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Yglesias

Bailout Or Default

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 18, 2011 at 12:51 pm

It’s very difficult to understand what’s supposed to be happening with Greece:

On Sunday, finance ministers from the euro zone will meet in Luxembourg and are expected to approve the next dispersal of aid. But if Mr. Papandreou fails to push through the new austerity measures that Parliament is expected to begin debating next week — with a confidence vote scheduled for Tuesday following a cabinet reshuffle last week — it could jeopardize the second rescue package that Greece needs in order to carry it through next year. A default would send the euro zone and world markets into a tailspin.

To a first approximation, Greece’s problem is that it can’t pay the money it owes. When you owe more money than you pay, the normal solution is to not pay the money you owe. If the problem with Greece defaulting is that it would “send the euro zone and world markets into a tailspin” then it seems like the euro zone (or “world markets”) have a strong interest in bailing Greece out so as to avoid the default scenario. The idea of austerity seems nearly irrelevant to this calculation. Money was loaned to Greece at German-style interest rates. That can’t have been based on the assumption that the Greek economy was the same as the German economy or that Greek governance is the same as German governance. It must have been based on the assumption that in the event of a crisis the European Union would move to fiscal integration, since the system is unworkable without it. Now we either need to move to fiscal integration (bailouts, guarantees, etc.) or to unwind the system (defaults, runs, and countries forced to reintroduce devalued national currencies).

Politics

Sponsor Of Alabama Immigration Law Scott Beason Refers To Blacks As ‘Aborigines’

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Jun 18, 2011 at 12:42 pm

Alabama state senator Scott Beason (R), who sponsored the state’s tough new immigration law, has been caught on tape referring to black customers of a casino as “aborigines.” Beason made the offensive comparison while wearing audio recording equipment for the FBI as part of an investigation into a group of people accused of buying and selling pro-gambling votes in the legislature. The Associated Press reports:

In one transcript, Beason and two other Republican legislators were talking about economic development in predominantly black Greene County and the customers at one of the county’s largest employers, the Greenetrack casino in Eutaw.

“That’s y’all’s Indians,” one Republican said.

“They’re aborigines, but they’re not Indians,” Beason replied. [...]

The transcripts also showed Beason and other Republicans talking about what would happen if the legislation to protect electronic bingo casinos were approved by the Legislature and placed before voters in the election in November 2010. They speculated that casino owners would offer free meals and free bus rides to get black voters to the polls.

Under questioning, Beason said they were concerned that a large black turnout would hurt Republican candidates.

When pressed on his comments, Beason explained, “I don’t know what I meant at the time.” “I don’t use that term normally. I don’t know where it even came from that day,” he said in federal court. Democrats have called on Beason to resign. The federal judge in the bingo trial case will allow defense lawyers to question witnesses about Beason’s “racially charged” statements.

Back in February, Beason warned Republicans that immigration will “destroy a community” and advised his colleagues to “empty the clip and do what has to be done.” Beason later insisted that his comments were taken out of context and that he was using an analogy, not urging violence. He has also been leading the charge to redraw district lines in a way that would significantly dilute the power of black voters.

Security

Arming South Sudan With Surface-To-Air Missiles Could Endanger Humanitarian Efforts In Sudan

By Guest Blogger on Jun 18, 2011 at 12:30 pm

Our guest blogger, Lauren Jenkins, works on post-conflict peacebuilding issues and writes about national security at her blog International Development Without Pity.

As July 9 and South Sudan’s independence from northern Sudan draws nearer, violent attacks by the North on the South and its border areas are increasing in frequency and intensity. In Abyei, a disputed border region, upwards of 113,000 people have fled clashes between the northern and southern armies.

Yesterday, President Obama met with Princeton Lyman, his Special Envoy to Sudan, and the readout from the White House was one of cautious condemnation:

The President expressed deep concern over the violence and the lack of humanitarian access, and he underscored the urgent need to get back to cooperative negotiations to enable full and timely implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The President is “following the situation closely” while Ambassador Lyman works to achieve “a cessation of hostilities across the region and to support the emergence of two viable states at peace.”

Indeed, a peaceful conclusion to twenty years of civil war was the goal of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and should be still. That’s why suggestions by Representative Donald Payne (D-NJ) to arm South Sudan made at a subcommittee hearing on Thursday are so worrisome. Specifically, he referred to revisiting a 2008 decision by President Bush to provide air defense systems to South Sudan. That request was never fulfilled because, according to Bush administration officials, the Southern Sudanese army was not trained and equipped to use and maintain the systems.

Arming South Sudan with air defense systems would put them into deeper conflict with the North, not bring the two closer to peace. Further, South Sudan’s army still doesn’t have the requisite training to use and maintain an air defense system. That poses a distinct problem when it comes to distinguishing friendly aircraft from the North’s attack aircraft. In 2007, a UN panel of experts sent a report to the Security Council documenting the North’s use of attack aircraft painted to look like UN aircraft in bombing raids of Darfuri villages. Were the North to use this tactic in the South, it could put UN aircraft at risk.

If UN aircraft are at risk, more than just their aircrews’ lives hang in the balance. When the international community floated the idea of a No-Fly Zone over Darfur in 2007, Sudan expert Julie Flint noted humanitarian agencies were “quietly but unanimously appalled by the prospect” and even if northern Sudan didn’t forcibly ground humanitarian flights in retaliation, “the United Nations most likely would, for fear of sending its planes into a potential combat zone.”

An ill-trained South Sudanese army firing surface-to-air missiles at planes that look like UN aircraft could easily ground UN flights in South Sudan and the border regions. Without access to life-saving humanitarian assistance, the 113,000 people already displaced in Abyei would suffer. Air defense systems might curtail northern Sudan’s onslaught of aerial bombardments, but they would not stop its ground forces or artillery batteries from launching equally deadly attacks against the South. In the end, arming South Sudan could endanger already vulnerable civilians, not protecting them.

Yglesias

Campaign Finance As A Floor Rather Than A Ceiling

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 18, 2011 at 11:21 am

It seems utopian to even be thinking about such things, but I want to register agreement with Jonathan Bernstein that much better than futile efforts to restrict the use of money in politics are efforts to use public financing to guarantee the existence of a financial floor that ensures that legitimate candidates have some chance to get a campaign off the ground without needing to do oodles of fundraising:

If I had my ideal system, I’d probably give House major party nominees some substantial amount of public financing ($500,000? $1/constituent? $1/voter?), come up with a similar formula for the Senate, enforce strong disclosure rules on top of that, and call it a day (actually, I’d also keep the current system for presidential elections, with the assumption that no serious nomination candidates or major party nominees will ever use it, but just in case). You want to drop $10M into a House district? Fine. You’re going to waste most of it, and the opposition can run against some outsider trying to tell the locals how to vote (you better make sure opposition research won’t turn up anything about you), and that’s the end of the story, as far as I’m concerned.

One thing to note about this proposal is that it would probably do more than a million googoo anti-gerrymandering proposals to increase the number of meaningfully contested House races. No matter how you draw a district, there’s always a median voter and thus always in principle a way to beat the incumbent. But challengers all suffer at a major financial disadvantage and parties want to concentrate their fundraising efforts on the friendliest districts. That gives too many incumbents a too comfortable time.

Climate Progress

As Crops Are Killed, House Forbids USDA From Preparing For Climate Disasters

By Guest Blogger on Jun 18, 2011 at 9:32 am

Our guest blogger is Noah Matson, Vice President for Climate Change and Natural Resources Adaptation at the Defenders of Wildlife.

Flooded farmland in Tennessee

In a disturbing trend of attacking the government’s ability to prepare for climate risks, the House passed an amendment to the fiscal 2012 agriculture spending bill that would prohibit the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) from implementing new regulations on climate change adaptation. This amendment puts the nation at increased risk of food disruptions, forest fires and huge economic losses.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who introduced the amendment, bizarrely claimed USDA’s climate adaptation policy was somehow a “backdoor door attempt to put a cap-and-trade program in place in the Department of Agriculture.”

Far from it. The commonsense USDA policy says only that agencies should plan for that future in a way that will prevent food disruptions, massive forest fires and economic hardships:

Through adaptation planning, USDA will develop, prioritize, implement and evaluate actions to minimize climate risks and exploit new opportunities that climate change will bring.

The nation is still immersed in intense weather and climate-related disasters – from the Mississippi flood, to the Texas drought, to the Arizona fire. Some of these extreme events are happening in the same place.

“I can’t get my crop out of one side of the levee because it’s too dry and I’ve lost my crop on the other side of the levee because it’s floating away,” said George Lacour, 48, of Morganza, Louisiana. The state is bearing the brunt of much of the Mississippi flood as well as a state-wide severe drought.

Looking at the past record would not have prepared anyone for the devastating weather events this year – and the future is going to be different yet. Don’t we want our government to be planning for those changes?

The conditions we are seeing this year are breaking records. According to Texan Matt Farmer, “It’s as dry as I’ve ever seen it in my lifetime. I don’t remember a drought this widespread. I’ve got a lot of country that’s blowing, but I can’t do a thing about it.”

This year’s events are also consistent with the conditions researchers project are coming with climate change. Looking at the past record would not have prepared anyone for the devastating weather events this year – and the future is going to be different yet. Don’t we want our government to be planning for those changes?

The Senate should do right by the country’s farmers, forests and the people and wildlife that rely on them, and reject this amendment.

Learn more from the Defenders of Wildlife on Congress’s June 3 vote to put the lives, livelihoods, property and security of Americans at increased risk< and the importance of a broad, comprehensive strategy to prepare for the impacts of climate change.

Related Posts

Climate Progress

International Solar Day Open Thread: Should Solar Panel Recycling be Mandatory?

By Stephen Lacey on Jun 18, 2011 at 7:50 am


By the end of this year, solar PV production capacity will be at 50 GW (50,000 MW), up from 100 MW in 2000. That’s reason to celebrate on this International Solar Day.

But it’s also important to remember the implications of that growth. Solar PV manufacturing uses all kinds of toxic chemicals and materials that should be recycled. Many solar companies have take-back programs that minimize waste. But independent groups have called for mandatory recycling of panels.

Greentech Media had a piece on the issue this week:

Read more

Climate Progress

Re-Imagining Agriculture: How to Raise Yields while Reducing CO2 Emissions

By Energy Interns on Jun 18, 2011 at 7:39 am

“Agriculture must, literally, return to its roots by rediscovering the importance of healthy soil, drawing on natural sources of plant nutrition, and using mineral fertilizer wisely.”

That’s the conclusion of a recent report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on sustainable agriculture.

When talking about sustainable agriculture, I often hear the criticism that “we cannot return to the methods of farming of 50 years ago.”  But that is not what sustainable agriculture is about. An increase in yields can be achieved with lower emissions (my working definition of sustainable) — not by being anti-science, but by re-imagining agriculture.

Methods of the past yielded less, which is not an option for a burgeoning global population. But the current fossil-fuel laden agricultural system is not an option either. So to meet today’s unique food and energy challenges of today, researchers and innovative companies are re-inventing agriculture and bringing ingenious solutions to realize true sustainability.

Here is a round-up of a few innovative methods.

Let’s begin with wheat, specifically perennial wheat.

Researchers at Michigan State University and the Land Institute have been working on creating a commercially-viable perennial version of wheat.  Contrary to the once-a-year, shallow-rooted annuals, perennial wheat has much deeper roots and can produce up to seven years in a row, thus reducing frequency of plowing. Deeper roots allow for greater uptake of nutrients, minimizing the amount of fossil-based fertilizers needed.

While perennial versions of wheat and other crops is still a ways off, a report from the Land Institute points out that “perennial crops could help restrain climate change. Their net values for global warming potential are negative, having been estimated at –200 to –1050 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents per ha per year, as compared with positive potentials of410 to 1140 kg per ha per year for annual crops.”  Clearly, more research is needed so that this important transition from annuals to perennials can take place.

Read more

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