Author Archives: OfeliawWeeks

Good News: Household Deleveraging Is Pretty Much Finished

by OfeliawWeeks Posted on September 6, 2013

Mother Jones

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Hale Stewart provides some reason today to be moderately bullish on the economy: the massive deleveraging that started when the recession hit has now pretty much run its course:

What started this recession was a massive build-up of debt in the system, largely related to the housing bubble. When the bubble burst, people had to sell the asset(s) underlying their debt, usually at a loss….This meant they had less money to spend on other items, meaning there was overall less economic demand, culminating in weak overall growth.

….Total household and non-profit debt, according to the Federal Reserve’s Flow of Funds report, has been dropping since a little bit before the recession began….Total household debt has been declining as a percentage of GDP since mid-way through the last recession….Household obligations as a percent of disposable personal income are at very low historical levels.

….Put in economic terms, the above charts show the “balance sheet” recession is close to ending.

There are still some underlying structural weaknesses in the economy that should keep anyone from getting too excited: employment is weak; wages are stagnant; automation is starting to become a real threat; deleveraging still has a ways to go overseas; and income inequality is back on the rise. Still, leverage was the core reason the 2008 recession was so severe and the subsequent recovery was so weak. The fact that household leverage is back to its historical average is good news for the future.

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Good News: Household Deleveraging Is Pretty Much Finished

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Dozens of new oil rigs planned for Gulf of Mexico

by OfeliawWeeks Posted on July 19, 2013

Dozens of new oil rigs planned for Gulf of Mexico

By John Upton

kris krüg

Somebody ordered a couple dozen more of these?

It’s open season for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

A five-month moratorium on deep-sea drilling was imposed after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, but those days are long gone. Now a record-breaking number of rigs are coming to the Gulf to tap gas and oil beneath the sea floor.

More than 60 rigs are expected to be operating in waters deeper than 1,000 feet by the end of 2015, up from 36 today, Bloomberg reports:

Demand is driven in part by exploration successes in the lower tertiary, a geologic layer about 20,000 feet below the sea floor containing giant crude deposits that producers are only now figuring out how to tap. Companies such as Chevron Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. must do more drilling to turn large discoveries into producing wells — as many as 20 wells for each find.

“The Gulf had more than its fair share of discoveries,” Chris Beckett, chief executive officer at Pacific Drilling SA, said in an interview. “Right now, the Gulf is the fastest growing deep-water region in the world.”

The revival will add to surging crude oil supplies from the U.S. shale boom, with Gulf production climbing 23 percent to 1.55 million barrels a day by December 2014 from 1.26 million in March, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

What could go wrong?

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Keystone XL opponents dominate raucous Nebraska hearing

by OfeliawWeeks Posted on April 19, 2013

Keystone XL opponents dominate raucous Nebraska hearing

By John Upton

Reuters / Dave WeaverRandy Thompsen tells State Department officials why Keystone XL is a terrible idea.

More than 1,000 people traveled from far and wide to snowy Grand Island, Neb., on Thursday to tell the State Department what they think of plans to build the Keystone XL pipeline. Commenters had a maximum of three minutes apiece to speak their minds during the hearing at the Heartland Events Center, which, according to Reuters, is “a venue more used to hosting monster-truck derbies and antique shows.”

Thursday’s eight-hour hearing allowed members of the public to formally comment on the State Department’s draft supplemental environmental impact statement on the pipeline. It’s the only hearing State is expected to hold on the report, which effectively concluded that there is no environmental reason not to build the pipeline. That conclusion is, of course, hotly disputed, especially in the wake of the recent spill from a tar-sands oil pipeline in Mayflower, Ark.

The Lincoln Journal Star describes the crowd at the hearing:

[H]undreds of critics with rural addresses, young, old and in between turned out in red, white and blue shirts with the words “Pipeline Fighter” spread across their chests. Tribal leaders also weighed in strongly against the project.

There to counter them were busloads of union workers from Omaha, plumbers, welders and pipeline fitters wearing blue and orange shirts, many of them bearing the words “Approve the KXL pipeline so America works.”

But the sides were not evenly matched: “for every voice of support there were at least a dozen against” the pipeline, reports The New York Times.

The hearing … drew hours of emotional testimony, mostly from opponents of Keystone XL, who whooped and applauded when anyone from their ranks spoke, and solemnly hoisted black scarves that read “Pipeline Fighter” during comments by the project’s supporters.

“The Keystone ‘Export’ pipeline is not in the national interest, and it is most certainly not in Nebraska’s interest,” said Ben Gotschall, a young rancher, one of the first speakers at the hearing, which was held in a large events hall at the state fairgrounds here.

“Our landowners have been left to fend for themselves against an onslaught of dishonest land agents and corporate bullies,” Mr. Gotschall said.

Nebraska has been a rallying point for environmental groups, landowners and ranchers who oppose the 1,700-mile proposed pipeline, which would carry diluted bitumen from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast.

Many who didn’t make it to the Nebraska hearing have submitted written comments on the environmental impact statement — at least 807,000 of them. More comments will be accepted through April 22, and the State Department is considering a request to extend the comment period for another 75 days. State said in March that it wouldn’t release the comments publicly, but this week it reversed course and said all comments would be posted online, Bloomberg reports.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

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, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

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Keystone XL opponents dominate raucous Nebraska hearing

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Obama Wants Conservatives to Know that Immigration Reform Won’t Be a Rerun of 1986

by OfeliawWeeks Posted on April 18, 2013

Mother Jones

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What are the odds that immigration reform will pass? Opposition has already started to mobilize from, among others, Arkansas Sen. Richard Shelby, who noted the other day, “We’ve seen this movie before — 27 years ago, remember?” Ed Kilgore comments:

Shelby, of course, is alluding to a “scandal” that most people outside conservative activist circles are at best dimly aware of: the 1986 immigration law that sold “amnesty” under the false flag of reform.

I guess this is true: most people who are neither conservative activists nor political junkies don’t really remember the 1986 immigration bill. But make no mistake: it’s profoundly driven the approach toward immigration reform from both left and right. Among tea partyish conservatives, the 1986 bill is universally considered one of the great betrayals of all time. They were promised tougher border security in return for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but in the end they got only a wave of newly legalized immigrants flooding into their town and schools. The tougher border security was a mirage, discarded almost immediately, which naturally led to yet another new wave of Mexicans crossing the border illegally and yet another call for a path to citizenship for them. As far as conservatives are concerned, they were played for suckers in 1986, and they’re not going to fall for this con again.

President Obama has done his best to blunt this anger by spending his first term getting tough on undocumented immigrants. E-Verify has been ramped up; deportations have become harsher and more intensive; fences have been built; and funding for the border patrol has been increased. Liberals have been incensed with much of this, but the result—with a big assist from the recession—has been a sharp decline in illegal immigration over the past few years. Generally speaking, Obama’s entire strategy with immigration reform has revolved around proving that he doesn’t plan a rerun of 1986. This time, he’s saying, there really will be tougher border security and tougher employer checks to go along with the path to citizenship.

Will this work? Conservatives have not been notably willing to credit Obama with much good faith in the past, and even Marco Rubio can only do so much to change that. Nevertheless, this has been the plan all along, and now we get to see if it works. If Obama can convince enough conservatives that he’ll be tougher than Reagan on border security, then immigration reform has a chance. If not, it will probably fail.

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Obama Wants Conservatives to Know that Immigration Reform Won’t Be a Rerun of 1986

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Sandy refugees set to be booted from NYC hotels

by OfeliawWeeks Posted on April 1, 2013

Sandy refugees set to be booted from NYC hotels

By Susie Cagle

Coming up on the six-month anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, New York City is ready to move on. But more than 2,000 Sandy refugees still living in the city’s hotels are not — since they’re, you know, homeless.

John de Guzman

This is no longer a housing option — and soon a hotel might not be either.

According to the city’s Department of Homeless Services, upwards of 900 displaced families are living in more than 45 different hotels throughout the five boroughs. Since last October, more than 3,000 storm-swept families have spent one or more nights in a hotel through a city program, which is slated to end on April 30. A separate FEMA program does not yet have an end date.

“We’re trying to get people focused on the future,” Homeless Services commissioner Seth Diamond told The Wall Street Journal. That would be a future in which they might not have anywhere to live, apparently. Diamond said the city would be placing some people in public housing units, while others might receive federal Section 8 vouchers. Everyone else would apparently be on their own, with some potentially having to leave the city altogether.

From The New York Times:

Some housing experts and elected officials said the city’s reliance on hotels underscored how federal and local disaster planning had to be revised to include more emergency rental assistance.

“Why are we spending money on hotels instead of helping families pay the rent?” asked Rosanne Haggerty, president of Community Solutions, a nonprofit organization in New York that works to end homelessness. She added, “For a fraction of the cost, families could be in a stable situation and getting a running start in putting their lives together.”

The damage from Hurricane Sandy revealed how many residents of coastal areas in New York, especially in Brooklyn and Queens, were renters with low incomes.

Of more than half a million households across New York and New Jersey that registered for assistance from FEMA by February, 43 percent made less than $30,000 a year, according to studies by Enterprise Community Partners and the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University.

Some of those who have still not found permanent housing had been living in illegal basement apartments and in other living arrangements without leases or other documents needed for apartment hunting or immediate federal rental assistance. A small group, about 2 percent, are illegal immigrants and another small group has not cooperated in efforts to place them. …

But mostly, they are poor.

FEMA is spending an average of $252 per night per family for the hotel rooms — which is still a far cry from the kind of scratch you’d need to buy those beachfront homes in the bargain-flooded, basement-priced Rockaways.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Former Obama Official Compares Glenn Beck’s Attacks to Orwell’s "Two Minutes Hates"

by OfeliawWeeks Posted on March 21, 2013

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In a new book, former senior Obama administration official Cass Sunstein compares former Fox News host Glenn Beck’s harsh attacks on his record to George Orwell’s 1984, and blasts what he calls the “the true terribleness of the contemporary confirmation process.”

Sunstein, a former law professor at Harvard and the University of Chicago, was nominated in 2009 to be director of the little-known Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs—a job that quickly took on the sobriquet of “regulatory czar.” His long record of books and speeches quickly became fodder for Beck, who dubbed Sunstein “the most dangerous man in America.” In his soon-to-be-released book, Simpler: The Future of Government, Sunstein notes that Beck “developed what appeared to be a kind of obsession with me” and says that the unrelenting criticism from this tea party leader and other conservative pundits triggered more threatening messages:

In Orwell’s 1984, there is a brilliant, powerful, and frightening scene of the “Two Minutes Hate,” in which party members must watch a film depicting national enemies. (As it happens, the leading enemy is named Goldstein.) At times, Beck’s attacks on me, featuring my smiling face, were not entirely unlike those scenes. A new website was created, stopsunstein.com, filled with inflammatory quotations, some taken out of context to suggest that I endorsed views that I rejected and was merely describing.

I began to receive a lot of hate mail, including death threats, at my unlisted home address. One of them stated, “If I were you I would resign immediately. A well-paid individual, who is armed, knows where you live.”

Beck wasn’t the only right-wing leader who had Sunstein in his sights. In 2009, Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s executive vice president, bashed Sunstein as “a radical animal rights extremist who makes PETA look like cheerleaders with pooper-scoopers,” and he alleged that Sunstein “wants to give legal standing to animals so they can sue you for eating meat.”

In his book, Sunstein’s response to the attacks from hunting and agriculture groups is succinct: “OMG.”

Despite all the conservative opposition to Sunstein, he survived the confirmation process and was approved by the Senate on a 57-40 vote—after having to ensure fence-sitting senators he would not in his new post ban hunting or steal guns. Following the vote, he met with Obama in the Oval Office, and Rahm Emanuel greeted him with a sarcastic exclamation: “Fifty-seven to 40! That’s a landslide!”

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Former Obama Official Compares Glenn Beck’s Attacks to Orwell’s "Two Minutes Hates"

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