corporate welfare.” At a town hall last week, Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) said that oil subsidies should be “on the table” for elimination. And Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) now wants to vote to repeal them. Even GOP leadership, including Reps. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and John Boehner (R-OH), have recently back pedaled support for tax breaks to the oil industry. (HT: BishopBlunders)

Yglesias

Two Reasons For a Corporate Income Tax

By Matthew Yglesias on May 3, 2011 at 5:14 pm

NB asks the question on the mind of every aspiring tax policy junky—why would you tax corporations as such?

Maybe this is stupid but after all the talk about corporate income tax lately (up here in Canada too), I find myself wondering what the point of corporate income taxes is. When you’re taxing a person, it’s easy to see where the money is coming from but when you’re taxing a corporation, what’s happening then? I suppose maybe it comes out of the pockets of the higher ups since there’s probably more flexibility in pay there but maybe it comes out of the pockets of consumers in which case it’s actually a regressive tax. What’s the deal?

As I understand it, there are two reasons for having a corporate income tax. One is concern about tax evasion. If you made corporate income untaxed, then you might see all manner of rich people incorporating themselves as a tax shelter and then you’d have some huge enforcement headaches.

The other (and realistically more important) reason is just pure path dependency. Marie Diamond wrote for ThinkProgress yesterday about a Texas House committee moving to enact a tax break for yacht owners amidst a state budget crunch. That’s in response to the fact that Florida recently cut its yacht tax. Now in both cases you could ask “how much sense does it really make to single out yachts for taxation?” and the answer is “not that much sense.” Clearly the intent is to levy a consumption tax whose incidence will fall on the rich, but there are many technically superior ways of doing this. However, the point is that when you’re in the midst of a state budget crisis, it’s dumb to scrap the tax and need to engage in even deeper cuts in public services. It seems to me that the corporate income tax should be reformed in a revenue-generating way. If that means congress wants to scrap the tax entirely and replace it with some other kind of tax, that’s worth talking about. But just scrapping it on the grounds that it’s not optimal doesn’t make sense. Lots of things aren’t optimal, and you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.

Health

Atul Gawande: IPAB Is Needed To Establish ‘Rules Of The Road’ To Move Towards Better System

By Igor Volsky on May 3, 2011 at 5:07 pm

On Friday, during an event at the Center for American Progress, Dr. Atul Gawande defended the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) — a 15 member commission formed by the Affordable Care Act that is tasked with controlling health care costs. The board has come under Republican criticism for “rationing” health care to seniors since President Obama announced his intention to expand its functions as a means of lowering health care spending. During his town halls in Wisconsin for instance, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) repeatedly characterized the board as a “rationing” body that would restrict coverage and benefits to current seniors.

But Gawande — a doctor and prize-winning author — argued that while competition is important to reducing health spending, the government should establish a body to ensure that “what we are driving towards are better quality and lower costs“:

GAWANDE: There must me someone setting rules of the road. Competition is invaluable but competition does not drive fair rules that come out of the game and rules that are going to insure that what we are driving towards are better quality and lower costs as time goes on requires that there be a role there and the Independent Payment Advisory Board is the kind of system that we are going to need to evolve towards. It is the kind of a provision that allows us to evolve towards having — not someone who tells me how I do my operations or tries to micromanage those components at the front light– but instead tries to answer how as we evolve along are the payment incentives working — what rules allow things to happen. Is it okay if in a community the doctors and the hospital become consolidated? And some competition starts to disappear. What happens when that happens? Are we actually getting better quality and lower costs? And what are we learning as we go along? You need that kind of advisory board that translates that into rules of the road that make us continue to move in that direction.

Watch it:

Unlike insurers, who make coverage decisions every day without so much as holding a public hearing, the IPAB will establish the “rules of the road” in a transparent and accountable manner, considering the needs and suggestions of a broad spectrum of stakeholders. The IPAB will be composed of representatives from drug companies, hospitals, doctors, patients — all of whom are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate — who will be tasked with lowering out of control spending. The board will only issue recommendations of health spending increases beyond a specific threshold and is specifically prohibited from restricting benefits or modifying eligibility criteria.

Yglesias

How Important Is Pakistan?

By Matthew Yglesias on May 3, 2011 at 4:25 pm

Joshua Foust’s overview of US-Pakistan relations in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing is really great reading, but I’m not sure I agree with the conclusion:

Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. forces might not change the overall picture much, but it is clarifying. Even beyond the enormous political symbolism of the kill, it brings the particulars of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship into disturbingly sharp focus. Though often characterized by mistrust, the way this raid unfolded seems to indicate that the U.S. has never trusted Pakistan less than it does right now. But this just might be a good thing — the causes of that mistrust have long been present, but we are only now acting on them — especially if it results in more arrests or killings of senior leaders of al-Qaeda.

There are, however, downsides to the souring U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Pakistan’s importance to the U.S. goes beyond the fact that terrorist groups inhabit its soil. It has nuclear weapons. It is one of the biggest recipients of Chinese economic aid (often targeted to annoy or provoke India and Iran). By sheer luck of geography, it will play an enormous role in the future of the war in Afghanistan, and the ultimate stability and economic interdependence of Central Asia. None of these things really depend on al-Qaeda. But if the U.S. destroys its relationship with Pakistan because of Pakistan’s support for terrorism, we will be sacrificing much of our influence in a part of the world where influence is both increasingly important and hard to come by. In the end, if our relationship continues to sour, we just might not be that much better off after all.

I know that regional experts are often annoyed by the prognostication of know-nothings like me. But conversely, I’m often annoyed by regional experts proclaiming something or other to be important (or even “increasingly important”) without explaining compared to what. The Pakistan government is important for the future of Afghanistan, but the most plausible reason to think Afghanistan is important is that it’s important for the future of Pakistan. Pakistan is important because al-Qaeda is important, but if not cooperating with Pakistani authorities is the best way to fight al-Qaeda, then the Pakistan government can’t be important for that reason. Pakistan matters because it’s part of the China-India balance of power but of those three countries Pakistan is clearly the least significant.

This leaves us with the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. That matters, obviously. But of course it matters even more to the Pakistani authorities then it does to us. It makes a ton of sense to, as Brian Katulis suggests, offer more assistance in this regard if Pakistan’s government wants it. But that’s not a reason per se to think we need to try to be nice to them and make them like us.

Politics

VIDEO: Rep. Hultgren (R-IL) Grilled Over Vote To Repeal Health Reform

By Lee Fang on May 3, 2011 at 4:25 pm

Video recorded by ThinkProgress Blog Fellow Micah Uetricht, a reporter from the Chicago area. Uetricht is also a staff writer for Campus Progress.

Over the last two weeks, Republicans have faced a growing town hall backlash over their votes to cut taxes on the rich, to end Medicare as we know it, to extend billions in subsidies to oil companies, and to reduce the corporate tax rate. Now, a freshman Republican is feeling the heat over his vote to repeal health reform and reinstate so-called preexisting conditions discrimination.

Last week at a town hall in Sycamore, IL, a constituent relayed a story to Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) about his daughter, who has suffered because insurance companies refuse to extend coverage to her because of her medical history. Hultgren claimed such discrimination is a problem that must be addressed. However, he was challenged by another constituent who accurately noted that Hultgren voted to repeal the entire health reform law, which means that he repealed protections against preexisting condition screening.

Hultgren then made two startling claims. First, he said the Senate will not approve the House GOP-passed repeal bill, so his vote meant nothing. Second, Hultgren erroneously claimed that he voted to fix preexisting conditions discrimination “the very next day” after his repeal vote. In reality, Hultgren and his party never proposed a “replacement” bill after voting to repeal health reform:

CONSTITUENT 1: One more thing about healthcare. I’ve got a daughter and she had a baby about four months ago. She decided that she loves being a mother so much to resign from her position as a teacher. Guess what? She can’t get insurance because she has a preexisting illness. She’s been cancer-free for fifteen years but the cancer also brought on diabetes because it damaged her pancreas. Preexisting illness and the insurance companies tell her to take a hike. [...]

HULTGREN: Well as you think — it’s one of those things, we’re a compassionate nation, we need to take care of people with preexisting conditions. The lady talked about that as well. We can do that. I agree with you too, we’re America, we can figure this out. [...] But then for those who are truly uninsurable with preexisting conditions, we’ve got to have a system in place and I know we can figure that out.

CONSTITUENT 1: This healthcare system if it finally gets adopted, something about if you have a preexisting illness, you can not be turned down for health insurance. That’s what I want.

CONSTITUENT 2: That was passed! He voted to repeal it.

HULTGREN: [...] You know what, some part of the bill. I think this is part of it that’s going to stay, the Senate’s not going to pass repeal.

CONSTITUENT 2: So why did you vote for it?

HULTGREN: Because the immediate next vote was, now let’s fix it. Let’s go in and fix it [...]

CONSTITUENT 2: Which bill was that, which bill was that that you voted for to fix it?

HULTGREN: The very next day.

CONSTITUENT 2: What’s the bill number?

HULTGREN: I’ll get it to you.

Watch it:

It seems doubtful if Hultgren ever followed up with the constituent asking for the bill number for legislation to replace health reform. That is because no such legislation exists, and the Republicans have done nothing so far to come up with an alternative. Last year during the election, Republicans campaigned aggressively on a platform of “repeal and replace.” Once in office, they have only done the former.

Climate Progress

Fox News Wants You To Believe Climate Pollution Can’t Influence Extreme Weather

By Brad Johnson on May 3, 2011 at 4:20 pm

“NOAA Scientist Rejects Global Warming Link to Tornadoes,” blares Fox News. In a classic example of misreporting the threat that carbon pollution poses to the United States, Fox News reporter James Rosen asked climate experts the wrong questions and then confused the answers he received into a he-said, she-said faux controversy. Rosen claimed that a “top official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)” — Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center — “rejected claims by environmental activists that the outbreak of tornadoes ravaging the American South is related to climate change brought on by global warming”:

Asked if climate change should be “acquitted” in a jury trial where it stood charged with responsibility for tornadoes, Carbin replied: “I would say that is the right verdict, yes.”

In fact, the “environmental activist” Rosen interviewed — Sarene Marshall, Managing Director for The Nature Conservancy’s Global Climate Change Team — did not accuse global warming of spawning the tornadoes. She said that greenhouse pollution is “connected to the increased intensity and severity of storms.”

In an interview with ThinkProgress, NOAA’s Greg Carbin said that it was a mistake to interpret his remarks as being in conflict with those of Sarene Marshall, Managing Director for The Nature Conservancy’s Global Climate Change Team. Like Marshall, he believes that global warming is real, is manmade, and is influencing extreme weather — but that scientists like himself do not have enough data to understand how a warming world affects tornadic storms. When it comes to warning people about deadly risks, he said, the “jury trial” standard is not appropriate.

“All the science points to warming being due to anthropogenic forcing,” he said. “We don’t know how that warming has an influence on the small scale.” There has been a clear increase in precipitation in the United States as the planet has warmed, he said, and the science of how greenhouse pollution influences large-scale events like droughts and floods is robust. However, the climatology of tornadoes is much more challenging, given sparse historical data and the complexity of super-cell thunderstorm physics. Although the number of recorded tornadoes has risen dramatically in the last few decades, that could simply be an artifact of improved record keeping. “We just don’t know with respect to tornadoes. We are continuing to do the research.”

It is important for people to understand that tornadoes are not the primary extreme weather risks that most people should worry about, Carbin said, despite the obvious and terrible destruction they can cause. Tornado outbreaks that cause mass casualties are extremely rare and localized, he said, in contrast to the heat waves, floods, and droughts that have strong links to global warming pollution.

Asked if he applies the “jury trial” standard to his own work of warning Americans about the threat of tornadoes and severe storms, Carbin replied, “Absolutely not.”

“We use probabilistic methods to predict the threat of severe weather,” because it would be foolhardy to require absolute certainty when dealing with matters of life and death. Their predictions are usually of the form of a 45 percent risk of a tornado appearing within a 25-mile region of a given point. However, the conditions that bred these deadly twisters were “unbelievable,” Carbin said. The modelling predicted that multiple tornadoes would form, hours in advance, with over 95 percent probability, and extreme tornadoes with over 90 percent probability.

Fox News wants to make off limits any discussion of any connection with climate change to extreme weather in the United States, precisely because they are the sorts of connections that real people might actually care about.

Update

Tornadogenesis is influenced by the jet stream and different air masses interacting, all of which are influenced by global warming. “Sea surface temperatures across the Gulf of Mexico have been warmer than normal for about a month and a half,” AccuWeather’s Heather Buchman explains. “Warm, humid air is a necessary ingredient for severe thunderstorm development, and the Gulf of Mexico is a major supplier of it. The warmer sea surface temperatures are across the Gulf of Mexico, the more warm and humid the air is above it. “

Alyssa

Alison Brie Says ‘Community’ Could Get Gayer

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 3, 2011 at 3:39 pm

By Alyssa Rosenberg

I absolutely adore Community, and have since the show’s debut. But it’s always struck me as a little strange that while Community’s study group may have a black ex-jock, a white ex-lawyer, a South Asian aspiring filmmaker, a deranged fraudulent Asian Spanish teacher, and a half-Jewish recovering addict. But it doesn’t have a single real gay person. Sometimes, it’s as if Community is so comfortable in the diversity of its universe that the show’s just skipped beyond a necessary-but-cliche coming-out arc. Troy, the former football player, and Abed, the Aspergerian pop-culture savant, have the most comfortably homosocial friendship on television. They’re close enough—and secure enough in the nature of their relationship—to reenact professions of love from Star Wars, or to reject women who don’t find both of them equally cool. Greendale Dean Pelton is potentially gay, but the show spends more time on his sexual practices—Dalmation fetishes! Lady Gaga costumes! blanket forts!—than his sexual identity.

The one hint that series creator Dan Harmon might have a larger vision in mind came earlier this season when Annie (Alison Brie), egged on by an addled Pierce, moved in to kiss Britta:

In Community’s fractured way, Annie is having the study group’s most typical college experience, and in this season, she’s moved to the show’s center. The first time she gets drunk, Annie fakes a new identity and admits she’s exhausted by her reputation as a striver. Broke, she scrapes for the rent on her apartment above a sex shop in a bad neighborhood. And Annie’s thrown herself into college dating, taking up with a hippie, chasing an older doctor, and kissing Jeff.

I was curious about all of this, so when I got a chance to talk to Alison Brie this afternoon about the show’s next foray into paintball, I asked her whether Annie might explore her sexual orientation further.

“With Annie, to be honest, I could see her getting with a girl,” she told me, emphasizing that. “It seems like it would be out of character for her, but I just like to go back to the fact that she’s young and impressionable and still figuring out who she is and what she wants to. It’s one of her best qualities that though she seems uptight, she’ll try everything….We’re pro gay people on the show. I think the Dean is one of those character that has just been morphing along in this odd fashion, and a lot of it comes from Dan Harmon, and a lot of it comes from Jim Rash in things that he’ll improv. The point of the show is comedy. We’re not trying to take a stand about any of those things. It’s a possibility that more gay stuff could creep in.”

I hope Harmon and company give it a shot. For all the progress television’s making in its depictions of gay characters, shows still struggle to depict characters who are bisexual or questioning their sexuality well. Glee‘s done pretty well with Brittany and Santana’s storylines, but it’s a fairly rare outlier. Community‘s so smart about so many other aspects of friendship, dating, and growing up that I think the show could knock an arc like this out of the park.

LGBT

GOP Congressman Compares Same-Sex Marriage To Incest, Polygamy During Congressional Hearing

By Igor Volsky on May 3, 2011 at 3:35 pm

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) compared same-sex marriage to incest and polygamy during a House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder this afternoon, asking why the administration would be willing to apply a higher level of scrutiny to laws that prohibit gay people from marrying as a pose to other kind of marriage arrangements:

GOWDY: And would you agree with me that the rational basis test is the appropriate test to be used with respect to consanguinity, the marrying of family members? That’s the appropriate test, right? Rational basis. You’re not arguing for a heightened level of scrutiny on whether or not cousins can marry each other.

HOLDER: No, I would not argue that. I don’t know if there’s law on that, but again off the top of my head, I’m not sure that you would need heightened scrutiny standard in that regard. [...]

GOWDY: Alright, and we don’t need intermediate or heightened scrutiny with respect to polygamy, right?

HOLDER: Yea, I would think not.

Watch it:

 

Unlike laws preventing people from marrying their brother, laws which discriminate against gay people meet the Supreme Court’s legal standard for heightened scrutiny because gay men and lesbians have historically been “subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process.”

Gowdy went on to note that two court of appeals have ruled that a rational basis test should be applied to sexual orientation laws, while just one agreed with the administration’s view that a higher level of review is applicable and asked why Obama chose to side with the one decision. “Court of appeals make decisions that sometimes the Department of Justice will disagree with to the extent that court of appeals have taken different views of what the appropriate level of scrutiny is,” Holder said. “We think those courts of appeals are wrong. The Supreme Court will ultimately have to decide I guess this issue.”

Gowdy then admitted, “The Ninth Court of Appeals is presumptively wrong. So we don’t change our course of conduct when the ninth circuit court of appeals comes up with something crazy, we don’t change our course of action.”

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