Bush and the Republican Wrecking Crew

Bush and the Republican Wrecking Crew
Brattleboro Reformer Editorial

On its way out the door, the Bush administration is rushing to gut some important laws and regulations protecting the environment. Regarding the Endangered Species Act, for instance, the administration wants to impose major exceptions to rules requiring scientific review of federal projects that might harm or threaten endangered species.

The administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other projects will harm endangered animals or plants. The changes would apply to any project the federal government funds, builds or authorizes.

This giveaway to commercial interests would greatly reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been conducting in the 35 years since the act was adopted. The new regulations also would bar federal agencies from assessing whether emissions from proposed projects would further endanger species or habitats by contributing to global warming.

In response to these proposed changes, individuals, groups and officials submitted more than 300,000 comments. The Interior Department quickly assigned 15 employees to "review" all of them in 32 hours, a cynical speed-reading exercise with a predictable outcome.

Not surprisingly, the Interior Department "brightly concluded that no significant environmental harm would result from simply allowing federal agencies to voluntarily decide whether their projects might be a threat to wildlife," writes executive director Carl Pope, of the Sierra Club.

The rush job is a result of the administration's desire to finalize all regulatory changes before it leaves office, making it difficult and time-consuming for the incoming Obama administration to reverse them.

In another area, a rule put forward by the National Marine Fisheries Service, now under final review, would lift the requirement that environmental impact statements be prepared for certain fisheries management decisions. In addition, it would give review authority to regional councils dominated by commercial and recreational fishing interests, according to The Washington Post.

The administration has received almost 200,000 public comments on the rule, as well as protests from 80 members of Congress and 160 conservation groups, according to the Post.

In yet another outrage, the administration signed a rule on Oct. 31 exempting thousands of factory farms from needing permits that limit water pollution. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency did not adopt improved controls for bacteria and other pathogens that can pose risks to human health and wildlife, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations, confine animals on an industrial scale and produce massive amounts of manure and other waste that can pollute waterways with dangerous contaminants. These farms lack waste treatment facilities comparable to those that treat human sewage, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

There are many more such damaging rule changes in the pipeline than can be detailed here. Others include, according to The New York Times, a rule that would weaken a Clean Air Act program requiring utilities to install modern pollution controls when they upgrade their plants to produce more power. The EPA also will issue a rule to make it easier for coal-fired plants to locate near national parks. And the Interior Department is awaiting EPA approval of a proposal that would make it easier for mining companies to dump toxic wastes in valleys and streams.

The new administration will undo all this craziness - but with an unfortunate expense of time, energy and money. A decent future for the U.S. and the world will require thinking through and working out responsible and integrated economic, energy, food and environmental policies which don't destroy one sector to boost another. The Bush administration's ill-considered rule changes are the last gasp of an exhausted and discredited ideology.

Joe the Plumber is a welfare queen too

Joe the Plumber is a welfare queen too
Is there anything this guy hasn't been involved in? What's next for Joe, "Dancing with the Stars?" I was watching H&C last night and made this clip after I almost couldn't stop laughing at this guy. Joe "the Plumber" Wurtzelbacher is the perfect definition of what a wingnut is if you never understood the term before. You see, he survived in our country using welfare, a program designed to help the needy, but now says Obama is not loyal to our country because he wants to take our money and give it to other people. Does he drive a Cadillac too? I guess if it wasn't for welfare he wouldn't be littering our air waves. His 15 minutes are almost up.

Colmes: Do you really doubt that Barack Obama's loyalty to the United States?

Plumber: Ah...to a Democracy "yes," I mean, right back to the, as far as the Socialism issues, spreading the wealth around. I mean, Alan that is right out of Karl Marx.....Webster dictionary...government health care...

Colmes: You don't think he's loyal to our country?

Plumber Joe: To democracy? He's proposing a lot of changes that could change the core of America, don't you think?

Plumber Joe: Was it patriotic for Joe Biden to say "take my money and give it to other people? That's patriotism?

Colmes: Well, let me ask, you were on welfare once, was that taking somebodies else's money and giving it to you?

Plumber Joe: Paid into welfare. It something to be used, not to be abused like it often is.

Spoken like a true wingnut. He's perfect for FOX News. Colmes nailed him pretty good. He talks about his principles at the end of the clip, but really they are no principles at all, just the principle of a wingnut.

Jed has more:

So it turns out that when Plumber Joe was a child, he was on welfare, not once, but twice, and he credits it with helping his family ultimately lead a middle-class life style. He defends having received welfare by saying that he's subsequently paid into the system.

Bob Novak Just Doesn't Get It

Bob Novak Just Doesn't Get It
In the Wednesday edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, conservative columnist Robert Novak claimed Barack Obama's historical election last night was not "a broad mandate from the public" and the ensuing Democratic wave did little to change the political alignment in congress. Given recent history and the evidence of a shifting tide in American politics, I'm hard pressed to find a more inaccurate assessment of the outcome.

George W. Bush and Co. declared a "mandate" from the people shortly after his reelection in 2004 by a mere 35 electoral vote-margin. He did so despite barely eking out a majority with 50.7% of the popular vote over John Kerry's 48.3%. Incidentally, this 2.4% margin of victory was the narrowest win for any elected incumbent seeking reelection since Harrison beat Cleveland in 1888 and it was the smallest victory in all of American history for a war-time Commander in Chief.

Obama sailed over John McCain last night with a clear majority of over 53% of the popular vote and a 6%, 7.4-million vote margin of victory that is over twice that of his predecessor. And with an electoral-vote margin of nearly 200 (over five times that of Bush), Obama's win constitutes not just more than double the "mandate" claimed by Bush, it is an historic landslide by contemporary standards.

The President-Elect flipped eight Bush states to the blue column and managed to get two states--Indiana and Virginia--to elect a Democrat for President for the first time in nearly half a century. Solidly red North Carolina hasn't sent a Democrat to the Whitehouse in 22 years but they seem likely poised to do so this year, and the changing maps in this election weren't limited to just the Presidency.

In the Senate, Democrats were successful in unseating the incumbent Republicans in New Hampshire and North Carolina and won seats formerly held by Republicans in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico. They failed to upset Republican leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky but, much like the races in blood-red Alaska and Georgia, the outcome should never have been in doubt or so razor-close. This is indeed a year of changing political landscapes.

It's No Joke Bush Fed Hires Failed Bank Executive

It's No Joke Bush Fed Hires Failed Bank Executive
The Federal Reserve Bank is drawing jeers for hiring a former top executive from the now-defunct investment bank Bear Stearns to help it gauge the health of other banks.

"How's this for sweet irony?" business publication Portfolio.com needled the pick.

Michael Alix was head of risk management for Bear Stearns for two years until the institution imploded this spring, a victim of its (risky) subprime-mortgage related investments.

Last Friday, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York quietly announced it had hired Alix to advise it on bank supervision.

"You're kidding me," said economic policy expert Dean Baker, of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic Policy and Research. While he didn't know Alix personally, he said, "You would think [his record] would be a big strike against him."

The collapse of Bear Stearns led to its pennies-on-the-dollar buyout by J.P. Morgan Chase; the bank's shareholders saw their wealth plummet. To facilitate the buyout, the Fed agreed to assume potential billions in losses on bad Bear Stearns investments.

"[Alix] was the guy on the mast charged with yelling 'iceberg' just before the Titanic introducted its bow to a floating chunk of ice," wrote financial expert and blogger John Carney on the web site Clusterstock.com, where he flagged the hire.

The Fed's move "is sure to put to rest the notion that there are no second acts in American life," Carney observed drily.

Wash. Post misrepresented Obama's remark to SF Chronicle editorial board about coal

Wash. Post misrepresented Obama's remark to SF Chronicle editorial board about coal
Summary: The Washington Post distorted a quote by Sen. Barack Obama in reporting that Sen. John McCain "ma[de] fun of something Obama had told a reporter, 'The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster.' " In fact, Obama said during a January 2008 interview: "The only thing that I've said, with a respect to coal -- I haven't been some coal booster -- what I have said is that, for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter, as opposed to saying, if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it. You know, that I think is the right approach."

In a November 3 Washington Post article, staff writers Shailagh Murray, Juliet Eilperin, and Robert Barnes cropped a quote by Sen. Barack Obama during a January 17 meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board to misrepresent what Obama had said about coal. Murray, Eilperin, and Barnes reported that during a speech the previous day, Sen. John McCain "ma[de] fun of something Obama had told a reporter, 'The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster.' " The article went on to quote McCain stating, "My friends, I've been a coal booster, and it's going to create jobs, and we're going to export coal to other countries and we are going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs." In fact, during the Chronicle meeting, Obama said: "The only thing that I've said, with a respect to coal -- I haven't been some coal booster -- what I have said is, that, for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter, as opposed to saying, if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it. You know, that I think is the right approach."

From Obama's January 17 meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board:

EDITORIAL WRITER: Senator, you introduced a bill promoting coal-conducted fuels, and then you said you'd only support them if they emitted fewer greenhouse gases in gasoline. Now, all the scientific evidence points to coal being dirtier than pretty much anything else, so how are you going to score your support for coal with the need to fight global warming?

OBAMA: Well, I've already - I've already done it. You know, I voted against the Clear Skies bill -- in fact, I was the deciding vote. Despite the fact that I'm a coal state, and that half of my state thought I'd thoroughly betrayed them, because I think clean air is critical, and global warming is critical. But, this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that, right now, we are getting a lot of our energy from coal, and China's building its coal-powered plant once a week. So, what we have to do, then, is we have to figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon, and how can we sequester that carbon and capture it? If we can't, then, you know, we're gonna still be working on alternatives. But --

EDITORIAL WRITER: Alternatives including coal, or what?

OBAMA: Let me sort of describe my overall policy. I mean, what I've said is that we would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is more - that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. I was the first call for a 100 percent auction on the cap-and-trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases was emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted-down caps that are placed -- imposed every year.

So, if somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can. It's just that, it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that I've said, with a respect to coal -- I haven't been some coal booster -- what I have said is, that, for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter, as opposed to saying, if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it. You know, that I think is the right approach.

The same with respect to nuclear. Right now, we don't know how to store nuclear waste wisely, and we don't know how to deal with some of the safety issues that remain, and so it's wildly expensive to pursue nuclear energy. But, I tell you what, if we could figure out how to store it safely, then I think most of us would say that might be a pretty good deal. The point is, if we set rigorous standards for the allowable emissions, then we can allow the market to determine, and technology and entrepreneurs to pursue what's the best approach to take, as opposed to us saying, at the outset, here are the winners that we're picking, and maybe we pick wrong, and maybe we pick right.

From the Post article:

Although McCain's pitch to voters in his final days focuses primarily on the theme that he is more experienced and would manage the economy better than Obama, he has also increasingly shifted to the right in recent weeks as he courts voters in swing states.

In one of the clearest indications of that move, the candidate who once spoke repeatedly of the need to curb climate change now devotes his speeches to touting the need to boost oil and coal production, two of the biggest contributors to global warming, while campaigning in those coal-producing states.

Indeed, the one new line he unveiled Sunday -- which his aides said he would use several times during his seven-state swing in the run-up to Election Day -- was to make fun of something Obama had told a reporter, "The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster."

Speaking before a crowd in Scranton, McCain said, "My friends, I've been a coal booster, and it's going to create jobs, and we're going to export coal to other countries and we are going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs."

— M.G.

McCain And Obama Criticize New Coal Plants — Right Wing Goes Insane

McCain And Obama Criticize New Coal Plants — Right Wing Goes Insane
The right wing has gone insane over these remarks, falsely claiming that Obama said he “will bankrupt the coal industry.” This false claim is the headline of a Newsbusters story — the same right-wing front group that falsely attacked Al Gore using doctored audio clips. This time, the piece is based on an anonymous YouTube video. After being pumped by a top link on the Drudge Report, the right-wing — including the Weekly Standard, Michelle Malkin, and Power Line — went wild and repeated the lie that Obama talked about “bankrupting” the “coal industry.”

In reality, Obama’s statements, while blunt, are neither revelatory nor controversial. At a September 15 townhall meeting in Orlando, FL, McCain warned against building new coal plants:

We’re going to build new plants that generate energy, my friends, we’re going to build them. We’ve got to. There’s an increased demand for it. And it seems to me, it’s going to be coal, which I believe will increase greenhouse gas emissions dramatically, or it’s going to be nuclear, or it’s going to be clean coal technology.

In the San Francisco Chronicle interview , Obama similarly stated that the future of power involves coal:

But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives.

Under either candidate’s cap and trade program, constructing new coal plants that do not employ “clean coal technology” — that is, carbon capture and sequestration technology — would raise costs “dramatically.” Independent analysts have found that new coal plants would “create significant financial risks for shareholders and ratepayers” because of the likely cost of their greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, energy providers will have a financial incentive to pursue alternative energy and energy efficiency. McCain explained the market signal of a cap and trade program in his May 12 speech on climate change:

And the same approach that brought a decline in sulfur dioxide emissions can have an equally dramatic and permanent effect on carbon emissions. Instantly, automakers, coal companies, power plants, and every other enterprise in America would have an incentive to reduce carbon emissions, because when they go under those limits they can sell the balance of permitted emissions for cash. As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy. . . A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy. Those who want clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels will have their opportunity through a new market that rewards those and other innovations in clean energy.

McCain emphasized who the winners under a carbon cap-and-trade system are: “clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels.” The market “incentive,” “reward,” or “signal” is a euphemism that the winners will make money because the losers will pay more. And the losers, above all, are traditional coal plants — no matter who is elected president.

GOP Donor Secretly Funneled $75K To Norm Coleman Family

GOP Donor Secretly Funneled $75K To Norm Coleman Family
The CEO of a major marine technology company is alleging that he was pressured by a friend and associate of Norm Coleman to secretly funnel tens of thousands of dollars to the Senator's family.

Paul McKim, the founder and CEO of Deep Marine Technology, alleges in a civil suit that Nasser Kazeminy -- a longtime Republican donor, friend of Coleman, and DMT shareholder -- directed the company to send $75,000 to the Senator and his wife.

The transaction, which occurred in 2007, allegedly went as follows: DMT would make payments for services to Hays Company, even though no services would be rendered. Since Norm Coleman's wife Laurie worked at Hays, that money would be given to her in the form of 'salary.'