Bush Hiding Truth: Global Warming Regulations Worth $2 Trillion Benefit
Bush Hiding Truth: Global Warming Regulations Worth $2 Trillion Benefit
Excerpt of the draft EPA rulemaking, discussing the threat global warming poses to public health. Download the first 150 pages of the document (Part I and Part II).
Reporters for Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal write that an “intense private battle” has broken out between officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Environmental Protection Agency over “the publication of a document that could become the legal roadmap for regulation of greenhouse gas emissions across the U.S. economy.” The portions of the document obtained by the Wonk Room reveal why the White House has been suppressing it since December of last year.
Even after major cuts from the December version, this document makes a mockery of President Bush’s claim in April that applying the Clean Air Act to global warming pollution “would have crippling effects on our entire economy.” In fact, after spending all of 2007 working with the Departments of Transportation and Energy to model the effects of motor vehicle greenhouse gas regulations, the EPA found the exact opposite:
Assuming gas prices in the range of $3.50 per gallon, “the net benefit to society could be in excess of $2 trillion” through 2040:
With higher gasoline prices, the benefits of high carbon-dioxide standards would be even greater. The EPA’s findings, completed last year, raise serious questions about whether Bush’s statements to the American public were made in good faith, and why he is now asserting executive privilege to block the Congressional investigation.
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NYT: Iraq War Allowed Al Qaeda To Regroup In Pakistan
NYT: Iraq War Allowed Al Qaeda To Regroup In Pakistan
This New York Times article’s description of the Bush administration’s confused attempts to deal with the Al Qaeda threat emanating from Pakistan’s tribal areas is yet more evidence against conservatives’ claims that they can more effectively manage anti-terrorism:
After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a “war on terrorism” and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden’s network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.[…]
The White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.[…]
Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.
The Center for America Progress’s Brian Katulis wrote last week that “Pakistan is most likely to create the biggest headache for the next U.S. president.”
[Pakistan] is the country that U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly cited as the most important haven and training ground for global terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. It is also the place that is the best guess among intelligence agencies for where top Al Qaeda leaders like Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri currently reside. Military and intelligence officials have warned that the next terrorist attack will most likely come from Pakistan.
In order to invade and occupy country where Al Qaeda wasn’t, President Bush diverted resources away from where Al Qaeda was, allowing Al Qaeda to regroup and reorganize and continue to plot against America. Many of the most prominent people responsible for this brilliant plan are now advising John McCain. Read the rest of this entry »
BREAKING: Citing Threat Of Global Warming, Georgia Judge Blocks Coal Plant
BREAKING: Citing Threat Of Global Warming, Georgia Judge Blocks Coal Plant
In a landmark victory in the battle to regulate global warming pollution, a Georgia judge ruled that a proposed coal-fired plant could not be built unless its carbon dioxide emissions are limited, effectively killing the project. The ruling is the first to apply the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts vs. EPA decision to the question of greenhouse gas pollution from power plants. According to GreenLaw, the Georgia environmental organization who filed suit with the Friends of the Chattahoochee and the Sierra Club in June 2007, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Moore’s decision “goes a long way toward protecting the right of Georgians to breathe clean air“:
The decision overturns an administrative court’s ruling that affirmed the state Environmental Protection Division’s (EPD) decision to issue an air pollution permit for Dynegy’s Longleaf plant. In practical terms, Dynegy cannot begin construction of the plant unless it can obtain a valid permit from EPD that complies with the Court’s ruling. The Judge held that EPD must limit the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the plant, a decision that will have far-reaching implications nationwide; this is the first time since the April 2, 2007, Supreme Court decision requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate CO2 that a court has applied that standard to CO2 from an industrial source rather than from motor vehicles.
The $2 billion, 1200 megawatt plant — the first proposed in Georgia in over 20 years — was to be built by Dynegy Inc., the Houston-based energy company with several other proposed coal-fired power plants across the country. Dynegy and other fossil fuel polluters have been scrambling to get new plants started in anticipation of future limits on greenhouse gases, before investors and ratepayers recognize the risk.
Last October, the Kansas Department of Health denied air quality permits to a proposed coal plant expansion because of the danger greenhouse gas emissions pose to the climate. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) vetoed repeated attempts by the legislature to override the decision.
In contrast, officials recently appointed by Gov. Timothy Kaine (D-VA) to the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board unanimously granted air quality permits to Dominion Resources for a $1.8 billion coal-fired plant last week.
UPDATE: Clean Air Watch’s Frank O’Donnell (also a Wonk Room guest blogger) has forwarded the court decision, which unequivocally rules that carbon dioxide must be regulated:
Faced with the ruling in Massachusetts that CO2 is an “air pollutant” under the Act, Respondents are forced to argue that CO2 is still not a “pollutant subject to regulation under the Act.” Respondents’ position is untenable. Putting aside the argument that any substance that falls within the statutory definition of “air pollutant” may be “subject to” regulation under the Act, there is no question that CO2 is “subject to regulation under the Act.”
Frank writes, “Those proposing coal plants elsewhere are going to be running for the Excedrin.”
UPDATE II: At Raising Kaine, TheGreenMiles, who earlier revealed the “menacing letter” Kaine sent to the Virginia board to push them to approve the Dominion plant, writes:
As for Gov. Kaine … you’ve spent the last year championing this coal plant as a cure-all for southwest Virginia’s economic woes, global warming and green jobs be damned. Now a judge is very likely to rule that your efforts have been in violation of the Clean Air Act, leaving southwest Virginia without the jobs, Virginia behind the curve on a clean energy future and you with a deeply scarred legacy. There are no winners here.
On Taxes, McCain Was A Solid Conservative First
Our guest bloggers are James Kvaal and Robert Gordon, senior fellows at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
John McCain is campaigning for president on a platform of budget-busting tax cuts for the rich. In fact, he would cut taxes for the top 1 percent of taxpayers by nearly $150 billion a year.
But McCain opposed Bush’s tax policies before he supported them. So would he govern as the moderate on taxes he was in 2001 or the enthusiastic tax-cutter he is today? McCain’s true intentions were one issue discussed by Gene Sperling and Jared Bernstein at McCain U earlier today.
The easiest way to know what McCain would do as president is to ask him – and he says he wants deep, regressive tax cuts.
But his voting record also matters. And it’s true that, on taxes, McCain was a moderate before he was a conservative. But he was also a conservative before he was a moderate. According to Grover Norquist’s right-wing tax group, Americans for Tax Reform, McCain’s record has three stages:
– Between 1994 and 1997, McCain voted with ATR 100 percent of the time, demonstrating a “Reagan-like” record on taxes.
– Between 1998 and 2003, McCain’s ratings were lower, reaching a low of 55 percent in 2001.
– Since 2004, ATR writes, “McCain has slowly tried to reinvent himself as a taxpayer friendly senator.”
It’s not McCain’s current right-wing tax agenda that is the exception to his career-long record. Instead, it’s his opposition to the Bush tax cuts that was the break from his past.
McCain’s Health Care Plan Would ‘Undermine Preventive Services’
Today, the Center for American Progress Action Fund hosted ‘McCain University,’ an all-day symposium on Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) policy proposals. At a panel discussion about McCain’s health care reform, Karen Davenport, Director of Health Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, underlined an important inconsistency within the senator’s plan:
On the surface, McCain shares a lot of ideas with progressives on how can we change health care costs. He gives lip service to improving chronic disease management…and he talks about improving the use of preventive services…but his plan, with its reliance on the individual market and the high deductible policies that proliferate in this market would actually undermine preventative services and good chronic care management. [It] discourages the kind of smart consumers of health care who seek preventive care…and discouraging that kind of good consumerism may actually increase health care spending.
Indeed, on his campaign website, McCain expresses concern for the high costs of chronic care and suggests that his reform would emphasize “prevention”:
Chronic conditions account for three-quarters of the nation’s annual health care bill. By emphasizing prevention, early intervention, healthy habits, new treatment models, new public health infrastructure and the use of information technology, we can reduce health care costs. We should dedicate more federal research to caring and curing chronic disease.
But as Davenport points out, McCain’s overall health reform philosophy encourages Americans to use less care to bring down health care costs. On June 23, 2008, during a town hall meeting, McCain suggested, “if that money [for health care] is coming out of your pocket, you would be more careful about it.”
Thus McCain wants it both ways: he discourages Americans from investing in preventive care, while simultaneously suggesting that “we have a personal responsibility to take better care of ourselves and our children” since “that is the only way to prevent many chronic diseases.”
The Iran ‘Appeaser’ On McCain’s National Security Team
The Iran ‘Appeaser’ On McCain’s National Security Team
Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Just a few weeks ago, Senator John McCain endorsed President George W. Bush’s criticism that diplomatic engagement with Iran would be appeasement.
Now it seems McCain has open the door to his war cabinet to someone who has called for U.S. negotiations “without preconditions” with Iran.
Kori Schake, a research fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, former National Security Council and State Department official in the Bush administration, and former advisor to Rudy Giuliani, wrote an article last spring in the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review, that in the case of Iran and its nuclear program, “We could assist our own case significantly by agreeing to negotiations without preconditions.”
Her article outlines a persuasive case against John McCain’s stated Iran position:
Opponents of negotiations argue that opening them would give away valuable leverage, reward Iranian misbehavior, and send a signal of weakness. They are mistaken on at least two of those points. If negotiations with the U.S. were such valuable leverage, the Iranians would likely have taken last summer’s deal. Moreover, the leverage argument assumes that negotiating with the Iranians is of more value to them than to us, which is at least questionable. If the Iranians are bent on nuclear weapons development, they will be unaffected by negotiations, whereas we will solidify domestic and international backing and have a direct channel of communication that could reduce miscalculation and expand our opportunities to separate the Iranian government from its people. Even if negotiations do not constrain the Iranian nuclear program, they will strengthen our standing and could help open up Iranian society.
Engaging with the Iranian government is an idea more anathema to American policymakers than it is to Iranian dissidents; they have confidence we can conduct diplomacy, as we did with the Soviet Union, without legitimizing the regime. In refusing to negotiate we help a dictatorial government control information; through negotiations, we further our aims and reduce their ability to mischaracterize our actions. If the Iranians are not bent on nuclear-weapons development, negotiations will give us a better understanding of tradeoffs that would constrain them.
In the same piece, Schake also argued that the United States should increase its threshold for military action against Iran to the actual testing of a nuclear weapon rather than uranium enrichment.
Schake joined the McCain team sometime this year and took part in this national security conference call with reporters earlier this month. Schake was even sent out to defend McCain’s position on Iran from Congressional critics of McCain’s 2005 vote against sanctions on Iran.
FLASHBACK: McCain In 1999 — ‘I Would Not Support Repeal Of Roe V. Wade’»
FLASHBACK: McCain In 1999 — ‘I Would Not Support Repeal Of Roe V. Wade’»
Today, CNN’s Late Edition re-broadcasted an August 22, 1999 interview with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), in which McCain expressed support for overturning Roe v. Wade, while also noting that the action “would condemn young women to dangerous and illegal operations”:
Ultimately, I would like to see the repeal of Roe v. Wade, but to do it immediately, I think, would condemn young women to dangerous and illegal operations.
Watch It:
I’d love to see a point where [Roe v. Wade] is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even in the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe vs. Wade.
Unfortunately, now that he is the presumptive nominee of the Republican party, McCain is no longer concerned for the “young women” who will undergo “dangerous and illegal operations” if Roe v. Wade is repealed. In fact, on his campaign website McCain argues that the decision “must be overturned” to restore “constitutional balance”:
John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench. Constitutional balance would be restored by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion question to the individual states. The difficult issue of abortion should not be decided by judicial fiat.
While his rhetoric has waffled back and forth, McCain’s voting record throughout his entire public career has been consistently anti-choice. That’s why McCain gets a zero from women.
Cross-posted at ThinkProgress
UPDATE: On January 26, 2000, a reporter asked McCain, “If his 15-year-old daughter became pregnant and believed that she wasn’t ready to bear a child, would McCain block her from getting an abortion?” McCain answered “No,” he would not:
McCain first said that the ”final decision” on ending a pregnancy would be made by his daughter, 15. An hour later, he contacted reporters with a clarification: ”I misspoke,” he said. ”The family decision will be made by the family, not by” his daughter alone, he added. [AP, 1/26/2000]
Nancy Pfotenhauer, McCain’s Dirty Energy Spokeswoman
Nancy Pfotenhauer, McCain’s Dirty Energy Spokeswoman
On “Fox and Friends” yesterday, Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer — a top policy adviser for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — derided those who say that lifting the offshore drilling moratorium won’t affect gas prices, saying it “reveals ignorance on the futures markets.”
That position puts her at odds with the federal Energy Information Administration, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and even McCain himself. Why would Pfotenhauer go so far off message?
Perhaps it’s because the only ones who would benefit from lifting the moratorium are energy companies like Koch Industries (pronounced “coke”), the largest private company in the United States, the secretive backer of the right-wing message machine, and Pfotenhauer’s longtime boss.
Koch Industries Is The Secret Dirty Energy King. With $90 billion in annual sales, Koch Industries is the largest privately owned company in the United States. Begun in 1940 as an oil refining business by Fred Koch, his company — now controlled by sons David and Charles Koch — has diversified into “refining and chemicals; process and pollution control equipment and technologies; minerals and fertilizer; fibers and polymers; commodity and financial trading and services; and forest and consumer products” — a global warming pollution factory. [Forbes, 2007]
Koch Industries Is At The Center Of The Right-Wing Message Machine. Koch’s founder, Fred Koch, also helped found the John Birch Society, an ultraconservative organization that believed the U.S. government was controlled by a traitorous cabal of Communist sympathizers. Koch Industries’ charitable arm, the Koch Family Foundations, has provided over $120 million in the past 20 years to the Cato Institute (founded by Charles Koch), Citizens for a Sound Economy (founded by David Koch, now Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks), the Heritage Foundation, George Mason University, the Federalist Society, the Mercatus Center, and dozens more right-wing, anti-regulatory, and global-warming denial organizations. [Media Transparency]
Nancy Pfotenhauer Is A Pure Right-Wing/Koch Industries Product. Pfotenhauer’s resumé includes George Mason University (funded by Koch), Citizens for a Sound Economy (founded by Koch), Americans for Prosperity (founded by Koch), and the Independent Women’s Forum (funded by Koch). She also worked directly for Koch Industries as their top Washington lobbyist. When not on the Koch payroll, Pfotenhauer worked for the Republican National Committee, Sen. William Armstrong (R-CO), and Dan Quayle’s Council on Competitiveness. [Media Transparency, Dunamis International Ministries]
Vitter - The Only Senator Opposing Removal Of HIV Travel Ban
Vitter - The Only Senator Opposing Removal Of HIV Travel Ban
The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan is reporting that Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), a former client of the DC Madam, “is the only Senator opposing the removal of the HIV travel and immigration ban” from the Senate version of a bill extending PEPFAR, the international health initiative dedicated to combating HIV/AIDS around the world. On Wednesday, in an editorial in the Washington times, Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) penned an editorial underlining the importance of lifting the travel restriction:
Today, HIV is the only medical condition that renders people inadmissible to the United States. In fact, we are just one of 12 countries that prohibit, almost without exception, HIV-positive non-citizens from entering the country (China has recently overturned its ban). This policy places the United States in the same company as Sudan, Russia, Libya and Saudi Arabia.
Vitter is happy to keep such company. In fact, the Senator, who himself engaged in behavior that could have placed him and his wife in danger of contracting HIV, has promoted policies that increase the likelihood that people will become infected with HIV:
- Voted in support of the “prostitution pledge” in PEPFAR which creates obstacles to reaching and serving sex workers.
- Attempted to amend PEPFAR “to reinsert the 33 percent abstinence-only earmark.”
Vitter has a long history of promoting failed abstinence-only policies and supporting legislation that undermines people’s sexual health and equal rights. Recently, Vitter, along with fellow disgraced Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), signed up to co-sponsor S.J. Res. 43, the Marriage Protection Amendment. If passed, the bill would amend the Constitution to declare that marriage “shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.”