End to ethanol subsidies?

This corporate farm handout should have been axed long ago.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Thune, R-S.D., along with ethanol opponent Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have proposed diverting $1.3 billion of the money remaining for the tax break this year to pay for debt reduction. And $668 million will be used for incentives for the ethanol and biofuels industries.

If accepted by the House and the Obama administration, the compromise could provide a quick path to end the ethanol credit as part of budget negotiations between Congress and the White House. The Senate last month adopted an amendment to end the $5 billion subsidy, but the fate of the legislation to which it's attached—a bill renewing a federal economic development program—is uncertain.

The White House signaled support for the deal.

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Exxon denies MT open government rules, state pulls out of task force

Now there's the Big Oil that we know and love. It's not unlike what we observed during the disaster in the Gulf but back then, the Obama administration was tripping over itself to help play the game. Even this time, the federal team seems to be comfortable with Exxon and keeping things secret. Well done by governor Schweitzer on his move to remove the state from this charade.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer was to travel to Billings Friday to announce the opening of an alternate state-run oil spill coordination center.

Exxon Mobil security workers have closely guarded access to the command post on the second floor of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Billings, where the EPA and other federal agencies also are stationed. Attempts by The Associated Press to talk to government officials there have been denied.

"The state will no longer have a presence at the Crowne Plaza because Exxon Mobil tells us they can't respect the open government laws we have in Montana," Schweitzer told The Associated Press. "I can't allow state employees to be in meetings at the Crowne Plaza talking about this cleanup without having it open."

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Betty Ford just died

ABC. Read the rest of this post...

When a monkey steals your camera, who holds the copyright to the photos he takes?

It's actually quite an interesting question.  Remember the other day I wrote about the macaque monkeys (George Allen's favorite) who grabbed a professional photographer's camera and started snapping photos of themselves.  Well, as TechDirt notes, it's not entirely clear how the photographer, or his photo agency. is now claiming the copyright on photos taken by someone, or some thing, else.

Technically, in most cases, whoever makes the actual work gets the copyright. That is, if you hand your camera to a stranger to take your photo, technically that stranger holds the copyright on the photo, though no one ever enforces this.

So here's the legal question: how did the copyright get assigned to Caters? I can't see how there's been a legal transfer. The monkeys were unlikely to have sold or licensed the work. I'm assuming that it's likely that the photographer, Slater, probably submitted the photos to the agency, and from a common sense view of things, that would make perfect sense. But from a letter-of-the-law view of things, Slater almost certainly does not hold the copyrights on those images, and has no legal right to then sell, license or assign them to Caters.

You could try to argue that people who take photos of speeding bullets bursting balloons aren't really taking the photos - the contraption they set up is taking the photos when it senses the bullet passing. But the photographer set up the contraption, so there's a chain of custody you could use to argue that HE is really taking the photo. But with the monkey who stole the camera, there's no chain of custody - the photographer did not give the monkey the camera with the intent that the monkey snap photos like some kind of machine. Intent seems to be part of the issue here, if we're talking about non-humans snapping photos. Does it matter who owns the camera? If someone steals my camera, a person I mean, and they take photos with it, do they own the copyright to the photos from the stolen camera? Or if it's a monkey again, and I give him my camera in order to coax him to take photos, now do I own the copyright, because I intended the monkey to snap the shots? And doesn't the monkey's intent matter? Isn't this a bit like me dropping my camera accidentally and when it hits the floor it accidentally snaps a Pulitzer Prize winning photo - who gets the prize if the photo was never intended? Would it matter if I was passing the camera to a friend and we both had our hands on it when it dropped - would that mean both of us hold the copyright?

This is what I loved about my Property law class in law school. It was this kind of fascinating stuff. Somewhere in America some law students are going to get an exame question on this very topic, asking them whether the monkey owns the copyright. Cool stuff. Read the rest of this post...

Wisconsin: New Dem ad puts the wood to David VanderLeest in recall election

This is what playing to win looks like. The bare transcript doesn't do justice to the effectiveness of the voice, pacing, music and images in this ad. The little wobble as the yellow text images finally settle into place is smart and eye-catching.

Note especially the image of the woman sitting on the bed. That image comes up before the text explaining it; the mind is really engaged in possible explanations. A wife? A daughter? And after the explanation — "broken ribs and back" devastates the "only a misdemeanor" defense.

Very nicely done (h/t Chris Bowers).



For background, click here. David VanderLeest is the Republican challenger to Democratic state senator Dave Hansen. If you recall, the Republicans tried to get John Nygren into a primary with VanderLeest, most likely because of just these liabilities. Didn't work.

Hansen and VanderLeest square off on July 19, since there will be no primary. As Chris Bowers says:

Hansen is expected to win this campaign by a solid margin, and this ad will go a long way toward making sure that he does.

Playing to win. From Chris, other Wisconsin dates to keep in mind:

The six general elections against Republicans will be on August 9, while the general elections against the other two Democrats will be on August 16. There will also be primaries on July 12 and July 19, which both sides will use to test out their field operations for the August general elections.

Our help-out-Wisconsin link is below.



As you can see, we're very close. And thanks!

GP Read the rest of this post...

GOP to repeal light bulb efficiency - will add $12 billion in costs to consumers

As long Big Energy is happy, that's all that matters anyway. More from ThinkProgress:

In a move that could be called anything but conservative, Republican lawmakers are set to bring a bill to the House floor next week that will repeal state and municipal rights to set efficiency standards for light bulbs. The bill would unravel a piece of federal legislation that was strongly supported by light bulb manufacturers and has spurred innovation in the lighting industry.

The bill, sponsored by Texas Republican Joe Barton, would strip away any “federal, state or local requirement or standard regarding energy efficient lighting” that uses light bulbs containing mercury. In other words, all compact fluorescent bulbs.

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What Plouffe "really" said isn’t much better than what we "thought" he said

This morning, White House senior adviser to the president David Plouffe found himself in some hot water for comments that seemed to suggest he didn't think voters would care about jobs during the next election.  At the time, I wrote the following, and I still think my analysis is correct:

I suspect Plouffe is playing the same card that top Obama advisers played to convince the President not to support a real stimulus. The economy is going to get better soon, the argument went at the time, so no need for a stimulus the size of which Krugman, Stiglitz and Obama's own economics adviser said we needed. They're hoping the same failed argument works on unemployment. Or perhaps Plouffe reflects a different thinking inside the White House, that voters actually care about the deficit and will reward the President for reaching a "historic" deal to garotte Social Security and Medicare, just like George Bush wanted, even though far too many of their family members are still unemployed or underemployed.

Greg Sargent has posted the rest of the transcript of the interview, which does seem to suggest that Plouffe was not saying "who cares about jobs?" but rather, "unemployment won't be a big problem by the time the election rolls around" (my words, not his). Greg's interpretation of Plouffe's meaning is that people won't pay attention to the actual unemployment rate number, but rather their own sense of how they and their family are doing (though Greg doesn't necessarily agree with Plouffe's underlying point). I still think that suggests that Plouffe believes unemployment won't be bad by the time of the election.

I'm not sure I agree with Plouffe (if that is what he meant). If unemployment is still 9-point-something in November of 2012, two things are going to be true. One, people will have heard so often that unemployment is unbearably high that they're going to believe it, regardless of their own personal situation (but only to a degree). Second, if unemployment is still that high, I refuse to believe that people won't either be themselves, or know family and friends who are, under- and un- employed.  It's not like the unemployment rate has nothing to do with the number of unemployed.

I'd also argue with another larger point Plouffe seems to be making. That things are getting better. No they're not. As Krugman is constantly reminding us: Things are no longer getting worse, but they're not really getting better.  My income is 1/3 of what it was. And it's only marginally gotten better of late, but just barely. And the joke of it is, I have people coming to me for money because I'm the one who's supposedly doing well! I have a relative who lost their business of some ten or twenty years, only to be unemployed for a year, and then finally, at age 60, found a job selling cars for two thousand bucks a month, which, where they live, and with a family, isn't a lot. I have other relatives who have had to up their work hours, and travel, to a ridiculous degree just to make ends meet - meaning, just barely paying the mortgage, making the car payment, etc., juggling all the bills. Other relatives who had to sell their homes to be able to continue affording supporting their kids because the work still hasn't come back.

Things are barely better out there. So yes, if we want to be overly legalistic about it, the unemployment rate got worse by .1 while the situation with me and people I know back home got better by .1 -- that's nothing to write home about. And from what we hear form Krugman and Stiglitz, who have been uniformly ignored by the White House while being uniformly right about just about everything, things aren't going to be so great next year, the year after that, the year after that, and the year after that (and then some).

Plouffe's comments, to me, were dismissive of the unemployment rate as an indicator of, well, employment in America. And to an extent he's right, but in the wrong way. More people are unemployed and underemployed than are shown in the 9.2% rate. But to suggest that things are actually better out there for voters than the 9.2% suggests - or they'll be significantly better next year - I think that's out of touch with what everyone outside of the administration is telling us, and I think it sounds out of touch. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman: No wage growth means no paydown of household debt, and therefore no recovery

There's a lot of news (all bad) on the jobs front. But it's not just the jobs.

I've written before (and not alone) that one of the biggest problems facing the American economy today is household debt:

Americans are now larded up with debt. In 1982, profits came back, but wages stayed permanently depressed. People felt "prosperous," but only because the Dow was up and the rich were crowing about it. How could the rest of us participate?

At first, the "prosperity" of ordinary people was wife-driven. Second incomes were both necessary (thanks to St. Ron) and possible (thanks to dreaded bra-burners and women's lib types). You couldn't take part in the Gordon Gekko "boom" without a second income.

When that source petered out (when all the women who wanted jobs had gotten them), our "prosperity" became debt-driven. That period lasted until, oh, yesterday (ok, 2008). By my count, that's 20-plus years of debt intake. Clearing that debt is a job that has to be done. Starting now is a very good thing.

How long will it take to clear 20 years of debt? If it "only" takes ten years, we'll have gotten off lightly — and it will feel like forever.

We won't have a real recovery until that debt is either paid off or destroyed (via bankruptcy, forgiveness, or some other form of debt-clearing).

So job growth is just the necessary first step to recovery of the consumer economy; debt reduction must also occur.

In this context I offer Paul Krugman's comments today on the dismal jobs picture. In a short post called "Falling Wages" he writes:

Ugh. That was a seriously ugly jobs report (pdf). Almost no job creation, with slow private-sector growth offset by falling public-sector employment; a falling employment-population ratio; and (I don’t know how many people have picked this up), an actual decline in wages, albeit a small one. ... [Y]ou can’t have a wage-price spiral if wages ain’t spiraling. And they aren’t, to say the least. ...

[S]tagnant wages are NOT good for recovery; all they do is ensure that the burden of debt relative to income remains high, keeping demand and employment down.

Think of household debt as a hole that has to be filled (with money) before big-screen spending can resume. The ratio of "debt relative to income" is a key metric in recovery of the consumer economy. The point at which debt-burdened people "feel" unburdened enough to start spending — that's when their personal economy recovers.

Right now, Walmart is losing business to the dollar stores. Not many big screens there.

And not much recovery either.

A side note: it's an open question for me if the big boyz really need a U.S. consumer recovery any more. There's manufacturing in Asia, there's engineering in Asia, there are a great many soon-to-come-online consumers in emerging markets — and even the noble souls at Ad Age, the Mad Men industry trade mag, has declared that the age of U.S. "mass affluence is over":

[T]he accrual of wealth among the very few is of great consequence for marketers, since 10% of U.S. households "account for almost half of the consumer spending" and represent about one-third of total GDP, according to the American Affluence Research Council.

Simply put, a small plutocracy of wealthy elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending and has outsize purchasing influence -- particularly in categories such as technology, financial services, travel, automotive, apparel and personal care.

"Simply put," if "you" don't matter anymore, or matter much less, to the profits of consumer-driven companies, your recovery can comfortably go onto the back burner.

Do you think that's part of what's driving the elite unconcern with the safety net (including in the White House hive mind)?

GP Read the rest of this post...

GOP now blaming Obama for cutting Medicare, increased health care costs, and rising unemployment

That didn't take long.  The President endorsed the Republicans' agenda to cut Social Security and Medicare, and he cut back on his promised health care reform and stimulus package to woo Republican support, and now the President is being blamed for cutting Social Security, rising health care costs, and increased joblessness.

Typically, the President does this, endorses the GOP talking point, thinking it's going to woo him friends on the GOP side of the aisle and, more generally, force Republicans to be nicer to him.  Instead, Republicans attack him for doing what they told him to do.  Which is what most of us predicted would happen.  But the President keeps doing the same thing over and over, with the same, and increasingly, disastrous consequences.

As for the ad, it's made by a group tied to Karl Rove, among others.  It's not just some fly-by-night operation.  It's the Republicans doing this. Read the rest of this post...

Just a warning, it’s going to be an ugly news day

The reaction to the President's stealth plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, compounded with today's news that the unemployment rate rose (again), this time to 9.2%, has created quite a firestorm among Democrats and the media.  It's bad.  On a number of accounts.

First off, it's not entirely clear how the President is going to spin this deficit fiasco as a victory when even Democrats are now saying it's the President who wants to cut Social Security and Medicare.  Second, it's not clear how Democrats are going to being able to use Social Security and Medicare in the next election now that the President has taken the lead as bad-guy-in-chief.  Third, Republicans can now legitimately claim that it's Democrats who want to cut both programs, thus using the argument against us (and they already are).  And fourth, it's not clear how the President is going to avoid blame for the economy next year when it's Democrats who are now blaming the President for not just refusing to focus on unemployment, but for embracing GOP policies that will actually increase unemployment and put a damper on already lackluster growth.

The White House has never understood the power of the Netroots, the Democratic base overall, or the media - nor have they much cared.  As Joe often writes, the President and his top advisers think they're the smartest people in the world since, after all, they did win the election.  So they don't need the Netroots, the Democratic base, or the media.  (And they don't need the advice of pesky Nobel laureates like Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz who, oddly, keep getting it right while the White House keeps getting it wrong.)

The problem for the President is that the Netroots, the Democratic base, and the media are all key in influencing public opinion.  And all three are today blaming President Obama for the mess we're in.  Republicans don't need to run ads against the President in 2012 when the entire party is united in blaming him already.

It's a very dangerous situation.  And the White House seemingly hasn't a clue. Read the rest of this post...

Wash Post’s Serwer: "The White House has shown a complete lack of leadership on the issue" of jobs

Adam Serwer writing on Greg Sargent's Plum Line:

Today’s jobs report is terrible. While the Republican response borders on self-parody, the White House has shown a complete lack of leadership on the issue.

Republicans reiterating the same talking points day after day is one thing. What’s worse is that the White House has not only failed to rebut the GOP’s arguments on spending, it has practically endorsed them. As Paul Krugman writes today, rather than pointing out that cutting spending right now means shedding jobs and further slowing the recovery, the White House has embraced the idea that spending is the problem.

The most generous interpretation of the GOP’s support for the Bush tax cuts is that Republicans actually believed their own rhetoric that massive tax cuts would lead to growth, even though they didn’t. Bush had few if any critics on the right contesting that basic point. Obama, by contrast, could have benefitted from the many people on the left warning from the beginning that Obama’s stimulus alone was insufficent and that the economy wouldn’t recover without more spending to create jobs. But Obama and his team simply didn’t listen.

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Top Obama adviser says unemployment won’t matter to voters in 2012, as UE rises to 9.2%

Speechless.

“The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers,” Plouffe said, according to Bloomberg. “People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’ ” - White House senior adviser to the president David Plouffe

The article goes on to invoke the mythical "confidence fairy" who will magically create jobs once businesses have "confidence" that the deficit is under control. Because, you know, that's how I make my hiring decisions - not based on how much money I have, and how consumer demand looks in the future, but rather, based on how the President is doing with the deficit negotiations.

Not to mention, it's difficult to "believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family" when his top adviser is claiming that unemployment, which very much has affected me and my family, doesn't matter.

I suspect Plouffe is playing the same card that top Obama advisers played to convince the President not to support a real stimulus. The economy is going to get better soon, the argument went at the time, so no need for a stimulus the size of which Krugman, Stiglitz and Obama's own economics adviser said we needed. They're hoping the same failed argument works on unemployment. Or perhaps Plouffe reflects a different thinking inside the White House, that voters actually care about the deficit and will reward the President for reaching a "historic" deal to garotte Social Security and Medicare, just like George Bush wanted, even though far too many of their family members are still unemployed or underemployed.

Yes, can't feed the kids, can't pay the mortgage, but thank God the long-term deficit will be under control in 2024. Read the rest of this post...

Only 18,000 new jobs in June, far fewer than expected. Unemployment up to 9.2%.

It's hard to sugar coat the latest jobs numbers. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- JUNE 2011

Nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged in June (+18,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment in most major private-sector industries changed little over the month. Government employment continued to trend down.

That's right. Only 18,000 new jobs, far fewer than expected, and unemployment did change a little -- it went up. The NYT reported that analysts had predicted 105,000 new jobs in an article headlined: "Job Growth Falters Badly, Clouding Hope for Recovery."

No doubt, GOPers, who created the economic recession and have done nothing to fix it, will be gleeful (at least among themselves.)

This weekend, Obama and Hill leaders are going to figure out how to cut more spending and Social Security and Medicare are on the table. They should be trying to fix the immediate economic crisis and create jobs. But, that's not even on the agenda.

And, as usual, Atrios sums it up:

So, uh, not good news.

Read the rest of this post...

Report: Pakistan generals involved in selling nuclear secrets

Not much of a surprise, really. How different is it for a Pakistani general to profit from selling nuclear information from our own generals "retiring" and working for the defense industry that is strangling our budget and political process? Neither is very good news for the general population.

The source of the documents is AQ Khan, who confessed in 2004 to selling parts and instructions for the use of high-speed centrifuges in enriching uranium to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Extracts were published by the Washington Post, including a letter in English purportedly from a senior North Korean official to Khan in 1998 detailing payment of $3m to Pakistan's former army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, and another half-million to Lieutenant General Zulfiqar Khan, who was involved in Pakistan's nuclear bomb tests.

Both generals denied the allegations. "What can I say. [These are] bits of old info packaged together. [There is] not an iota of truth in the allegations against me. [There is] no reason on earth for anyone to pay me for something I could not deliver," Karamat wrote in an email to the Guardian. Lt Gen Khan told the Washington Post that the documents were "a fabrication".

The issue is seen as critically important by western governments. Seven years after Khan, the godfather of the Pakistani nuclear programme, made his public confession on Pakistani television, there is still uncertainty over the extent to which he was a rogue operator or just a salesman acting on behalf of the Pakistani state and its army. Western officials are also unsure whether the covert nuclear sales are continuing.

Read the rest of this post...

Cairo braces for massive rally

The Muslim Brotherhood is coming into the fold this time. If their influence increases, the foot draggers in Egypt should blame themselves for moving the changes so slowly. Protesters are targeting one million people on the streets. The Guardian:

In a rare show of unity, Egypt's largest political Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, will join a vast array of liberal, leftist and secular political forces, including youth representatives from this year's anti-Mubarak uprising. They will demand that police officers and former regime officials are finally held accountable and that the army's grip over the justice system comes to an end.

"Take to the streets on July 8: the revolution is still on," reads graffiti scrawled across the Egyptian capital.

The demonstration comes at a perilous time for the authorities, following 10 days of street violence in Cairo and Suez as public frustration at the slow pace of reform begins to grow.

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Rupert Murdoch closes News of the World after outcry

Instead of holding the specific leaders of that disgusting paper accountable, Murdoch is shutting down the paper and will continue to employ the director responsible at the time of the phone hackings. How unfair is that?

News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of the News of the World, was said to be in tears as news of the closure was announced. A News of the World employee who did not want to be named said Brooks had said she had offered to resign in the wake of Ed Miliband's call for her to be sacked, but that offer had been rejected. News International denies that claim.

Miliband said last night of the closure: "It's a big act but I don't think it solves the real issues. One of the people who's remaining in her job is the chief executive of News International who was the editor at the time of the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone."

Downing Street said last night: "What matters is that all wrongdoing is exposed and those responsible for these appalling acts are brought to justice."

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Durbin introduces bill to block privatization of infrastructure

These deals are terrible deals for city and state governments, but it's even worse for US federal taxpayers who fund the projects in the first place. Good for Durbin to introduce this. Should have been done long ago but better late than never.

"The federal government provides states and local governments billions of dollars to build, maintain and improve transportation projects around the country," Durbin said in a statement. "The last transportation bill alone provided states with an average of $48 billion per year for upgrades to roads, bridges and mass transit systems. Any deal to sell or lease these assets should be closely examined and include a return on the federal taxpayer investment."

Durbin was particularly upset by Chicago's deal to lease its parking meters to Morgan Stanley for $1.2 billion. Nearly all of this money was spent by former Mayor Richard M. Daley, leaving drivers to pay massive increases in the cost of parking that will add up to an estimated $11.6 billion over 75 years.

"This legislation protects against fire sales of our existing public assets while making certain the public's interest is fully protected in future public/private partnership agreements," the House sponsor of the legislation, Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), said in a statement.

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