ThinkProgress Logo

NEWS FLASH

Barney Frank: ‘Mitt Gets Worse’ | Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has joined the “Mitt Gets Worse” campaign, discussing his history of encountering Mitt Romney’s anti-gay record. Frank worries that if Romney is elected, it would be a “serious setback” for LGBT rights because “he has no principles on this subject.” According to Frank, Romney “attaches no value to our rights and our issues” because the Republican Party is caught in a “right-wing death grip.” Watch the clip:

Related Posts

Climate Progress

One Millionth Home Weatherized: Federal Efficiency Program A Winner On All Counts

By Climate Guest Blogger on Sep 28, 2012 at 3:00 pm

by Richard W. Caperton, Adam James, and Matt Kasper

Energy efficiency is a win-win-win for the United States. It saves homeowners money, it puts Americans back to work, and it helps avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. But energy efficiency investments are tough for some people to make because they typically involve relatively large up-front costs for benefits spread into the future. The Weatherization Assistance Program exists to help make sure all Americans share benefits of energy efficiency.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allocated $5 billion for the Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program with the highly ambitious goal of weatherizing 600,000 homes by the end of the three-year Recovery Act period.[1] In crafting the Recovery Act, President Barack Obama understood that scaling up the weatherization program would be a key part of the strategy to jumpstart the economy through creating American jobs, supporting small businesses, saving everyday people money on their energy bills, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions

After a slow start, the Weatherization Assistance Program gained momentum and on Thursday, September 27, 2012 weatherized the 1 millionth home just nine months after passing the 600,000 mark.[2] This achievement marks a major milestone. Across America, the Weatherization Assistance Program has been a success.

While this is a great achievement for President Obama and the Department of Energy, the real beneficiaries are the families who have had their homes retrofitted. Any household at or below 200 percent of the poverty line qualifies to apply for retrofit services. Although 38 million households are eligible for weatherization services, priority has been given to families with children and homeowners who are elderly or disabled.[3]

The Weatherization Assistance Program also has environmental benefits. Energy use in homes, offices, and industrial facilities is a leading contributor to climate change. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, buildings in the United States account for nearly 40 percent of the nation’s total energy use and 65 percent of electricity consumption.[3] Because the construction, operation, and maintenance of buildings involves large amounts of energy, water, and other resources, buildings produce 30 percent of the greenhouse gasses emitted in the United States each year.

Read more

Justice

SCOTUS Preview Part II: Dividing And Conquering Workers

By Ian Millhiser on Sep 28, 2012 at 2:40 pm

The following is the first in a multi-part series on the Supreme Court term that begins this Monday. Part I of the series is here.

Ordinary workers and consumers stand on a profoundly uneven playing field when they have to bring well-moneyed corporations to court. While major companies can employ armies of lawyers to protect their interests, middle class Americans rarely have the funds to hire even a single attorney who possesses the same credentials and experience as a major law firm’s army. Indeed, an ordinary family that has just been cheated out of a few hundred or thousand dollars may quickly discover that the cost of hiring any lawyer to recover that money exceeds what they are likely to recover if they win their lawsuit.

For this reason, the law often allows multiple plaintiffs who have suffered similar injuries from the same company to unite together in order to provide a unified front against wealthy corporations. The most common example of this strength in numbers is a class action lawsuit. While few lawyers would be eager to represent a consumer who lost $1000 because of a company’s defective product, many of the best lawyers will eagerly represent a class of tens of thousands of plaintiffs who all suffered the same relatively low-dollar injury. These lawyers normally work on a contingency fee, meaning that they are paid a percentage of the class of plaintiffs’ total winnings — so the bigger the money at stake, the more equal the fight between the plaintiffs’ lawyers and the defendant’s army.

Last year, however, the Supreme Court enabled companies to force consumers to sign away their ability to bring class actions as a condition of receiving a cell phone or a credit card or potentially any other good or service. As a result, it is likely that consumer class actions will eventually become nearly nonexistent, and consumers will lose one of their most important tools in leveling the playing field between them and big business.

This term, the Supreme Court could strike a similar blow against workers. Many federal worker protection laws, including laws guaranteeing a minimum wage, overtime pay and laws preventing discrimination against women and older workers, permit something known as a “collective action” suit. These lawsuits, which are similar to class actions, allow multiple workers who have been underpaid or otherwise mistreated by their employers to join together under a single suit, thus giving them the same strength in numbers that class action plaintiffs enjoy. Yet in Genesis HealthCare Corp. v. Symczyk, the justices could give corporate America a cheap and easy escape valve every time an employer is subject to such a suit.

Collective action suits work in multiple phases. Early on, a single worker must step forward and charge the company with violating federal worker protection law. At a later stage, the law then allows other workers to be joined to the same suit to form the collective action. What happened in Symczyk is that during the intermediate phase of this lawsuit — after the single worker stepped forward but before the other workers could join the suit — the defendant offered to buy off the single worker while giving nothing to the others. Worse, the corporate defendant claims that, because they offered “complete relief” to the single worker, the law requires the worker to take it even if that will kill the collective action suits benefiting all the other workers.

So, the company in Symczyk wants to be able to pick off plaintiffs one at a time, before a collective action can fully form, and thus strip their employees of their ability to bring a collective action in the first place. If the Supreme Court gives the company this power, it will effectively destroy workers’ ability to join collectively against any company smart enough to pay off as few as one of them.

In light of the conservative justices’ recent decision against class actions, workers have every reason to be pessimistic about this outcome of this case.

NEWS FLASH

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Prevent 129,000 Foreclosures In Second Quarter | Government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped prevent 129,000 foreclosures in the second quarter of 2012, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reports. Fannie and Freddie have now completed more than 275,000 foreclosure prevention efforts this year thanks to the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and other housing programs, HousingWire reported Wednesday. Nearly 30 percent of the actions included some form of principal forgiveness. The two mortgage giants have now completed more than 2.4 million foreclosure prevention efforts since September 2008. But HAMP has still fallen well short of its goals.

Alyssa

‘Homeland’ Creators Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon on Drone Strikes, Iran’s Nuclear Sites, and Carrie Mathison and Nicholas Brody’s Futures

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Sep 28, 2012 at 2:06 pm

Homeland, Showtime’s freshman drama about bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison and Nicholas Brody, the former prisoner of war she suspects of being a terrorist and falls in love with anyway, starts its second season on Sunday at 10 PM. I caught up with the show’s creators, Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, who collected Emmys for best drama writing and for best drama last weekend, at the Television Critics Association press tour in August to talk drone strikes, Carrie as assault survivor, Brody’s political future, and putting Islam on screen. This interview touches on the basic setup of the show’s second season, and has been edited for clarity and length.

I wanted to start out by asking one question that had been percolating in my mind since last season: were we meant to think that Carrie was sexually assaulted after she was pulled out of the prison in the first episode?

Alex: We didn’t explicitly want you to think that, but it was always a subject of our discussions: what exactly happened to her? And the possibility certainly was there. What made you think that?

I thought the transition in the pilot between that and the scene where she’s washing her genitals after that, there’s that sense of carried-over shame that was really interesting.

Alex: We talked about that. At one point we were going to show some of that period where she was being held, and we chose not to. It just felt at some point like it was beside the point at that time.

How much time has passed between the first season and the second.

Alex: Six months. Ish?

That’s a quick turnaround for Brody as a Congressman.

Howard: It’s sort of like, dog ears, six months in TV time. Some stories are better explained. The idea would be that he was appointed to that seat…Which is what happened last year [with former Congressman Anthony Weiner].

I also wanted to ask about the vice presidential storyline, where Brody learns that Walden is considering him for a spot on the ticket, because while it’s nice to have him close to the Vice President, it’s hard for me to believe he would pass even an initial vet.

Alex: Well, I mean, Sarah Palin passed a big vetting process. Look, the guy’s a national figure. He’s generally acknowledged to be a hero. He’ been demonstrated to be incredibly good when he gets up to speak.

Howard: And in the context of what we posit geopolitically, he’s especially valuable to Walden in terms of casting an image of strength and service.  

Alex: But we also want to make it clear that he’s not the only choice out there. There are other, he’s being vetted among a number of vice presidential choices.

Howard: And he’s still a long shot.
Read more

LGBT

Napolitano Promises Written Guidance To Recognize Same-Sex Relationships In Deportation Proceedings

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Sep 28, 2012 at 2:05 pm

Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano on Friday pledged in a letter (PDF) to consider a gay or lesbian person’s relationship status in deportation proceedings, bringing relief to many bi-national gay and lesbian couples whose relationships aren’t recognized because of the Defense of Marriage Act.

While this echoes an earlier commitment from the Department of Homeland Security, it is the first time such guidance will be provided in writing:

In an effort to make clear the definition of the phrase “family relationships,” I have directed ICE to disseminate written guidance to the field that the interpretation of the phrase “family relationships” includes long-term, same-sex partners. As with every other factor identified in Director Morton’s June 11 memorandum, the applicability of the “family relationships” factor is weighed on an individualized basis in the consideration of whether prosecutorial discretion is appropriate in a given case.

Napolitano’s commitment is a response to a request for clarification from members of Congress about the deportation process, which currently does not factor in whether a gay or lesbian non-citizen is in a relationship with a citizen — a right afforded to straight couples.

Climate Progress

How Combined Heat And Power Could Replace Retiring U.S. Coal Plants

By Stephen Lacey on Sep 28, 2012 at 2:00 pm

We’ve got a lot of coal plants set to close in America. Based upon whose estimates you look at, we could see 19 and 35 gigawatts of coal plant closures over the next 5-8 years. That could mean a turnover of around 5 percent of our total electricity generation fleet by 2020.

Before you start blaming the Environmental Protection Agency for its over-regulation, consider this: Analysts say that a large portion of those coal plants would retire without new EPA air pollution rules. That’s because our coal fleet is pretty old — the median age of U.S. facilities is 46 years. At the same time, the cost of coal is increasing while the cost of natural gas remains very low, thus encouraging companies to phase out coal plants in favor of natural gas.

Along with the dubious claims that the shift away from coal is a result of “EPA overreach,” one of the frustrating things about the reaction to U.S. coal plant closures is the lack of imagination about what comes next. Some people assume it’s either/or: either you maintain a fleet of old coal plants or you compromise the integrity of the electric grid. It’s a silly fallacy that completely ignores all the other technologies that could take the place of these coal plants — options like baseload and peaking renewables, efficiency, and better grid management tools.

And it doesn’t have to be anything too fancy. A new report out from The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) shows how simple approaches to energy efficiency can make up for the fleet of coal plants that will soon be taken offline.

According to ACEEEE, combined heat and power — a process that uses excess heat from electricity generation for air-conditioning or water heating, or uses excess heat to generate electricity — could make up for 100 percent of coal plant closures in certain states:

These conversations [around coal plants closures] have largely ignored an alternative that could meet future demand needs, reduce emissions, and save consumers money: energy efficiency. Energy efficiency offers benefits in addition to its low costs, however. It reduces overall emissions; can be deployed quickly compared to other forms of generation; reduces peak demand, minimizing the need for peaking plants; and reduces the general stress on vulnerable parts of the distribution system.

So instead of cause for alarm, these retirements can be looked at as a unique opportunity to replace what were already old, comparatively inefficient, and dirty electricity generation assets with cleaner, more cost-effective resources. Well-considered in energy efficiency resources like CHP can help utilities meet future demand while reducing overall emissions and costs borne by consumers as well as society at large.

A typical new natural gas-powered CHP system can generate electricity at a cost of 6 cents/kWh, while the cost of new natural gas-powered traditional generation or nuclear-powered generation can range from 6.9 to 11.3 cents/kWh. CHP is not only more cost-effective than traditional centralized generation, but it is also cleaner and more efficient, squeezing more useful energy out of every unit of fuel. CHP can generate electricity and thermal energy at efficiencies of up to 85 percent, while the average electric generation efficiency of U.S. power plants is about 33 percent.

The report looked at 12 key states facing a substantial number of coal plant retirements. While CHP can’t fill in the entire gap in every state (the feasible penetration in states ranges from 2 percent to 100 percent), the detailed assessment of potential shows a massive resource sitting in front of us — 56 GW worth.

These CHP plants, which could be integrated into manufacturing facilities, commercial buildings, or existing power plants, already make up nearly 9 percent of America’s electricity portfolio. They can be run on coal, biogas, natural gas, and a variety of other renewable fuels. It’s a cheap resource available today that we already know how to integrate.

There are some substantial barriers, of course. The major problem is that increasing efficiency may mean less revenues for utilities integrating these projects. In order to spur more activity, utilities may need to be compensated for investing in efficiency, rather than compensated for every unit of electricity they sell. Another barrier is the lack of attention paid to CHP in state-level renewable energy and efficiency targets. By establishing firm targets, states can put in place a legal framework for utilities to make these investments.

The Obama Administration clearly understands the important role that CHP can play in the transition of our electric grid. Last month, the White House announced a goal of 40 GW of CHP over the next 10 years — a target that could bring between $40 and $80 billion of investment in the technology. The Executive Order directs federal agencies to integrate promotion policies and to provide technical assistance for utilities and industrial companies looking to develop projects.

Common sense solutions like CHP are a major economic opportunity for America. Instead of complaining and pointing fingers about the closure of old, dirty coal plants, we should be looking forward and thinking creatively about how we make the transition to a cleaner, more efficient electricity system. For a country that takes such pride in innovation, it’s baffling that this doesn’t get more serious discussion in policy circles.

Health

Romney’s Approach To Medicare Reform Will Lead To Higher Costs, Study Finds

By Sy Mukherjee on Sep 28, 2012 at 1:47 pm

A new Urban Institute Health Policy Center study finds that premium support models, such as the proposed Romney/Ryan Medicare plan, are more likely to increase excess costs in the program.

According to the report, turning Medicare into a “premium support” program would encourage private insurers to draw less costly beneficiaries from traditional Medicare, leading to bloated per-beneficiary reimbursements. The study arrives at this conclusion by extrapolating existing trends in Medicare Advantage (MA), which has appreciably higher per-capita costs than traditional Medicare in 75 percent of counties serviced:

The debate around premium support misses the potential within Medicare’s existing structure to harness the market to promote efficiency and to do so on terms that do not put beneficiaries at risk for escalating costs…By design, MA plans have been paid above per capita costs for equivalent beneficiaries in traditional Medicare, and have used these payments to provide extra benefits that have successfully attracted more than a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries into private health plans.

Measures taken by the Affordable Care Act significantly reduce these extra payments. But they do not eliminate the long-standing bias favoring payment policies designed to attract private plans rather than to encourage lower costs. Our analysis of recent MA experience shows that most private plans are more, not less, costly than traditional Medicare. In fact, MA plans with the lowest costs have been found to serve only 10 percent of MA enrollees, despite their attractiveness in the current market, and they do not reflect the typical MA experience. Only in the highest cost areas for traditional Medicare do typical MA plans deliver care at lower costs than the public program. Even this difference is likely exaggerated, given continuing evidence of favorable risk selection (that is, disproportionate enrollment of low cost enrollees) in private plans. In short, overpayment, not lower costs, drives most of MA plans’ success in competing with the public program for enrollees.

The GOP defends premium support models like the Romney/Ryan plan by claiming that they will exert downward pressure on providers and encourage competitive bidding in the insurance industry. The logic is that seniors, whose Medicare subsidies would stagnate relative to the rising cost of health care, will look for the best deals on the market and thus force insurers to compete, lowering overall health care costs.

But as the Urban Institute report demonstrates, private insurance competition is unlikely to yield much in the way of savings since providers would simply adapt their business models to pick up the least costly beneficiaries. Studies have repeatedly shown that this is the exact kind of adverse selection and cost-shifting that occurs in Medicare Advantage plans. Transitioning traditional Medicare away from its current defined-benefit model into a premium support one would exacerbate the problem, leading to increased premiums, more overpayments to private insurers, and even higher costs in the health care industry.

NEWS FLASH

2 Ohio Counties Set Early Voting Hours On Contested Weekend | Ohio boards of election are starting to implement plans for early voting hours after a court order lifted the ban on early voting the last weekend before Election Day. Jefferson County and Wayne County have set their own hours on that last weekend in spite of Secretary of State Jon Husted’s plea that state election boards wait until after his appeal to restrict voting on that weekend. Husted initially refused to comply with the court order and issued a directive prohibiting local boards of election from setting hours that weekend, saying it would “only serve to confuse voters.” Husted later caved after he was ordered to appear before the judge to explain his defiance.

LGBT

Tribal Marriage Equality Inspires New Comprehensive LGBT Toolkit For Tribal Leaders

By Guest Blogger on Sep 28, 2012 at 1:11 pm

Our guest blogger is Erik Stegman, Manager for the Half in Ten campaign at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The award-winning documentary about two-spirit people in Navajo culture.

Inspired by the Coquille and Suquamish Tribes’ recent landmark decisions to recognize same-sex marriage, a cutting-edge legal guide has been developed to help tribal legislators strengthen LGBT equality in their governments and communities.  The guide, “Tribal Equity Toolkit: Tribal Resolutions and Codes to Support Two Spirit and LGBT Justice in Indian Country,” is a first-of-its-kind collection of legal resources that helps tribal government officials identify discrimination in tribal codes and regulations and offers draft language to strengthen and promote LGBT equality.  The toolkit was developed by the Indigenous Ways of Knowing Program at Lewis and Clark College in partnership with the Native American Program of Legal Aid Services of Oregon, Basic Rights Oregon, and the Western States Center.  The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians also offered technical support to the project.

Although the final toolkit won’t be released until November, the project’s authors had a unique opportunity to present a draft to the general assembly of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, which is an association of the leadership 57 Northwest tribal governments.  The toolkit covers a comprehensive range of legal areas where tribal leaders can improve the lives of LGBT tribal members.  The family law section provides guides and sample language for marriage equality, adoption codes, visitation for LGBT parents, and even ways to strengthen the environment for LGBT native youth in the juvenile justice system.  Other sections of the toolkit include employment nondiscrimination approaches, hate crime legislative options, housing nondiscrimination policies, and options to improve education, and health care.

Se-ah-dom Edmo, director of the Indigenous Ways of Knowing Program at Lewis & Clark College, stold the Indian Country Today Media Network that “our hope is to begin to construct a cohesive narrative about Two Spirit & LGBT Natives within our own Tribal communities and for those stories to compel us to take action.”

Basic Rights Oregon also produced a new video called “Our Families: LGBT Two Spirit Stories,” which tells the stories of LGBT tribal members and their families.

The toolkit is especially timely for the Northwest because of Referendum 74, a state ballot initiative in Washington State that would uphold marriage equality.  Washington State has 29 federally recognized tribes, one of which, the Suquamish Tribe, has legalized same-sex marriage.  There are 566 federally recognized tribes in the United States.  As sovereign governments, tribal leaders have wide-ranging opportunities to promote LGBT equality in their agencies, police systems, courts, schools and business relationships.  The final toolkit will be available on November 1.

 

Older

Newer

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up