On Monday, 43 Senate Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) introduced legislation to circumvent the Obama administration and approve the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. A ThinkProgress Green analysis reveals at least 35 of the 44 senators backing the proposal have received special interest political action committee contributions from the biggest backers of the pipeline since the start of the 2010 cycle.
$644,400 went to 35 of those senators who have endorsed this measure. Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Rob Portman (R-OH) received the most, with $43,500 each. Manchin received $2,500 and the rest went to Republicans.
The most active companies and trade associations lobbying for the pipeline over the last three months were the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ConocoPhillips, the Business Roundtable, Shell Oil, ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, Deere & Company, TransCanada Pipelines, and Devon Energy.(more…)
As usual, the Republicans cannot stop attacking. President Obama traveled to Las Vegas yesterday and was speaking at a UPS facility. The facility was stocked with specially made natural gas trucks. Republicans have stated that these are not practical. In fact, this is American ingenuity at work. I don’t think that natural gas cars are the answer for everyone, but they simply makes sense in this particular sector of business. UPS was big enough to be able to set up the infrastructure and then reap the cost savings.
On Thursday, President Obama traveled to Las Vegas to pitch a few new energy policies — including tax breaks for firms that buy natural gas-powered trucks. T. Boone Pickens, for one, has argued that fueling vehicles with natural gas is the best way to curtail oil use. Is it?
President Barack Obama speaks at a United Parcel Service (UPS) freight facility about greater use of natural gas . (Ethan Miller – Getty Images)In small doses, perhaps, though it depends what the alternatives are. Fueling up cars and trucks directly with natural gas could help cut America’s reliance on crude oil. Yet some experts have cautioned that plug-in electric vehicles should play a much more pivotal role in weaning the country off oil. After all, it’s far more efficient to take natural gas, burn it to generate electricity, and power a bunch of plug-in vehicles, than it would be to fuel up cars and trucks with all that natural gas directly. (That’s because the combustion engines in cars and trucks lose waste more energy than the modern-day combined-cycle gas turbines that produce electricity.)
The counterargument is that electric vehicles are expensive and hard to scale up — and they typically require a vast new charging infrastructure. That’s true. But natural-gas vehicles could face similar hurdles. A 2002 analysis in the journal Energy Policy found that natural-gas fueling stations have historically had trouble getting built precisely because they turned out to be far more costly than anticipated.
For those reasons, a 2009 report from MIT on “The Future of Natural Gas” predicted that natural-gas vehicles would likely play a modest role in transportation — mostly confined to long-haul trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles like buses and delivery vans. Meanwhile, the MIT analysts expect natural gas to play a much more prominent role in the electric sector. That, in itself, could be an environmental boon: The report found that electric utilities could very rapidly cut their carbon emissions up to 22 percent by switching from coal to natural gas in key areas (and that’s without making major capital investments).
Just because it looks as if the Keystone Pipeline is dead, don’t think that this fight is over. Some very powerful people stand to make tons of money for this project to simply die. It will be back, I promise.
For the second time in as many months, the Obama administration has rejected the Keystone XL pipeline—a hugely controversial project that would traverse the length of the country from Nebraska to the Gulf of Mexico, carrying heavy and dirty tar sands oil from deep in Canada.
You’ll recall that, following a summer of protests and civil disobedience, the administration announced in November that it was delaying the project for at least a year, until a less disruptive route around a key aquifer in Nebraska could be studied and proposed. (Many believe this delay would kill the project entirely).
But Republicans successfully revived the project during the end-of-year negotiations on the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance. Democrats desperately wanted these measures, and the final bill included a provision that would force the State Department to issue a decision on Keystone within two months. (more…)
Oh, btw, I don’t buy the GOP argument that the pipeline would make 2500 or 100,000 jobs. Media Matters clearly shows how the media pumped up the jobs numbers.
Now, I am old enough to remember the gas crisis of the mid-to-late 1970s. As a matter fact, I remember one of our debate topics (yes, I was a nerd and I took debate in high school) was on alternative fuels. There was a huge panic that there were not enough economical cars. The average Cadillac and Lincoln Town Car only got 10-12 miles to the gallon. All you had to do was to see those lines. Some people waited in line for hours. Others tried to beat the lines and showed up first thing in the morning before the gas stations would open. Many gas stations ran out of gas. Jimmy Carter and the leading experts talked about conservation. Everybody started making more fuel-efficient cars. Then, out of nowhere, the gas crisis abated. Ronald Reagan was elected and he didn’t believe in conservation. He didn’t believe in alternative fuels. Over the next 10 years, Americans cared less and less about how fuel-efficient their car was. That leads me to today. Now, everybody’s watching their pennies. If we can spend $20 at the gas pump as opposed to $40 (or more), we would rather spend the $20. Maybe, just maybe, the automakers will keep this fuel-efficient trend going.
At the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which opens to the public this weekend, advances in fuel economy are taking center stage. Thanks to aggressive leadership by the Obama administration, working in concert with the state of California and the unions and carmakers of the American auto industry, fuel economy standards are zooming toward an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. A Detroit Free Press editorial reports that the new fuel economy standards have breathed new life into American automobile manufacturers, spurring them to innovate new technologies and new styles. Their new cars — which reduce our vulnerability to the whims of Big Oil and lessen dangerous pollution — will be able to compete on the international stage, which has much higher standards for fuel efficiency:
Against the backdrop of the North American International Auto Show, which opens to the public Saturday, anything seems possible, including fuel efficiencies that seemed out of reach just a few years ago. The stylish introductions focused as much on engine and power configurations (hybrid, plug-in, turbocharged, direct injection, etc.) and weight-savings as they did on appearance.
“This year’s auto show proves beyond all doubt that fuel efficiency is no longer just a euphemism for ‘econobox,’” writes the Detroit Free Press. “With the long-term planning horizon offered by the new fuel efficiency rules, automakers can do far more than survive. They can thrive, they can do it with style and — most important to everyone around here — build the cars that people want to buy.”
The incidence of leukemia is twice as high in children living close to French nuclear power plants as in those living elsewhere in the country, a study by French health and nuclear safety experts has found.
But the study, to be published soon in the International Journal of Cancer, fell short of establishing a causal link between the higher incidence of leukemia, a type of blood cancer, and living near nuclear power plants.
France has used nuclear power for three decades and is the most nuclear-reliant country in the world, with 75 percent of its electricity produced by 58 reactors.
Wow, what a fabulously misleading commercial. I saw this commercial for the first time about three or four weeks ago. I was struck by its look and feel. Then, I saw it a couple more times. I guess the initial polling on this commercial did extremely well. I’ve seen it so often now as to feel the need to break this commercial down little by little.
First of all, we see a classroom with five people in it. We are to assume that there are three students, one teacher and one janitor/maintenance man. No one identifies himself/herself, but these are fair assumptions. Interestingly, the teacher never says anything. The whole conversation is driven by one student, the tall white guy. The commercial opens with him asking, “Aren’t you getting a little emotional?” One of the two females responds with a stupid little quip, “Aren’t you getting a little industrial?” Instantly, we have the thoughtful logical character pitted against one of the women who does not have a thoughtful or logical answer. She is already painted as emotional and her quip/response reinforces that thought. Let’s move on.
White guy: there’s enough energy right here in America. Black girl: yeah, over 100 years worth. White girl: so you’re just going to ignore the environment Black girl: actually, it’s cleaner White guy: and it provides jobs and helps our economy. White girl: okay, I’m listening.
This commercial is brilliant. Besides the captions and graphics that you see floating in space, we place this conversation in a classroom, giving it the stamp of academia. Yet, because some in our society recoil whenever teachers say anything, the makers of this commercial have the teacher say nothing. The educator is silent. Therefore, you still get the air of academia without the negativity that can be associated with some teachers. (Why some in America recoil at teachers – because there has been a relentless attack against teachers by conservatives for over 30 years.)
Now, the announcer comes in and states that at Conoco Phillips, they’re “helping power America’s economy with cleaner, affordable natural gas. More jobs. Less emissions. Good answer for everyone.” (While the announcer is giving his spiel, we see the teacher instructing at the board, but we never hear his voice. We see the students listening intently and we see different graphs, which mean absolutely nothing because they are never put in context. We are to assume that the teacher is expounding on the wonders of natural gas.)
The commercial concludes –
One of the women (can’t really tell which one): so, by reducing the impact of production… and protecting our land and water. White guy: I might get a job once I graduate.
So, to sum up this commercial, natural gas has little or no impact on the environment and can produce tons of jobs.
If you are unaware of the debate, this is one of those commercials that tend to sway you towards natural gas. It doesn’t mention anything aboutfracking. Fracking is shorthand for hydraulic fracturing. This technique is basically pumping water and lubricants at extremely high pressures deep beneath the ground in order to fracture the rock and release the natural gas. What could possibly go wrong with the process that breaks rock a mile or two underground? There’s no way that any of these lubricants which include chemicals like benzene, a known carcinogen, could actually get into our underground water supply. In the town of Dish, Texas the EPA found benzene in the air 55 times higher than allowed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
It is true that burning natural gas produces 40% fewer emissions/greenhouse gases than burning coal. 40% is good. Zero emissions is even better. Our goal must be to stop looking for quick answers to our energy needs. We need to find sustainable, reliable, non-polluting answers to our energy problems. This is not a pipe dream. We just need to focus. This commercial simply paves over some of the environmental dangers of natural gas. It paves over the fact that natural gas is a finite solution. I have a problem with people being able to light their faucets, a phenomenon which has actually happened in areas where fracking has been allowed. We need to be the world leader in solar energy and wind energy and tidal energy. We cannot let the oil and gas industry beat us into submission, yet again. Clever commercials should not steer us away from where we need to be going.
Republican Representative Darrell Issa is leading the charge in the Solyndra investigation. He is waving the flag of the free market. He has got his cliché machine churning out the old tried-and-true capitalism clichés – “government should not be choosing winners and losers in the marketplace,” “government should not play venture capitalist.” I find it interesting that he was requesting the same assistance for a different “clean energy company” in his state. So it would’ve been okay for the government to give money to the company that he wanted but not okay for the government give money to any other company.
Dear Mr. Secretary:
I write to express my support of Aptera Motors’ application for a loan under the Department of Energy’s 136 Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Program (ATVMIP). Funding will allow Aptera to establish U.S. manufacturing facilities for the commercial production of its plug-in and hybrid electric cars. Aptera Motors plans to purchase and equip manufacturing facilities to begin commercial scale production of its energy efficient electric vehicles. Awarding this opportunity to Aptera Motors will greatly assist a leading developer of electric vehicles in my district. Electric vehicle initiatives like Aptera’s will aid U.S long-term energy goals by shifting away from fossil fuels and using viable renewable energy sources like plug-in electric energy. Additionally, Aptera’s vehicles will reduce dependence on foreign oil and enhance energy security.Aptera’s project will also promote domestic job creation throughout California as well as in other states.
Unlike many other electric vehicles, Aptera’s energy efficient electric vehicles have a range of over 100 miles per charge and the possibility to become one of the most energy efficient vehicles in the world. A loan to Aptera will help accelerate the move from gasoline-powered vehicles to cleaner electric vehicles.
I urge you to give Aptera Motors’ Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Program funding application full consideration. If I can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me or my Press Assistant, XXXXX.
Respectfully,
Darrell Issa
Member of Congress.
I find it interesting that, on one hand, Representative Issa things that the government should not be in the venture capital business, but on the other hand he’s happened to ask for money for his own district. Now, I’m not going to talk too much about the fact that there seems to be some campaign donations which may have prompted this outstanding representative to write the letter to the Department of Energy. I will say that this is not the first time that this Republican representative has pushed for green energy in his district. There seems to be a battery plant making renewable lithium ion batteries which he thought would be an excellent investment for the Department of Energy.
This is simply more evidence that Republicans will argue against anything that President Obama and his administration supports.
For three days after September 11, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded commercial aircraft in the U.S., stranding travelers, hindering mail delivery and interrupting courier service, but for scientists at Penn State and the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, the three-day shutdown provided a rare glimpse of the climate effects of jet contrails.
“In the past, some studies have compared the climate of areas with little overhead air traffic with those under heavily used flight paths,” says Dr. Andrew M. Carleton, professor of geography. “Other studies looked at cloud cover before the advent of heavy jet traffic in the 1960s and afterwards, but these studies really provide circumstantial evidence.”
Carleton, and Dr. David Travis, climatologist at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Ryan Lauritsen, then an undergraduate at UW-W, looked at high and low temperatures recorded throughout the country during the three days of commercial air shutdown and at satellite photos taken during that time. The satellite photos show where contrails were occurring, mostly absent over the U.S. between Sept 11-14, but still occurring in Canada and northern Mexico.
“We show that there was an anomalous increase in the average diurnal temperature range for the period Sept. 11-14, 2001,” the researchers reported in today’s (Aug. 8 ) issue of the journal Nature. “Because persisting contrails can reduce the transfer of both incoming solar and outgoing infrared radiation and so reduce the daily temperature range, we attribute at least a portion of this anomaly to the absence of contrails.”
The diurnal temperature range is the difference between the nighttime low temperature and the daytime high temperature, usually for a given day.
“Because the shutdown occurred before noon on Sept. 11, the low temperature had already been reached, so we looked at 24-hour periods beginning with the high on Sept. 11 to the low on Sept. 14,” said Carleton.
The change in the temperature difference was plus 1.1 degree Celsius, equal to plus 2 degrees Fahrenheit, above the 30-year long-term mean diurnal temperature range. The researchers compared the temperature ranges on these three days to those of the three days directly before Sept. 11 and the three days after Sept. 14, finding that the days before and after were similar, but that the three days in question differed by 1.8 degrees Celsius or 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit. (more…)
The other day, when I heard that there was a massive power outage in Southern California I was wondering how that can happen. How is it that something so basic as our electrical power grid can go haywire because somebody in Yuma, Arizona did something wrong? Let’s just think about this for a second. Barney Fife, fictitious character from the Andy Griffin show, is somehow working on a major power line and does something wrong. I don’t blame Barney. People make mistakes all the time. How is it that Barney can do something so catastrophic that over 7 million people lose their power? Where’s the redundancy in the system? Where are the backup generators? Why isn’t the power rerouted from a problem spot to spots that are working?
In an instant that one utility official called ”a blink-of-the-eye second” shortly after 4 p.m., the grid that distributes electricity to the eastern United States became overloaded. As circuit breakers tripped at generating stations from New York to Michigan and into Canada, millions of people were instantly caught up in the largest blackout in American history.
In New York City, power was shut off by officials struggling to head off a wider blackout. Cleveland and Detroit went dark, as did Toronto and sections of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In some areas, the power problems were scattered. The lights remained on in Albany and in Buffalo, but not in nearby suburbs.
So, in August of 2003 45 million Americans lost power, as did another five million in Canada. What happened? The same thing that happens after every other disaster. A task force or a committee is formed. Experts are gathered. Testimony is taken. A huge report is written. Then nothing gets done. Once we heard this was not a terrorist attack it seems that everybody lost interest. The best I can tell is that no specific legislation has been passed by Congress and signed into law address the failures noted in this task force report. It seems as if there was plenty of blame to be handed out but in the end I can’t see where Congress did anything. There is a nice article in the Scientific American which chastises “voluntary standards” which was enacted by The North American Electricity Reliability Council
Fast forward to 2011. The official story that we are hearing is that a utility worker went to fix something in Arizona. Something went wrong and then seven 7 million people were in the dark. 1.9 millions of gallons of sewage sneaked into the water supply. This is yet another example of our desperate need for infrastructure investment. It’s another example of our Congress sitting around giving lip service to the problem (Energy Policy Act of 2005) but not fixing the problem. This is another example of how big business, if left to their own devices, will pay CEOs but won’t invest in research and development. We need to upgrade our electrical grid. We need to use new and reliable technology to prevent this type of failure from ever happening again. We can’t have this. We are better than this.
While new plants are unlikely to be built in the United States over the next 25 years, nuclear power provides 20 percent of our electrical power and is climate friendly. We therefore must make existing reactors safer, develop a new generation of safer designs and prevent nuclear power from facilitating nuclear proliferation. As tragic as the Fukushima disaster has been, it has provided a rare opportunity to advance those goals.
Nuclear physicist Frank von Hippel has a good op-ed today, which the NYT gave the provocative headline, “It Could Happen Here.” The Princeton professor is co-chairman of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. From 1993 to 1994 he was responsible for national security issues in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Here’s more:
From one perspective, nuclear power has been remarkably safe. The 1986 Chernobyl accident will ultimately kill about 10,000 people, mostly from cancer. Coal plants are much deadlier: the fine-particulate air pollution they produce kills about 10,000 people each year in the United States alone.
Of course, for most people this kind of accounting is beside the point. Their horror over even the possibility of a meltdown means that the nuclear-power industry needs constant and aggressive regulation for the public to allow it to stay in business.
Yet despite the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has often been too timid in ensuring that America’s 104 commercial reactors are operated safely. Nuclear power is a textbook example of the problem of “regulatory capture” — in which an industry gains control of an agency meant to regulate it. Regulatory capture can be countered only by vigorous public scrutiny and Congressional oversight, but in the 32 years since Three Mile Island, interest in nuclear regulation has declined precipitously.
In 2002, after the commission retreated from demanding an early inspection of a reactor, Davis-Besse in Ohio, that it suspected was operating in a dangerous condition, its own inspector general concluded that it “appears to have informally established an unreasonably high burden of requiring absolute proof of a safety problem, versus lack of a reasonable assurance of maintaining public health and safety.” (more…)
The lack of attention may help explain how, on an island nation surrounded by clashing tectonic plates that commonly produce tsunamis, the protections were so tragically minuscule compared with the nearly 46-foot tsunami that overwhelmed the Fukushima plant on March 11. Offshore breakwaters, designed to guard against typhoons but not tsunamis, succumbed quickly as a first line of defense. The wave grew three times as tall as the bluff on which the plant had been built.
Japanese government and utility officials have repeatedly said that engineers could never have anticipated the magnitude 9.0 earthquake — by far the largest in Japanese history — that caused the sea bottom to shudder and generated the huge tsunami. Even so, seismologists and tsunami experts say that according to readily available data, an earthquake with a magnitude as low as 7.5 — almost garden variety around the Pacific Rim — could have created a tsunami large enough to top the bluff at Fukushima.
After an advisory group issued nonbinding recommendations in 2002, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant owner and Japan’s biggest utility, raised its maximum projected tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi to between 17.7 and 18.7 feet — considerably higher than the 13-foot-high bluff. Yet the company appeared to respond only by raising the level of an electric pump near the coast by 8 inches, presumably to protect it from high water, regulators said. (more…)
As if Japan does not have enough going on. A 6.0 earthquake rocked the country just yesterday.
The King in Bahrain has declared martial law. Look for Saudi Arabia to have a huge interest in what goes on in Bahrain. The Middle East is really starting to get ugly.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has come up with six simple tests of any corporate tax reform. Seems to be pretty simple and straightforward. This means it will never be adopted.
Maine’s new governor is trying to pay for tax cuts by asking state workers to contribute more to their pensions. Now, where have we seen this before?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Egypt. I’m not exactly sure what she’s doing in Egypt besides giving the reformers a pep talk. Look for more on this soon.
Representative Dennis Kucinichcontinues to try to see Bradley Manning. He’s being blocked by the Department of Defense. I’m not sure how the Department of Defense has the legal authority to block a member of Congress from seeing a prisoner. Doesn’t sound kosher.
NFL Players are considering a boycott of the draft. This is getting very ugly. $9 Billion to split between players and owners… and they can’t figure it out. Don’t look for football this September.
News from Japan continues to worsen. The news is sketchy but it seems that a meltdown is inevitable.
There will be a ripple effect throughout Japan’s economy. As we found out, just two years ago, the world economy is not insulated from a major player like Japan.
I’m working on a post describing why I love Governor Scott Walker. He is exposed the underbelly of the GOP. He is shown the world the Republicans, not just Scott Walker, want to enrich their friends at the expense of everyone else. Republicans of use platitudes about family values and being in the mainstream for years.
Somebody needs to answer over the treatment of Bradley Manning.
To get elected to a major office in United States you don’t necessarily need people to like you. I know this is counterintuitive but this is a fact. Think about Richard Nixon. He was never the most likable president. He split the electorate. Therefore, it is possible to win the White House even if you’re not the most likable guy in the field. The key is, you can’t be the most hated guy. You cannot have highly unfavorable ratings. Unfavorable ratings are hard to change. These are people who will come out and campaign against you because they dislike you so much. So, when you’re looking at polls, you really need to look at candidates on favorability ratings. The higher the on favorability, the less likely that candidate can get any traction. This brings me to Newt Gingrich. I just look at his on favorability ratings and smile. (Sarah Palin is in much better.)
Update:
Looks like Japan is bracing for a nuclear meltdown. This is terrible.
The death toll in Japan continues to rise. Now, there are over 3300 confirmed dead.
Wisconsin Democrats are back in Madison but you know that the Republicans aren’t going to let that stand. The Democrats tried to stand up for principle. You can’t let something like this go. So the Republicans have found the Democrats in contempt of the Senate and as such they aren’t going to be allowed to vote on anything. Beautiful. What jerks.
The second hydrogen explosion in three days rocked Japan’s stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant Monday, sending a massive column of smoke into the air and wounding 6 workers. The plant’s operator said radiation levels at the reactor were still within legal limits.
The explosion at the plant’s Unit 3, which authorities have been frantically trying to cool following a system failure in the wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami, triggered an order for hundreds of people to stay indoors, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said radiation levels at Unit 3 were 10.65 microsieverts, significantly under the 500 microsieverts at which a nuclear operator must file a report to the government.
The blast follows a similar explosion Saturday that took place at the plant’s Unit 1, which injured four workers and caused mass-evacuations.
The estimated death toll from Japan’s disasters climbed past 10,000 Sunday as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns and hundreds of thousands of people struggled to find food and water. The prime minister said it was the nation’s worst crisis since World War II.
Nuclear plant operators worked frantically to try to keep temperatures down in several reactors crippled by the earthquake and tsunami, wrecking at least two by dumping sea water into them in last-ditch efforts to avoid meltdowns.
The situation in Japan is moving quickly and getting worse. The above is from the AP story, “10K dead in Japan amid fears of nuclear meltdowns” from 4:05 EDT Sunday.
UPDATE: The nuclear savvy French “recommended its citizens leave the Tokyo region of Japan on Sunday, citing the risk of further earthquakes and uncertainty about the situation at its damaged nuclear plants.”
I hate Daylight Savings Time. One of the stupidest inventions of all time. Whenever I have to wake up earlier, I think it’s stupid.
I was asked about nuclear power yesterday and I answered in a quick comment. Briefly, the essence of nuclear power is that we are going to create a nuclear reaction, which we are going to control. We then use the heat in the nuclear reaction to superheat water. That water will be turned into steam and the steam will be used to turn turbines to generate electricity. I have three basic problems with nuclear energy. First, the process does not seem to be the most energy-efficient. Secondly, nuclear power plants are extremely expensive to build and therefore require taxpayer money to help these utility companies. As far as I know, the taxpayers are sharing in the risk but not in the benefits. If you want us to fill the bill then we need to sit on the board of directors. Thirdly, when the fuel rods are all used up, I don’t think that we’ve come up with an adequate solution of what to do with the nuclear waste. Burying the waste in a great big hole sounds too much like a Wily E Coyote solution. Trucking nuclear waste all over the country just seems to be a formula for disaster.
Cool new website called DrawCongress.org. This may be a way for us to fix our political districts and nonpolitical manner. I’m hopeful.
It looks like the situation in Japan is more serious than we thought. Looks like we are dealing with a nuclear disaster.
The protesters in Wisconsin will not quit. I’m loving these guys. Personally, I will send them every bit of support that I can afford. They are going to change the political landscape not just in Wisconsin but in the United States for the next 5-10 years.
Michele Bachmann needs a history lesson. The battles of Lexington and Concorde took place in Massachusetts and not New Hampshire.
Don’t let the mainstream media fool you. The disaster that is becoming the NFL’s fight with its players union is more than a disagreement among millionaires. This is about much more than that. Read as much as you can and stay informed. This is an age-old battle between workers and owners. This is about splitting up a $9 billion pie and the owners want a larger share.
The Arab League has voted to support a no-fly zone in Libya. No surprise here. The Arab League understands that stability sells oil.
The art of debate in this country has died over the last 30 years. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were probably the last presidential candidates that actually had real debates. Since then, we’ve had organized photo opportunities. Two candidates will stand on the same stage and recite memorized talking points. Today there will be a lot of discussion about the Harry Reid – Sharron Angle debate. The bottom line is that very few voters will actually see the debate and decide their votes based on the merits of their arguments. The undecideds will continue to be undecided. Those who support each candidate will continue their support in spite of a good or a poor performance.
The Obama Administration has been placed in an interesting position over the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. They don’t want to alienate the armed services. On the other hand, they really want this policy to go away.
Securitizing home mortgages never sounded like a good idea to me. It sounded like a great way to make money for Wall Street but not necessarily a great thing for United States or the American homeowner. It appears that all 50 states are looking into home foreclosures. Paul Krugman has more – Now an awful truth is becoming apparent: In many cases, the documentation doesn’t exist. In the frenzy of the bubble, much home lending was undertaken by fly-by-night companies trying to generate as much volume as possible. These loans were sold off to mortgage “trusts,” which, in turn, sliced and diced them into mortgage-backed securities. The trusts were legally required to obtain and hold the mortgage notes that specified the borrowers’ obligations. But it’s now apparent that such niceties were frequently neglected. And this means that many of the foreclosures now taking place are, in fact, illegal.
And in a rather classic example of why I think the notion of conservative populism is silly on a fundamental level, Glenn Beck urged his followers today to start sending donations directly to corporate interests so the U.S. Chamber of Commerce can buy more elections for far-right candidates. The minions took their orders well — the Chamber’s online donation page crashed today after regular folks tried to give their money to the already-extremely-wealthy business lobby.
A clip-and-save item from Jonathan Cohn on health care reform: “[F]or the sake of my friends at Fox News and anybody who might be listening to them, here are three basic questions to ask every time you hear a story about changes the Affordable Care Act is unleashing: 1) Is something actually changing? 2) Is the change related to the Affordable Care Act? 3) Is the change really for the worse?”
Daniel Luzer: “How much can you pay for college? Remember when $50,000 a year was a lot of money? Now that’s not even surprising. Cost is still going up, a lot, and now $60,000 is right around the corner.”
Newt Gingrich has been out of power now for a decade or two, yet is still dominant figure in the Republican Party and on the Sunday talk shows. Can you think of any Democratic equivalent? There is none. Through hypnosis or magic, Newt Gingrich manages to convince Americans that he is still relevant. He has made two statements in the last couple of days which I think need discussion. About 10 days ago he wrote an op-ed piece which argued for more offshore drilling and then today, on Fox News Sunday, he called for the President to withdraw Elena Kagan’s nomination for the Supreme Court.
Let’s start with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As you know it’s been more than three weeks since the explosion, the death of 11 American workers and the subsequent disastrous spill in the Gulf. The exact circumstances of how this happened are not clear. President Obama was 100% correct when he said that there’s enough blame to go around. Newt Gingrich argues that one disaster should not cripple the industry, nor cause us to abandon offshore drilling. He lists a litany of disasters in aviation, nuclear energy and even the levee failure in New Orleans as examples of Americans investigating a disaster and then moving forward. His take-home message is that we should not abandon offshore drilling. We should learn from this mistake and move forward. I viscerally oppose just about everything that Newt Gingrich says. I know he’s not talking for me or people who think like I do. Instead, he’s talking for the corporations. I’m surprised that there is no acknowledgment that cleaner, less destructive forms of energy exist.
Suppose in 1980, when Ronald Reagan moved into the White House, he had embraced alternative energy. Where would we be now? If Ronald Reagan had poured federal resources into the development of more efficient solar cells, wind power and even tidal power on the coasts, would we have affordable alternative energy by now? You figure that 20 or 30 or even 40% of our energy could now come from alternative renewable sources. Oil would not be eliminated, but oil consumption would have been reduced. How could have been a bad thing? Would we have invaded Iraq? I doubt it. I see America’s consumption of oil as the equivalent of a cocaine addict’s addiction to crack. We have to put down the crack pipe. So, I have no problem with safe offshore drilling (I just think it’s an oxymoron at this time). We need to focus on alternative energy.
Newt Gingrich says Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should be disqualified because she did not allow military recruiters on campus. The case went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled with the military. I’m not sure why this should disqualify her. Newt Gingrich couches his comments in patriotic rhetoric. “We’re fighting two wars.” My answer would be — so? If it is wrong to have military recruiters on campus in peacetime, it would still be wrong in wartime. Therefore, the context is not important. What is important is the reason why Elena Kagan, as Dean of Harvard Law School, opposed having military recruiters on campus. Those recruiters could not guarantee that some students would not be discriminated against. I’m beginning to like Dean Kagan more and more. With conservatives opposing her, maybe I need to crank up my support of her nomination. (To be honest, I’m ambivalent. I agree with Glenn Greenwald that we really should have some idea of how she feels about the major issues of our day. I do not believe that anything that will be said in a Senate hearing will be truly indicative of how she feels. Instead, I suspect what will be said in the Senate Judiciary hearing will be just enough to get her confirmed, but not enough to get a true grasp on many of these issues.)
Searchers found four bodies deep in a West Virginia coal mine shattered by an explosion, raising the death toll to 29 and ending an excruciating week for families holding onto faint hopes that their missing miners had somehow survived.
Crews are to soon begin the bleak task of carrying out 22 bodies from Massey Energy Co.’s Upper Big Branch mine, though officials said Saturday no timetable has been set. Seven bodies were removed after Monday’s blast, making it the worst U.S. coal mining disaster since a 1970 explosion killed 38 in Hyden, Ky.
The investigation into the company that has an extensive list of safety violations at the mine also will begin with President Barack Obama wanting some answers in a report next week and Congress planning hearings.
The discovery of the final four bodies ended days of futile searches by rescue crews that repeatedly battled a volatile mix of poisonous gases and thick smoke that turned them back on three previous attempts. The massive blast also left the inside of the mine a mess of twisted tracks, boulders and debris. (more…)
Solar power technologies could generate 15 percent of America’s power in 10 years, but only if Washington levels the playing field on subsidies, a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) says.
That means either rolling back fossil fuel subsidies, as President Obama proposed earlier this year, or increasing subsidies for clean energy, the association says.
Fossil fuels received $72 billion in total federal subsidies from 2002 to 2008, keeping prices artificially low, according to figures from the Environmental Law Institute (ELI). About 98 percent of that went to conventional energy sources, namely coal and oil, leading to more emissions. The rest, $2.3 billion, was pumped into a new technology to trap and store carbon dioxide spewed by coal plants.
During that same period, solar got less than $1 billion, according to the SEIA, a trade group representing 1,100 solar companies across the nation.
I’m not sure that trading one industry who’s in on the public dime for another is a winning strategy.
If president Barack Obama has any thoughts of becoming a two-term president, he has got to create jobs. The jobs numbers for June were not abysmal but they weren’t good either. I talk with Dr. Heidi Shierholz from the Economic Policy Institute. She is a Masters and Ph.D. in economics.
The American economy has now lost 6.5 million jobs since the start of this recession. Last month we lost 467,000 jobs. During the first quarter of this year we lost an average of 691,000 jobs per month. So the jobs market may be improving. I mean were losing jobs at a slower rate. This is of little comfort to those were losing jobs.
Most of the job losses are being suffered in those areas of the economy that are cyclical — construction and manufacturing. Unfortunately, men tend to gravitate to these types of jobs. Men have been particularly hurt by this economic downturn. The unemployment rate for all men is 10.6%. For women it is 8.3%. The unemployment rate in the Black community is 14.7%, the Hispanic community – 12.2% and the white community – 8.7%.
We heard lots of happy talk last month when the economy lost only 345,000 jobs in May (I still find it weird to say that we lost ONLY 345,000 jobs). The New York Times quoted chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group, Stuart Hoffman as saying, “The freefall in the job market does appear to be tapering off. If the prelude to an economic and job recovery later this year.”
We, as progressives, must watch this new climate change Bill. It has to have plenty of money for green jobs. This has to act as a second stimulus, in my opinion. Dr. Shierholz mentions that this economic downturn is far from over. We will begin to see increases in our GDP and in the stock market before will see significant job creation. Significant job creation may not be until the third quarter of next year.
In spite of the depressing news, this is an excellent interview on the economy. Enjoy.
The Errington Thompson show airs every Saturday morning at 9 a.m. (EST). Live streaming. Podcasts can be heard on iTunes and here.
The Errington Thompson Show 7-8-09 with Heidi Shierholz from the Economic Policy Institutue[ 13:36 ]Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
The oil industry has asked us (no, wait…) told us to bend over and relax for the last 15 years. Now, it appears, the tables have turned. OPEC met last week with a plan to decrease production. The meeting ended without an agreement. Experts are now talking about falling gas prices… to falling to less than one dollar per gallon.
Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, full-time sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
