German rail to be carbon free by 2050

It's good to see Germany setting such a target due to consumer request. Reuters:

Deutsche Bahn says it wants to raise the percentage of wind, hydro and solar energy to power its trains from 20 percent now to 28 percent in 2014 and become carbon-free by 2050.

"Consumers in Germany have made it clear they want us all to get away from nuclear energy and to more renewable energy," Hans-Juergen Witschke, chief executive of Deutsche Bahn Energie, said of the railway's attention-grabbing revised targets that exceed the government's already ambitious national aims.

"It's what customers want and we're making it happen," Witschke said in an interview with Reuters. "The demand for green electricity keeps rising each year and that'll continue."

Read the rest of this post...

Rick Perry goes blank defending Texas’ failed abstinence education program

Here's a TV interview with Governor (and now 2012 Republican candidate) Rick Perry and a reporter from the Texas Tribune. It's a classic, old style, black-screen-and-ferns political chat, and it's very revealing.

The reporter's question: Why does Texas continue with abstinence education programs when they don't seem to be working?

I've heard Perry's answer as a sound clip, but watch his face as he struggles with the interviewer's persistent follow-up.



The conventional wisdom expressed by many is that Perry is beauty-queen dim and can't wrap his pretty little mind around the answer. For instance, Steve Benen:

The problem here isn’t just that Perry has the wrong answer. The more meaningful problem is that Perry doesn’t seem to know how to even formulate an answer. He starts with a proposition in his mind (abstinence-only education is effective), and when confronted with evidence that the proposition appears false (high teen-pregnancy rates), the governor simply hangs onto his belief, untroubled by evidence. As Jon Chait put it, Perry seems to struggle “even to think in empirical terms.”

But I give Perry far more credit. For the hyper-religious, the statement "abstinence works" is only the cover story. The real story is, Unmarrieds shouldn't have sex (St. Paul, some chapter, some verse).

The trick is to fit the square peg of St. Paul's teaching into the round hole of an empirical argument — without giving the game away. Perry can't do it; but in fairness, the way this interview was conducted, no one could.

The clue? Perry at 0:40 — "It is the best form to teach our children." Again at 2:20 — We're getting a return on our money that's appropriate; "those are some dollars that are well spent." The "comparable" (nice word) steroids example near the end is also telling: Keep kids off sex; keep kids off steroids. What's the diff?

To translate: If you start from the premise that abstinence is the only moral method you can teach, then a 5% (or .1%) return on your money is just icing on a very important cake. Getting the seculars to let you go anti-sex on their kids is a win all by itself. Getting something back in the form of reduced pregnancy, no matter how little, is like candy, a nice piece of data you can throw back at them when they complain.

It's the old old story, isn't it? The hyper-religious in this country hate(love) sex and can't stand(can't get enough of) it. And they'll never admit what they're really doing because they can't bear to look at it(can't keep their eyes off it). So there. Lemme at it(no, I'm not obsessed with it). Got that?

And no, I won't begin to touch what Perry meant when he said "From my own personal life, abstinence works." I have no idea where that leads. Or doesn't.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Government dramatically reduces estimate for natural gas in Marcellus Shale

This is a big deal - the Marcellus Shale natural gas field is becoming the new ANWR, only instead of being in the Alaskan wilderness, it's a gas field that runs through the highly populated east coast and midwest. Instead of risking the health and well-being of rare animals as in ANWR, fracking in Marcellus Shale risks the health and well-being of millions of Americans.

For energy companies that want to get at this gas, they have to use a violent, destructive process called hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking), that pipes water and sand deep underground to force the gas out. Fracking is as nasty as it sounds, producing highly toxic byproducts that contaminate groundwater.

Bloomberg reports that US government geologists have dramatically reduced their estimate of the amount of natural gas that can be extracted by fracking in the Marcellus Shale formation:

The U.S. will slash its estimate of undiscovered Marcellus Shale natural gas by as much as 80 percent after a updated assessment by government geologists.

The formation, which stretches from New York to Tennessee, contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of gas, the U.S. Geological Survey said today in its first update in nine years. That supersedes an Energy Department projection of 410 trillion cubic feet, said Philip Budzik, an operations research analyst with the Energy Information Administration.

Coincidentally, just a few days ago law enforcement superhero and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman subpoenaed a number of energy companies under the Martin Act, alleging that they weren't being honest with investors about how much gas were in their wells.

Investigators have requested documents relating to the formulas that companies use to predict how much gas their wells are likely to produce in the coming decades. The subpoenas, which were sent on Aug. 8, also request documents related to the assumptions that companies have made about drilling costs in their estimates of the wells’ long-term profitability.

The investigation will be watched closely in the industry because the attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, is using a New York law called the Martin Act that gives him broad powers over businesses and allows him to obtain and publicly disclose an unusual amount of information.

Subpoenas were sent to the three companies — Range Resources, Cabot Oil and Gas, and Goodrich Petroleum — according to the sources, who have direct knowledge of the investigation. Mr. Schneiderman also broadened a continuing investigation by his office into a fourth company, Chesapeake Energy, asking it to respond to similar questions about its shale gas wells, they said.

One of the reasons Schneiderman has taken interest in these energy companies is that New York State pension funds have heavily invested in these companies. Schneiderman has an obligation to help protect the State's investments, especially if the companies haven't been honest with investors.

It's also worth noting that in addition to Schneiderman challenging yet another powerful corporate lobby, he's also going against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who has sought to end a moratorium on fracking in New York. Seriously - where can we get a few dozen more Eric Schneiderman's to help get this country back on track? Read the rest of this post...

NY AG Eric Schneiderman removed from leading 50 state settlement committee

Yesterday Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is in charge of the 50 state settlement negotiations between banks, the administration and all 50 state attorneys general summarily kicked New York AG Eric Schneiderman off of the Executive Committee, which had been steering the negotiations.

Schneiderman, who doesn’t want a settlement to bar further investigations of mortgage practices by individual states, was removed from the executive committee of state officials working on the deal, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said yesterday in a statement.
“New York has actively worked to undermine the very same multistate group that it had spent the previous nine months working very closely with,” said Miller, who is leading the state group. For a member of the executive committee, that “simply doesn’t make sense, is unprecedented and is unacceptable,” Miller said.

We will see if Miller removes Delaware's Beau Biden, who's right there with Schneiderman pushing for real investigations and a narrow settlement, or Illinois' Lisa Madigan, who has also cast doubt on the scope of settlement being too broad. David Dayen has a strong response from Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement:

“Miller threw Schneiderman under the bus and as a result we’re likely to see a significantly weaker settlement,” said CCI member Judy Lonning from Des Moines. “We’re extremely disappointed. Tom has really let us down.”

“Scheiderman was the first AG to say that he wasn’t going to back down on the big banks, and he was the first AG kicked out of the investigation,” Lonning said, “There’s no question who this decision favors. It’s all about making life better for the big banks, and we expected Tom Miller to do better than this.”

Harsh words for Miller, coming from a group that has fought hard to make sure the settlement looks out for struggling homeowners who have suffered abuse at the hands of greedy banks.

The real question is, can this group under Miller get a settlement at all? Or will the hard lines being drawn by Schneiderman and a handful of others make the process moot?

Read the rest of this post...

Florida drug-testing program costing state more than it’s saving

Someone should do a report on all the GOP cost-savings programs that really end up costing us all more money.  Such as their great idea to cut illegal immigrants out of health care reform, while those same immigrants can simply go to the emergency room and get free treatment which costs the states four times as much.  Or this case in Florida, where they're drug testing welfare recipients, and found that the testing itself is costing them more than they're saving in welfare money that's been cut off to drug users.

So Florida's politicians put an even greater burden on the state budget in the middle of a nationwide budget crisis.  Brilliant.

More from the ACLU:

We've told you a few times about Florida's horrible new law that drug tests all families applying for cash benefit welfare applicants. The law, which went into effect July 1, makes applicants front the cost of the drug test and reimburses individuals if they test negative.

The ACLU and others predicted this program would be a failure and cost the state of Florida much more money than they would save. Guess what? In just the few weeks that the program has been in effect we have been proven right.

The Department of Children and Families' central region has tested 40 applicants since the law went into effect six weeks ago, and of those 40 applicants, 38 tested negative for drugs. The cost to the state of Florida to reimburse those 38 individuals who tested negative was at least $1,140 over the course of six weeks. Meanwhile, denying benefits to the two applicants who tested positive will save Florida less than $240 a month.

Read the rest of this post...

Another casualty of bad economy: Increase in stolen dogs

I heard about this latest casualty of the bad economy on Mike Signorile's show today. Mike is a fellow dog-lover who recently rescued an adorable pit bull puppy, Artie. There's been an increase in dog thefts lately:

According to the American Kennel Club (AKC) Companion Animal Recovery National Pet Theft Database, approximately 224 pets have been reported stolen so far in 2011 compared to 150 in the same seven-month period last year.

"We are getting reports almost daily of pets stolen during home invasions, out of parked cars while people are running errands and even snatched during walks in the park," says AKC spokesperson Lisa Peterson. "We've even seen a new trend of dogs being stolen from shelters and adoption events." Fortunately, many pets that are microchipped are recovered and returned to their owners.

Why do people steal pets? Some may take purebreds to resell them on the internet or at roadside sales, while others might hold them for ransom. Some steal them to keep as pets for themselves, or as a no-cost "gift" for a friend or family member. Wag'N Enterprises adds that stolen pets are also sometimes sold to research laboratories or pet stores, used as puppy mill breeders or as bait or fighters for dog-fighting rings. In rarer instances, they can be sold as meat to feed exotic pets or humans, or used for their fur. (Some say it is difficult to distinguish cat fur from rabbit or shepherd from fox!)

People do some really nasty things to animals.

When we adopted Petey, he was microchipped. And, I never leave him tied up outside when I go to the store. I was the same way with Boomer. Won't do it. Also, he's never off leash. Read the rest of this post...

What could Obama have done better?

From Ezra Klein:

But I’ve never been able to come up with a realistic scenario in which a lot more got done, the economy is in much better shape, and the president is dramatically more popular today. Anything that even comes close is really a counterfactual of what the chairman of the Federal Reserve could have done, and I’m not confident that I understand Bernanke’s constraints nor that a more massive intervention on the part of the Fed would have been the cure-all some suggest.

Indeed, if you had taken me aside in 2008 and sketched out the first three years of Obama’s presidency, I would have thought you were being overoptimistic: an $800 billion stimulus package — recall that people were only talking in the $200-$300 billion range back then — followed by near-universal health-care reform, followed by financial regulation, followed by another stimulus (in the 2010 tax deal), followed by the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” followed by the killing of Osama bin Laden and the apparent ousting of Moammar Gaddafi? There was no way. And yet all that did get done. But the administration hasn’t able to get unemployment under control — perhaps it couldn’t have gotten unemployment under control — and so all of that has not been nearly enough.

But perhaps I’m missing something obvious.

I think there are definitely reasonable scenarios under which more gets done. Remember, Obama won with a pretty huge mandate. The GOP was in ruins, people loathed them and the Bush legacy they rod out of town on, and the Dems had control of not just the House and Senate, but a solid majority in the House and a near filibuster proof majority in the Senate. The Dems were riding high. At the beginning of the President's term when the stimulus and health care reform were first being discussed.

The question therefore, is whether the President did all he could have, should have, to get as much as he could in those negotiations. The answer is no.

Let's start with the stimulus. While Ezra now says that everyone was only talking about a $200bn to $300bn stimulus, I'm not sure who he's referring to, as in early November of 2008, Paul Krugman was saying we needed at least $600bn. Now keep in mind, this was only seven weeks or so after Lehman Brothers went belly up, so we were still scrambling to figure out how bad things really were. By January of 2009, Krugman had upped the calculation and was saying that we needed a $1.8 trillion stimulus, comprised of $600bn a year for three years.

By the middle of February of that same year, when the details of the final stimulus package were known, Krugman was none too happy with how much we got.

"It's helpful, but it does not cover even one-third of the gap, so it's disappointing," Krugman said. Out of the $789 billion approved, only about $600 billion adds real stimulus, in Krugman's opinion. "So you've only got $600 billion to fill a $2.9 trillion hole." What's more, he argued that $350 billion of the package slated for tax cuts will provide some, but not much, stimulus traction because households are likely to save rather than spend large portions of it. That's the "paradox of thrift," Krugman noted. Normally, encouraging savings is a great plus for an economy. But in a downturn, households (and businesses) worry about the future more, and decide to conserve resources and spend less -- just when spending is needed most.

What's more, much of the proposed aid to state and local governments was stripped from the stimulus package during political negotiations needed to secure passage, Krugman noted. That was the most effective component because it would be spent quickly. State budgets are in serious trouble, and if the states knew more federal funds were on the way, they'd be more likely to decide immediately to defer layoffs and continue with construction and other projects requiring instant funding. Also, much of the planned infrastructure spending, while positive for the economy, will take up to two years to have its greatest effect.

And Joe Stiglitz was saying similar things at the same time.  (And keep in mind, that as bad as it was already, none of us were aware of how bad the economy was going to get.  At the time, Krugman was talking about unemployment possibly hitting 10% if we didn't pass a stimulus, when in fact it hit 10% even with the stimulus.)

So, I'm not entirely sure when it was that everyone was supposedly talking about a $200bn stimulus package.   And even were that the case, say back in October of 2008, once we became aware that the crisis was far graver than we realized, the Obama White House didn't come through for us. They didn't up their ask enough. Rather, they low-balled it. No one that any of us trust was suggesting that an $800bn stimulus (or as Krugman points out, really a $600bn stimulus with some weak-tea tax cuts included) was the right amount. Even the President's own chair of the Council of Economic Advisers said we needed $1.3 trillion (and even she was low-balling it, but still, it was at least higher than $800bn).

So, no, I don't take solace in the fact that the Obama administration asked for, and got, more money than an abysmal $200bn that might have been being discussed in the fall of 08. What mattered is how much stimulus we knew we needed at the time the legislation was passed, and whether the White House did all they could to get it. They knew we needed more, and they didn't ask for it. They instead asked for less, then chopped another $100bn off because Olympia Snowe didn't like it, then gave away another 35% of what remained to not-very-stimulative tax cuts.

The White House should have negotiated from a position of strength, being fresh out of the elections, with a new wonderman in the White House, and with the GOP broken and in tatters. Instead, the President acted like the Democratic minority leader of the Senate (even the GOP minority leader of the Senate would have put up a bigger fight for what he wanted).

What do I mean?  I mean that when Olympia Snowe tells you to cut $100bn from legislation intended to keep America from plummeting into another Great Depression, you send the President to Maine, where he won handily only two months before, and have him inform Olympia's constituents that, on behalf of the very same people who got us into this crisis to start with, she's trying to short-change the only thing that might, just might, save us all from economic death.

That's what a leader with a mandate does in a time of national crisis.  He leads.  He fights.

But of course, President Obama didn't do this because he doesn't believe in fighting.  Instead, he did what he since has become famous for - he lowballed his initial offer, and then proceeded to whittle away at it, again and again, every time a Republican (or conservative Dem) got in his face and said "boo!"  To hell with the fact that we were talking about legislation to save the country from another Great Depression.  It was more important to the President to be nice, than to get the size of the package that was needed to address the crisis at hand.

We could have had more, we should have had more, had he simply fought for what was needed.  I just don't know how anyone looks at that and says "job well done."  If anything, it was one of the first symptoms of the larger problem this President has with leadership.  The last thing President Obama, and our country, now need is an attempt to retroactively justify his actions on the stimulus or anything else.  We almost lost "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" because the President wasn't willing to fight.  We most certainly lost the public option because of it, and we may lose whatever health care reform we did get because of it as well.

The President doesn't fight to win, nor does he fight to defend his victories.  Where is the ongoing effort to defend the stimulus, to defend health care reform?  I have zero confidence that health care reform is going to survive next year's election, mostly because the administration has done such a lousy job selling it to the American people, that if the GOP wins the White House, HCR is gone.

Outside of the administration bubble, I just can't fathom how anyone still thinks the President did everything he could on the issues of the day. Read the rest of this post...

The earthquake cracked the Washington Monument

Well that sucks. Read the rest of this post...

Rick Perry thinks God made the economy crash

He comes across as awfully Pat Robertson in this video. I still feel like all of this is an effort to hide something the religious right wouldn't be every happy about.

Read the rest of this post...

Hate Group leader Tony Perkins: top four GOPers would get support from religious right

Tony Perkins heads the Family Research Council, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. There are ample reasons why FRC earned that designation. But, Perkins, who is notoriously obsessed with all things gay, remains a fixture in GOP politics. And, he's happy with the top four Republican candidates and thinks the other right-wing religious types will approve, too. From The Hill:

Evangelical voters would likely accept and enthusiastically support any of the four frontrunning candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said Tuesday evening.

Perkins, an influential leader of social conservatives, suggested that Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), and Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) would each be acceptable to evangelicals.

"Yes, I think so," Perkins told Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs, who asked if the four frontrunners "would satisfy the evangelical right."

Perkins recently trashed the Obama administration's support of the "It Gets Better" campaign. And, he's made similar comments ugly comments about youth suicide before. Because, really, why would someone like Tony Perkins want to stop young LGBT kids from killing themselves? Wonder if the top four GOPers agree with him there, too.

Read the rest of this post...

College kids not so proficient at using the Google

I'm surprised by the results of this new study. Sure, mom and dad don't get the intricacies of how to refine a Google search, but college students? From Mashable:

One hundred and fifty-six students who were interviewed at the five schools about their research habits mentioned Google more than any other other database. The 60 students who participated in a “research process interview” — with researchers following them around the library as they searched for information — frequently used the search engine poorly. And when they used other databases, they expected them to work the same way that Google does.

“It wasn’t so much that students were inefficient in their use of Google, but rather that students are often ill-equipped to sufficiently evaluate or refine the results that are returned,” says Andrew Asher, an anthropologist at Bucknell University and one of the project leads. “…I don’t think this is a problem limited to students.”

“They were basically clueless about the logic underlying how the search engine organizes and displays its results,” adds an article on the study by Inside Higher Ed. “Consequently, the students did not know how to build a search that would return good sources. (For instance, limiting a search to news articles, or querying specific databases such as Google Book Search or Google Scholar.)”

Read the rest of this post...

Was Libya truly "led from behind"?

Ben Smith via First Read:

As Politico's Ben Smith notes, the Obama administration's "leading from behind" in Libya -- having NATO lead the military operations, getting the cooperation from the Arab League, and letting the Libyan opposition have the main stake in the outcome -- seems to have been a success. But it hasn’t been an easy five months for the White House. In fact, it emphasizes how difficult managing a war, even one being waged “from behind,” can be in this 24-7 media environment. Consider: The American Revolutionary War, with an assist from France, lasted some eight years; the U.S. Civil War lasted four years; and World War II lasted about that same amount of time. There is little patience when the news cycle changes every hour. The one ironic exception, of course: the Afghanistan war, which has lasted nearly 10 years…

Something feels too simplistic here. The entire notion of "leading from behind" being a good or bad strategy strikes me as missing the point. It depends.

A quick metaphor:

Mom and dad go on vacation and leave their 4 young children at home.

1. Mom and dad pick a great babysitter to take care of the kids and all goes well.
2. Mom and dad pick a lousy babysitter to take care of the kids and all goes badly.
3. Mom and dad don't pick anyone to take care of the kids, and all goes badly.

So mom and dad "led from behind" on this one, but in some scenarios leading from behind worked while in others it didn't. So is leading from behind a wise or unwise strategy?

Again, it depends. In the case of health care reform, the President was the proverbial mom and dad who skipped town for a year and didn't leave anyone to watch over the kids in Congress. In fact, he left it to the kids to run their own show, while appointing a weak babysitter (his staff) to run only moderate interference. In that case, leading from behind was a failure because the entire effort was almost a loss, and in the end the President got far less than he potentially could have gotten had he truly led the effort.

Not to mention, the President continues to lead from behind in doing PR on health care reform and the stimulus. In this case, leading from behind means not doing a thing while the GOP continues to blast those initiatives every day to the point where the public now thinks both were a bust (more so in the case of the stimulus), and they weren't.

In the case of Libya, the President claims to have ceded control to NATO (I heard at the beginning of the mission, at least, the US was just pretending to let France take the lead, for public consumption). NATO as babysitter is a far cry from giving control of health care reform to a bipartisan Gang of Six run by Republicans who don't want a deal and Democrats bought off by the insurance industry. NATO is a strong alternative leader; the guys Obama picked on health care reform were not.

Or look at the debt ceiling. The President led from in front on that one, and did a terrible job.  Partially because he's a horrible negotiator, and partially because he seems to have no core beliefs.  Does the President's poor performance in the debt ceiling talks prove that he shouldn't lead from in front, or does it simply prove that regardless of where he sits, this particular President is simply a bad leader? Read the rest of this post...

Spain launches program to cut billions from pharma costs

And remember, countries in Europe already negotiate with Big Pharma for drug prices so the costs are consistently lower than in the US. A major flaw in the health care reform was to fail to negotiate drug prices to control those costs. In a capitalist system, negotiating when you have volume should be one of the top priorities.

Looking at the budget problems across Europe, forcing doctors and pharmacies to use generic when available is likely to become a much more popular in the very near future. In France, generic is still rarely requested and some pharmacies become irritated when those products are requested. Welcome to the modern world. At least the bankers have their fat bonuses. The Guardian:

In a move designed to save €2.4bn (£2.1bn) a year, Spain's socialist government has passed a law forcing doctors and pharmacies to prescribe generic drugs rather than the more expensive brand names sold by pharmaceutical companies.

Spanish doctors will now have to complete prescriptions giving only the details of the active ingredients of the medicine that their patients must take, as well as the dose and format. The drugs are paid for partly by the state and partly by patients.

Pharmacies will be obliged to provide the cheapest available versions of drugs, which will frequently mean not the better-known brand names sold by the big drugs firms.

Read the rest of this post...

UN to investigate Syrian murder of thousands of pro-democracy protesters

A bit slow, but the UN finally got there. BBC News:

The UN Human Rights Council has ordered an investigation into violations reportedly committed by Syrian security forces during the crackdown on dissent.

It passed a resolution to "urgently dispatch an independent international commission of inquiry" and demanded an end to the violence against protesters.

EU countries and the US say they have prepared a draft resolution calling for UN sanctions against the government.

Read the rest of this post...

Lockerbie bomber may be heading back to prison

It can't happen soon enough.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) issued a statement Monday saying such action by the TNC, which the Obama administration recognizes as Libya’s legitimate governing authority, would “send a strong statement to the world.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential front-runner, issued a similar statement calling on the TNC “to arrest and extradite” Mr. al-Megrahi “so justice can finally be done.”

A White House spokesman had no comment Monday on President Barack Obama’s position.

Read the rest of this post...