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Economy

House Republicans Start New Congress By Telling The Same Old Lies About Wall Street Reform

By Pat Garofalo on Jan 24, 2013 at 3:50 pm

The new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), this week released a statement announcing that “the work of our committee and subcommittees has perhaps never been more important to hard-working taxpayers.” However, Hensarling made it clear that he doesn’t have much interest in abandoning the playbook of former Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL), as the statement went on to say “during the past few years, we’ve seen a mind-numbing, innovation-choking, job-killing flood of federal red tape…And we’ve observed how Congress enshrined a ‘too big to fail’ bailout scheme into law.”

But there is no “too big to fail bailout scheme” in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which was signed by President Obama in 2010. The law lays out a clear process, called resolution authority, for unwinding a troubled financial firm without resorting to the sort of bailouts used in 2008. The law, in fact, explicitly bars the use of the process to bail out a firm. Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) — whose name graces the Wall Street reform law — called the process “death panels” for banks.

But House Republicans love to perpetuate the myth that Dodd-Frank enshrines bailouts. In fact, recent House Republican budgets have called for the repeal of resolution authority, even though that would set the country back right where it was in 2008: with little choice but to bail out failing firms or risk a financial calamity. As economist Mark Thoma explained:

The resolution authority in Dodd-Frank is intended to fix this problem [of bailouts] by putting into place a procedure that is similar to what is done with ordinary banks. Resolution authority allows government regulators to take control of the banks, fix the problems, and then return them to the private sector. But, and this is important to recognize, Dodd-Frank also prevents the type of bank bailout that was done during the financial crisis.

Thus, the authority for the type of bailout that we saw during the crisis no longer exists. If if we now remove resolution authority there will be just one choice if a too big to fail firm gets in trouble — let it fail. That, and the cascading shadow bank failures that would follow, would be a disaster.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, responded to Hensarling’s statement by saying, “our colleagues in the majority made a claim which misrepresents the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act…Dodd-Frank specifically ends too-big-to-fail by prohibiting the bailout of a failing financial institution. In fact, it mandates the orderly liquidation of such an institution, in which its executives are dismissed and its shareholders are wiped out.”

Outgoing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in an interview that he believes “efforts to water down the Dodd-Frank financial reform law have largely fallen by the wayside.” But that hasn’t stopped House Republicans from employing the same rhetorical pot shots that they were using even before the law passed.

LGBT

POLL: Growing Plurality Of Minnesotans Support Marriage Equality

By Josh Israel on Jan 24, 2013 at 3:31 pm

Gov. Mark Dayton (D-MN)

Gov. Mark Dayton (D-MN)

A new PPP poll of Minnesotans shows a plurality now supports marriage equality, by a 47 to 45 margin. Fully 75 percent of Minnesotans (including 65 percent of Republicans) back at least allowing civil unions. PPP estimates that given the trend and the age demographics, a majority Minnesotans will likely support marriage equality by the next election.

In November, Minnesotans defeated a marriage inequality constitutional amendment, proposed by the then-Republican majorities in the state’s House and Senate, by a 51-47 margin. At the same time, voters elected new Democratic Farm Labor (Minnesota’s Democratic Party) majorities in both chambers.

Armed with the popular mandate from November’s elections, supporters of marriage equality plan to push a bill to grant same-sex couples the right to marry in Minnesota in the next few months. Gov. Mark Dayton (D) has pledged to sign the bill if it reaches his desk.

Security

Allowing Women On The Front Lines Could Reduce Sexual Assault, Joint Chiefs Chairman Says

By Hayes Brown on Jan 24, 2013 at 3:29 pm

Gen. Martin Dempsey (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty)

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey today expressed his hope that allowing women into combat roles would bring down sexual assault rates in the military.

As of today, the Department of Defense has fully rescinded the 1994 Direct Combat Definition and Assignment Rule that first closed off billets in combat units to women. Speaking at the official announcement of the change, which will open thousands of positions to women for the first time, Dempsey pressed back particularly strongly when challenged on the notion that adding women to these new roles would be a hindrance to the development of the military.

Recalling his days at West Point, Dempsey told reporters that the military academy had become a much higher quality institution after the admission of women. The same transformative property would hopefully be seen in changing the culture of the military regarding sexual assault, according to Dempsey:

DEMPSEY: We’ve had this ongoing issue with sexual harassment, sexual assault. I believe its because we’ve had separate classes of military personnel at some level. Now, its far more complicated than that. But when you have one part of the population that is designated as ‘warriors’ and one part that is designated as something else, that disparity begins to establish a psychology that — in some cases — led to that environment. I have to believe the more we treat people equally, the more likely they are to treat each other equally.

Instead of taking the stance of some commentators that adding women to combat units would diminish their effectiveness or “humiliate” the men serving alongside them, Dempsey rightly focused on the risk of assault that women in the armed services face. Approximately one in three military women have been sexually assaulted, about double the rate of those in civilian life.

In the rest of their conference, Dempsey and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta clarified many of the details of the shift. New positions are not opening immediately for women, as the military departments now have until May 15 to submit plans on how they’ll implement the changes, with the process of integration to be completed by Jan. 1, 2016.

The new policy also doesn’t mark a change in the Selective Service process, where young males must register for the draft upon reaching the age of eighteen, according to Panetta. Regarding infantry and other ground combat positions, Panetta made clear that the onus is now on the service branches to justify to the Pentagon reasons why women should be barred from certain billets. The move to integrate women will also allow women more options in terms of advancing their career, as combat roles offer officers and enlisted soldiers alike greater ease in obtaining promotions.

“If they can do the job, if they can meet the standards, if they can meet the qualifications that are involved here, there is no reason why they shouldn’t have a chance,” Panetta said. “That’s just a fundamental belief of mine and I think it’s a fundamental belief of the American people.”

Climate Progress

China Is Getting Into The Patent Game For Alternative-Energy Cars

By Jeff Spross on Jan 24, 2013 at 3:28 pm

China is trying to get a leg up on the market for clean transportation by bulking up the rate it’s been filing patents. According to a recent report in Europe’s China Daily, China filed over 2,000 patents for alternative-energy cars in 2012, placing it just behind Japan and the United States, and dead even with Germany and South Korea:

With a worldwide push for sustainable, clean transportation, patents are vital to survival in the global new-energy vehicle industry, China Intellectual Property News reported.

China had filed more than 2,000 patent applications – 8 percent of the world total – for new-energy cars by the end of last year to share the third place with Germany and South Korea, according to the statistics from Thomson Reuters.

Japan ranks the first with nearly 9,000 patents, followed by the United States with 4,000, accounting for a respective 60 percent and 22 percent of the world total.

China has actually been in the patent game for sometime. In 2011, the country’s patent office received more applications — for all forms of invention, not just green technology — than any other nation. At the same time, very few Chinese investors seek to patent their ideas abroad — less than 5 percent between 2005 and 2009. As The Economist put it, if an inventor has a genuinely good idea, they’ll seek to patent it as many places as possible. Concentrating merely on China’s office could be an indication that other incentives are driving the patent, such as the chance to snatch up a government subsidy.

The race between various countries to accrue patents in alternative-energy also raises the possibility of “patent wars,” such as those that have riled the world of software. Companies and interests attempt to round up and hoard patents in order to corner sources of revenue. That is, of course, very profitable for them, but it also tends to dampen innovation in the relevant industry. The spread of patents forces companies and inventors to spend ever more time and money making sure every conceptual aspect of the technology they’re working on is in the legal clear, or is properly licensed. That drives up costs for the companies, for consumers, and slows down the creation of new products and technologies that can raise everyone’s well-being — like cars and other forms of transport powered by sustainable energy. It arguably even drives up inequality.

The problem is especially acute in the software world, where it’s especially difficult to organize who has the rights to what into a public and easily-searchable database. But in principle the inefficiencies and transaction costs that come with over-zealous competition for patents can afflict any industry, including green tech and green transportation.

In February of 2011, for example, Butamax Advanced Biofuels, a joint venture between BP and DuPont, sued another advanced biofuels company, Gevo, for infringing their patent on a process to produce microbial-based biofuel.

Health

Medical Experts Warn The Rise Of Resistant Bacteria Will Cause ‘Antibiotic Apocalypse’

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Jan 24, 2013 at 3:15 pm

England’s chief medical officer is warning that the rising numbers of drug-resistant diseases will eventually lead to an “antibiotic apocalypse” — a not-too-distant future when there aren’t any cures for common infections — and more antibiotic research should be a top global health priority.

Professor Dame Sally Davies told members of Parliament on Wednesday that the world must begin addressing antibiotic resistance, since the treatments for common diseases like gonorrhea, E. coli, and penicillin are losing their effectiveness and new drugs aren’t being developed quickly enough to replace them. The emergence of “superbugs” that can’t be cured with modern medicine could soon undermine advances in disease research and treatment. Davies compared the issue of resistant viruses to the gravity of the world’s climate change crisis:

Davies said rapidly evolving resistance to antibiotics among bacteria is one of the greatest threats to modern health. “Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness at a rate that is both alarming and irreversible – similar to global warming,” she said. “Bacteria are adapting and finding ways to survive the effects of antibiotics, ultimately becoming resistant so they no longer work.”

The warning comes six months after a similar call by Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organisation, who said the world faced the “end of modern medicine as we know it” as a result of the “global crisis in antibiotics”.

Davies said that even though she may not live to experience the full effects of global warming, the looming antibiotic crisis may threaten the health care system within the next few decades. “The apocalyptic scenario is that when I need a new hip in 20 years, I’ll die from a routine infection because we’ve run out of antibiotics,” she explained.

Antibiotic development has slowed in recent years, largely because marketing new drugs isn’t as profitable for the pharmaceutical industry. As Davies put it, there’s currently a “broken market model for making new antibiotics” that has led to “an empty pipeline.” The World Health Organization has called for the development of new antibiotic drugs, just four of the world’s 12 largest pharmaceutical companies are investing in researching new antibiotics.

Alyssa

Is ‘The Following’ A Metaphor For The War On Terror?

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jan 24, 2013 at 3:04 pm

I did not particularly like Fox’s The Following, Fox’s new drama, which stars Kevin Bacon as an alcoholic former FBI agent who comes out of retirement to hunt down James Purefoy, the pretentious, Edgar Allen Poe-quoting serial killer, who has escaped from prison and trained a whole bunch of other serial killers to fulfill their own dark fantasies and enhance his own legend. The whole thing struck me as a slick but empty excuse to put extraordinarily grotesque violence on television in an attempt to compete with cable, as if violence itself, rather than the things that lead up to violence, were what make cable dramas sophisticated. Over at Vulture, however, Matt Zoller Seitz has a theory about what the show’s really about:

Once you become attuned to the show’s anti-logic, the mix of gnawing dread and random mayhem might trigger the gloomy adrenaline rush of the 2001–2004 period. Hijackings, collapsing skyscrapers, subway explosions, shoe bombers, anthrax attacks, terror alerts, weapons of mass destruction: The Following evokes an alternate-world version of that horrendous time. Watch the skies. Sleep with the lights on. Trust no one. Those co-workers or next-door neighbors or smiling security guards that you deal with each day could be in cahoots with an ice-veined genius-madman. Portions of the first few episodes reminded me less of The Silence of the Lambs or Se7en than a zombie or body-snatchers picture, one in which every character but the lead could secretly be, or potentially become, a monster. Parts of The Following feel like 24 with serial killers instead of terrorists. It’s an apocalypse story as long-form nightmare. The whole world is losing its mind.

It’s an idea that that actually makes me like The Following even less.
Read more

Justice

Key Democratic Senator Backs Universal Background Checks, And Indicates A Bipartisan Bill Is In The Works

By Adam Peck on Jan 24, 2013 at 3:00 pm

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), once thought to be a possible roadblock to some of President Obama’s proposed gun control measures, told a West Virginia talk show host Thursday morning that he supports legislation requiring a background check for anyone who wants to buy a gun.

Manchin has long been a darling of the National Rifle Association, and has consistently earned A ratings from the organization since he assumed his Senate seat in 2010. In December, days after the mass school shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school, Manchin signaled an openness towards rethinking his past resistance to new gun control regulation, but his comments to radio host Hoppy Kercheval on Thursday suggest that the blue dog Democrat is already working on a bill to introduce universal background checks:

KERCHEVAL : Do you think there should be universal background checks on anybody who wants to buy a gun? Right now it’s done only through federally licensed firearms dealers.

MANCHIN: I’m working on a bill right now with other Senators — Democrats and Republicans — we’re trying to get it, and looking at a background check that basically says that if you’re going to be a gun owner, you should be able to pass a background check, to be able to get that. With exceptions. The exceptions are: Families, immediate family members, some sporting events that you’re going to — that if you’re just going to be using them at the sporting events. So we’re looking and talking to people with expertise. I’m working with the NRA, to be honest with you, and talking to them.

Recent polling has shown that more than nine in ten Americans are in favor of universal background checks, but the NRA has thus far refused to lift its opposition to any substantial new regulations on gun ownership. But Manchin is now the second Democrat to reveal that the NRA has been party to ongoing negotiations over background checks.

Presently, as many as 40 percent of all guns sales are done with no background checks at all.

(HT Greg Sargent)

Economy

Sorry, New Orleans: The Super Bowl Won’t Bring A Major Boost To Your Economy

By Travis Waldron on Jan 24, 2013 at 2:25 pm

New Orleans is gearing up to host Super Bowl XLVII, the National Football League’s annual championship that will pit the Baltimore Ravens against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, February 3. The city and its businesses are predicting an economic boom that will result in the ultimate comeback for a city that was decimated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Officials expect 150,000 people to descend on the city for the Super Bowl, and economic impact studies estimate that the game will bring $434 million to the city’s economy. Hosting three mega sporting events — the 2012 NCAA men’s Final Four and this year’s Super Bowl and women’s Final Four — will boost the city’s economy by more than $1 billion, according to an estimate from the International Business Times. And business leaders and lawmakers think the media exposure involved with hosting the big game will push the boom to immeasurable levels.

Those estimates, though, are likely fool’s gold, according to an assortment of academic research into the actual economic impact of Super Bowls and other major sporting events. When professors Victor Matheson and Robert Baade studied the economic impact of Super Bowls from 1973 to 1997, they found that the games boosted city economies by about $30 million, “roughly one-tenth the figures touted by the NFL” and an even smaller fraction of what New Orleans officials predict. A later Baade and Matheson study found that the economic impact of a Super Bowl is “on average one-quarter or less the magnitude of the most recent NFL estimates.”

Similarly, a 1999 paper from professor Philip Porter found that the Super Bowl had virtually no effect on a city’s economy. Research on other events New Orleans has hosted, including the men’s Final Four, is similar. When Baade and Matheson studied Final Fours, they found that the events tend “not to translate into any measurable benefits to the host cities.”

Read more

Justice

Rubio Places Limits On Immigration Reform When Speaking To Conservatives

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Jan 24, 2013 at 2:20 pm

GOP Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) agrees that Congress needs to pass immigration reform and has given numerous media interviews outlining his proposal to offer legal status to immigrants here illegally. “We just have to get this thing done for once and for all,” Rubio told the New York Times.

The potential 2016 presidential candidate has been meeting with conservative lawmakers to build support for his proposal. But in selling the plan to right-wing voters, Rubio places strict pre-conditions to providing legal status to undocumented immigrants and significantly downplays the component. On Wednesday, for instance, Rubio reiterated to conservative radio host and reform opponent Mark Levin that Congress must adopt stronger immigration enforcement — including border security — before offering work permits to undocumented immigrants:

LEVIN: I want to make it clear. You want operational security of the border, and you want enforcement in the workplace of existing law.

RUBIO: Let me tell you the problem with that. In the past, people say that, but then what happens is they go ahead and do the process of legalization, but they don’t do the security. One of the things is…the security component is a trigger. In essence, none of that other stuff with regard to getting in line and applying, none of that happens until we’ve been able to certify that indeed the workplace security thing is place, the visa tracking is in place, and there’s some level of significant operational control at the border.

While the Obama administration also has offered stronger checks to verify a worker’s citizenship or legal status, Rubio’s suggestion that the border needs to be more secure before immigration reform can be implemented is ridiculous. The U.S. spent $18 billion on immigration enforcement in the 2012 fiscal year, which is more than every other federal law enforcement agency combined, according to a report from the Migration Policy Institute. A record number of people continue to be deported under Obama, and net undocumented migration is at or below zero.

Instead of wanting to focus more money and resources on the border, it is time for Rubio and Congress to consider a permanent fix to the nation’s immigration system, including a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living here.

Climate Progress

Kerry Pledges To Confront Climate Change: ‘I Will Be A Passionate Advocate’ Of Action

By Rebecca Leber on Jan 24, 2013 at 1:57 pm

At his confirmation hearing for Secretary of State, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) took a strong position on the urgent need for climate action.

Kerry’s likely confirmation is good news for confronting climate change. He has a long career as a climate hawk, taking to the Senate floor to call for action on our “biggest long-term threat” to national security. With the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline in the next Secretary of State’s hands, his remarks may mean some hope for the administration’s decision on the tar sands project. He urged senators to consider the cost of climate inaction, saying “I will spend a lot of time trying to persuade you and other colleagues of this.”

Kerry responded forcefully to Sen. John Barrasso’s (R-WY) concerns over environmental protections hampering the economy:

I would respectfully say to you that climate change is not something to be feared in response to — the steps to respond to — it’s to be feared if we don’t. 3,500 communities in our nation last year broke records for heat … and we had a derailment because of it. We had record fires. We had record levels of damage from sandy, $70 billion. If we can’t see the downside of spending that money and risking lives for all the changes that are taking place, to agriculture, to our communities, the ocean and so forth, we are ignoring what science is telling us. I will be a passionate advocate on this not based on ideology but based on facts and science, and I hope to sit with all of you and convince you that this $6 trillion market is worth millions of American jobs and we better go after it.

Watch it:

Kerry also noted the extraordinary success story renewables play in his home state’s economy. “I can tell you, Massachusetts, fastest growing sector of our economy is clean energy and energy efficiency companies. And they’re growing faster than any other sector,” he said.

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