Treasury Tapping Second TARP Installment ‘Before It Has Been Released By Congress’
Treasury Tapping Second TARP Installment ‘Before It Has Been Released By Congress’
According to multiple reports, the Treasury Department has allocated nearly $10 billion more in funds from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) than Congress has officially released, “effectively making more promises than it can afford to keep.”
Under the TARP legislation, Treasury is allowed to hand out $350 billion of the $700 billion program, and must make a formal request in order to use the rest of the money. However, with the $6 billion allocated to auto-finance company GMAC on Monday, Treasury has appropriated $358.4 billion, which the Wall Street Journal notes “suggests Treasury is tapping into the second half…before it has been released by Congress.”
Treasury defended its actions, claiming that “the agency has complied with the [TARP] legislation” because it has not literally dispersed $350 billion, but has merely decided where it would like to send the money:
A Treasury spokeswoman declined to comment Tuesday on whether the newest commitments were based on the assumption that Congress would release the second installment, or would require reallocating money that had been promised to others.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said, “They are pushing the envelope here…What they are trying to do is create a situation to put pressure on [President-elect Barack] Obama and the Congress to provide the next $350 billion.” Indeed, Treasury has put Obama in a position from which he may have to renege on the department’s promises, if Congress decides to withhold the second TARP installment.
As The Wonk Room has noted before, it is critical that at least a portion of the remaining TARP funds be directed toward foreclosure relief. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) are reportedly drafting legislation to do just that, but it appears that Treasury, intentionally or not, is already tying Congress and the next administration’s hands.
- Comments
- 6
WSJ Continues To Fear Monger Against Health Care Reform
WSJ Continues To Fear Monger Against Health Care Reform
The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal took another shot at President elect Barack Obama’s health care proposal yesterday, warning readers that Obama’s appointed health care leaders — incoming Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Daschle and Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council Melody Barnes — “will ration your health care“:
People are policy. And now that President-elect Barack Obama has fielded his team of Tom Daschle as secretary of Health and Human Services and Melody Barnes as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, we can predict both the strategy and substance of the new administration’s health-care reform.
The prognosis is not good for patients, physicians or taxpayers…. Americans can expect a quick, hard push to build more federal bureaucracy, impose price controls, restrict medicines and technology, boost taxes, mandate the purchase of health insurance, and expand government health care.
The Journal’s ‘predictions’ are as predictable as they are erroneous. Conservatives have spouted the same-old tired arguments against reform since President Clinton’s failed 1994 effort, and the Wonk Room, along with some other progressive blogs, has been actively disputing their assertions.
But this latest attack piece introduces another more potent argument. The editorial, with Rove-like precision, attempts to invert the nation’s most successful universal health care reform effort into its biggest disaster:
Mr. Daschle’s model is Massachusetts. But Massachusetts’s plan is an unfolding disaster and demonstrates how Mr. Daschle’s private/public model is merely a stalking horse for government-dominated health care.
By conflating universal health care with the challenges of the Massachusetts model and defining ’success’ as a program that remains budget neutral — not one that extends more coverage to more people — conservatives are stalling reform.
The popular Massachusetts model has greatly reduced the number of uninsured and increasing access to coverage. Nearly three-quarters of previously uninsured Massachusetts residents now have medical coverage, half of the newly-insured “are enrolled in private health insurance and employer-sponsored plans” and “the number of visits to hospitals and community health centers by the uninsured declined by 37 percent,” saving the state an estimated $68 million.
But while Massachusetts “decided not to hold coverage hostage to the difficult decisions about cost,” Obama and his health care team have suggested that they will simultaneously address access and cost. The Massachusetts plan, for instance, “allows private insurers to sell group-style policies to lower-income Massachusetts residents who lack insurance” within a “Connector” or exchange but does not include a public plan alongside private options.
“Mr. Daschle’s ‘public/private model‘” conversely, would create a public option alongside the private plans, forcing insurers to compete on price and quality.
The Journal, however, glosses over the details and differences and attempts to discredit both the Obama team and the successes in Massachusetts by regurgitating tired attacks and pretending that the challenges of reform discredit the entire effort.
Iraq’s Leaders Condemn Gaza Strikes
Iraq’s Leaders Condemn Gaza Strikes
Of the various premises on which the U.S. invasion of Iraq was sold to the American people, one of the most bizarre was that a post-Saddam Iraqi government would be friendly to Israel. As with claims about WMD and Al Qaeda connections, this one has proved to be a work of imagination.
Just as they did during Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah, Iraq’s leaders are now showing where their true sympathies lie. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Da’wa Party “issued a statement condemning the attacks and calling on Islamic countries to cut relations with Israel and end all ’secret and public talks’ with it.”
Khalid Hussain of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) told Gulf News “We have obligations towards Palestine and all Iraqi people are in solidarity with the people in Palestine, and we will support the people in Gaza.”
Liwa Smeisim, Head of the Sadr’s political movement, has called for demonstrations in various Iraqi cities in solidarity with the people of Gaza and is also raising money to send to Gaza.
“Palestinian blood which was shed in Gaza and Iraqi blood which was shed in the Iraqi city of Kadhimiya [in reference to the bombing, which occurred in Baghdad at the time of the Israeli aggression on Gaza] is one blood,” Omar Abdul Sattar of the Islamic Party told Gulf News.
Iraqi parliamentarians called for the convening of a special session of parliament to discuss the situation in Gaza and the nature of the Iraqi move to support the Palestinians and stop Israeli aggression.
“Iraqi resistance groups have to retaliate against the Israeli aggression on Gaza by escalating their operations against the US military in Iraq since the US position is in favour of this aggression, firstly, and secondly because the United States and Israel are both enemies of the Arabs,” Omar Al Kubaisi, an activist of the Sunni Muslim Clerics Association.
Iraq’s senior Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Sistani also issued a statement condemning the Gaza strikes. (Juan Cole has the English translation.) Iraqis all over the country expressed solidarity with the Palestinians.
Looking on the bright side, if one can call it that, as with opposition to the U.S. occupation, Gaza is an issue on which Iraqis have achieved rare political consensus.
Under Bush, OSHA ‘Literally Fell Asleep On The Job’
Under Bush, OSHA ‘Literally Fell Asleep On The Job’
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) mission — as stated on its website — is to “assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women.”
However, the Washington Post reported today that for the last eight years OSHA has been doing anything but accomplishing this mission. Instead, the agency has become “mired in inaction,” creating only a “legacy of unregulation” — all to the benefit of America’s corporations.
As the Las Vegas Sun recently noted, the Bush administration’s “only real priority has been to prevent the agency from doing its job.” In fact, in just its first two years, the administration “pulled 22 items off the agency’s regulatory agenda, its working list of proposed safety and health rules.”
During Bush’s tenure, OSHA officials issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations “termed economically significant” than they did under President Clinton. And while these officials have been sitting on their hands, as many as 13 million people — “or nearly a tenth of the American workforce” — are injured on the job each year.
Part of the problem, as the Post reported, is that under Bush, career OSHA officials were shut out by political appointees, and thus “strategic choices were frequently made without input from [the agency's] experienced hands.” This has turned the agency into “a bureaucratic quagmire, where regulations take a decade or more to make and where priorities consistently shift.”
Symbolical of the agency’s shortcomings under Bush, Edwin G. Foulke Jr., a former Bush fundraiser appointed to head OSHA in 2006, “acquired a reputation inside the Labor Department as a man who literally fell asleep on the job“:
His top aides said they rustled papers, wore attention-getting garb, pounded the table for emphasis or gently kicked his leg, all to keep him awake. But, if these tactics failed, sometimes they just continued talking as if he were awake.
A key goal for the next administration should be to get OSHA back on the side of working people. For starters, this means putting teeth into the agency’s safety enforcement mechanisms. As David Madland of the Center for American Progress Action Fund has noted, “Many worker-protection fines are so low — even for the worst violations — that irresponsible employers have begun factoring them in as part of their cost of doing business rather than complying with labor laws”:
In 2007, the median OSHA final penalty for violations that caused a fatality was only $3,675.16. OSHA is one of only five government entities that are exempt from the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act, which directs and authorizes agencies to regularly adjust their penalties for inflation. These civil money penalties were last adjusted by Congress in 1990 and are not indexed to inflation.
OSHA — and the Labor Department as a whole — has neglected working Americans for the last eight years, harming not only individual workers, but also costing the American taxpayer $108 billion a year. There is no reason for this willful apathy to continue.
Andy McCarthy: Will The Gaza Strikes ‘Educate’ The Palestinians?
Andy McCarthy: Will The Gaza Strikes ‘Educate’ The Palestinians?
Commenting on Israel’s attack on Gaza, NRO’s Andy McCarthy wonders whether the strikes will “demonstrate that terrorism is a loser for those who vote for it.”
The question is whether the Palestinian people are educable. Which brings me back to the first point: the Palestinians voted to put in power — i.e., vest with the power of a quasi-sovereign government — a terrorist organization which thinks legitimate governing consists of bringing about the annihilation of its sovereign neighbor and, meantime, targeting the said neighbor’s civilian population with bombing attacks. When you do that, you make yourself a target.
It’s one thing to defend Israel’s disproportionate attacks as a legitimate attempt to destroy Hamas’ capacity to launch rockets into Israel, but it’s quite another to defend them as an attempt to “educate” the Palestinian people. The former is debatable, the latter is a forthright embrace of terrorism, the use of force against civilians to achieve a political goal.
McCarthy’s advocacy of violence against people who vote the wrong way raises an obvious question. Granting, for the moment, McCarthy’s simplistic interpretation of Hamas’ election, (which was more a vote against Fatah’s incompetence and corruption than it was for Israel’s destruction) if Palestinian civilians have made themselves targets by voting into power a party that advocates the destruction of Israel, have Israeli civilians made themselves targets by voting into power successive governments that have continued a military occupation while expropriating Palestinian land? Have Americans made themselves targets by voting in governments that support that occupation? According to McCarthy’s reasoning, the answer to both questions is yes.
This is very similar to the justification offered by Osama bin Laden for attacks on American civilians in his November 2002 “Letter to the American People“:
The American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.[...]
This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.
Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.
This is the rhetorical company in which McCarthy now finds himself. While we shouldn’t be surprised that there are many things that conservative extremists from all cultures agree on, decent and reasonable people should agree that there is no legitimate justification for intentional violence against civilians, by anyone.
Coal Front Group Sets Up Dirty ‘Blogger Brigade’ To Fight Reality
Coal Front Group Sets Up Dirty ‘Blogger Brigade’ To Fight Reality
The coal industry is attempting to organize bloggers to promote their false “clean coal” propaganda. The Reality Coalition, a group of national environmental organizations, have begun airing the message that “There’s no such thing as clean coal,” to counter the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by coal-powered corporations to pretend that coal is a “clean” fuel. So the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) and Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), essentially one coal propaganda group with two different faces, is fighting back with an email blast asking people to join their “Blogger Brigade”:
You can get into the debate. If you are interested in becoming an active member of ABEC’s Blogger Brigade just send me an e-mail to abroadhurst@balancedenergy.org and let me know you’re interested. One of our team members will give you a call and walk you through the process. It’s really easy – and for those of you who don’t already Blog, it is fun! You can join the online debate that’s already going on and you and others can remain anonymous (if you want to) at the same time! We’ll even set up a little competition to see how many Blog entries each person can make.
Notwithstanding the strange capitalization of “Blog,” this is the latest in a series of netcentric efforts from the coal public relations people. They’ve launched a Facebook page, Twitter feed, and have littered blogs with comments defending coal.
No matter how large ABEC’s “Blogger Brigade” gets, they still won’t be able to hide the toxic and dirty reality of coal. Yesterday morning, a dike at the Kingston coal-fired power plant in Harriman, Tennessee broke, letting loose a deluge of about 500 million gallons of coal slurry into tributaries of the Tennessee River, destroying twelve homes and derailing a train.
Watch the startling news footage:
Now that’s something worth blogging about.
Full email: More »
The coal industry’s poor design and maintenance of its sludge ponds has a long and sordid history: In 1972, a giant impoundment collapsed in Logan County, West Virginia, causing a landslide that killed 125 people, injured 1,000 others, and left 4,000 people homeless.
In 2000, a sludge impoundment failed in Inez, Kentucky, spilling more than 300 million gallons of coal-contaminated waste into local waterways. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, this was among the largest environmental disasters ever to occur East of the Mississippi.
There are literally hundreds of these sludge impoundments across the United States. As coal has dominated Appalachia, it has left behind a toxic legacy for residents, a legacy that will haunt the region for decades. For example, in Sundial, West Virginia, an elementary school sits just 400 yards downhill from a massive impoundment containing 2.8 billion gallons of toxic coal sludge.
Clean Coal Smoke: ACCCE Releases Long List Of Coal Tech Projects They’re Not Supporting
Clean Coal Smoke: ACCCE Releases Long List Of Coal Tech Projects They’re Not Supporting
Our guest bloggers are Daniel J. Weiss and Alexandra Kougentakis, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy and a Fellows Assistant at the Center For American Progress Action Fund.
Yesterday, the Center for American Progress released “Clean Coal Smoke Screen,” which documented that the coal and utility companies that belong to the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) have invested only a paltry percentage of their profits to develop technologies to reduce global warming. ACCCE attempted to push back by releasing a list of research efforts to capture coal’s global warming emissions:
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) today released a list of more than 80 carbon capture and storage demonstration and research projects, predominantly underway in the U.S., proving again that the coal-based electricity sector is moving aggressively towards bringing advanced clean coal technologies to the marketplace domestically and abroad.
In fact, this list did not prove that ACCCE members are “moving aggressively” in carbon capture and storage research. A quick review of the list found that most of these research projects are undertaken by the Department of Energy in cooperation with non-ACCCE entities. The projects on the ACCCE list fall into the following categories (projects before 2001 are not included here):
– 18 with ACCCE members in a joint CCS-related project
– 18 are joint National Energy Technology Lab and regional Carbon Sequestration and Leadership partnership projects
– 13 are joint DOE-university projects
– 12 projects are joint projects between DOE and non-profit or non-ACCCE for-profit partners
– 8 projects are joint DOE-U.S. energy lab projects
– 10 are foreign projects
– 6 are joint projects by the DOE or National Energy Technology Labs and regional Carbon Sequestration and Leadership partnerships; while the partnerships in this group include ACCCE members, these particular projects did not include ACCCE members as primary sponsors
– 1 with an ACCCE member partner in a non-CCS project
– 1 project is funded by the DOE only
– 2 are private projects by non-ACCCE members
Only 18 out of 89 projects on ACCCE’s list are CCS-related projects involving investment from ACCCE members. Sixteen of the 18 were recognized in the Center for American Progress analysis, which relied on information provided by ACCCE members. Two additional recently announced projects that were not on the ACCCE list were accounted for by the Center for American Progress as well. All the ACCCE list proves is that the federal government has undertaken many CCS projects with little monetary involvement from the “coal-based electricity sector.”
Our study found that ACCCE companies made 17 times as much money in 2007 alone as their total multi-year investment in CCS research –- a fact not refuted by ACCCE’s press release. Despite this miniscule investment in carbon capture and storage, we fully expect ACCCE and its member companies to continue to urge Congress to delay and weaken greenhouse gas reduction proposals, and to use taxpayer dollars to fund the research the coal industry should be doing themselves. Hopefully, Congress will not be fooled by the clean coal smoke.
Bush Administration Has Plenty Of Time To Slash Corporate Taxes, No Time To Audit Corporations
Bush Administration Has Plenty Of Time To Slash Corporate Taxes, No Time To Audit Corporations
According to IRS enforcement data released Monday, “audits of large corporations fell for the third straight year” in 2008. The IRS audited just 15.3 percent of returns of corporations with assets of $10 million or more, which is “the lowest audit coverage level since 2003 and down from a 20% coverage rate in 2005.”
IRS Deputy Commissioner Linda Stiff said 2008 was “a very challenging year,” since enforcement staff levels declined 2 percent and “some enforcement staff were re-directed to help field calls from taxpayers related to tax rebates that Congress ordered as part of economic stimulus legislation.” While this may be true, the turn away from corporate audits comes on the heels of reports that Bush’s IRS is expending a lot of effort to cut corporate taxes.
As Time’s Stephen Gandel found, in 2008 the IRS has been “unusually aggressive in doing what it can to lower corporate taxes, going above and beyond what has been allowed in the past.” The IRS this year has issued 113 notices — breaking the record of 111 set in 2006 — “many of which will lower the taxes companies will pay this year and in the future.”
Furthermore, Dean Zerbe, national managing director of the public accounting firm alliantgroup LP, said that the IRS — in a “disturbing” trend — is simply shifting its focus away from large corporations and onto “small and medium-sized firms“:
Audits of small and mid-sized firms don’t produce as much tax revenue, and about one-third of the time produce no change in taxes assessed, according to Mr. Zerbe. “They spend a lot of time doing root canals on people who are basically compliant,” he said.
The amount that the IRS collected from audits fell by about $3 billion this year. And while Goldman Sachs paid a 1 percent effective tax rate in 2008, the IRS thought its time would be better spent auditing the little guy and finding more ways to lower corporate taxes.
Redefining The Bush Doctrine As ‘Successful’
Redefining The Bush Doctrine As ‘Successful’
As conservatives grapple with Bush’s foreign policy legacy, a number of writers have lamented Bush’s retreat from the democracy promotion aspect of the Bush Doctrine. (I’ve argued that the flaws of Bush’s foreign policy itself have necessitated that retreat.)
In the Washington Times, Daniel Gallington takes a different approach. He argues that democracy promotion has been a waste of time, but that the other part of the Bush Doctrine — the part where America attacks other countries — has been a huge success.
Sad, because part of the doctrine — “preemption” — will continue to be U.S. policy, however it may be described by the Obama administration. Ironically perhaps, it’s the “democracy” part of the Bush Doctrine that has failed under the Bush administration, primarily because of fuzzy thinking and poor execution at the senior policy level.
The idea behind preemption is simple: Because our free (and soft-target) society is so vulnerable to Sept. 11-style sneak attacks from terrorists, we have adopted a policy to attack the attackers before they attack us.[...]
No American political administration, Republican, Democrat, liberal or conservative — anything short of a pacifist one — would stand by and do nothing if it were convinced that an attack on America was about to take place.
The reason none of this seems very controversial is that it has nothing to do with the Bush Doctrine, which asserted not the right of preemption, but of prevention, the right of the United States to attack any country that it determined may pose a threat in the future.
The careless confusion of these two terms has been a common problem in discussions of Bush’s foreign policy, as it’s enabled supporters of the Bush Doctrine to pretend that it’s less radical than it actually is.
Just as do all nation states, America under an Obama administration will continue to assert the right of preemption. But it will also hopefully abjure the right of prevention, which in its single application — Iraq — has proven completely calamitous.
As for the U.S.’s “‘democracy’ policy in Iraq”, Gallington is not having it:
Come on, the various religious and tribal factions there don’t want anything to do with democracy because it requires compromise – and they can’t do that any more than anyone else in the region. These aren’t Republicans and Democrats; these are people (mostly poorly educated and highly indoctrinated men) who have long sworn to kill each other for various sins and atrocities of the past – and have taken turns doing it over the past few thousand years.
Meanwhile, while all this killing was going on, we in the glorious civilized West were sitting around in libraries writing constitutions. No, that’s a joke. The truth is that, in terms of raw numbers, Europe probably engaged in more mass murder in the twentieth century alone than the previous thousand years in the Middle East.
I’m always grateful when conservatives engage in this sort of naked, ignorant bigotry, though. It’s good to let readers know where they, and we, really stand.
John Tierney On Catastrophic Climate Change: ‘There Are Other Ways To Cope’
John Tierney On Catastrophic Climate Change: ‘There Are Other Ways To Cope’
John Tierney, a libertarian columnist whose work graces the New York Times science pages, slammed President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of John Holdren as chief science adviser this weekend. Tierney attacks Holdren for being “spectacularly wrong about a major issue in [his] field of expertise,” for having “resistance to dissenting views,” and for “his tendency to conflate the science of climate change with prescriptions to cut greenhouse emissions.” Tierney quotes at length from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Reason Foundation, both right-wing libertarian think tanks.
Tierney takes special umbrage at Holdren’s critique of Bjorn Lomborg’s 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, even though it’s a hodge-podge of ideological pseudo-science and dishonest rhetorical fallacies. Actually, Tierney’s defense makes sense, because John Tierney’s own stock in trade is a hodge-podge of ideological pseudo-science and dishonest rhetorical fallacies.
Tierney does appear to go off the deep end with this bizarre paragraph:
Even if most climate scientists agree on the anthropogenic causes of global warming, that doesn’t imply that the best way to deal with the problem is through drastic cuts in greenhouse emissions. There are other ways to cope, and there’s no “scientific consensus” on which path looks best.
It’s not a complex fact that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere won’t stabilize until we stop adding new emissions. Natural processes to sequester atmospheric CO2 in the deep ocean and rocks take hundreds of thousands to millions of years. If the climate is to stabilize at any level in the meantime, net anthropogenic emissions will have to approach zero — requiring “drastic cuts.” Considering that the climate system is rapidly destabilizing, those drastic cuts are going to have to happen fast.
To be fair to Tierney, this assessment is failing to consider “other ways to cope,” which fall into three categories:
1. Magic technology to suck up emissions
2. Magic technology to block out the sun
3. A medium-scale nuclear war
(By “magic” I mean “undeveloped, unresearched, untested, and needed to be deployed on a global scale.”) Perhaps Tierney is arguing that the kind of science advice Obama truly needs is plans for seeding the ocean with vast amounts of iron, a fleet of orbital mirrors or an Arctic Christo-wrap to reflect insolation, or heightening tensions in Kashmir.
For now, I’d rather stick with cutting energy waste, shifting away from fossil fuels, and promoting reforestation and sustainable agriculture. Not quite the stuff one reads about in science-fiction novels or Gregg Easterbrook columns, but it’s a good deal less stupid.
Report: Coal Industry Talks ‘Clean Coal’ but Spends Few Dollars On It
Report: Coal Industry Talks ‘Clean Coal’ but Spends Few Dollars On It
Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
America’s coal industry is blowing smoke on the American public, misleadingly hyping its commitment to cleaning up its act. A series of feel-good ads this year showcased a variety of people straight from central casting saying “I believe in…Clean Coal. America’s Power.” These ads were sponsored by the American Council for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), an industry group comprised of 48 coal and utility companies. ACCCE spent at least $45 million on advertising this year to convince Americans that coal is a clean panacea to the world’s problems.
Despite the ads’ claims, an analysis by the Center of American Progress determined that ACCCE’s companies spend relatively few dollars conducting research on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), the experimental but promising technology that would allow power plants to capture 85 percent or more of their carbon dioxide emissions and permanently store them underground in geological formations. CAP’s analysis found that the 48 ACCCE companies made a combined profit of $57 billion in 2007 while investing over several years only $3.5 billion in CCS research.
ACCCE companies combined made $17 in 2007 profits for every $1 invested in CCS research over several years. This is a very generous estimate, because the analysis includes several projects that haven’t yet begun. Nonetheless, the research funding over a number of years is dwarfed by the profits for a single year. The 18 CCS projects by ACCCE companies have a lifetime cost of $5.7 billion, or one-tenth of the ACCCE companies’ profits in 2007 alone. Of this total cost, the ACCCE companies would eventually spend $3.5 billion on these projects, based on our analysis of publicly available data. The Department of Energy would provide an additional $1.9 billion. [CAP, 12/22/08]
With such relatively small investments in CCS research, it’s no wonder that it may take many years to develop and commercialize the technology. The lack of investment reinforces the notion that the real purpose of the clean coal campaign is to postpone requirements to reduce emissions. More »
That $50 billion over 30 years (less than one year of profits) was spent to reduce emissions of pollutants they are required by law to remove -- the soot, acid rain, and smog-causing pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. Only a small fraction, as our report found, is spent trying to remove greenhouse gas emissions. The Bush administration bent to the will of the industry and has ignored the Supreme Court mandate to set regulations for greenhouse emissions. The industry's record is one of investment in advanced coal technology only after fighting for years to delay and weaken efforts to require clean up. And every time, the cost to comply with regulations has been far less than industry claims, as the new research leads to gains in efficiency and competitiveness.
Iraqi Gov’t: ‘Remaining In Iraq Is Not An Option’ For MEK
Iraqi Gov’t: ‘Remaining In Iraq Is Not An Option’ For MEK
Yesterday, the Iraqi government announced its intention to expel the anti-Iranian Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) from Iraq:
“The Iraqi government is responsible for their security and it continues to implement its plans to shut down the camp and to either deport its population to their country or to a third country,” it said in a statement after the visit led by Iraqi national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie.
“Remaining in Iraq is not an option for them,” the statement added.
The MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), is the largest and most militant group opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
MEK was founded in the 1960s by a group of college-educated Iranian leftists opposed to the country’s pro-Western ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Although the group took part in the 1979 Islamic revolution that replaced the shah with a Shiite Islamist regime, MEK’s ideology, a blend of Marxism and Islamism, put it at odds with the post-revolutionary government. In 1981, the group was driven from its bases on the Iran-Iraq border and resettled in Paris, where it began supporting Iraq in its eight-year war against Khomeini’s Iran. In 1986, MEK moved its headquarters to Iraq where it received its primary support to attack the regime in Iran.
While it’s now understood that, despite the Bush administration’s claims, Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have any significant relationship with Al Qaeda, Saddam did have relationships with other terrorist organizations, one of which was the MEK. In addition to receiving financial, logistical and material support from from Saddam to carry out attacks inside Iran, “MEK forces also assisted the Iraq regime in the repression of Kurds and other minorities in northern Iraq.”
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Sec. Donald Rumsfeld declared the MEK “protected persons” under the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which is to say that a designated terrorist group known to have carried out attacks that killed Americans enjoyed greater legal protections than your average Iraqi picked up after curfew. The decision to protect the MEK — possibly for the purpose of carrying out future attacks against Iran — also revealed one of the underlying premises of the U.S. war on terror — the idea that we would make “no distinction” between terrorists and those who harbor them — to be just empty rhetoric.
This was not lost on Iran. Understandably irritated by the U.S.’s sheltering and protecting an anti-Iranian terrorist organization, the Iranian government has long demanded that the U.S. disband the MEK and and repatriate its members. (In 1981, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali al-Khamenei, who was then the president, survived an MEK bomb attack in which he lost the use of his right arm.) Now it seems they may get their wish.
Interestingly, the Iraqi government’s announcement was made just days before Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is due to visit Tehran. Clearly, the decision to grant one of Tehran’s dearest requests and expel a US-allied, anti-Iranian terrorist organization represents another huge blow to the theory that Tehran enjoys influence in the Iraqi government.
Banks ‘Refuse to Discuss’ Or ‘Simply Don’t Know’ Where TARP Money Is Going
Banks ‘Refuse to Discuss’ Or ‘Simply Don’t Know’ Where TARP Money Is Going
On Friday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that Congress must release the second $350 billion of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), since “emergency loans to the nation’s automakers have all but depleted” the initial $350 billion of the $700 billion program.
While neither the White House nor Treasury has made a formal request for the rest of the TARP money, lawmakers have already balked, particularly after reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and a congressional oversight panel found that the Treasury has no idea what banks are doing with their share of the money.
In what should only add to these concerns, the Associated Press has released a series of articles highlighting how little transparency there has been in the TARP thus far:
- The AP contacted 21 banks that have received at least $1 billion in TARP money and asked four questions: “How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what’s the plan for the rest? None of the banks provided specific answers.”
- The 116 banks that so far have received taxpayer dollars gave their top tier of executives “nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses and other benefits in 2007…That amount, spread among the 600 highest paid bank executives, would cover the bailout money given to 53 of the banks.”
- Six financial firms that received billions in bailout dollars “still own and operate fleets of jets to carry executives to company events and sometimes personal trips.”
As the AP put it, “the nation’s largest banks say they can’t track exactly how they’re spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it,” while some banks “said they simply didn’t know where the money was going.”
In light of this information, it is clear that more stringent TARP oversight is necessary, and that at least some of the funds need to be focused on something other than the financial sector. Fortunately, a plan to make this happen is already in the works.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-CA) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) are drafting legislation “that would release the remaining $350 billion of the financial-rescue fund in exchange for foreclosure help” financed by TARP money. The legislation will reportedly include Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair’s foreclosure-prevention plan, as well as revisions to the Hope for Homeowners program and “provisions to hold banks accountable for stepped-up lending to consumers.”
A concerted effort to stem foreclosures is a key facet missing from the response to the financial crisis. While the TARP was ultimately necessary to avoid even wider financial chaos, there’s no reason to continue on the present course or leave banks alone to do what they will with taxpayer money.
A Christmas Scandal
A Christmas Scandal
Our guest blogger is Lisa Gilbert, a Democracy Advocate with U.S. PIRG.
A foul smell is overwhelming the scent of pine this holiday season as the nation learns more about corruption allegations facing Rod Blagojevich.
Governor Blagojevich has been accused of trying to hold the editorial board of the Tribune hostage for state funding, asking for gifts from contractors and hospital executives, and trying to sell a Senate seat to the highest bidder. Blagojevich should resign effective immediately; however the activities that he so casually engaged in are a loud wake-up call to the undue influence of money on our political system.
The need to constantly seek enough money for campaigns is the reality of our democracy. The candidate with the most money spent on his or her behalf typically wins 85%-95% of elections. The relentless pursuit of this funding, oftentimes from those who have a stake in what happens in legislative decisions and appropriations, creates an environment in which money (and who it came from) can mean more than representing your constituents.
While we can’t stop people like Governor Blagojevich from seeking to game the system for personal gain, we can try to halt the tide of private contributions that lead politicians toward corruption. To do this, we need to clean up our election process by putting in place a strong public financing system.
The public supports this idea. In 2008, unprecedented numbers of small donors supported President-elect Obama. Following this historic upturn in involvement, small donors are looking for a fair system that will recognize their support. According to polling data from Lake Research Partners and the Tarrance Group:
Voters support a proposal for publicly funding elections that includes a ban on lobbyist contributions and accepting only small contributions by over a 5-to-1 ratio.
Even before the Blagojevich holiday scandal, the public was concerned about the corrupting influence of money on politics. 77% of voters also said that they worried that big gifts to politicians would keep Congress from working on critical issues like jobs and the economy.
The Fair Elections Now Act was introduced in the 110th Congress by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), and Rep. Walter Jones, Jr. (R-N.C.). President-elect Barack Obama was a co-sponsor on the bill, which will put in place a system where opt-in candidates qualify for funds to start their campaign by receiving a significant amount of small donations from individuals. Candidates will agree to take no large donations and to keep their own funds out of the race in exchange for this public funding. Small donations will be matched with public funding to help further level the playing field.
As Americans enjoy this Christmas and hope that under their trees they’ll find a universal healthcare system and green job creation, let’s give them a chance to be heard by their elected officials. President-elect Obama promised to reform the public financing system. Let’s hold him to his word, and transform the big money system that allows corruption at the Blagojevich level to flourish into a participatory clean system of public financing.
Is Coal-Poisoned Sushi Killing Jeremy Piven?
Is Coal-Poisoned Sushi Killing Jeremy Piven?
It appears that Jeremy Piven, the star of HBO’s Entourage series, is being poisoned by coal. Piven “split from the critical and commercial hit Broadway revival of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, citing doctors’ diagnosis that he’s suffering a high mercury count,” causing Mamet to quip that Piven quit to “pursue a career as a thermometer.” Piven’s doctor, Carlon Colker, explained that his mercury poisoning was caused by a high-sushi diet:
Dr. Colker said that an initial battery of tests on Mr. Piven had shown normal results. But after Mr. Piven said he was a frequent sushi eater who consumed fish about twice a day, and that he used herbal remedies, Dr. Colker tested him for heavy metals. Dr. Colker said that these tests revealed “a very, very elevated level of mercury” in Mr. Piven’s blood, adding that it was five to six times the upper limit that is typically measured.
Organic mercury poisoning from fish consumption causes nervous system damage with symptoms similar to cerebral palsy. Mercury in fish has reached alarming levels. In the United States, about “one in six women of childbearing age now have unsafe levels of mercury in their blood” and “between 300,000 and 600,000 children are at serious risk of severe neurological and developmental impairment from mercury exposure each year.”
But why is sushi such a poisonous threat?
Mercury dissolved in water accumulates in the muscle tissues of fish. As the Natural Resources Defense Council explains, “Many of the fish chosen for sushi are the apex predators of the fish food chain, which means they can bear high concentrations of mercury.”
The mercury comes from the same toxic polluters responsible for global warming pollution, particularly coal-fired power plants, as coal is naturally contaminated with high levels of mercury. Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury air emissions worldwide, responsible for about 1500 tons of mercury added to the atmosphere each year. In the United States alone:
Coal-fired power plants emit around 60 tons of mercury into the air annually.
Gold mining releases about 10 tons of mercury annually.
Waste incineration emits 10 to 12 tons of mercury annually.
Corrupt Environmental Protection Agency officials are complicit in this deadly debacle. The Environmental Integrity Project’s Ilan Levin tells the Wonk Room:
The Bush administration bought the U.S. electric industry a decade of inaction. Mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants have remained the same for eight years despite the development of new technologies that could reduce them by about 90 percent.
The Government Will Have To Invest In Health Care In Order To Save It
The Government Will Have To Invest In Health Care In Order To Save It
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has concluded that some popular health care proposals, like increasing funding for comparative effectiveness research and preventive care “would carry a high price tag and would generate only modest savings.” Still others, seem more promising. Requiring doctors and hospitals to use health information technology as a condition for participating in Medicare, for instance, saves “$7 billion in the first five years and a total of $34 billion over 10 years” and lowers “health insurance premiums in the private sector.”
In short, bringing everyone into the system, helping businesses afford health care coverage, insulating Americans from catastrophic health care bills and improving the quality of care, will yield savings but will also require a significant upfront investment in coverage and health care infrastructure.
If we fail to act, however, “health costs will continue to soar, the number of people without insurance will rise by nearly one million a year, to a total of 54 million in 2019, and spending on health care will increase to 25 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from 16 percent in 2007.”
As General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner admitted, a national health care program would have helped the industry avert financial disaster:
GWEN MOORE (D-WI): Wouldn’t this have been a great time for GM to say, we need a national health care program in order to stay viable? …. Why did you stop short of saying that this kind of initiative would help our industry?
WAGONER: Well it undoubtedly would help level the playing field for the industry. … We’ve then tried to we have been very active in the health-care debate since here in Washington. … Our competitors do in most other countries have a significantly greater government role.
After all, that’s what the government does: it spends money to avert disaster. We spend billions on protecting our homeland and bailouts of financial institutions. To somehow change the paradigm in the health care discussion and argue that reform is only possible if it’s budget neutral, completely affordable, or free, is intellectually dishonest. We don’t count the pennies we spend on securing our airports or argue that if we try to secure all of them we’ll bust the budget, and we shouldn’t penny pinch for affordable health care.
As the CBO points out, certain cost-containment measures will indeed contain costs. But to avert the consequences of inaction and help its citizens, the government will have to invest new dollars into health care. As with anything else, it will have to collect taxpayer money, find savings where it can, and then spend to improve the common good.
WSJ Writer: Free Choice Act Is ‘Unconstitutional,’ Denies Employers The Right To Intimidate Workers
WSJ Writer: Free Choice Act Is ‘Unconstitutional,’ Denies Employers The Right To Intimidate Workers
In the Wall Street Journal today, Richard Epstein, a professor of law at the University of Chicago and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, claimed that the Employee Free Choice Act is “unconstitutional” because it “denies all speech rights to the unions’ adversaries.”
Under the Free Choice Act, employers would have to recognize a union if a majority of workers signed cards of consent, which Epstein argues would make it impossible for employers to adequately lay out the supposed cons of unionization. Having a union be recognized after a majority sign-up is important, however, because currently employers can force workers into an arduous, unfair unionizing campaign, even after a majority have formally expressed their desire to unionize.
But if Epstein is so concerned about the free speech rights of employers (and what prevents employers from making their opinions known during a card signing drive is unclear) then he should be equally troubled by this facet of the current unionizing process:
Management is allowed to bombard employees with anti-union messages anywhere, anytime in the workplace. Workers can only talk about the union while they’re on breaks in the break room or before or after work. Union organizers have no right to set foot in the workplace.
That sure seems like a free-speech infringement. Furthermore, as the AFL-CIO has found:
- 92 percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda.
- 78 percent force employees to attend one-on-one meetings with their own supervisors against the union.
- 75 percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.
Employers can also delay the voting process for years. It took “an expensive and emotional 15-year organizing battle,” which just ended last week, for Smithfield Packing in Tar Heel, NC to unionize, even though in 2006, the United States Court of Appeals “ruled that Smithfield had engaged in ‘intense and widespread’ coercion” to prevent the union from forming. More »
No More Roads To Nowhere: Call For A Clean Economic Stimulus
No More Roads To Nowhere: Call For A Clean Economic Stimulus
Congress is answering President-elect Barack Obama’s call for an economic recovery package that includes green infrastructure investments. However, as Friends of the Earth warns, “the road-building lobby is attempting to hijack this bill and divert billions of dollars to the construction of new, unnecessary roads, highways and bridges that would deepen our nation’s dependence on oil and increase greenhouse gas emissions.”
As Bob Massie explained earlier in the week, there’s no reason for infrastructure investment and the transformation to a green economy to be mutually exclusive. In fact, these two goals will be “far more powerful” if they are “directly connected.”
There is undeniable need to invest in “truly imperiled bridges, seriously decayed subway lines and roads, leak-plagued water systems, [and] schools crying out for basic repairs,” as The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the United States a “D” grade on its infrastructure in 2005 and reported that traffic congestion led to huge productivity losses. Plus, without adequate roads and bridges, mass transit initiatives become that much more difficult. However, this investment would only be the beginning.
Further investment in “energy stimulus” should go to modernize government buildings, update public schools, and improve the electrical grid. Also critical will be the greening of individual homes, which can create jobs, improve housing values, and “bring new [green] technologies rapidly to scale.”
The Center for American Progress notes that part of this could be accomplished through the greening of HUD-assisted housing, as “it is generally agreed that each $1 million investment in rehabilitation of affordable housing yields between eight on-site jobs to 11 on-site jobs“:
According to Oregon Housing and Community Services’ study of some of its affordable residential development and rehabilitation projects, for each job created on-site another 1.5 jobs on average are created off-site. Using these numbers, a $1 billion investment in the greening of HUD-assisted housing would create an estimated 20,000 green jobs to 27,500 green jobs.
Another option is to fully fund the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), “and build toward a goal of weatherizing 1 million homes” in 2009. This improves home energy-efficiency, as “each house that benefits from WAP reduces its carbon dioxide emissions by 1.79 tons per year,” and also acts as stimulus, with each $1 million of program funding creating 52 direct jobs and additional indirect jobs for subcontractors and material suppliers. And Architecture 2030 has proposed an energy-efficiency mortgage refinancing stimulus.
A properly crafted economic recovery package will restore our job market in a green economy that rewards work instead of Wall Street gambling, and builds a sustainable infrastructure instead of paving new roads to nowhere.
Obama’s Pick For Green Jobs: Hilda Solis
Obama’s Pick For Green Jobs: Hilda Solis
President-elect Barack Obama has reportedly completed his Cabinet with the selection of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) as Secretary of Labor. Solis, a five-term representative from East Los Angeles, is a progressive leader in the fight for green jobs, as both a “stalwart friend of the unions” and the author of the first environmental justice law in the nation. At this summer’s National Clean Energy Summit, convened by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Solis spoke about her commitment to solving global warming through a clean energy economy for all:
Our nation is at a crossroads right now. We can choose to transition to a clean energy economy that secures our energy supply and combats climate change or we can continue down the same old path of uncertainty and insecurity that we’re currently in. Current economic conditions, particularly for under-served, under-represented minority communities underscore the need to transition to clean energy technology.
Watch it:
The Green Jobs Act authored by Solis and passed into law as part of the 2007 energy bill was not funded at all. Green For All and the Center for American Progress are calling for full funding of this important legislation to bring skilled, well-paying jobs to communities that have been left behind in earlier economic good times — and are now hardest hit by the current economic crisis.
Iraq’s Strongman?
Iraq’s Strongman?
The New York Times reports that “up to 35 officials in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior ranking as high as general have been arrested over the past three days with some of them accused of quietly working to reconstitute Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.”
The arrests, confirmed by officials from the Ministries of the Interior and National Security as well as the prime minister’s office, included four generals. The officials also said that the arrests had come at the hand of an elite counterterrorism force that reports directly to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
Maliki’s creation of military units answerable only to himself and the inner circle of his Da’wa Party has been a growing issue. Musings on Iraq had this overview in October:
Since the security operation in Basra in March 2008 Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been organizing local tribes to back the security forces and his government. So far these Tribal Support Councils have been established in Basra, Maysan, Babil, Wasit, Karbala, Dhi Qar, and Baghdad provinces. They are paid $21,000 by Baghdad when they first form, then receive $10,000 a month afterwards. They answer directly to Maliki’s office.
This has caused increasing tensions with the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) who rules most of the south. The SIIC is afraid that Maliki will use these sheikhs to help his Dawa party gain seats in the upcoming provincial elections. The Prime Minister has publicly declared that the councils are non-partisan in nature, and that he would disband any that are allied with a party, but their political nature is apparent to everyone.
Recently, a tribal leader in southern Iraq publicly said what has been an open secret for months now that the Tribal Support Councils are meant to sway voters to Maliki’s Dawa party. Sheikh Nabil Sagban, the head of the Fatla tribe and a Tribal Support Council in Qadisiyah, said that the provincial elections are causing increasing tensions between Dawa and the SIIC. Each one is looking to gain followers before the balloting in early 2009. The tribes are in the middle as they can influence large numbers of Iraqis, especially in rural areas. The coming of a Support Council to the Fatla area of Qadisiyah seemed to work for Maliki as the sheikh declared he would vote for Dawa, and that he would tell his tribesmen to do the same.
In November, Iraq’s presidential council demanded that Maliki “suspend pro-government tribal councils so their legality could be reviewed.”
“We demand that you intervene to order a halt to the work of these councils until there is agreement about them, in order to provide administrative and legal cover for them,” the council said in a letter posted on its website.
The so-called Support Councils have already drawn fire from Iraq’s two main Kurdish parties, who earlier this month accused Maliki of creating his own militias to consolidate Baghdad’s grip on ethnically mixed regions.
While the Kurds in the north and Maliki’s Shia rivals in the south accuse Maliki of using these militias to strengthen his party’s hold in advance of January elections, Maliki has apparently learned from his Bush administration sponsors in that you can do pretty much anything you want as long as you call it “fighting terrorism.”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Wonk RoomContact Us
Donate
