Daily Kos

At Climate Progress, Richard Caperton writes, CBO: Clean Energy Standards Are an Affordable Way to Cut Carbon Emissions:

It sure would be nice if members of Congress actually listened to the Congressional Budget Office. If they did, they would learn what we’ve known for quite some time: shifting to cleaner electricity generation is an affordable and effective way to reduce carbon emissions.

The CBO just released a summary of seven different types of standards from a variety of sources. The summary uniformly finds that either an RES (renewables alone) or a CES (some combination of renewables, natural gas, nuclear and CCS) will reduce carbon emissions, and that any price impacts to consumers will be minimal. Some consumers may even pay lower utility bills.

Geothermal energy plant

The report does acknowledge that some regions could see price increases. You can bet that some people will jump all over this and claim that clean energy mandates drive up rates. But let’s put the figures into perspective.

Only one out of seven scenarios sees a price increase of more than 5 percent by 2030. At the same time, in five of the seven scenarios, at least one region of the country is projected to see lower electricity prices.

Virtually all price impacts are between plus or minus 5 percent, which is extremely small compared to other expected price impacts. For example, a price increase of 1 percent would be overwhelmed by any change in the price of natural gas generation or in a regulated utility’s allowable rate of return. Electric rates for all consumers will change by 2030, and virtually none of that change would be because of a clean energy standard. ...

Frustratingly, none of the studies CBO includes look at actual policy proposals. Whereas the President has proposed getting 80 percent of the country’s power from a diverse mix of low-carbon sources, the studies in the CBO report are based on meeting much lower targets with much smaller sets of technologies. Inevitably, this means that CBO has underestimated the benefits and overestimated the costs of actual CES proposals.

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At Daily Kos on this date in 2010:

BP announced its second quarter earnings, and news reports are focusing on the oil giant's record loss, as its disastrous oil gusher continues to poison the Gulf of Mexico. Curiously, it takes some digging to find anyone willing to mention that BP's revenues actually soared, last quarter. The Irish Times made such an effort:

BP’s underlying performance, excluding the spill, was strong in the second quarter, with profits of $5 billion and operating cash flow of $8.9 billion, up 31 per cent from the equivalent period of 2009.

BP is doing just fine. It will sell some assets to help cover the short-term loss, and it also has other clever plans. For example, in case you were wondering how it will find the cash to put into its oil gusher escrow fund (assuming BP ever does actually put cash into it), you need not worry. Marketwatch explains that BP will take a $32 billion charge against earnings, due in part to the oil spill—which means it will get a $9.9 billion tax credit.

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Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Having state legislators from across the country drafting legislation in close cooperation with corporate sponsors seemed bad enough. But Maine Gov. Paul LePage has gone ALEC one better. He just copied and pasted his regulatory agenda from lobbyist wishlists.

Maine's Freedom of Access law enabled the Portland Phoenix to obtain documents which:

confirm the central role of Preti Flaherty and Pierce Atwood, whose proposals on behalf of their clients were often literally cut and pasted into the governor's infamous "Phase I" regulatory reform agenda. The two Portland-based firms wrote at least 28 of the 50 environmental rollbacks the governor's office submitted to the legislature in January, some of which have since been enacted into law. (Four other rollbacks were borrowed from a white paper created by a transition subcommittee chaired by Pinza.)

[...]

In most cases, language from the industry and lobbyist's memos was copied word-for-word into LePage's reform proposal, suggesting the governor and his staff made little effort to analyze or shape policies themselves.

And it wasn't just the environment:

These include rolling back Maine's civil rights and wage and tip sharing laws to weaker federal standards (proposed by Portland restaurateur STEVE DIMILLO); repealing the ban on the use of strikebreakers and eliminating unemployment benefits for strikers (proposed by Pinza's subcommittee); weakening child labor laws (MAINE INNKEEPERS ASSOCIATION); privatizing Department of Environmental Protection field investigations (Preti Flaherty); directing the Bureau of Insurance to ease oversight over insurance rates (MAINE ASSOCIATION OF HEALTH PLANS) and the Maine Housing Authority to move away from green construction (contractor NICKERSON & O'DAY); and considering Maine's withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (PIERCE ATWOOD on behalf of the paper industry).

There's more, and it's nauseating.

In contrast to the likes of Scott Walker, John Kasich and Rick Scott—Republican governors who have clear personal engagement with their extremist agendas—LePage is almost buffoonish, a weapon rather than a warrior in the corporate war on the environment and workers. But the damage to a state is the same, regardless of whether the governor came up with the ideas himself or just cut and pasted them as directed by his corporate masters.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) have sounded an alarm over government overreach under the auspices of the PATRIOT Act, arguing that the administration has adopted a "secret law," an interpretation of the statute that extended the surveillance capacity of the government beyond what Congress authorized under the law.

More information about this classified program emerged this month, when Wyden and Udall released a letter they'd written to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper about location tracking of Americans.

In a letter to the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the senators demand information on whether the agencies he leads, including the NSA and the CIA, “have the authority to collect the geolocation information of American citizens for intelligence purposes.”

“If yes, please explain the specific statutory basis for this authority,” the letter states.[...]

The letter also asks how many Americans have had their communications monitored under authority granted by 2008 legislation amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “Have any apparently law-abiding Americans had their communications collected by the government?” they write.

In a confirmation hearing in the Intelligence committee Tuesday, Wyden asked general counsel of the National Security Agency if the government was tracking U.S. citizens using cellular data.

According to the general counsel of the National Security Agency, it may have that authority. Matthew Olsen, who is currently at the NSA and has been nominated to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, discussed the possibility at a confirmation hearing Tuesday morning in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“There are certain circumstances where that authority may exist,” he said. His comments came after Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) asked him several times whether the government has the authority to “use cell site data to track the location of Americans inside the country.”

Although Olsen acknowledged the possibility, he also said “it is a very complicated question” and that the intelligence community is working on a memo that will provide a better answer for the committee.

Committee chair Dianne Feinstein has asked for the memo for the committee's first hearing after the August recess. No word yet whether that will be a closed, classified hearing. Wyden and Udall seem committed to taking this program to the public, however.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson I do believe Rep. Paul Broun may in fact be a bit of an idiot:

A conservative member of the House warned that one consequence of the a weak economy is declining membership at country clubs.

"When someone is overextended and broke they don't continue paying for expensive automobiles, they sell the expensive automobiles and buy a cheaper one. They don't continue paying for country club dues, they drop out of the country club," Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said Wednesday on MSNBC.

Yes! Won't somebody please think of the country clubs! What kind of monsters are we, if in this jobless so-called recovery, full of pain and misery and people who haven't been able to find a new job in 99 weeks and so therefore are dumped into the sarlacc pit, if the end result is declining country club memberships!

And the automobiles! The expensive automobiles! The slightly cheaper automobiles! Dashboards that lack narwhal-tusk inlays! Engines that can tolerate non-premium gasoline! Madness, swirling madness all around us! The unfamiliar shapes, the tacky, insufficiently coordinated colors! Visions of purchasing a mere Acura, with the salesmen all chanting one of us! One of us!

Yes, now the nightmare of America's worst recession since the "Great" one is really hitting home.

I think you can judge a person quite well from observing what gets their attention; Broun has had little interest in the plight of the little people, during this recession, and I imagine that people who might have to drop their country club memberships count as the closest thing he can viscerally recognize as a hardship. I suppose in his mind this makes the rest of us feel the pain of the only-vaguely-well-off, because after all, they are suffering too! Not in a "goddamn it, what am I going to feed the kids tonight when I haven't had a job in six months" way, but at least in a "this is going to significantly affect my opportunities for golf" sort of way.

Note that it's probably not the top one or two percent giving up their country club memberships, the poor overtaxed darlings, but the upper middle class. We've decided we don't even need a middle class in this country anymore, so I don't know what we're worried about: isn't this like the whole thing with the manatees? If God has decided that the American middle class needs to be chopped into fine bits by the actions of the wealthier and better off, then hey—sucks to be you, American middle class, but good tea party Republicans know not to interfere.

Broun also explained that this means we should be cutting the debt ceiling, not raising it, because blah blah magical fairies creating jobs with pixie magic blah blah, which is something like saying "hmm, I need to lose weight—bring me a sharp axe and shopping bag's worth of bandages, would you?" There is no rational basis for his belief: it is, in fact, garbage, and contains zero economic wisdom or even common sense. He believes it only because he believes that government should cut funding for everything involving the poor or the sick or the homeless, and this is momentarily the best way for him to promote that goal.

If you recall the apocryphal (and by "apocryphal," we mean almost certainly false) story of Marie Antoinette asking why the starving peasants could not just eat cake, it was not out of cruelty that she supposedly said it: she was so sheltered that she could not grasp that people who did not have bread would not have cake either. The quote was supposed to represent total obliviousness to the plight of anyone less privileged.

If we reinvented that quote for today, I'm sure it would involve either country clubs or luxury cars. We should ask Paul Broun to do it for us: he seems to be good at this sort of thing.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson

More than three and a half years since the Great Recession began and twenty-five months after it ended—according to the arbiters of such matters—the United States is still afflicted by all the chronic problems it faced before the acute crisis struck, including wage stagnation and offshoring of jobs as well as still-growing inequalities of income and wealth. On the one hand, government intervention saved the domestic car industry and hundreds of thousands of jobs that would have been otherwise lost. On the other hand, new workers in that industry are being hired at far lower rates and receive far lower benefits than their predecessors.

In February, the National Employment Law Project found a striking imbalance between where the recession’s job losses occurred, and where the growth in the so-called recovery was concentrated. High-income jobs constituted 40 percent of what was lost during the recession but only 14 percent of what had been regained since the recession officially ended. Forty-nine percent of job growth between July 2009 and July 2010 had occurred in low-wage jobs. But such jobs made up only 23 percent of the layoffs between December 2007 and June 2009.

Now NELP has published an updated survey. Once again, it's not good news. The majority of growth continues to be in lower-wage occupations.

Policy Co-Director Annette Bernhardt, author of the report, said: “While it is too early to predict whether these trends will continue, the dominant growth in lower-wage occupations suggests that there is a good-jobs deficit that has hollowed out many of the decent work opportunities people are looking for. […] There has been a stark, disproportionate loss in mid-wage occupations during the recession, which puts a heavy burden on the recovery to replenish the stock of good mid-wage jobs.”

Bernhardt analyzed employment trends for 366 occupations based on data from the Current Population Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The data cover the first quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011, which ended March 31. Median wages were ranked into three groups: lower-wage ($7.51 to $13.52 per hour), mid-wage ($13.53 to $20.66 per hour) and higher-wage ($20.67 to $53.32 per hour).

What did she discover?

Lower-wage occupations grew by 3.2 percent, with retail salespersons, office clerks, cashiers, food preparation workers and stock clerks topping the list. Mid-wage occupations, including paralegals, customer service representatives and machinists, grew by only 1.2 percent, while higher-wage occupations declined by 1.2 percent, which includes occupations like engineers, registered nurses and finance workers. […]

As [the chart above shows], these meager growth figures are dwarfed by the job losses during the recession, which were concentrated in mid-wage occupations.  Of the net employment losses between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2010, fully 60.0 percent were in mid-wage occupations, 21.3 percent were in lower-wage occupations, and 18.7 percent were in higher-wage occupations. […]

The United States needs 11 million jobs to get back to pre-recession levels, and that jobs deficit is unevenly distributed:  it is largest among mid-wage occupations (8.4 percent below pre-recession employment), compared to higher-wage occupations (4.1 percent below pre-recession employment) and lower-wage occupations (0.3 percent below pre-recession employment). […]

Even as lower-wage jobs have generated the most growth, the wages they pay have fallen disproportionately – seeing a 2.3-percent decline since the start of the recession.  Workers in mid-wage occupations saw more modest declines (-0.9 percent), while workers in higher-wage occupations actually saw slight gains in real wages (+0.9 percent).  Overall, wages have fallen 0.6 percent since the start of the recession.

You can see specifics for some of occupations in the report.

Answers to the questions raised by the NELP report are crucial. Will these troubling trends vanish over time? Or is this part of that awful but oft-voiced description of our future—the "new normal"? Are the majority of Americans forever stuck with McJobs? Will younger people seeing such a dead-end future for themselves begin to feel more of a sense of solidarity with the working poor? And, if so, will they act accordingly to put the screws to politicians who are promoting austerity and tax cuts for the rich? How exactly would they turn those screws?

Talk about caucus unity:

The entire Senate Democratic caucus -- including independents Joe Lieberman (CT) and Bernie Sanders (VT) -- have a succinct message for House Speaker John Boehner: cram it!

In a Wednesday letter, the Democrats seek to prove what Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been saying for days: nobody in his party will vote for Boehner's debt limit plan, and he should stop claiming it's a viable solution to the looming default crisis.

Ouch. Not one non-GOP vote for Boehner's supposedly "bipartisan" plan. From the letter:

A short-term extension like the one in your bill would put America at risk, along with every family and business in it. Your approach would force us once again to face the threat of default in five or six short months. Every day, another expert warns us that your short-term approach could be nearly as disastrous as a default and would lead to a downgrade in our credit rating. If our credit is downgraded, it would cost us billions of dollars more in interest payments on our existing debt and drive up our deficit. Even more worrisome, a downgrade would spike interest rates, making everything from mortgages, car loans and credit cards more expensive for families and businesses nationwide.

In addition to risking a downgrade and catastrophic default, we are concerned that in five or six months, the House will once again hold the economy captive and refuse to avoid another default unless we accept unbalanced, deep cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security, without asking anything of the wealthiest Americans.

If there were any rationality left in Washington, we'd do a clean debt bill and be done with it. It's not like the debate would be going away: mere months from now, there's a budget to be passed, and there's no way all of today's issues won't be coming right back up then, and I'm sure the tea party Republicans could find some grand hostages to take then, in exchange for screwing poor people just a little bit more or whatever else gets them motivated for these things. But at least we wouldn't be threatening to burn down our entire economy just for the partisan spite of it.

Sigh. Then again, I suppose that's the very point. The hostage takers aren't going to give up the hostages without a fight, and "we'll destroy the entire U.S. economy unless you give us what we want" has been the primary message all along.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Ikea is, not unlike T-Mobile and its German parent company, one of these companies that have good labor practices in Europe and then come to the United States for cheap, union-free labor.

But today, workers at Ikea's Swedwood plant in Danville, Virginia, voted to join a union. The vote was 221-69, despite a typical anti-union campaign:

Rather than remaining neutral and supporting a “Fair and Friendly” election as IKEA management had discussed with BWI and the IAMAW, the United States-based Swedwood management continued to follow the advise of its union avoidance law firm and conducted several activities designed to alter the outcome of the election. Regardless of these intrusive tactics that ranged from “voluntary” meetings with Swedwood management; rumours of plant closure; and promises of bonuses should the union be defeated, the workers decided to join the union. Issues of safety and health, racial discrimination, dignity and basic human respect were the main grievances that the workers had expressed as reasons for voting to join the Machinists Union.

Conditions for Ikea workers in the U.S. have differed drastically from those in Sweden:

Laborers in Swedwood plants in Sweden produce bookcases and tables similar to those manufactured in Danville. The big difference is that the Europeans enjoy a minimum wage of about $19 an hour and a government-mandated five weeks of paid vacation. Full-time employees in Danville start at $8 an hour with 12 vacation days — eight of them on dates determined by the company.

What's more, as many as one-third of the workers at the Danville plant have been drawn from local temporary-staffing agencies. These workers receive even lower wages and no benefits, employees said.

If Ikea management here continues to operate the way it did in the run-up to the union vote, it may be quite a while before a contract is ratified and working conditions improve. But the workers have taken a resounding step toward something better today—and sent a message to European companies that they can't assume the U.S. is a safe place to come to looking for a low-wage, docile workforce.

Think Progress's Igor Volsky picks up on a Politico report stating that before talks between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner broke down last Friday, the two had agreed to raising the eligibility age for Medicare.

In what may be one of the most under-reported stories of the debt ceiling talks, Politico’s Jen Haberkorn notes that before negotiations broke down on Friday evening, President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner tentatively agreed to gradually raise the Medicare eligibility age as part of a "grand bargain" to increase the nation’s borrowing limit:

Details of the plan were not yet finalized before the Obama-Boehner talks collapsed on Friday. But in general, the agreement called for very gradually increasing the eligibility age from 65 to 67 over about two decades, according to administration and Republican congressional sources.

One pathway would call for increasing the age by one month per year beginning in 2017 until it reached 66 in 2029. In 2030, it would increase two months per year until it hit 67.

The administration’s willingness to entertain the idea may have given "a controversial idea more legitimacy and high-profile support than it's ever gotten before," Haberkorn observes, and it is likely to rile progressives who question the wisdom of the compromise.

Indeed, particularly considering the huge cost shift this would mean for seniors (Kaiser Family Foundation estimates [pdf] that it would cost "$3.7 billion in out-of-pocket costs for those ages 65 and 66 who would otherwise have been covered by Medicare" in 2014) for the pretty small return for the government. Volsky points to a CBO finding on the proposal that raising the eligibility age "would have little effect on the trajectory of Medicare’s long-term spending … because younger beneficiaries are healthier and thus less costly than the program's average beneficiary."

All of this, and more, is why some analysts call the plan "dopey," and another "the single worst idea for Medicare reform—which is saying a lot in light of the disastrous Paul Ryan plan for turning Medicare into an inadequate voucher for private insurance."

It's just a bad idea, so I guess we can thank Boehner and his band of crazies in the House for that bullet dodged, at least for the time being.

Rick Santorum better stop gay-bashing, or Dan Savage will redefine his first name too:

How pathetic. Tea partiers—the fringe element of the Republican Party who have forced John Boehner & Company to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage—held a rally in Washington today to protest any deal on raising the debt ceiling. There was an all-star cast of crazy, including Rand Paul, Herman Cain, Paul Broun and the head teabagger himself, Jim DeMint.

The only thing missing? A big audience.

At the start of the rally, which was organized by the American Grassroots Coalition and Tea Party Express, there were roughly 15 attendees waiting to hear the conservative lawmakers speak. By the time the senators had spoken there were still fewer than 50 tea partiers in attendance.

They panned the Boehner plan and the Reid plan, apparently because they:

"... believe that president and the Democrats have created this crisis to gain leverage over a plan to raise taxes, and the American people are saying that’s a non-starter.”

Of course. They must defeat the great debt-ceiling conspiracy of 2011 (which is no doubt connected to the great manatee conspiracy), because as Herman Cain said:

I don’t buy that there is going to be a catastrophe.

Never mind that Boehner, the man who is presently in charge of kow-towing to this extremist group of Republican thugs, said that:

While some think that, you know, we can go past August the 2nd, I frankly think it puts us in an awful lot of jeopardy and puts our economy in jeopardy, risking even more jobs.

And that even St. Ronald of Reagan—who had the debt-ceiling raised 18 times during his presidency—wrote:

The full consequences of a default or even the serious prospect of default by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. [...] The risks, the cost, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns. I want to thank you for your immediate attention to this urgent problem and for your assistance in passing an extension of the debt ceiling.

... the furthest extremes of the Republican party know better. Them and their 15-50 supporters. And this is who Boehner is listening to.

And if Senate Democrats cave to their lunacy, we're screwed.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Lawrence O'Donnell draws a useful parallel between the debt ceiling battle and the FAA's partial shutdown: in both cases, we're watching something that was once routine become a battleground. In the case of the FAA, it's already wreaking economic havoc, with nearly 4,000 workers furloughed and construction projects halted across the country, putting in the neighborhood of 90,000 construction jobs at risk.

As I've said time and time again, the FAA battle is, at base, about union rights. But, since the media is falling for the "this is really about rural airport subsidies" line, let's examine that for a minute.

Failure to pass a short-term extension is because of the cuts to Essential Air Service (EAS), which subsidizes rural airports, that Republicans inserted into the short-term extension bill. They did this explicitly to put pressure on Democrats to accept the loss of union rights for airline workers. The pressure comes because the EAS cuts target airports in the home states of Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller and Max Baucus—the Senate Majority Leader, the Chair of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, and the Chair of the Finance Committee. So it's "buckle to our anti-union agenda or your rural constituents get it."

What we're talking about here is a politically motivated $16.5 million cut, which Republicans are framing as Democrats not wanting to cut a wasteful program. Cuts to EAS might in fact be a good idea, and that's a discussion we could have if the political motivation—both the targeting of Democratic senators and the anti-union part—wasn't so blatant.  Meanwhile, the FAA is losing $30 million every day because it doesn't have the authority to collect taxes. That $30 million a day is money the Republicans want us to believe they are costing the government just in order to extract a $16.5 million cut. And the media is largely going along with that story, without questioning the wisdom of losing $30 million a day to cut $16.5 million once.

It's also money that airlines are pocketing, having raised fares by the amount of the taxes they're no longer collecting. Various politicians, including Rep. John Mica (R-FL), the guy who included the EAS cuts in the short-term extension, are telling the airlines to be good citizens and either pass along the savings to customers or the money to the government. But there's no muscle behind that.

No press will be allowed at a meeting with an unknown agenda that Herman Cain is planning for an unannounced time at an unstated venue between himself and an unreleased list of American Muslim leaders. Given the presidential candidate's penchant for expressing his disdain for Muslims and their constitutional rights, the ban on reporters is no surprise. His campaign security team better be sure to collect all the cell phones and tape recorders at the door.

Evan McMorris-Santoro confirmed Tuesday that the meeting to discuss religion and politics will be taking place. Other than a claim by campaign spokeswoman Ellen Carmichael that several leaders have agreed to meet with Cain, that's about all that is known. But you can be sure he won't be offering to cut the ribbon at the opening of any mosques.

The former CEO of Godfather's Pizza has previously said he would not appoint a Muslim to his Cabinet or as a federal judge for fear they would spread Islamic law in the United States. In a later appearance on Glenn Beck's television show, he backed off of that statement a bit and said he would consider such an appointment but only if the Muslim he chose swore a special oath of loyalty to the U.S. Constitution. In a rare moment of clarity, Beck asked Cain if he would ask a Catholic or Mormon to recite the same oath. "Nope, I wouldn't," Cain said.
Cain also opposes the building of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

On July 17, Cain tried to walk back his bigotry in another appearance on Fox, saying:

“I know that that there’s a peaceful group of Muslims in this country. God bless them and they are free to worship. I have never discriminated against anybody because of their religion, their sex, or origin, or anything like that. I’m simply saying I owe it to the American people to be cautious because terrorists are trying to kill us.”

In addition to surrendering their cell phones and tape recorders at the door, the Muslim leaders Cain plans to talk with should be prepared for a thorough pat down. They're sure to understand. Just a precaution. No offense. Really.