Conservatives Falsely Assert That Green Economy Legislation Would Impose $3,100 Tax On Families
Conservatives Falsely Assert That Green Economy Legislation Would Impose $3,100 Tax On Families
Conservatives in Congress are resting their objections to effective green economy legislation on a bogus stat. Conservative leaders like Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) are attacking the cap-and-trade proposal before Congress by claiming that it would “cost every American family up to $3,100 per year in higher energy prices.”
This is a deliberate lie.
They seem to be getting this number from an intentional misinterpretation of a 2007 study performed by a group of researchers at the MIT.
In an interview with PolitiFact, John Reilly, an MIT professor and one of the authors of the study, explained about this $3,100 claim:
“It’s just wrong. It’s wrong in so many ways it’s hard to begin.”” [...]
“Someone from the House Republicans had called me (March 20) and asked about this,” Reilly said. “I had explained why the estimate they had was probably incorrect and what they should do to correct it, but I think this wrong number was already floating around by that time.”
House Republicans apparently took the total revenues from the hypothetical cap and trade system that MIT analyzed and crudely divided it by the number of households in America, getting approximately $3,100 per family.
What they don’t mention, however, is that not only did John Reilly explicitly tell them that this was an inappropriate way to do this calculation, but that MIT had determined the net welfare effect on a typical family and the burden would be less than 1/40th what they claim, and wouldn’t occur until 2015.
As PolitiFact explains: “The report did include an estimate of the net cost to individuals, called the “welfare” cost. It would be $30.89 per person in 2015, or $79 per family if you use the same average household size the Republicans used of 2.56 people.” In exchange, we’d get a clean & renewable energy economy, decreased reliance on oil, and a safer climate for the world.
The reason Boehner’s methodology is totally inappropriate?
“That’s just not how economists calculate the cost of a tax proposal, Reilly said. The tax might push the price of carbon-based fuels up a bit, but other results of a cap-and-trade program, such as increased conservation and more competition from other fuel sources, would put downward pressure on prices. Moreover, consumers would get some of the tax back from the government in some form. [In this case,President Obama wants to use revenues from cap-and-trade to fund a tax cut for 95% of working families]“
When conservatives tell you you’d see your energy bills go up $3,100 every year, it’s not distortion or spin, it’s just a lie.
Cross-posted at ThinkProgress.
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Sebelius: As Insurance Commissioner, I Saw Rationing Of Care ‘On A Regular Basis By Private Insurers’
Sebelius: As Insurance Commissioner, I Saw Rationing Of Care ‘On A Regular Basis By Private Insurers’
Today, the Senate HELP committee held confirmation hearings for Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Sebelius sparred with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — who proposed the administration adopt his hackneyed campaign health care plan — and pushed back against Republican concerns that comparative effectiveness research would tie doctors’ hands:
Watch a compilation:
Sebelius stressed that as insurance commissioner in Kansas, she fought private insurer efforts to ration care:
I can’t tell you that I’m not concerned, ultimately, not with comparative effectiveness research but ultimately reaching a point where in order to control costs there is some effort to ration health care. I frankly, as insurance commissioner where I served for eight years saw it on a regular basis by private insures, who often made decisions overruling suggestions that doctors would make for their patients that they weren’t going to be covered. And a lot of what we did in the office of the Kansas Insurance Department was to go to bat for those patients to make sure that the benefits they had actually paid for were ones that were delivered.
Sessions Calls Spending Freeze ‘Perfectly Responsible,’ Refuses To Say Where He Would Cut Budget
Sessions Calls Spending Freeze ‘Perfectly Responsible,’ Refuses To Say Where He Would Cut Budget
As debate on the 2010 budget began in the Senate today, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) appeared on CNBC to explain an amendment to the bill that he is proposing. Sessions’ plan is to implement a two year federal spending freeze, to be followed by three years with no more than one percent spending growth. Sessions characterized the amendment as “perfectly responsible.”
Noting that “it’s very easy to throw rocks and shoot spitballs,” CNBC’s Donny Deutsch then asked Sessions three times where in the budget he would cut spending. Sessions refused to answer each time, finally claiming that he can’t specify cuts because he doesn’t “have access” to the same information that President Barack Obama does. Watch it:
Of course, a spending freeze is only “perfectly responsible” if you find it perfectly responsible to endanger the economic recovery with anti-stimulus. Sessions doesn’t seem to grasp this at all, as his justification for the freeze is that the stimulus was enacted.
And Deutsch, who is emerging as the occasional voice of reason at CNBC, was spot-on in pressing Sessions as to where he would make cuts. As Hilzoy noted, Republicans have essentially “proposed a whole raft of new tax cuts and only one specific spending cut, ‘ending the bailouts.’” Indeed, there are legitimate debates to be had about priorities in the budget — and there are probably woefully inefficient and fraud-ridden programs that can be pared back — but the Republican position has been to advocate the “dramatic effect” of a spending freeze. Given the economic climate that we’re in, that’s simply not productive.
Right-Wing Climate Denier Attacks Carol Browner As Having ‘Little Respect For The Law’ And ‘Less For Science’
Right-Wing Climate Denier Attacks Carol Browner As Having ‘Little Respect For The Law’ And ‘Less For Science’
National Center for Public Policy Research president Amy Ridenour explains to Congress why she laundered $2.5 million for Jack Abramoff.
In a widely reprinted column, the National Center for Public Policy Research’s (NCPPR) David Ridenour attacks White House energy and climate change adviser Carol Browner as a “socialist” and “zealot” with “so much baggage she could be an airline”:
As little respect as she has shown for the law, she has shown even less for science.
Ridenour’s arguments include the bizarre Drudge Report attack that Browner is a socialist, accusing Browner of complicity in an EPA case for which she was fully acquitted, and the repetition of a 1995 claim of “illegal lobbying” by then-Congressman David McIntosh (R-IN), which the New York Times explained then involved “doing things that have long been routine functions of officials in the executive branch, practices that lawyers in Republican and Democratic administrations alike have declared legal.”
In fact, it is the National Center for Public Policy Research that has little respect for the law, and even less for science:
Little Respect For The Law: Laundering $2.5 million for Jack Abramoff. Jack Abramoff was a member of NCPPR’s Board of Directors; he resigned in October 2004. From 1999 to 2001, NCPPR wrote “repeated articles that aligned with the positions of the lobbyist’s clients.” In October 2002, Abramoff directed the Mississippi Band of Choctaws to give $1 million to NCPPR, and then told Amy Ridenour to distribute the funds to front organizations he controlled. In June 2003, Greenberg Traurig, the firm that employed Abramoff, sent $1.5 million to NCPPR, which Ridenour again distributed to front organizations controlled by Abramoff. Amy Ridenour later testified to Congress that she was an unwitting dupe. [Raw Story, 3/8/06]
Less Respect For Science: NCPPR Is Part Of The Right-Wing Climate-Denier Machine. The National Center for Public Policy Research was founded in 1982 by Amy Ridenour, David’s wife and a compatriot of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist in the leadership of the College Republicans in 1981. NCPPR is a member organization of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Cooler Heads Coalition and the right-wing State Policy Network. In 25 years of operation, NCPPR has received about $280,000 from Exxon Mobil, in part to fund its “Envirotruth” climate denial website. [ExxonSecrets, SourceWatch]
Less Respect For Science: NCPPR Uses African Poverty to Attack Climate Change Action. Using its Project 21 front group, NCPPR put out a press release supporting CEI’s Third-World vs. Gore campaign on Amy Ridenour’s blog. It attacked “Gore and his celebrity friends” for “living opulent lifestyles” while “many in the Third World – particularly those in Africa – are literally dying due to a lack of adequate power, and the catastrophe that could result from imposing anti-global warming emissions regulations on power generation in these areas.” In fact, Africa is “one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability,” with between 75 and 250 million Africans facing increasing water scarcity by 2020, potential food shortages and a rise in disease. [Project 21, 3/10/2008] [IPCC, 2007]
This hit piece was published in several right-wing publications, including Investor’s Business Daily, Robert Decherd’s Providence Journal, and Rev. Sung Yun Moon’s Washington Times.
Foreign Policy Initiative: Housebroken Neocons?
Foreign Policy Initiative: Housebroken Neocons?
Attending the Foreign Policy Initiative’s inaugural conference on Afghanistan today at the Mayflower Hotel, I was struck by how very little that was said was controversial. And that’s really the point — in the wake of Iraq debacle, for which the neocons are widely and rightly held responsible, it simply won’t do to bang the drum for American military maximalism. One has to be a bit slicker than that. And these guys are nothing if not slick.
As their website makes clear, FPI intends to re-brand and mainstream-ize neoconservatism as a “reasonable” and “moderate” — and of course “serious” — alternative to the rising tide of isolationist sentiment in American politics (the fact that no such tide of isolationist sentiment is rising in American politics is entirely beside the point.) This strategy was evidenced in the morning’s first panel, as Robert Kagan praised President Obama’s “gutsy and correct decision” on Afghanistan, but warned that “the United States is at a tipping point between desire to maintain extensive engagement in the world, as it has done since World War II, and the temptation to pull back…[Obama] has decided to maintain the commitment.”
This is a pretty obvious strawman (one that Kagan built more fully in this article last spring, arguing that American foreign policy has essentially always been neoconservative.) There is no real substantive argument for America “disengaging” from the world. There is, on the other hand, a real debate over the nature of that engagement, a debate that the neoconservatives have largely lost. No longer do we insist “with us or with the terrorists.” We now understand that international partnerships and multilateral institutions are key elements of America’s national security architecture. No longer do we insist that we are in a “global war on terror.” We now accept that we face a number of challenges from discrete groups and organizations, some of which work together, some of which compete with each other. No longer do we insist that “we don’t negotiate with evil; we defeat it.” It is now broadly understood that we do negotiate with our enemies in order to gain strategic advantage over other enemies. Ten years ago, the sponsors of today’s event would have condemned all of this as “weakness.” Today it was simply accepted as wisdom.
TARP IG: ‘Complaints That It Was Impractical’ For Banks To Track TARP Funds ‘Were Unfounded’
TARP IG: ‘Complaints That It Was Impractical’ For Banks To Track TARP Funds ‘Were Unfounded’
Today, Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the TARP, appeared before the Senate Finance Committee to lay out his efforts to track TARP money. Barofsky explained that his office has asked for and received responses from all of the TARP recipients regarding their use of the funds, which he claimed directly rebuts the Treasury Department’s charge that tracking the money is “challenging at best.” As Barofsky said:
One thing, however, was apparent from the responses – complaints that it was impractical or impossible for banks to detail how they used TARP funds were unfounded. While some banks indicated that they had procedures for monitoring their use of TARP money, others did not but were still able to give information on their use of funds.
This is a big improvement over where we were just a few months ago, when the banks simply refused to provide information about where their TARP funds were going. Whether they’ve broken down and provided answers because someone is actually putting some effort into getting them, or because of the bad PR connected to all the secrecy is anyone’s guess, but this is a promising development.
So where is the money going? Last week, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that banks were using “some” TARP money appropriately. In a report he provided to the committee, Barofsky fleshed this out a bit more:
Respondents provided diverse answers to how funds received have been used such as to strengthen the capital base of individual banks providing a foundation for lending activities; retiring debt, purchasing mortgage backed securities, increasing credit lines, making loans, etc.
Now, its not immediately worrisome that banks are buying mortgage backed securities, but as we noted last week, some bailed-out banks may be speculating on toxic assets with TARP money. This is something worth keeping an eye on.
Barofsky said that his report “makes an even stronger case for a recommendation we made back in December and which up until now has not been adopted — Treasury should require TARP recipients to monitor their use of funds and be required to provided certified reports to Treasury on how they are using taxpayer money.”
Elizabeth Warren, chair of the TARP’s Congressional Oversight Panel, reiterated this, and told the committee that “we do not seem to be a priority for the Treasury Department.” Indeed, while oversight seems to have improved slightly, the TARP is still not transparent enough to prevent the banks from gambling with taxpayer money.
Pollack Explains Health Coalition: ‘If The Ultimate Question Is Where Did I Hammer Karen Ignagni, That’s Not What Happened’
Pollack Explains Health Coalition: ‘If The Ultimate Question Is Where Did I Hammer Karen Ignagni, That’s Not What Happened’
Six months ago, a diverse group of stakeholders — Families USA, NFIB, Business Roundable, America’s Health Insurance Plans, PhRMA, among others — began holding a series of Health Reform Dialogues to, as they put it, “create a forum outside of the political arena for exchanging views on tough policy issues.”
Last week, the group released a document spelling out “a number of policy approaches where they reached consensus” and pledged to work with lawmakers and each other to support the enactment of comprehensive reform this year.
The group called for expanding income eligibility levels for Medicaid, providing tax credits for more affordable coverage, improving prevention and care coordination and ensuring that “all Americans purchase or otherwise obtain health insurance.” But the strange-bedfellow coalition skirted some of the more controversial issues of health reform such as “whether a government-run health plan should be available to compete with private companies” or whether the government should require employers to offer coverage.
Two labor unions abandoned the coalition after the group couldn’t agree on a public option and one participant in the conversation said the group’s recommendations were “[a] day late and a dollar short.”
Yesterday, in a wide ranging discussion about health care reform, ThinkProgress asked Families USA President and CEO Ron Pollack to respond to critics who question the value of broad-based coalitions:
I don’t think this is designed to say, ‘Hey, you gave this, you gave that.’ What is at the heart of the process is to try to figure out where is there common ground that is clearly going to be part of the debate.…in the process, it I think we found that unlike past debates where you didn’t even have these conversations and you couldn’t even identify where you actually agreed, that there was this assumption one group was totally for good stuff, or another group is totally in favor of bad stuff, and there’s nothing in between. If the ultimate question is where did I hammer [AHIP President and CEO] Karen Ignagni over the head and get her to yell, ‘I give up! I give up!’ that’s not what happened.
Watch it:
Pollack argued that the group’s pledge to expand access to coverage by subsidizing coverage for poor Americans and expanding access to Medicaid could cover up-to 90 percent of the uninsured, and pushed back against critics who argue that the group’s recommendations are a boon to insurance industry profits. “I think having AHIP engage in a way that is designed to enable insurance market reform to take place in a way that fits their business model, but yet helps people who are currently shut out of the healtchare system — I think that’s a step in the right direction,” Pollack explained.
Pollack predicted an 80% success rate and suggested that the major stakeholders would not oppose the whole of health care reform (but may run ads criticizing certain aspects of the proposal). Ultimately, everyone will have to come to the table to achieve bipartisan reform, Pollack said. “The first attempt will be made to try to do this in a bipartisan fashion. But it takes two to tango. And we saw with the economic recovery legislation, we didn’t have two folks tangoing. You had one doing a tango and the other doing a break-dance, and so that didn’t quite work,” Pollack explained.
House Energy Leaders Unveil Green Economy Legislation
House Energy Leaders Unveil Green Economy Legislation
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) have unveiled green economy legislation today that will set national standards for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and global warming pollution — but leaves open whether polluters will be subsidized to achieve those standards.
Green economy legislation is needed now, for three key reasons:
Repowering A Healthy Economy. According to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a federal standard requiring all utilities to obtain 25 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025 would create 297,000 new domestic jobs and save consumers $64.3 billion in lower electricity and natural gas bills. Clean energy standards will reduce the 24,000 premature deaths, 550,000 asthma attacks, and 38,000 heart attacks caused each year by power plant pollution, disproportionately hurting vulnerable children and the elderly.
Restoring Economic Leadership. Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr warned Congress in January that “of the top 30 companies in solar, wind, and advanced battery technologies in the world today, only six of them are U.S. firms.” Doerr called for “a predictable price tag be put on greenhouse gases in order to encourage the massive investment and innovation necessary to make the American economy competitive in coming years.”
Stopping Global Catastrophe. The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change has devised this visual representation of the risks of global temperature rise if we don’t implement green economy policies. Any rise over 2°C carries high risks of worldwide devastation.
NO POLICY GREEN ECONOMY
Waxman and Markey are releasing their discussion draft today, with an aggressive schedule to get the legislation to the House floor in less than two months:
– March 31, 2009: Discussion draft
– April 6 – 17: Representatives return home for spring district work period
– Week of April 20: Hearings
– Week of April 27: Energy and Environment subcommittee mark up
– Week of May 4: Full committee hearing
– May 11: Full committee mark up begins
House Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) told E&E News that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “plan floor votes in both chambers by the end of July,” with a conference “by the end of the fall.”
Congressmen Waxman and Markey continue to provide invaluable leadership toward fulfilling President Obama’s goal of implementing a cap and trade system to limit carbon pollution. The only substantive questions remaining concern how this system is fashioned. I agree with President Obama’s call for auctioning 100% of allowances and using the revenues to help us transition to the clean energy economy. Giving away pollute-free cards defeats that objective. Additionally, our proposed Safe Markets Development Act offers a reasonable way to strengthen their proposal by addressing the legitimate concerns of those who fear manipulation and speculation of the carbon market.
PNAC Activist Downplays PNAC Role In Iraq War
PNAC Activist Downplays PNAC Role In Iraq War
George Packer has a couple of posts on Kristol and Kagan’s neo-neocon Foreign Policy Initiative. Packer’s comments on the outsize role that the neoconservative Project for the New American Century played in getting up the Iraq war drew a protest from PNAC’s Gary Schmitt, who writes that “no one who ever worked for PNAC or was on its board worked in the Bush administration. Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, not PNAC.”
That is true. Similarly, George W. Bush invaded Iraq, not PNAC. But it’s pretty safe to say that neither the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act nor the 2003 Iraq invasion would have happened without PNAC’s activism. For a sense of how this worked in regard to the former, read former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter’s account of how PNAC board member Randy Scheunemann — who was then national security adviser to Trent Lott, and later John McCain’s foreign policy adviser, and then a lobbyist for Georgia, and then John McCain’s foreign policy adviser again — leaked a UN weapons report on Iraqi WMD (which turned out to be false) to con artist Ahmad Chalabi, who then provided it to the Washington Post.
The resulting story provided the major impetus for the passing of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Iraq the policy of the United States. The piece is fascinating on a number of levels, notably for how pleased with themselves Chalabi’s little cabal of neocon supporters were with their plan to install him as the new post-invasion Iraqi leader, how up front they all were about their scheme to get America into a war, and how completely wrong they all turned out to be about what would happen afterward.
As for Gary Schmitt, he himself served with Scheunemann as an officer on the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a front organization founded in 2002 in collaboration with members of the Bush administration to publicly lobby for the Iraq invasion. So while it may be true that “no one who ever worked for PNAC or was on its board worked in the Bush administration” (though both Schmitt and Scheunemann worked as Pentagon consultants) the clear fact is that PNAC and those closely associated with it played a key roles both in laying the early legislative groundwork for the Iraq war, and then later in developing and disseminating Bush administration propaganda leading to the invasion.
The WonkLine: March 31, 2009
The WonkLine: March 31, 2009
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 10 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Climate
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) are unveiling green economy legislation today that will set national standards for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and global warming pollution — but leaves open whether polluters will be subsidized to achieve those standards.
Biotech giant Monsanto has not only launched an ad campaignn aimed at food’s “thought leaders,” it’s funding “a new Facebook presence, Twitter stream, and a blog, Monsanto According to Monsanto.”
Charlie Brandts, a White House carpenter for 25 years, is now the First Beekeeper.
Health Care
Speaking with the Health Affairs Blog, Jonathan Oberlander speculated that “whether comprehensive health reform passes this year is likely to depend on whether Senate Democrats are willing to use the so-called ‘budget reconciliation process‘.”
Joe Paduda explains “why a public health plan option isn’t anti-competitive.” “Even if a service area was dominated by a public plan, a private plan that did a really good job of keeping members healthy and out of the hospital would deliver lower costs – even if their hospital stays, when they did occur, were more expensive.”
Some health reformers “wonder whether [Sen.] Baucus may strain too hard to cut a deal with Republicans” on health care reform.
National Security
Last year, the Pentagon experienced “staggering” cost overruns — totaling nearly $300 billion — on major weapons system development, according to a new GAO report.
The United States will commit $40 million toward the cost of holding elections in Afghanistan this summer, Secretary of State Clinton told reporters yesterday.
National Security Adviser Jones said that in Afghanistan, “we’re trying to put a three-legged stool together. We have done the security leg pretty well, but we haven’t done the other two legs — that is, economic development, and rule-of-law and government.”
Economy
The New York Times finds that “facing fallen endowments and needier students, many colleges are looking more favorably on wealthier applicants as they make their admissions decisions this year.”
The House and the Senate “will take aim this week at the credit card industry, sparking a lobbying frenzy by banks, card issuers and consumer groups.”
Noam Scheiber presents a new theory of the AIG catastrophe: “[T]he difference between a successful risk enterprise and an unsuccessful one often has less to do with the complexity of its schemes than with its leaders’ fanaticism about discipline.”
Wagoner Heads Out, As Banking Executives Stay Put
Wagoner Heads Out, As Banking Executives Stay Put
Today, President Barack Obama issued an ultimatum to the American auto industry, “laying out strict standards that the carmakers must meet to get more government aid.”
This comes one day after General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner resigned at the White House’s request. As the Washington Post reported, “the administration effectively rejected as untenable the business plans that GM and Chrysler had submitted to restructure their companies,”a failure for which Wagoner was the casualty.
Wagoner’s ouster does bring up an interesting question, though: why is the administration okay with dismissing the head of an auto company, while going to great lengths not to get involved with personnel decisions at federally bailed-out financial institutions (aside from AIG)? As Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) put it, “when will the Wall Street CEOs receiving [bailout] funds summon the honor to resign? Will this White House ever bother to raise the issue? I doubt it.”
There does seem to be a bit of a double standard when it comes to the respective rescues of the financial system and the auto industry, even beyond management decisions. Ali Frick at ThinkProgress noted that during the AIG bonus debacle, AIG’s contracts were considered sacrosanct, while United Auto Workers has repeatedly agreed to “make major concessions in its contracts,” in an attempt to make the auto companies viable.
So what’s the difference? Tim Fernholz posited that “it’s not a problem of political clout that allows bankers to be more insulated from political pressure, it’s a problem of knowledge“:
Though the auto industry has a lot of problems that will be difficult to solve, those problems are easier to understand and chart, because at the end of the day, manufacturing is a comprehensible industry. Meanwhile, the banks aren’t making anything but bets, and they’re making insanely complicated bets that are not clearly understood.
Fernholz added that he believes that “the administration is much more likely to make bolder moves” once the banks’ stress tests are complete. And maybe this will be true, if the stress tests confirm that the banks are in far worse shape than previously thought.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the government has expected the auto companies to profoundly change the way in which they do business, while not asking for the same level of change from the financial giants. Even within AIG, executives called the Credit Risk Committee, who “oversaw some of the company’s biggest bets,” are still plying their trade.
So as Paul Kedrosky put it, if you want to make catastrophic mistakes and keep your job, “you need to do it in a place where your errors nearly take down global capitalism.” Otherwise, “keep your resume up-to-date.”
Hudson Institute’s Dennis Avery: ‘I Stand Corrected’ On My Lie That Carbon Dioxide Levels Are Declining
Hudson Institute’s Dennis Avery: ‘I Stand Corrected’ On My Lie That Carbon Dioxide Levels Are Declining
Conservative economist Dennis Avery, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and one of Marc Morano’s climate denial jokers, claimed today on a right-wing website that the “atmospheric CO2 levels at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory have declined since 2004″:
How can this be when humans keep emitting more greenhouse gases? Could declining atmospheric CO2 levels mean that the whole Greenhouse Warming theory is collapsing?
In fact, carbon dioxide levels measured since 1958 at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mauna Loa Observatory have continued their inexorable rise, going from an average of 376 to 385 parts per million from 2004 to 2009:
Avery’s claim was based on a post on Morano climate denial joker Anthony Watts‘ blog, which implied that carbon dioxide growth rates have been going down. As Joe Romm noted at Climate Progress, “Dennis Avery doesn’t know the difference between growth and growth rate.”
In a telephone interview with the Wonk Room, Avery admitted his error:
I stand corrected . . . I apparently misstated the case.
Furthermore, the post Avery misinterpreted was nonsensical as well. Craig Loehle, principal scientist with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, the forest products industry’s “research institute,” drew an “eyeball trend line for the peaks” of a chart of monthly carbon dioxide growth rates by Morano joker Alan Siddons. Despite Loehle’s ability to draw lines on charts, carbon dioxide is piling up in the atmosphere faster than ever:
To reiterate, carbon dioxide levels are continuing to increase. And the increase is getting faster. In the 1960s, carbon dioxide levels were going up an average rate of less than one part per million each year. Since 2000, carbon dioxide levels have been rising at an average annual rate of two parts per million. Avery and Loehle weren’t just wrong — they’re dead wrong.
The Wonk Room appreciates Avery’s willingness to admit one mistake. But we doubt this marks the beginning of a trend.
Betsy McCaughey: Health Care Reform Will Lead To Natasha Richardson-Style Deaths
Betsy McCaughey: Health Care Reform Will Lead To Natasha Richardson-Style Deaths
Betsy McCaughey is back. This time, she has stuffed the entire stimulus bill into a large white binder– a sort of fundamentalist bible McCaughey uses to misinterpret the intentions of the legislation. McCaughey is still preaching that the stimulus bill contains provisions that “provide less care” and tie doctors hands in prescribing procedures — but this time, she’s added to her sermon.
In her new comeback tour of Fox News Channel programming, McCaughey regurgitates insurance-industry arguments against the public plan option and argues that the government will import Canadian-style rationing into the American health system. Short: We will all end up like Natasha Richardson:
- On public option: “The public plan will pay doctors and hospitals below market rates, as Medicaid and Medicare currently do, and doctors and hospitals will have to shift those costs to the private health plans, including the one you get at work, and therefore those premiums in the private sector will go up to unaffordable levels.”
- Cost benefit killed Richardson: HOST: So she’s lying there, they have a CT scanner – and it’s my understanding that we don’t know ether or not they used it. But there’s no doubt that what you’re talking about, this cost-benefit analysis, went into that decision. McCAUGHEY: Exactly.
- Critical choice for Americans: The really critical issues here for all Americans is to think twice about whether they want to lower their healthcare costs if it will mean that they don’t get the care they need to live.
Watch a video compilation:
McCaughey’s connection between Canadian single payer health care and Richarson’s death is unclear. McCaughey quotes Dr. Saba, an emergency room doctor at Lachine Hospital, as saying that the hospital had to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before performing a CT scan. It’s unknown if a scan was performed, but McCaughey certainly misquotes the doctor. He discusses cost benefit in the context of deploying a medical rapid response unit — “You have to do a cost-benefit analysis,” Saba said. “It takes time to get the helicopter’s medical team assembled, get the helicopter to the location of the patient, pack in the patient and fly the helicopter to Montreal” — not a life-saving test. In fact, while the United States is generally better equipped to handle medical emergencies, we consider similar factors before dispatching a medical unit.
In fact, any health care system operates on criteria that are based on general characteristics, not individual patients. A fever of 101 degrees triggers a different medical response than a fever of 98 degrees. Similarly, a hospital won’t dispatch a helicopter for someone who broke his leg, but would send a rapid response unit if paramedics believed that the patient sustained internal injuries. In 2005, a study concluded that “60 people have have died in 84 air ambulance crashes since 2000 — “more than double the number of crashes during the previous five years.” The report cited “a 2002 study in The Journal of Trauma that found helicopters were used “excessively” for patients who weren’t severely injured.”
In Canada, publicly financed health insurance plans provide universal coverage to the entire population “while constraining spending and largely protecting the clinical autonomy of physicians.” Canada has lower overall costs, administrative efficiency, and higher satisfaction rates, but it is not without it’s problems. McCoughey’s modus operandi is to distort certain inefficiencies — like longer waiting lines for specialty procedures — and suggest that American reformers would simply copy-and-paste the system.
Rep. Ryan Clueless About The Deficit Effect Of His Radical Tax Cuts
Rep. Ryan Clueless About The Deficit Effect Of His Radical Tax Cuts
Last week, we noted that NPR let Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) trash the spending in the Obama administration’s proposed budget, without having to answer for the deficit effects of his own proposal to slash taxes for the wealthy and corporations. In an appearance on C-Span yesterday, Ryan did not get off so easily, and his meandering answer about small businesses and the stimulus made it abundantly clear that he has no idea what his tax cuts would mean for the deficit:
Q: What is it going to mean for the deficit? You made a lot of hay about deficit spending with the Democrats’ budget. It seems like a tax cut is only going to add to that deficit.
RYAN: We think we need to make up that difference on spending. We think we need to grow out the economy with pro-growth tax policy…Look, we have a massive deficit right now, you can’t balance the budget tomorrow because it’s out of control, but we need to show the economy and the American people that we have a plan and a glide path to get our fiscal house in order and to grow our economy by helping entrepreneurs and small business people, not by raising their taxes, but by lowering their taxes.
Watch it:
Kudos to Politico’s Patrick O’Connor for asking Ryan this question, even if Ryan artfully dodged the answer. Fortunately, Citizens for Tax Justice ran the numbers on Ryan’s income tax proposals. Here’s what they found:
- Over a fourth of taxpayers, mostly low-income families, would pay more in taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the President’s plan.
- The richest one percent of taxpayers would pay $100,000 less, on average, under the House GOP plan than they would under the President’s plan.
- The income tax proposals in the House GOP plan…would cost over $300 billion more than the Obama income tax cuts in 2011 alone.
That’s $300 billion more annually, without factoring in the cost of cutting the corporate tax and eliminating the capitals gains tax, both of which Ryan also proposed. As Lee Fang pointed out on ThinkProgress, Ryan conceded that his budget would increase the deficit “a lot.” It might behoove him to figure out how much of that comes from his radical, regressive tax plan.
Triggering A Green Recovery At The G20 Summit
Triggering A Green Recovery At The G20 Summit
Written by Alexandra Kougentakis, a Center for American Progress Action Fund Fellows Assistant, and Brad Johnson.
At the G20 Summit in London on April 2, the 20 largest economies in the world, from the United States and the European Union to Russia and China, will discuss a response to the global financial crisis. Using a study first presented at the Center for American Progress, Germany will argue that a coordinated effort by the G20 to fight climate change will be essential to fighting the global recession. “Towards a Global Green Recovery: Recommendations for Immediate G20 Action,” by Ottmar Edenhofer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PICIR) and Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics (LSE), notes that the G20 has the power to “trigger a global green recovery”:
As G20 countries account for roughly three quarters of global gross national product, energy consumption and carbon emissions, their combined efforts constitute a critical mass to trigger a global green recovery.
As the nation with the largest economy in the G20 and with one of the top greenhouse gas emission levels, the United States has a particular responsibility to act. The recently passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act devotes one of every ten dollars to making the kinds of green investments recommended by the Center for American Progress’s Green Recovery report and this new Potsdam-LSE report, according to an advance copy acquired by the Wonk Room.
The authors note that “the costs of action are likely to be much less than the costs of inaction.” Stern, who concluded in 2006 that a failure to address climate change could lead to “a 20% reduction in consumption per head, now and into the future,” has warned that more recent findings show his report actually underestimated the threats of climate change.
This new report accordingly states that “the risks from any given global temperature increase are greater than previously thought.” Even as “emissions are increasing at a faster pace,” “the planet’s capacity to sequester carbon in natural sinks is decreasing.” Therefore, “seven strategic areas for G20 action” are identified to build a global green recovery that will address short term economic decline while emphasizing a long-term strategy of sustainable growth:
- Implement across-the-board energy efficiency improvements
- Convert to low carbon economic infrastructure through physical upgrades
- Support clean-technology markets in renewable energy and energy efficiency
- Initiate flagship projects to improve technological knowledge and increase innovation
- Enhance international research and development (R&D) efforts, including international collaborative projects
- Incentivize investment in low-carbon growth by setting a global price of carbon
- Coordinate financial and climate change mitigation efforts
Specific recommendations include:
– “Ensure that new infrastructure investments are ‘climate-proof,’ i.e. that they take into account the impacts of unavoidable climate change”
– “Review and amend national procurement guidelines with the aim of going ‘carbon-neutral‘”
– “The development of a G20 Strategic Energy Technology Plan . . . which could serve to streamline R&D efforts globally”
– “Appoint ‘Energy and Climate Sherpas‘ to coordinate follow-up meetings and ensure that momentum in developing policies is maintained”
Edenhofer and Stern recommend “linking regional schemes” to limit global warming emissions in the manner of the International Climate Action Partnership, a 2007 coalition of 15 countries and regions that have already implemented or are actively pursuing the implementation of carbon markets through mandatory cap and trade systems. Interlinked regional carbon markets can “pave the way for the negotiations on a global climate agreement, which will take place in Copenhagen next December.”
The world’s fossil-fueled economy is now sagging dangerously even as its continuation will make climate change unmanageable and catastrophic. By making strong investments in climate-friendly sectors, “Towards a Global Green Recovery” declares that “a global green recovery can deliver immediate and long-term economic benefits, cut the risk of dangerous climate change, reduce energy insecurity and competition for natural resources, and prepare the ground for a successful post-Kyoto agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009.”
Kristol: Accountability Is For Suckers
Kristol: Accountability Is For Suckers
Appearing on CSPAN’s Washington Journal last Friday, Bill Kristol was confronted by a caller on his role and that of his magazine, The Weekly Standard, as the main ideological drivers behind the Iraq war. As Think Progress noted, Kristol showed absolutely no remorse for having been completely wrong in almost every particular about the war’s consequences for the United States, blithely asserting that “I think the war was right, and I think we’ve succeeded in the war.”
Watch it:
As I’ve written before, the Iraq war has “succeeded” only in the sense that we seem for now to have avoided the very worst imaginable outcome there. Though violence has declined from the catastrophic levels seen in 2006-7, Iraqi factions remain at odds over key political issues of the new Iraqi state, and as shown by the upsurge in violence between the Iraqi government and Sunni militias this weekend, remain prepared to resort to violence to press their claims.
Watching the video, I did get the distinct sense that, at some level, Kristol knows that he’s peddling snake oil, given the way that he quickly pivoted away from Iraq to argue that “in Afghanistan, incidentally, it’s President Obama who’s announcing the increase in troops today” — as if the further deployment of U.S. troops to that country was an affirmation of his ideas, rather than proof of their failure.
Kristol also protested that Obama’s plan “is not something he was forced into by the Weekly Standard or anyone else.” As with most of what comes out of Bill Kristol’s mouth, though, this is not entirely true. The main reason that President Obama has had to commit further troops and resources to Afghanistan is that President Bush failed to finish the job there. The reason he failed to finish the job is that he went and started a war in Iraq, aided and abetted by the trash journalism and shameless jingoism of Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard. While The Weekly Standard didn’t “force” Obama to escalate in Afghanistan, they did play a central role in creating a situation wherein escalation is the least worst option. But Kristol is far less interested in honestly considering the costs of the Iraq debacle to American national security than he is in mitigating the costs to his own reputation, as he attempts to re-introduce his discredited ideology into the American political discourse.
Reid Might Cave On Cram-Downs: ‘What I’ll Do Is Take That Off And Do The Other Banking Provisions’
Reid Might Cave On Cram-Downs: ‘What I’ll Do Is Take That Off And Do The Other Banking Provisions’
According to Congress Daily, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said that he is willing to “drop a cram-down provision from a House-passed banking bill if the language threatened to keep the Senate from passing the overall bill”:
If we can’t get the votes for that, and I am hopeful we can — I am semiconfident we can — then what I’ll do is take that off [the bill] and do the other banking provisions.
Reid’s move “seemed to acknowledge assertions by Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and others that the cram-down bill cannot pass due to opposition from Republicans and some Democratic moderates.” It also acknowledges that Reid is willing to pass a bankruptcy bill that has nothing to do with bankruptcy.
Of course, the Republican opposition has come in the form of a steady stream of misinformation, fueled by the Mortgage Bankers Association’s talking points. As Congress Daily noted, “eliminating or watering down the cram-down provision would be a win for the banking industry.”
Business as Usual: The Fundraising Treadmill
Business as Usual: The Fundraising Treadmill
Our guest blogger is Lisa Gilbert, a Democracy Advocate with U.S. PIRG.
President Obama and congressional leaders responded quickly to the latest AIG scandal. But here’s the problem: the financial hijinks of AIG, mortgage bankers, and others had already triggered our economic woes. Part of the reason better regulations were not put in place years ago is that AIG and others in the financial sector have contributed $1.3 billion dollars to congressional candidates since 2000. To make sure this can never happen again we need a clean system of campaign financing, one where politicians listen to regular people.
How do we make this a reality? The bipartisan bicameral Fair Elections Now Act, which will be introduced tomorrow in the Senate Press Gallery by Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Reps. John Larson (D-CT),Walter Jones (R-NC), Jim Cooper (D-TN), and Todd Platts (R-PA).
Under this bill, a candidate must demonstrate a broad base of community support by collecting a set number of small dollar donations from their constituencies at home. Once qualified, candidates receive a grant to help kick off their campaigns, and receive matching funds at a 4:1 rate for small dollar donations between $5 and $100.
Our nation’s current campaign system forces elected officials onto a never-ending fundraising treadmill — the day after they take office, politicians must turn an eye towards raising enough money for their reelection. This climate often leads to legislators spending more time talking to influential big donors and deep-pocketed interest groups, than focused on the vital issues of the day.
In a recent bipartisan poll by the Tarrence Group and Lake Research, nearly four in five voters thought that large contributions and their influence would prevent Congress from tackling big hot button issues like the mortgage melt down, our out of control health care costs, and the fragile national economy. Voters in six states this past November also expressed their strong support for state candidates who used Fair Elections-style systems. In both Connecticut and Maine, more than 80 percent of the seats in their incoming legislatures will be held by those who ran using Fair Elections programs.
Every major demographic group solidly favors the Fair Elections proposal. This includes remarkable support across party lines and virtually no difference by region. Nationwide people understand that in order to actually usher in the change administration that President Obama promised, we need to change the “business as usual,” mentality in Washington, and help politicians get off the treadmill and “on” tackling the real issues of the day.
The WonkLine: March 30, 2009
The WonkLine: March 30, 2009
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 10 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Health Care
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) said energy taxes is an “option” for funding healthcare reform. But according to health policy analyst Robert Laszewski, “that would be a bad idea–a really bad idea.”
Can Health Care Czar Nancy-Ann DeParle “avoid conflicts of interest, given the size and market share of some of the firms she has worked for?”
“A collection of health care groups calling itself the Health Reform Dialogue issued a set of recommendations” on Friday. “But the group sidestepped the thorniest issues,” such as “whether a government-run health plan should be available to compete with private companies.”
Economy
“In 2007, Americans 55 and older accounted for 23 percent of the more than one million Americans who filed for bankruptcy, a threefold increase from 1991“; bankruptcy rates more than quadrupled for seniors ages 75 to 84.
The LA Times reports that “it has become clear that AIG’s problems extend across most of its business lines,” instead of being confined to its financial products division.
According to The Choice, “the recession appears to have had little impact on the number of applications received by many of the nation’s most competitive colleges, or on an applicant’s overall chances of being admitted to them.”
Climate
Joining Newt Gingrich, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), and the Institute for Energy Research in arguing that climate legislation is an energy tax, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) said: “You’re essentially raising $645 billion in taxes from parts of the country that are carbon intensive and sharing it with the rest of the country. And I just don’t think that’s fair.”
Matthew Wald claims “increasing the nation’s reliance on renewable energy will in itself raise costs,” citing only industry executives.
David Sassoon explains that, in a profile of climate skeptic Freeman Dyson that repeats the global cooling myth, “much has been left out in order to magnify a false conflict that would play well on the cover of the magazine.”
National Security
The United States deployed two missile-interceptor ships from South Korea on Monday, a military spokesman said, days ahead of a North Korean rocket launch widely seen as a long-range missile test that violates U.N. sanctions.
Violent weekend clashes in Baghdad involving Iraqi soldiers, U.S. forces and a Sunni Arab Awakening Council foreshadow challenges ahead, analysts say. Witnesses said the violence began Saturday after Iraqi and U.S. troops arrested an Awakening leader in Baghdad’s Fadhil neighborhood.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has warned that corruption among American officials may be making it harder to deal with drug-trafficking between Mexico and the US.
Global Boiling Roulette: The Margin For Error Is Gone
Global Boiling Roulette: The Margin For Error Is Gone
In 2002, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change designed the “Greenhouse Gamble” roulette wheels to depict the “probability of potential global warming over the next hundred years,” based on the latest scientific research. They compared the gamble of warming with and without an international agreement to reduce emissions through programs like the cap and trade system proposed by President Obama. Today, they released updated roulette wheels, reflecting how much worse the gamble has gotten:
| The ‘No Policy’ Gamble (2002 v. 2009) | |
|---|---|
| 2002 | 2009 |
 |
 |
| These wheels assume a scenario in which “no policy” action is taken to try to curb the global emissions of greenhouse gases. In the previous wheel the likelihood of exceeding 5°C was about 4%, but in the new wheels that likelihood is 57%. MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, 2009. |
|
| The ‘Policy Action’ Gamble (2002 v. 2009) | |
|---|---|
| 2002 | 2009 |
 |
 |
| If greenhouse gas emissions are controlled to relatively low levels then the Earth systems feedbacks are much lower, but there is no longer any possibility of less than 1°C warming. MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, 2009. |
|
The “policy” scenario reflects the establishment of mandatory policies to reduce emissions, such as building standards and cap and trade systems, that limit total carbon dioxide concentrations to 550 parts per million. However, as climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf recently explained, even limiting warming to two degrees Centigrade cannot be considered safe, which is why there is a growing demand for policies that limit CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm.
The new roulette wheels were initially released in February 2009, with a reset color scale that made a direct comparison between the old and new scenarios difficult. The Wonk Room thanks the Global Change Program for taking our suggestion to update the wheels.
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