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FLASHBACK: Republicans Opposed Electoral Vote Rigging In 2004, Calling It ‘A Really Stupid Idea’

By Scott Keyes on Jan 25, 2013 at 2:20 pm

Nearly a decade before the GOP responded to President Obama’s re-election by proposing to rig the Electoral College in states like Pennsylvania and Virginia, Republicans vehemently opposed the plan and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting its implementation.

In 2004, when Colorado was still a red state and then-President Bush was locked in a tight race with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the state had a ballot initiative that would have shifted its allocation of electoral votes from winner-take-all to proportional. Under the proposal, for example, even if Bush had won 60 percent of the vote, he still would only get 5 of the state’s 9 electoral votes instead of all 9.

However, the proposed Electoral College rig ended up getting trounced for one reason: Republicans strongly opposed the idea.

The push against Amendment 36, which failed by a 2-to-1 margin, was led by Republican Gov. Bill Owens, who lambasted the idea as a “transparently partisan movement”. Owens detailed his opposition in a USA Today op-ed:

There’s a transparently partisan movement afoot in Colorado to distribute our Electoral College votes proportionately. The goal? To give John Kerry a four-vote Electoral College boost, putting him ahead of President Bush in a close election.

But that in and of itself is not the reason proposed Amendment 36 on the Nov. 2 ballot is bad for Colorado. The fact is that if Amendment 36 passed, it would forever make it easy for presidential candidates to ignore Colorado, since our state would be an Electoral College “lone ranger” among states.[...]

Here’s why: Colorado is a state with a slight Republican majority, but which, nevertheless, has a longstanding tradition of electing Democrats to statewide and national office. If Colorado split its electoral votes, leaving just one or two electoral votes in play, future presidential candidates — and presidents — would ignore Colorado and its interests in favor of states with more electoral clout. They would skip over us and move on to more fertile ground.

If that sounds like the same argument Democrats and anyone opposed to GOP’s electoral rigging efforts are currently making, that’s because it is.

Owens was joined by all his fellow state GOP officials in opposing the plan. Republican consultant Katy Atkinson, who organized the anti-36 effort under the umbrella group “Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea”, noted that it would undermine the state’s clout. “[If Amendment 36 passes], Colorado will effectively have 1/3 of the power of Alaska, Delaware or Wyoming,” Atkinson wrote. State newspapers roundly criticized the initiative; the Pueblo Chieftain even called the proposed electoral rig a “quest for pure, raw political power by the left.”

National conservatives also criticized the idea. George Will wrote a scathing article in Newsweek, calling it a “pernicious proposal”. Major GOP funders also rallied against the referendum; Sheldon Adelson alone contributed $100,000 against Amendment 36.

In 2004, Republicans fervently opposed manipulating the Electoral College when the Democratic candidate stood to benefit. A decade later, after Obama won his second term and pundits discuss a long-term electoral realignment, Republicans are abandoning that principled stand in an attempt to rig future presidential elections.

Climate Progress

New ‘Rock Candy’ Process To Manufacture Silicon Could Make Solar Power Even Cheaper

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jan 25, 2013 at 2:18 pm

By Tina Casey Via Clean Technica

Researchers at the University of Michigan have come up with a low-cost way to manufacture high-grade silicon, based on a concept familiar to anyone who has tried to make rock candy at home. If the breakthrough can be translated into a commercially viable process, it would make ultra-cheap solar tech like V3Solar’s Spin Cell (which we were just raving about the other day) even cheaper.

Ironically, funding for the research project came from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund, but maybe they know something we don’t.

Cooking Up a Batch of Low-Cost Silicon

Silicon is the key component of conventional solar cells. It comes from silicon dioxide, aka sand, which is one of the cheapest and most abundant materials on Earth, but converting sand into high grade silicon is a high cost, energy intensive process with a pretty significant carbon footprint.

As described by U of Mich writer Kate McAlpine, the new process works at just 180 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a far cry from the 2,000 degrees needed for conventional silicon manufacturing.

The method basically consists of covering a liquid gallium electrode (gallium is a soft whitish metal that has a melting point around room temperature) with a layer of a solution based on silicon tetrachloride (a colorless, flammable liquid).

As in conventional silicon processing, electrons from the metal convert the silicon tetrachloride into raw silicon. The new twist is that by using soft metal with a low melting point, the research team was able to get the raw silicon to form crystals without exposing the solution to additional heat.

A Ways to Go for Low Cost Silicon

The team has observed films of silicon crystals forming on the liquid gallium electrodes, but so far the individual crystals are only about 1/2000th (yes that’s 1/2000th) of a millimeter in diameter.

There is still a long way to go before the process jumps from the lab into commercial viability, and the next steps include experimenting with other metal alloys that have low melting points.

Meanwhile, other routes to low-cost silicon based solar power are at or near commercial development, and they could go even lower if the U Mich research pans out.

One approach, illustrated by the aforementioned V3Solar Spin Cell (which by the way began life as Solarphasec), is to squeeze more power out of conventional solar cells by reconfiguring the solar module.

The Spin Cell reboots the typical flat solar panel into a 3-D cone. Along similar lines, MIT researchers have come up with a solar “tower of power” that takes advantage of 3-D angles.

The 3-D concept can also be internalized, as demonstrated by a company called (what else) Solar3D.

On a completely different note, the Obama Administration is also focusing on lowering the “soft costs” of solar power, which typically account for half the cost of a completed solar installation.

The Petroleum Research Fund

Well, here’s hoping. In any case, the really interesting part of the story is the involvement of the Petroleum Research Fund, which states at the top of its home page that its mission is to support “fundamental research directly related to petroleum or fossil fuels.”

In its vision statement following that declaration, the Fund waxes a little more expansive, describing itself as dedicated to “significantly increasing the world’s energy options,” though directly after the following note appears: “Proposals will no longer be considered in solar power, which includes photovoltaics and solar cells.”

Apparently the U Mich project got in under the wire, but it shouldn’t be surprising that a grant-making organization with roots in the petroleum industry was at least once open to solar power research.

Solar power has long been used as an economical way to provide energy to remote oil fields, where grid connections would be difficult if not impossible.

Given the energy intensity of harvesting unconventional oil, most notably from Canada’s tar sands, low-cost power in any form would be a welcome development for the petroleum industry.

– Tina Casey, reprinted from Clean Technica with permission

Alyssa

Why Overestimating The Economic Impact Of The Super Bowl Hurts Taxpayers

By Travis Waldron on Jan 25, 2013 at 2:08 pm

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about how organizers in New Orleans were likely overstating the potential economic impact of the Super Bowl, which the city will host on Sunday, February 3. It’s easy to think that such an overstatement is no big problem — if cities get a boost from such events, what’s it matter if it is $40 million or $400 million? But it is a problem, because the studies into the benefits of hosting a major sporting event attracting a professional sports franchise are almost always used to justify substantial public investment into the construction or renovation of stadiums and arenas. And, as we’ve repeatedly examined here, those deals almost always turn out badly for the taxpayers who finance them.

Take New Orleans, a city whose taxpayers dumped $121 million into the renovations of the Superdome to keep the Saints in town after Hurricane Katrina. To be sure, the Superdome needed renovations after the storm just to be safely used. But less than a decade later, the financing scheme that was used to pour public money into the project is going wrong. Very wrong.

And it isn’t alone. Miami is selling taxpayers on stadium renovations by saying they are vital for future Super Bowls. Dallas already made such a sale. In cities across the country, new facilities are the impetus for getting big events, keeping professional teams, or attracting new teams. In almost every case, proponents wield an economic impact study to tout the benefits brought by a new facility and the professional sports franchise and mega-events it would attract or keep happy. In each of those cases, the estimate was almost surely overstated, especially when research shows that new arenas don’t boost overall growth of metropolitan areas, and that the presence of a sports franchise probably doesn’t either.

For any city with a stadium or arena, turning down an event like the Super Bowl would be absurd, if only because there is an impact on the surrounding economy, however large or small it is. The problem arises, though, when these studies are used to persuade the public into financing expensive stadiums and arenas that are not good investments and never will be.

Sports leagues and proponents of new stadiums use “these promises of riches to convince cities that the construction of a new…stadium at significant public expense is a profitable investment, especially if it includes the promise of a future” event like the Super Bowl, sports economist Victor Matheson wrote in one study of the problems with economic impact estimates. “[T]his creates ample reason to be skeptical of any claims made about the reported economic impact since the sponsors of the impact studies have a financial interest in results that show large economic benefits from the game.”

When those deals occur, they almost always go bad, as they have in Glendale, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and virtually everywhere else. And every time, cities that sell the myth of economic vitality are left with burgeoning debt, and the taxpayers who financed the projects end up facing higher taxes or cuts to programs on which they rely to service that debt.

The problem isn’t that impact estimates are overstated. It’s that they are often overstated for the explicit purpose of selling a bad product.

Politics

Virginia Advances ‘Gangbanger Bill of Rights’ To Withhold Gun Crime Evidence From Federal Government

By Josh Israel on Jan 25, 2013 at 2:06 pm

Virginia Del. Bob Marshall (R)

A Virginia House of Delegates committee endorsed a controversial bill Friday that would prevent any state or local government entity from providing information about gun crimes based on any federal law enacted after 2012. If enacted, the bill could prevent local police from sharing records with the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

The bill, authored by arch-conservative Delegate Bob Marshall (R-VA), aims to:

Prevent any agency, political subdivision, or employee of Virginia from assisting the Federal government of the United States in any investigation, prosecution, detention, arrest, search, or seizure, under the authority of any federal statute enacted, or Executive Order or regulation issued, after December 31, 2012, infringing the individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms by imposing new restrictions on private ownership or private transfer of firearms, firearm magazines, ammunition, or components thereof.

On a party-lines 15-7 vote Friday, the Republican majority on the Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety sent the bill to the full House.

Virginia blogger Ben Tribbett called the bill a “Gangbanger Bill of Rights,” noting that it could impede an FBI investigation of evidence found at a crime scene that involved a gun clip or assault weapon banned in future legislation and could prevent Virginia police from testifying in federal court cases.

The bill has the strong support of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, which notes that the bill “bill prohibits state agencies, local governments, or employees thereof from assisting the federal government in any searches, seizsures [sic] related to firearms, ammunition, or magazines. Also any federal attempt to create a private sale background check requirement will be treated likewise.” The group proudly displays on its website a quote calling it “a gun-rights organization that makes the NRA look moderate.”

Update

Delegate Alfonso Lopez (D), who voted against the bill in committee, told ThinkProgress, he believes the bill is unconstitutional. “Say the federal government was investigating a gun-runner in Virginia,” he observed, “local police would not be allowed to assist the FBI or the ATF with providing addresses, contact information, or phone numbers. It has unintended consequences, is overly broad, and is the wrong direction for Virginia to be going.”


Update

Delegate Patrick Hope (D), who also opposed the bill in committee, told ThinkProgress that if passed, “This bill will turn Virginia into a haven for fugitives of the federal government. If you’re a criminal, you should come to Virginia, because under this law we would ignore any commonsense legislation that comes out of Washington. It will be a danger to public safety. This is not a joke — but it’s something you’d think you’d see in The Onion.


Update

The House of Delegates re-referred the bill to the Appropriations Committee for a fiscal study. The appropriations left it dead for the year.

Health

How A Pharma Giant Used The ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Deal To Profit At The Expense Of Elderly Americans

By Sy Mukherjee on Jan 25, 2013 at 2:05 pm

Amgen Inc. — one of America’s largest biotech and pharmaceutical companies — has had a rough couple of months. In December, the firm was fined $762 million for illegally promoting drugs and defrauding Medicare. And now lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are looking to undo a little-noticed provision that Amgen successfully lobbied for inclusion in the recent “fiscal cliff” deal, a measure that gives special regulatory treatment to one of the company’s most profitable drugs.

The “fiscal cliff” deal included a provision exempting the oral drugs for kidney dialysis patients from being subject to Medicare price controls for two years. That means that drugs in that class, including Amgen’s hugely profitable Sensipar, can be sold to Medicare at higher prices than other dialysis drugs with little oversight — which ends up raising the drug’s cost for the seniors in the program. While the exemption is broad enough to affect drug companies other than Amgen, the New York Times reported this week that Amgen lobbied intensely for the provision, and that supporters like Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have received substantial political donations from Amgen’s employees and lobbying outfits.

As Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT), who introduced the measure to repeal Amgen’s exemption this week, told the LA Times, “Amgen managed to get a $500-million paragraph in the fiscal-cliff bill and virtually no one in Congress was aware of it. It’s a taxpayer ripoff and comes at a really bad time when we’re trying to control healthcare costs. Amgen should not be allowed to turn Medicare into a profit center.”

It’s no mystery why Amgen wanted the exemption so badly — just last year, sales of Sensipar ballooned by 18 percent to $950 million. But the fact that they successfully wedged it into the fiscal cliff compromise is a testament to the firm’s lobbying prowess and the outsized influence of the entire pharmaceutical industry.

LGBT

INFOGRAPHIC: What Republicans Could Do With $3 Million Other Than Defend Discrimination

By Guest Blogger on Jan 25, 2013 at 2:05 pm

Our guest blogger is Crosby Burns, Research Associate with the Center for American Progress.

This spring the Supreme Court will issue a final ruling on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. This odious law treats families headed by legally-married same-sex couples as second class citizens, depriving those families the same economic protections, access to safety net programs, and tax breaks afforded to other families. Largely because of this law—and contrary to commonly held stereotypes—families headed by same-sex couples are more likely to experience poverty, report lower incomes, and often face a higher tax burden compared to families headed by different sex couples.

Last year, the Obama Administration rightly determined that DOMA unfairly discriminates against Americans by arbitrarily denying one group of citizens (gay people) access to government programs and tax benefits. Consequently, the Department of Justice rightly refused to defend the law and promote discrimination against same-sex couples in federal court.

House Republicans, on the other hand, decided to take up the mantle of defending discrimination. To do so, these so-called “fiscal conservatives” have decided to foot taxpayers with $3 million in legal fees to ensure DOMA has its day in court.

As shown in an infographic released today by the Center for American Progress, here are nine alternative ways that House Republicans could use $3 million other than defending discrimination before our nation’s High Court:

  • Provide health care coverage to 1,497 children through state Medicaid programs.
  • Help 37,443 victims of domestic violence access emergency shelters and related services.
  • Provide nutrition assistance to 1,873 people through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP).
  • Give 203 homeless youth access to transitional living programs.
  • Increase employment opportunities through job training for 17,422 workers.
  • Offer job training to 12,167 veterans, many who were forced out of the military due to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
  • Ensure that an additional 75,000 people are tested this year for HIV.
  • Pay back 500 same-sex couples for the $6,000 in additional taxes they pay because of the discriminatory effects of DOMA.
  • Rent a billboard in the center of Times Square promoting anti-bullying initiatives for gay and transgender youth.


Security

The First Prison Sentence Related To Gitmo Torture Goes To Someone Who Spoke Out Against It

By Andrea Peterson on Jan 25, 2013 at 1:56 pm

Former CIA agent John C. Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison

Ex-CIA officer John C. Kiriakou became the first person to be sentenced to prison for issues related to torture at Guantanamo Bay on Friday– because he talked about, but did not participate in, “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Kiriakou pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in October for revealing the name of a former operative involved the Bush era’s brutal interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo to a reporter.

Kiriakou worked as a CIA operative for more than two decades and led a March 2002 raid that captured high-ranking Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah. He was also a vocal torture opponent who revealed his knowledge of U.S. enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, in an ABC interview in 2007. A confidential 2004 International Committee of the Red Cross report stated that the intentional physical and psychological harm done to detainees at Guantanamo was “tantamount to torture.” While several soldiers involved in the Abu Graib prison scandal were prosecuted and sentenced, the conviction of the only officer court-martialed was thrown out in 2008, and no one has ever been prosecuted for abuse at Guantanamo Bay. Leonie M. Brinkema, the judge who sentenced Kiriakou called his punishment “way too light.”

Kiriakou is the first ever CIA agent to be prosecuted under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and the first successful conviction under the statute in 27 years. His case continues a trend of harsh, but selective, crackdowns on whistle-blowers and intelligence leaks by the Obama administration; The Justice Department has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act under Attorney General Eric Holder than under all his predecessors combined.

Economy

The Rich Are Enjoying The Recovery While Wages Fall For Everyone Else

By Aviva Shen on Jan 25, 2013 at 1:13 pm

As income inequality skyrockets, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute finds that the economic downturn and gradual recovery has exacerbated the trend. The wages of the richest Americans are making a dramatic comeback, while the rest of the country has seen its income drop by 1.2 percent since 2007.

The wealthiest earners took a hit in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, with wages declining 15.6 percent from 2007 to 2009. But these individuals will quickly recover all their losses, while the bottom 90 percent of Americans continue to see their wages shrink:

As the stock market regained its value in the recovery, one would expect the top 1.0 percent to fare better than other workers—and they have, with annual wages growing 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011 (the S&P grew 37.4 percent over this period). As the recovery continues and the stock market sustains its growth, the top 1.0 percent of wage earners are likely to quickly recoup all of the ground lost in the downturn.

In contrast, annual wages of the bottom 90 percent of earners eroded by 0.6 percent in the downturn—and by a further 1.2 percent in the 2009–2011 recovery. This is not surprising given the persistently high unemployment over this period. Meanwhile, high-wage earners from the 90th to the 99th percentile enjoyed wage growth in the recovery—and are the only wage earners to have higher wages in 2011 than in 2007.

Entrenched wealth-friendly policies have helped smooth the recovery even more for the super-rich. Even under President Obama, maligned by conservatives as “anti-business,” chief executives have seen their paychecks grow steadily. And as top earners’ total incomes — including wages, capital gains, and other assets — recovered, they also benefited from lower tax rates (only some of which was addressed by the recent deal to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff”).

As the EPI report notes, income inequality shot up in recent decades, paused during the economic downturn, and then began growing again in the recovery. The richest 20 percent currently make eight times more than the bottom 20 percent in nearly every state.

LGBT

Conservatives Use Inauguration To Double Down On Anti-Gay Race-Wedging

By Zack Ford on Jan 25, 2013 at 1:10 pm

Last year, the release of a confidential memo revealed the National Organization for Marriage’s intent to “drive a wedge” between gays and blacks by trying to co-opt the language of “civil rights.” In the wake of President Obama’s second inaugural address comparing Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall, NOM and other anti-equality conservatives are reinvesting in this failed strategy to try to create more racial divides.

NOM’s weekly review this week is dedicated to dog-whistle messages trying to rally African Americans against LGBT equality. The group’s president, Brian Brown, eagerly offered his explanation of civil rights and co-opted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to put icing on the racist cake:

In an interview I gave to NBC News recently, I told them point blank: “Same-sex marriage is not a civil right. To try and compare in any way the attempt to redefine marriage with the Civil Rights movement is simply false. I think that the president’s forgetting about the most important group affected by this and their civil rights, and that’s children having the civil right to have both a mom and a dad.”

The fight continues. Let us continue to stand together in defense of timeless truths, truths we know from both Nature and Nature’s God. Justice for children is the great cause for which we strive.

As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate said, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

Alveda King, Dr. King’s niece, who is often a surrogate for NOM but who mostly focuses on opposing a woman’s right to choose, added to the wedge tactics:

KING: Now in the 21st century, to see the NAACP advancing abortion [and] homosexual ‘marriage,’ what they’re doing is they’re promoting reproductive genocide… African-Americans are coming out and burning membership cards to the NAACP. Thousands of African-Americans across this land have spoken out against the president’s agenda, which includes homosexual marriage, abortion, contraceptives.

These attempts to speak on behalf of the entire black community are unfair and unfounded, particularly because they completely erase the existence of LGBT people of color. NOM’s race-wedging strategies did not succeed in the Maryland marriage fight last year, and they will continue to fall on deaf ears.

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