The WonkLine: May 4, 2009

CNN reports that newly displaced residents in northwestern Pakistan, fleeing the fighting between government troops and Taliban militants, “are putting a crush on U.N. resources already stretched thin.”

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said today that Iran will not suspend its disputed nuclear program even if the United States imposes sanctions targeting companies that ship fuel to the Islamic Republic.

McClatchy reports that some South Carolina residents are nervous about the possibility of terror detainees being housed in their state. “I’d like to see them out in the middle of the desert somewhere,” says Mayor Michael Heitzler of Goose Creek.

After attacking green jobs as “wildly unrealistic” last week, the Washington Post’s Robert J. Samuelson argues that “promoting domestic drilling is simply common sense.”

A new study in Nature finds that the “world can burn only a quarter of proven reserves of oil, gas and coal to be confident of staying within safer climate limits” – in other words, people “could burn no more oil, gas and coal in their homes, cars and factories after 2024, at current rates, to limit to one in five the chance of exceeding 2 degrees Celsius warming worldwide.”

“President Obama will meet tomorrow at the White House with House Democrats who are struggling to reach consensus on a major energy and global warming bill.”

A new analysis from the Center for American Progress estimates that “2.4 million workers have lost the health coverage their jobs provided since the start of the recession.”

According to a poll conducted by the Des Moines Register, “more than half of Iowans support a public health insurance plan, and almost half of the state’s residents who aren’t already insured say they would consider enrolling.”

Employers aren’t “waiting to see whether the recession eases before year’s end. In a new survey conducted by Mercer, the employee benefits consulting shop, nearly half of the 428 employers polled said they plan to shift more health costs to employees in 2010.”

According to Bloomberg, General Motors “may be more likely to end up in bankruptcy based on the Obama administration’s willingness to place Chrysler LLC into court protection to safeguard union health-care benefits.”

Reps. Tom Petri (R-WI) and Patrick Murphy (D-PA) “are targeting colleges in an effort to stop predatory practices by credit card companies that help to drive students into debt.”

Mark Thoma at Economist’s View: “The fact that Citibank can negotiate the outcome of the stress tests is, I think, pretty good evidence that banks have become too big and too politically powerful for our collective good.”

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