McCain’s Confusing Coal Criticisms
McCain’s Confusing Coal Criticisms
This morning, CNN anchor John Roberts questioned Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about Gov. Sarah Palin’s statement that the U.S. should go into Pakistan after terrorists, a clear contradiction with McCain’s position that such measures should never be discussed publicly. Roberts asked why McCain called this “gotcha journalism.” McCain responded that the “circumstances were very different.” Roberts asked, “How so?”
I believe it was a town hall meeting that he said it. Hers was an encounter in a pizza parlor where the question was framed, so that of course we’re going to go after terrorists.
Watch it:
McCain is wrong. In fact, at a town hall meeting of his own that same week, Sen. McCain said that he supported an end to mountaintop removal, a position his campaign initially denied. McCain also criticized the construction of new coal plants, saying they “will increase greenhouse gas emissions dramatically.” A week later, at the Clinton Global Initiative, McCain said, “We now know that fossil fuel emissions, by retaining heat within the atmosphere, threaten disastrous changes in climate.”
Unfortunately, no one in the media has challenged McCain on these statements, which strongly imply that McCain considers the continued use of coal “disastrous.”
UPDATE: Factcheck.org calls the ads “false.”
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Conservatives Explain How To Salvage The Bailout: Add Tax Cuts
Conservatives Explain How To Salvage The Bailout: Add Tax Cuts
Yesterday, the Bush administration’s proposed $700 billion bailout was defeated in the House, after the Republican leadership failed to deliver their 70-100 promised votes from the conservative side.
Following the bill’s defeat, congressional conservatives took to the airwaves, explaining what should be included in the legislation in order to persuade other conservatives to vote for it. Their additions: cutting the capital gains tax and cutting corporate taxes. Watch a compilation:
From the beginning of the bailout process, conservatives have been advocating tax cuts, claiming that they will fix the current financial crisis. Today, the Washington Times editorial board reiterated this idea, saying that tax cuts will fix “some of the structural problems behind the mortgage meltdown.”
But these tax-cutting proposals do nothing to address the mortgage crisis and don’t help troubled homeowners. They amount to little more than a conservative hand-out to the wealthy and corporations.
As the Wonk Room has previously noted, most capital gains flow to millionaires. Conservatives argue that a cut in cap gains will cause capital to “flood” into the market again, thus solving the crisis. But as Michael Ettlinger notes, this wouldn’t happen because “this money would have to come from somewhere. If it’s interest bearing accounts, More » by as much as Wall Street benefited.”
As for corporate taxes, the U.S. rate is already in line with the G-7 average, and the U.S. raises below the OECD average in corporate tax revenue. An analysis by the Center for American Progress found that corporate profits do not trickle-down, and thus giving corporations tax breaks would not alleviate any of the pressure on the economy.
The legislation that failed to pass yesterday was already short on provisions actively aimed at helping those facing foreclosures. Any restructuring of the bill should address that shortfall - and focus on the root of the crisis - instead of turning the legislation into a gift for corporations and the richest Americans.
UPDATE: On Hardball today, former Rep. Tom Delay proposed suspending the capital gains tax for two years. Host Chris Matthews responded by saying “you guys have wanted that forever…you’re going to reward the people that blew it.” Watch it:
McCain Against Labor Standards In Trade, But Standards Can Improve Trade Deficit
McCain Against Labor Standards In Trade, But Standards Can Improve Trade Deficit
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has openly come out against tying U.S. trade deals to labor standards. His senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said in an interview that “McCain would reject the use of labor and environmental issues to block trade.” Instead, “his preference would be to monitor trading partners in order to determine if they are improving their standards.”
However, in a recently released paper for the Center for American Progress, - “Labor Rights Can Be Good Trade Policy” - Christian Weller argued that the United States can improve its trade deficit, which has been at or above 5% of gross domestic product since the middle of 2004, by calling for improved labor standards from America’s trading partners:
Better labor standards in trading-partner countries, especially in less industrialized economies, can positively affect U.S. exports and U.S. imports. Better labor rights could increase demand for U.S. exports by boosting the incomes of workers overseas. And better labor standards abroad reduce the cost advantage that some countries may enjoy by paying their workers poorly.
To back this assertion, Weller provided evidence showing that, currently, the U.S. “has smaller trade deficits or even trade surpluses with less industrialized countries that have some or even strong labor rights compared to countries that have limited or no labor protections.” Among Weller’s findings:
- Trade with less industrialized countries with weak or no worker protections has substantially contributed to the increase in the U.S. trade deficit from 2000 to 2007. If the United States had only traded with less industrialized economies that had some or strong worker rights during those years, its trade deficit in 2007 would have been $123 billion smaller than it actually was.
- In 2000, U.S. exports to countries with strong or some worker rights were 182.3% greater than U.S. exports to countries with limited or no worker rights.
- U.S. imports grew faster from 2000 to 2007 for countries with limited or no labor rights than for countries with some or even strong labor rights.
The AFL-CIO asserts that “McCain is missing the point“:
Labor and environmental rules are just as much a part of the trade equation as copyright protection or investment rules. It isn’t a question of blocking trade but of making sure that trade deals are fair to workers, don’t trash the environment and provide the right incentives to businesses and governments. McCain’s trade policy would serve only one constituency: multinational corporations.
New RNC Ad Highlights Fiscal Irresponsibility — But What About McCain?
New RNC Ad Highlights Fiscal Irresponsibility — But What About McCain?
Our guest blogger is Brian Levine, a Senior Policy Adviser at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
This morning, the Republican National Committee launched a new ad, which suggests that the only thing that could make our current economic problems worse is reckless spending, which will create “new debt.”
After watching the ad, viewers might assume that McCain is a deficit hawk who won’t create “new debt.” Nothing could be further from the truth. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, John McCain’s tax plan – which bestows lavish benefits on corporations and wealthy individuals — would increase the deficit by $5 trillion over the next ten years.
McCain claims he will balance the federal budget by 2013. The Washington Post recently called this claim “not credible,” as it is based on low-ball estimates of the cost of his tax cuts and $470 billion in unrealistic and largely unspecified spending cuts. The Post called the McCain campaign’s claimed savings “illusory.” McCain constantly talks about cutting earmarks. But eliminating every earmark in the federal budget would only save $18 billion – a small fraction of the cost of McCain’s tax plan.
The McCain budget also does not account for the new spending associated with his health care and energy plans as well as fully funding No Child Left Behind. His health care plan could cost $130 billion a year and McCain’s top economic adviser admitted that the high risk pools McCain promises to subsidize to cover those with pre-existing conditions could cost $20 billion.
If the Republican National Committee is so concerned about fiscal responsibility, they must be terrified at the prospect of their own candidate being elected.
Health Care & The Financial Crisis: ‘Medical Crises Contribute To Half Of All Home Foreclosure Filings’
Health Care & The Financial Crisis: ‘Medical Crises Contribute To Half Of All Home Foreclosure Filings’
Some health care analysts have argued that the current financial crisis undermines the possibility of major health care reform. Indeed, since the crisis erupted, policy makers, save Sarah Palin, have largely divorced the health care crisis from the economic crisis and ignored the contribution of rising health care costs to the growing number of home foreclosures.
In truth, while “lax lending standards, rising interest rates, and irresponsible borrowers” helped cause the current downturn, rising medical costs and loss of work due to injury or illness led to many foreclosures.
According to one recent study, “medical crises contribute to half of all home foreclosure filings.” “If these patterns hold nationwide, medical causes may put as many as 1.5 million Americans in jeopardy of losing their homes each year,” the study concluded:
As middle class incomes remain stagnant, health care costs continue to increase. The employee contribution to health care insurance has more than doubled since 1999 and the total cost for family coverage now averages $12,680 a year, up 5 percent from 2007. “Annual deductibles — the amount employees pay out of their own pockets for medical care before their insurance coverage starts — jumped an average of 29%, to $1,344, for those with family coverage,” a recent Kaiser survey found.
Unless the system is reformed, growing costs will continue to swallow paychecks. As Ezekiel Emanuel observes, “economic, tax and health care policy are inextricably linked“:
Health care may no longer be the acute pain at the forefront of the public’s attention — hence the short shrift so far. But it is a severe disease that will have to be cured to get the economy really going and to ensure we have money for all the other things we need to invest in, like education, alternative energy, infrastructure, defense, national parks and the rest. Let’s hope policy makers can rise above the immediate political agenda to solve the long-term problems.
Settlements And Double Standards
Settlements And Double Standards
Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made headlines by bravely saying what most people already know to be true, and what Olmert himself has spent almost his entire political career denying — that Israel must withdraw from nearly all of the West Bank as well as East Jerusalem to attain peace with the Palestinians.
Today, Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg — who authored an excellent history of Israel’s settlement enterprise — has an op-ed in the Washington Post describing the intractable situation Israel has created for itself through years of settlement building:
Nearly a thousand housing units are being built in Maale Adumim, according to Peace Now’s Settlement Watch project. At Givat Zeev, another of the settlements ringing Jerusalem, a 750-unit project was approved this year. The government has asked for bids on building nearly 350 homes in Beitar Illit, also near Jerusalem. Meanwhile, hundreds of homes have been added at settlements deep in the West Bank, with the government’s acquiescence if not approval.
All this fits a historical pattern: Diplomatic initiatives accelerate settlement building in occupied territory. When the peace effort fades away, the red-roofed houses remain as a monument.[…]
Since Annapolis, hard-line settlers have continued building, hoping to block any pullback. The government, meanwhile, is building in the so-called settlement blocs — settlements that it insists Israel must keep under any agreement. As in the past, it is writing its negotiating position in concrete on the hills.
Meanwhile, last week the New York Times reported on the increasing violence by Jewish settlers in the occupied territories:
There have been bouts of settler violence for years, notably during the transfer of Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. Now, though, the militants seem to have spawned a broader, more defined strategy of resistance designed to intimidate the state.
This aggressive doctrine, according to Akiva HaCohen, 24, who is considered to be one of its architects, calls on settlers and their supporters to respond “whenever, wherever and however” they wish to any attempt by the Israeli Army or the police to lay a finger on property in illegally built outposts scheduled by the government for removal.[…]
Besides exacting a price for army and police actions, the policy also encourages settlers to avenge Palestinian acts of violence by taking the law into their own hands — an approach that has the potential to set the tinderbox of the West Bank ablaze.
Hard-core right-wing settlers have responded to limited army operations in recent weeks by blocking roads, rioting spontaneously, throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles and burning Palestinian orchards and fields all over the West Bank, a territory that Israel has occupied since 1967.
For Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, settler terrorism is simply a fact of life. Lawless rampages like the one in Asira al-Qibliya a few weeks ago — which Olmert called a “pogrom” — make news, but the less spectacular daily acts of harassment, intimidation, vandalism and violence rarely do. More »
Conservatives Try To Dodge Responsibility For Crisis By Blaming Poor People
Conservatives Try To Dodge Responsibility For Crisis By Blaming Poor People
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, conservative commentators have blamed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), low-income people, minorities, and past Democratic administrations for the sub-prime mortgage meltdown:
- Laura Ingraham: “When Bill Clinton decided to tell Robert Rubin to re-write the rules the Community Reinvestment Act and push all of these institutions to lend to minority communities.”
- Neil Cavuto: “I don’t remember a blaring call that said, Frannie and Freddie are a disaster, loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.”
- Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR): “It was their harsh regulation under the Community Reinvestment Act that started this ball rolling down the hill.”
Watch a video compilation:
Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977, requiring banks “to lend throughout the communities they serve.” In the 1990s, greater “home mortgage lending to lower income households and in lower income communities by the banks and thrifts covered by the CRA,” increased the homeownership rate “for lower income and minority families.” As a result, “property values went up dramatically in low and very low income urban” communities, “reversing severe declines during the prior two decades.”
But the Bush administration ushered an end to CRA enforcement. In 2004, Bush “announced plans to sharply weaken CRA regulations, pulling small and mid-sized banks out from under the law’s toughest standards.” Ironically, conservatives are now blaming legislation that “was losing force and relevance” just as “sub-prime lending was exploding,” for the current crisis.
As CAPAF Senior Fellow Robert Gordon argues in The American Prospect, “the real problems came from the institutions beyond the reach of the CRA“:
- CRA Only Applies To Federally Insured Banks And Thrifts: CRA did not apply to independent mortgage companies, which were responsible for “half of sub-prime loans.” Only about “one in four sub-prime loans were made by the institutions fully governed by CRA.”
- CRA Institutions Engaged In Less Dangerous Lending: As the president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve points out, “independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by the CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts.”
- CRA Does Not Encourage Or Condone Bad Lending: According to Ellen Seidman, Director of the U.S Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision from 1997 to 2001, CRA-covered institutions were warned “that badly underwritten subprime products that ignored consumer protects were not acceptable. Lenders not subject to CRA did not receive similar warnings.”
While most economists blame the current crisis on market failure and sparse regulation, conservatives are attempting to elude responsibility by smearing the victims of predatory lending. As Matt Yglesias points out, “it was conservatives who watched as the housing bubble developed and it was conservatives who blocked any action to try to ensure a soft landing once the bubble popped….It was conservatives who blocked efforts to curb predatory lending and it was conservatives who blocked efforts to investigate fraud more robustly.”
Now, the preachers of ‘personal responsibility’ are ducking for cover.
McCain Confuses Coal With ‘Clean Coal’ In New Ads
McCain Confuses Coal With ‘Clean Coal’ In New Ads
On a day when Congress focuses on the deteriorating financial markets, John McCain has given up his pledge to stay in Washington to get a deal done. Instead, back on the campaign trail, he wants to talk about coal. McCain is selling a fantasy of a coal- and oil-based economy, in ads airing in Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia:
“Clean coal” is important to America. And to Colorado. For Coloradoans, coal means thousands of jobs. Economic growth. More affordable electricity. For America, coal means energy independence. And “clean coal” means cleaner air. But Obama-Biden and their liberal allies oppose “clean coal.”
Listen here:
In fact, coal is a dirty, deadly fuel that is becoming increasingly expensive. And a coal-based economy doesn’t promise real job growth, either. The coal industry has in fact been cutting jobs while increasing production and profits. Finally, continued use of coal — as the most concentrated global warming pollutant — is threatening the future of human civilization, something McCain himself seems to recognize.
McCain’s ads confuse coal with “clean coal” — the industry’s preferred term for technologies still in development to sequester coal’s deadly pollution. Such advanced coal technology may promise “cleaner air” — in comparison to the continued use of traditional coal plants — if and when it is developed. The “clean coal” propaganda campaign must not substitute for real technological innovation. This is what Al Gore meant when he said last week:
If the coal companies can actually sequester CO2 safely, then okay. But don’t, don’t pretend to do it. Don’t, don’t, don’t give us this illusion. Because that’s what they did on Wall Street. “The risk isn’t there. Don’t worry about it. Just keep focusing on the short term profit.”
McCain’s Social Security Privatization: Bad Idea When Bush Proposed It, Bad Idea Now
McCain’s Social Security Privatization: Bad Idea When Bush Proposed It, Bad Idea Now
The events of the last two weeks have illustrated the volatility of America’s financial markets. Today, the Dow closed below where it was on George W. Bush’s first day in office.
And yet, John McCain still supports a Bush-style Social Security privatization plan that would encourage Americans to risk their retirement benefits on the stock market.
Social Security provides the majority of income for most seniors and is a vital insurance system for disabled workers and dependent spouses. Income provided by Social Security keeps 13 million seniors from living in poverty.
McCain’s proposal, which would allow workers to divert their social security payments into private accounts, is risky, expensive, a financial boon to Wall Street, and would undermine, not shore up, the long-term solvency of Social Security.
This is a debate that’s been had before. When Bush proposed a similar plan in 2005, analysts were able to assess its impact and debunk its myths. Here’s what they concluded:
Private accounts are risky: Bush and McCain tout the potential for higher returns as a reason to shift Social Security payments into the stock market. But an analysis by Robert Shiller of Yale University of a standard “lifetime” personal account, as envisioned by Bush and McCain, show they actually lose money one-third of the time. Furthermore, projections of rosy growth used to justify personal accounts stand in stark contrast to the projections of slower growth that indicate there may be an eventual shortfall in Social Security.
Private accounts are expensive: Bush’s 2005 plan, supported by John McCain, to divert Social Security payments to private accounts, would have unnecessarily added an additional $17.7 trillion to the national debt by 2050, according to an analysis by James Horney and Richard Kogan. This borrowing was needed entirely to fund the creation of private accounts, not to shore up Social Security solvency.
Private accounts provide a boon for Wall Street: Wall Street firms advocate Social Security privatization for a reason: they’ve got a lot to gain. A 1997 estimate by actuary David Langer for the Washington Post projected that Wall Street firms would make $240 billion in fees during the first 12 years of a privatization scheme– this number is undoubtedly much higher now.
Private accounts won’t fix Social Security: The CBO recently projected that Social Security will continue to pay full benefits for the next 30 years. After 2041, the system will pay out 78% of benefits. Private accounts wouldn’t address this shortfall, they would cause more damage by requiring benefit cuts and shortening Social Security’s long-term outlook.
What McCain won’t tell you: The cost of closing the long-term shortfall in Social Security is less than the cost of extending Bush’s tax breaks for the richest 1% of Americans, as John McCain has proposed.
But McCain seems less interested in saving Social Security than gambling it away.
The High Costs Of High-Risk Pools
The High Costs Of High-Risk Pools
Today, NPR’s Julie Rovner examined the implications of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) proposal to insure uninsurable Americans — individuals who are unable to obtain coverage in the private market due to their medical history — through state-run high risk pools. As Rovner explains, high-risk pools are plagued by waiting periods, premiums that are out of reach for many families, substantial deductibles and co-pays, and limits on mental health and maternity care.
Listen:
The McCain campaign responds to criticism that high-risk pools provide inadequate coverage and access by suggesting that their Guaranteed Access Plan (GAP) is modeled on the best examples in the states, namely the Minnesota high-risk pool program. But Minnesota, like the other 35 states that run high-risk pool programs, limits eligibility to control costs:
In 2006, the Minnesota high-risk pool cost $8,116 per enrollee (21% of the average income) and provided coverage to just 30,000 people. In short, in most of these states, the programs’ prohibitive premiums, deductibles and waiting periods for pre-existing conditions keep many uninsurable Americans from obtaining coverage.
The McCain campaign, recognizing the program’s limitations, says it “might” subsidize GAP “to those making up to four times the federal poverty level, or $41,600 for a single person” but has not made a decision about “waiting periods for pre-existing conditions.” But “subsidies already cover around 50 percent of high-risk pool costs, and expansion of these programs could cost $100 billion.”
With America in the middle of a financial crisis, the likelihood of subsidizing high-risk pools seems like a distant possibility.
UPDATE: Peter Harbage examines Alaska’s high-risk pool program here.
BBC Poll: U.S. War On Terror Losing Hearts And Minds
BBC Poll: U.S. War On Terror Losing Hearts And Minds
A new BBC poll (pdf) of citizens of 23 countries has determined that most people don’t think very much of U.S. efforts against Al Qaeda:
Some 29% of people said the “war on terror” launched by President George W Bush in 2001 had had no effect on the Islamist militant network.
According to 30% of those surveyed, US policies have strengthened al-Qaeda.
This is bad news, but not all all that surprising. The “war on terror” — at least as it’s been framed by the Bush administration — involves the relentless application of military force to what is actually an intelligence and propaganda problem. Where the focus over the last seven years should have been on devaluing the al-Qaeda brand, President Bush has instead focused on blowing things up. Blowing things up creates a lot of collateral damage, which is an anodyne way of saying that “a lot of innocent people get killed.” This results in outrage and opposition to U.S. policies, which in turn enlarges the pool of potential terrorists, which is a problem if your goal is that there be fewer terrorists.
This is particularly troubling:
The most commonly held view of al-Qaeda in the 23 nations polled was a negative one - except in Egypt and Pakistan.[…]
In Pakistan, where much of the battle against al-Qaeda is being fought, just 19% said they had a negative view of Osama Bin Laden’s organisation.
Doug Miller, from polling agency Globescan, said the findings from Egypt and Pakistan were “yet another indicator that the US ‘war on terror’ is not winning hearts and minds”.
Given that Pakistan is where Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants are believed to currently reside, it’s obvious that the U.S. needs a new approach to Pakistan, to more effectively engage its population and government in the effort against Al Qaeda.
Last Wednesday, CAPAF’s Brian Katulis offered testimony before Congress on a new policy toward Pakistan.
McCain’s Budget Plan: ‘How About A Spending Freeze On Everything?’
McCain’s Budget Plan: ‘How About A Spending Freeze On Everything?’
During the presidential debate Friday night, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was asked for “major ways” in which his approach to the presidency has changed, in light of the budget problems potentially associated with the $700 billion federal bailout bill working its way through Congress.
McCain responded to the question by advocating a “spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs.”
McCain did qualify his answer a bit with his next statement, adding that he would fund “several other vital issues,” which remained unnamed. But if McCain were to freeze “everything” then, among other things, he would allow inflation to eat away at:
- Funding to the 908,412 children in the federal Head Start program.
- Funding for the 6 million students who receive federal Pell Grants for college.
- The $5.1 billion spent on the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides households with financial “assistance for their home energy bills.”
- Unemployment benefits, even though unemployment is at a seven-year high of 6.1%.
- The $24.6 million currently funding “110 national park improvement projects and programs.”
This list is almost endless. Would McCain freeze spending on foreign aid to Israel and Columbia? Is he going to freeze the Community Development Block grants program or funding for NASA? Will he freeze funding to infrastructure projects, like those undertaken by the Federal Highway Administration?
McCain needs to be asked what, in the end, he considers a “vital issue” worth spending federal money on, and what programs would fall victim to his massive spending freeze.
LoD Squad
LoD Squad
Our guest blogger is Nina Hachigian, Senior Vice-President at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
I thought Senator McCain was backing away from his idea for a “League of Democracies” because he had not mentioned it much lately, but he raised it again in the debate on Friday in response to a question about Iran.
The League is one of McCain’s more radical foreign policy proposals. He has described a “global compact” that will “harness the vast influence” of some 100 nations to “defend our shared interests” and “revive the democratic solidarity that united the West during the Cold War.”
While, as my Dad points out, “it sure sounds lovely,” the League is an unworkable, divisive waste of time.
First, no one else wants to do it. Though McCain suggested in the debate that Britain, France and Germany would sign right up, on the contrary, diplomatic reaction in Old Europe has ranged from cool to dismissive. The bigger developing democracies like India, Brazil and South Africa appear no more enthusiastic, perhaps because they saw Charles Krauthammer on Fox News explaining that the ulterior motive of the LOD is to “kill the UN.” And they like the UN.
Second, the LOD is fundamentally conceptually flawed because one’s form of government is not the principal driver of a country’s foreign policy stances. In a 2002 report, (pdf) a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute laments that he cannot report a “high correlation” of voting behavior at the UN among democracies and, in fact, that “the democracies of Africa, Latin America and the Carribbean, with a few exceptions, have voting patterns that correspond more closely with the dictatorships of their regions than with the United States.” That should not come as a big surprise. Why does the United States cozy up to Saudi Arabia and look the other way at Egypt’s non-democratic behavior? Because we have strategic interests at stake. Other democracies have those interests too, and sometimes those interests conflict with ours, despite our shared ideals.
McCain uses the case Iran to illustrate the utility of the League, but it actually reveals why it will not work. Like many, McCain is frustrated that the UN Security Council will not approve tougher sanctions against Iran because of China and Russia’s veto power (though they have agreed to some sanctions). But the LOD would not do any better at providing a united, sanction-seeking front. India, the LOD’s largest would-be member, claims a “strategic partnership” (pdf) with Iran and has been negotiating for a large natural gas pipeline to meet its growing demand for imported fuel. Moreover, it is hard to imagine how you can cut a nuclear deal with Tehran if China, its largest customer, and Russia, its arms dealer, are not fully engaged.
Third, do we really need another “us against them” construct motivating US foreign policy? Remember that Cold War strategy of trying to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow? The LOD is the opposite– another reason for them to bond in solidarity against the west.
Fourth, what could the League do about global warming or non-proliferation or disease? Not much because key non-democracies hold cards in all those areas.
Of course we should deepen cooperation with democracies individually and in groups, like NATO. We should also continue to promote democracy abroad in effective and peaceful ways because it is the best form of government around. But we shouldn’t spend another 10 minutes thinking about the future of the League.
Bailout By Any Means Necessary
Bailout By Any Means Necessary
According to the text of the draft bailout bill, the “troubled assets” that the Secretary of the Treasury is given $700 billion to purchase are not only mortgage-backed securities, but “any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages.” And Paulson is actually given authority to blow past even that vague limitation, since “troubled assets” also include:
Any other financial instrument that the Secretary, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, determines the purchase of which is necessary to promote financial market stability, but only upon transmittal of such determination, in writing, of the appropriate committees of Congress.
On October 11, 2002, the Senate approved the following:
The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to–
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
UPDATE: Paulson — and his successors — “is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act” . . . “without limitation.”
UPDATE II: A Wonk Room reader writes in that Paulson’s authority is restrained because he has to consult with Congress. In fact, the Iraq war resolution required the same:
In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon there after as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, and
(2) acting pursuant to this resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. . . .
The President shall, at least once every 60 days, submit to the Congress a report on matters relevant to this joint resolution, including actions taken pursuant to the exercise of authority granted in section 2 and the status of planning for efforts that are expected to be required after such actions are completed, including those actions described in section 7 of Public Law 105-338 (the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998).
UPDATE III: The oversight provisions in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 include reports from the Treasury Secretary; an Special Inspector General appointed by the President; an Oversight Board of cabinet-level Presidential appointees, including the Treasury Secretary; reports and audits by the Comptroller General, appointed by the President; reports from Office of Management and Budget (White House) and the Congressional Budget Office; and a bipartisan Congressional Oversight Panel appointed by Congressional leadership.
UPDATE IV: The House defeated the bill 225-208.
Stalinist Criticism In Defense Of One’s Dearly Held National Creation Myths Is No Vice
Stalinist Criticism In Defense Of One’s Dearly Held National Creation Myths Is No Vice
Commentary’s Noah Pollak states the neoconservative case against Israel’s “New Historians“:
Their cause is to expose the “founding myths” of Zionism, so as to undermine Israeli self-confidence.
Right, because true patriots understand that the only legitimate function of historical scholarship is the glorification of the state.
Also funny that Pollak deploys this critique of the New Historians — their work is politically harmful — by way of criticizing historian Tom Segev for suggesting that a certain work is politically harmful.
Fight on, Commentary!
McCain Calls For Irish Tax Rates
McCain Calls For Irish Tax Rates
During Friday’s presidential debate, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) argued that if the United States lowered its corporate tax rate, American businesses would “be able to create jobs, increase your business, make more investment”:
Right now, the United States of American business (OOTC:ARBU) pays the second-highest business taxes in the world, 35 percent. Ireland pays 11 percent. Now, if you’re a business person, and you can locate any place in the world, then, obviously, if you go to the country where it’s 11 percent tax versus 35 percent, you’re going to be able to create jobs, increase your business, make more investment, et cetera. I want to cut that business tax. I want to cut it so that businesses will remain in — in the United States of America and create jobs.
Watch it:
The Irish corporate tax stands at 12.5%, not 11, but that’s almost besides the point. McCain’s argument is full of so many other holes, you can drain spaghetti with it:
- America’s Effective Tax Rate Is Comparable To Other G7 Nations: According to a recent U.S. Treasury report, the effective tax rate on equipment financed by equity is 24 percent, the same as the G-7 average. The rate on equipment financed by debt is minus 46 percent, meaning that the government actually subsidizes these investments rather than taxing them.
- America Is The Number One Country To Do Business: The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for 2007-2008 concluded that the United States is most business friendly, followed by Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Finland and Singapore. Ireland came in at number 22.
- Two-Thirds Of Corporations Did Not Pay Taxes: According to last month’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, between 1998 and 2005 “about two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States did not pay taxes” because of a variety of corporate tax loopholes.
- US Raises Less Taxes From Corporations Than Ireland: In the United States, corporate revenues as a percentage of GDP was about 2.2 percent; Ireland raised close to 4 percent.
The past eight years of Bushonomics have refuted McCain’s trickle-down argument. In fact, from 2000 to 2006, increased corporate profits did not grow middle class incomes — as “corporate profits grew nearly four times as fast as GDP,” increasing by an estimated 66 percent, the median household income fell by $963, even after inflation.
Unfortunately, rather than “create jobs,” corporations retained their extra profits, invested little in new commercial structures such as factories and office buildings, bought back their own stock, and “increased dividends rather than expand capacity.”
McCain Admits Health Plan Would Increase Taxes
McCain Admits Health Plan Would Increase Taxes
Today, during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has previously promised “not [to] raise your taxes nor support a tax increase,” finally admitted that his health care tax credits would not cover the costs of a comprehensive health insurance plan:
MCCAIN: Actually, my position is that it will be, it will give people actually more money to go out and purchase tax - health insurance on their own and only those with the Cadillac gold-plated health insurance policies today are the ones who might suffer from it. The ones -
STEPHANOPOULOS: So they would see their taxes go up potentially.
MCCAIN: It depends on, on, on what plan they have. But that’s usually the wealthiest people. Ordinary working Americans have the kind of - or an overwhelming majority have the health insurance plans that this tax credit, refundable tax credit, will actually put more money in their pockets for the purchase of health care than what they had before.
Watch it:
McCain’s tax increase is worse than he lets on:
- Eliminating Tax Exemption Increases Cost Of Plan For Those Who Need It Most: By equalizing the tax treatment of employer and individual plans and enticing healthy workers to buy cheaper but less substantive insurance in the individual market place, McCain’s tax reform would increase costs for sicker workers and may force some workers to opt out entirely.
- Tax Credits Don’t Keep Up With Health Costs: McCain’s credits will diminish in proportion to growing health care premiums. This is because McCain indexes the growth of his initial $5,000 offering to inflation, not premiums. And, since premiums grow at a higher rate than inflation, McCain’s proposal imposes a large tax increase on the middle class.
- Middle Class Experiences Largest Tax Increase: For a couple earning $40,000 and paying $13,800 for insurance, “McCain’s new tax credit would cut their taxes by $50 in 2009, but because the credit quickly falls behind rising premiums that are the basis of the current tax break, the family would pay $1,169 more in taxes in 2013…[and] would pay $2,809 more in taxes by 2018.”
Ironically, McCain’s health care plan raises taxes for families whose yearly income just barely covers the cost of a Cadillac.
Al Gore: ‘Clean Coal’s Like Healthy Cigarettes’
Al Gore: ‘Clean Coal’s Like Healthy Cigarettes’
At the Clinton Global Initiative, Al Gore ripped apart “clean coal,” the coal industry catch-all propaganda term for advanced coal technologies, both existing ones that reduce traditional pollutants and developmental ones, like carbon capture and sequestration. Gore was asked by Bill Clinton, “Do you believe that the current economic difficulties will make it harder or easier to pass good climate legislation?” Here’s Gore’s answer:
For the first time in all of human history, we, as a species, have to make a decision. If we make the right decision then the answer to the question you asked is, the economic crisis can provide an opportunity to make the right kind of changes.
What should we do? We should stop burning coal . . . without sequestering the CO2. The coal and oil companies have spent in the United States alone a half a billion dollars in the first eight months of this year promoting a lie that there is such a thing as “clean coal.” Clean coal’s like healthy cigarettes — it does not exist. It could theoretically exist. The only demonstration plant was canceled. How many, how many such plants are there? Zero. How many blueprints? Zero.
Watch it:
Gore continued with a discussion of how the United States and the rest of the world should build a new, smart electricity infrastructure based on wind, solar, and geothermal power “to take the energy from the places where the sun falls and the wind blows to the places where the people live” — including a link from places like Darfur to Europe:
We are now — what we should do is make a one-off investment to switch our energy infrastructure from one that depends on fuel that is dirty, dangerous, destroying the habitability of this planet, and rising in price, to a new global energy infrastructure that is based on fuel that is free forever: the sun, and the wind, and geothermal. There’s a myth that the technology is not available. It is available. Concentrating geothermal [Ed.: He means “solar”] power is competitive today. Wind is competitive, though intermittent, today. Geothermal is competitive today.
Green Jobs Now Day Of Action, Today: 660 Events In All Fifty States
Green Jobs Now Day Of Action, Today: 660 Events In All Fifty States
Thousands of Americans are rising up together today to say, “We’re Ready” for green jobs now. Van Jones, head of Green For All and a Center for American Progress Action Fund senior fellow, explains:
George W. Bush’s house of credit cards is falling down — on the heads of the American people. We need dramatic action — but not just to bail to financial titans who destroyed the economy.
We need to throw a green life-line to the people who want to rebuild it.
There is only one comprehensive solution to the present mess: put America back to work retrofitting and repowering America with millions of green-collar jobs.
Watch it:
The Green Jobs Now Day of Action is taking place in every state in the nation, with over 660 different events (here’s the photostream — you can participate by sending in your own photo that declares “I’m Ready” for green jobs). Here are just a few:
ATLANTA
As Newt Gingrich sells his toxic pollution-based agenda across town, the Green Jobs Now people are coming together to install thousands of next-generation lightbulbs and conduct energy audits in communities like Adair Park that are too often forgotten. Join the work — and celebration. Here are some of the organizations working together to build the green recovery in ATL:
United Way Metropolitan Atlanta; Green Jobs Institute, Green World Promotions, Clayton County Clean; Energy Coalition; Spellman, Morehouse, Emory, Agnes Scott HBCU’s; Georgia State University; Georgia Stand Up; Annie E. Casey Foundation; National Wildlife Federation; SEEED, Sustainable Atlanta; Edge Connection; Southface Institute; Reach Them to Teach Them, Conserve Georgia; Home Depot; Green Atlanta
What John McCain Still Doesn’t Get About Iraq
What John McCain Still Doesn’t Get About Iraq
In tonight’s debate, Sen. John McCain repeatedly asserted that his opponent “doesn’t understand” Iraq or national security. McCain demonstrated, however, that it is he who doesn’t understand the consequences that that the Iraq war has wrought for America’s national security.
- McCain said that withdrawing from Iraq would “increase Iranian influence.” In fact, it is the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq that has resulted in increased Iranian influence, not only in Iraq, but in the region.
- McCain correctly identified the resurgence in Russian power as driven by increased oil wealth, but avoided mentioning that Russia’s huge oil revenues, as well as Iran’s, are to a significant extent a result of the destabilization resulting from the Iraq war. According to a leading oil economist, the Iraq war “tripled the price of oil…costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone”:
Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent…that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war.
- McCain decried the fact that U.S. taxpayers are “sending $700 billion a year overseas to countries that don’t like us very much,” but continues to support sending $10-12 billion a month to a country, Iraq, whose people want our military to withdraw. As i wrote in July, “a strong political consensus exists among Iraqis in favour of a US commitment to withdraw its forces from their country”:
President Bush and John McCain have consistently tried to ignore this reality, each insisting that a US withdrawal would be contingent upon “conditions on the ground”, and not on “artificial timetables”. But there’s nothing artificial about Iraqis’ revulsion at the continuing presence of foreign troops in their homeland, and the political expression of this revulsion represents an important condition on the ground.
A condition on the ground that McCain consistently chooses to ignore.
CNN Posts ‘Fact’ About McCain’s Lie That His Corporate Tax Cuts Will Create Jobs
CNN Posts ‘Fact’ About McCain’s Lie That His Corporate Tax Cuts Will Create Jobs
Appearing on CNN’s post-debate coverage is a graphic with the text:
FACT: McCain says he would lower business taxes in order to encourage job growth.
McCain did say during the debates, “I want to cut that business tax. I want to cut it so that businesses will remain in — in the United States of America and create jobs.”
But the real fact is this: according to the Congressional Budget Office, a corporate tax cut “does not create an incentive for [corporations] to spend more on labor” and “is not a particularly cost-effective method of stimulating business spending.” And McCain opposes eliminating the tax loopholes that encourage companies to send jobs overseas.
CNN should have indicated it was posting a “fact” about a “lie.” Is that a lact? A flie?