Category Archives: Green Light

We don’t need no stinking permits: California frackers get their way

by qdyedut Posted on September 11, 2013

We don’t need no stinking permits: California frackers get their way

By

Senator Fran Pavley

on Facebook

Calif. Sen. Fran Pavley lost her spine. Will Gov. Jerry Brown protect his state?

Until last week, the days of unbridled fracking in California appeared to be drawing to a close. But then legislation that would require drillers to obtain permits before work could begin was abruptly watered down, potentially handing the oil and gas industry a significant lobbying victory.

Senate Bill 4 passed the state senate last week following its approval by the assembly – but not before its author, a Democrat from Los Angeles, watered down her own legislation. The bill will now head back to the lower house for another vote there.

Environmentalists who had cautiously supported the bill, which many described as flawed, have turned into vociferous opponents. The East Bay Express explains:

Last week, after intense backroom lobbying, the powerful oil and gas industry convinced state Senator Fran Pavley of Los Angeles, the sponsor of SB 4, to further weaken her legislation and include poison-pill amendments. If enacted, it promises to do more harm than good.

Under the eleventh-hour changes, SB 4 would require state regulators to green-light all fracking requests by oil and gas companies in California until at least July 1, 2015, when the state is scheduled to complete an environmental review of fracking in California. You read that right. Before the environmental review is complete, the bill says that state regulators “shall” approve all requests to shoot toxic chemicals and water into the earth to release otherwise trapped fossil fuels.

In exchange, oil and gas companies would have to disclose to state regulators what chemicals they’re using in hydraulic fracturing. And while there currently is no specific requirement for such disclosure in California, the trade-off is not worth it for the state. After all, SB 4, as now written, could block state regulators from trying to halt fracking during the next two years, even after they learn what chemicals are being shot into the ground.

The brouhaha that preceded the changes centered around the effects of the California Environmental Quality Act, which is a rigid and perennially controversial law that was signed in 1970 — by Gov. Ronald Reagan, of all people. If drillers are required to obtain permits before they frack (or before they inject acid into the ground to loosen fossil fuel reserves — as horrified Californian lawmakers recently discovered has become a common practice), then CEQA would require them to complete an environmental impact report. And that would require that they propose measures to offset the environmental damage they would cause.

You can imagine how unpopular that idea has been with the gas and oil industry. After their lobbyists’ intervention, the amended legislation would now provide ample ways for drillers to weasel out of normal CEQA requirements. From a press release issued by the Center for Biological Diversity, CREDO, Food & Water Watch, and Friends of the Earth:

New language added to the bill specifies that “no additional review or mitigation shall be required” if the supervisor of the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources “determines” that the proposed fracking activities have met the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act. This provision could be used by DOGGR to bypass CEQA’s bedrock environmental review and mitigation requirements. This language could also prevent air and water boards, local land use jurisdictions and other agencies from carrying out their own CEQA reviews of fracking.

CEQA was defended against ruthless attacks for decades. But then Gov. Jerry Brown (D) came back into power in 2011. Within his first year in office, Brown signed legislation that exempted a football stadium planned in Los Angeles from normal CEQA rules. Last year he said, “I have never seen a CEQA exemption I don’t like.” And this year he led a hitherto failed effort to water down the historic law (although some proposed CEQA reforms are supported by environmentalists).

Brown will presumably have the final say on whether SB 4 becomes law. Time will tell whether he favors the frackers or the environment.

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.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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We don’t need no stinking permits: California frackers get their way

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World Bank joins war on coal

by Susie Quan Posted on July 18, 2013

World Bank joins war on coal

By John Upton

Shutterstock

There’s a new ally in the fight against the dirtiest of fossil fuels.

The World Bank’s board of directors approved a strategy shift this week that will move the lending body formally away from its longstanding support of coal-fired power plants in favor of cleaner and smarter alternatives.

Following the adoption Tuesday of its Energy Sector Directions Paper [PDF], the World Bank will “provide financial support for greenfield coal power generation projects only in rare circumstances,” such as where there are “no feasible alternatives to coal.”

The bank isn’t morphing from sinner to saint. It will still support new fossil-fuel projects, including those powered by natural gas, along with hydropower projects that wreck rivers and displace communities. But its shift away from coal could be significant, particularly as an example for other international financing groups. In the same vein, President Barack Obama recently called for an end to America’s financing of new coal plants abroad in most circumstances.

The World Bank is a huge financier of infrastructure projects, loaning nearly $53 billion last year to poor and developing countries. Its most recent support for construction of a coal-fired power plant came three years ago, when it approved a $3 billion loan for a coal facility in South Africa.

The shift is being welcomed by environmentalists, but they are anxious to find out how the bank will define the situations in which there are “no feasible alternatives to coal.” From Reuters:

“While it misses an opportunity to close the door for good (on coal lending) it only allows it in narrowly defined cases where there are no feasible alternatives,” Justin Guay, a Washington representative for the Sierra Club, said about the new strategy.

Guay said there had been concerns China would not allow the new language to go through, as had happened with past proposals to cut back on coal funding.

The real test of the strategy may come next year, when the World Bank should decide whether to provide loan guarantees for [a] Kosovo power plant fired by coal.

The strategy paper lays out the World Bank’s new energy priorities:

In countries with low energy access, the priority will be affordable and reliable energy. Grid, mini-grid, and off-grid solutions will all be pursued for electricity. In rural, remote or isolated areas, off-grid solutions based on renewable energy combined with energy efficient technologies could be the most rapid means of providing cost-effective energy services. Engagement in cleaner cooking and heating solutions will grow. …

Efforts to improve energy efficiency — one of the most cost-effective ways to expand supply and reduce environmental impact — will be scaled up according to countries’ needs and opportunities. …

The World Bank Group will continue to support and finance all forms of renewable energy … Rapidly declining costs are making wind and solar power competitive in some settings, while geothermal energy is a relatively low-cost source of renewable energy providing a dependable supply. Biogas and biomass-based energy also play useful roles.

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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Dogs Have Terrible Eyesight: See for Yourself

by Larissaiyb Posted on July 10, 2013

“Waterloo” by C. M. Coolidge. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Sorry, C. M. Coolidge, but man’s best friend would probably really suck at poker. For one, dogs can’t see red. Two, their vision is so awful that they’d probably have trouble even making out the numbers.

See for yourself: WolframAlpha, every nerd’s favorite search engine, has a web app that lets you look at life through a dogs’ eyes.

See what we mean? Photo: WolframAlpha

Where people have three specialized receptors in our eyes to distinguish colors, dogs only have two: this leaves them red-green color blind (we think). Life’s Little Mysteries:

To see blue and yellow, dogs and humans alike rely on neurons inside the eye’s retina. These neurons are excited in response to yellow light detected in the cone cells (which are also inside the retina), but the neurons’ activity gets suppressed when blue light hits the cones. A dog’s brain interprets the excitation or suppression of these neurons as the sensation of yellow or blue, respectively. However, in dogs and color-blind individuals, red light and green light both have a neutral effect on the neurons. With no signal to interpret these colors, the dogs’ brains don’t perceive any color. Where you see red or green, they see shades of gray.

“A human would be missing the sensations of red and green,” Neitz told Life’s Little Mysteries . “But whether or not the dog’s sensations are missing red and green, or if their brains assign colors differently, is unclear.”

Aside from the color issue, dogs’ sight is pretty bad. Using a custom eye test for dogs, researchers have found that dogs basically have 20/75 vision compared to a person’s 20/20 vision, says Psychology Today.

To give you a feeling about how poor this vision is, you should know that if your visual acuity is worse than 20/40 you would fail the standard vision test given when you apply for a driver’s license in the United States and would be required to wear glasses. A dog’s vision is considerably worse than this.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Colorful Kindergarten Lessons Throw Color-Blind Kids Off Their Game
Was Vincent van Gogh Color Blind? It Sure Looks Like It

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Dogs Have Terrible Eyesight: See for Yourself

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As more urbanites shun cars, some cities shun parking-space requirements

by Hyatt Monien Posted on July 10, 2013

As more urbanites shun cars, some cities shun parking-space requirements

By Claire Thompson

Shutterstock

Parking-space requirements have reached their expiration date.

In Washington, D.C., almost four in 10 households don’t own a car, making it one of the most car-free cities in the country (nationally, an average 9 percent of households lack car access). So why are new buildings along the city’s Metro transit lines required to include parking spaces — four for every 1,000 square feet of commercial space?

D.C. city planners, watching the town’s car-ownership rate fall year after year, are finally asking that question themselves. At the end of this month, they plan to propose to the city’s Zoning Commission that parking requirements for buildings near transit stops be eliminated, following the lead of other cities like Denver, Philadelphia, L.A., and Brooklyn that have reduced or eliminated mandatory parking quotas.

In addition to making urban parking scarcer and more expensive, thus encouraging alternative forms of transportation, getting rid of parking requirements can save a lot of money, as Jared Green explained in Grist last year:

To grasp the magnitude of the problem, consider that there are 500 million surface parking lots in the U.S. alone. In some cities, parking lots take up one-third of all land area …

All of those parking lots are not only expensive but represent an opportunity lost. The average parking lot cost is $4,000 per space, with a space in an above-grade structure costing $20,000, and a space in an underground garage $30,000-$40,000. To give us some sense of the opportunity lost, [author Elan Ben-Joseph] says 1,713 square miles (the estimated size of all surface parking lots in the U.S. put together) could instead be used for spaces that generate 1 billion kilowatt-hours of solar power. With just 50 percent of that space covered with trees, this space could handle 2 billion cubic meters of stormwater runoff, generate 822,264 tons of oxygen, and remove 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Mandatory parking spaces are costly not just for city governments and developers but for citizens and businesses, too. By driving up the cost of construction, they increase rents, discourage foot traffic that neighborhood businesses depend on, and make traffic worse. And, as this photo essay from Sightline shows, they make cityscapes uglier.

The Wall Street Journal reports that D.C. has already learned the hard way how out of date its 50-year-old parking requirements are:

In 2008, the District spent $47 million to build a 1,000-space parking garage under the new DC USA multilevel shopping center. The city’s zoning code mandated four parking spots for every 1,000 square feet of commercial space. But the developer, Grid Properties, persuaded city officials to cut the required total by nearly half.

Still, those 1,000 spaces turned out to be more than needed, because many shoppers ride the Metro to the mall. The garage languished more than half empty until the city courted nearby businesses to let employees park there. “That really hurt, to pay for a parking garage that was hardly used,” [Harriet Tregoning, director of the city’s Office of Planning,] said.

Some in D.C. worry that things could get chaotic if developers simply stop building parking spaces (after all, 61 percent of D.C. households do own cars; it’s not Manhattan yet). A Grid Properties principal suggests reducing parking requirements as a more reasonable stepping stone. For one of the most expensive cities in the country, even such a small change could make a difference.

But don’t worry, drivers: Parking is not disappearing even in dense urban areas. In Brooklyn, where residential parking requirements were recently reduced, new parking spots are coming — they’ll just be a lot sleeker and fancier than the old kind. The city has finally given the green light to developers to break ground on Willoughby Square, a long-awaited public park in Brooklyn that will be financed in part with the proceeds from a state-of-the-art underground parking complex. This is not your grandma’s garage, The New York Times explains:

To park at the garage, drivers will pull their cars into one of 12 entry rooms, where plasma screens, mirrors and laser scanners help direct the vehicle into the correct position. The driver then locks the car, takes the keys and heads to a kiosk to answer a few safety questions before swiping a credit card or key fob and leaving.

Light sensors measure the car’s dimensions and cameras photograph the vehicle from several angles. Once that is complete, the car is lowered into a parking vault, where it is moved into a parking bay. The cars are parked side-to-side and bumper-to-bumper, two levels deep. Special machinery allows access to the cars in narrow and limited spaces. Upon returning, the driver simply swipes the same credit card or key fob at the kiosk, and the car is returned to the entry room, which is supposed to take no more than two minutes.

Crazily enough, this behemoth will cost only about half as much to build as a conventional garage, and the director of planning for Automotion, the company building it, points out that it cuts down on the emissions cars create while circling a typical garage looking for a spot.

I guess if we still have to build some parking garages, we might as well build them this way: cheaper, more efficient, hidden underground, and helping to fund a public park. Not to mention making you feel like a badass, futuristic evil genius when you park.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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As more urbanites shun cars, some cities shun parking-space requirements

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Rich Food Poor Food – Jayson Calton

by Myrna Posted on June 22, 2013

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Rich Food Poor Food

The Ultimate Grocery Purchasing System (GPS)

Jayson Calton

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $9.99

Publish Date: February 26, 2013

Publisher: Primal Nutrition, Inc.

Seller: Midpoint Trade Books


Do you get confused while pouring over labels at the grocery store trying to determine the healthiest options? What makes one box of cereal better for you than another, and how are we suppose to decipher the extensive lists of mysterious ingredients on every package, and then determine whether they are safe or toxic to a your family's health? With nearly 40,000 items populating the average supermarket today, the Rich Food Poor Food – Grocery Purchasing System (GPS), is a unique guide that steers the consumer through the grocery store aisles, directing them to health enhancing Rich Food options while avoiding health detracting Poor Food ones Rich Food, Poor Food is unique in the grocery store guide arena in that rather than rating a particular food using calories, sodium, or fat as the main criteria, it identifies the products that contain wholesome, micronutrient-rich ingredients that health-conscious shoppers are looking for, like wild caught fish, grass-fed beef, raw/organic cheese, organic meats, pastured eggs and dairy, organic produce and sprouted grains, nuts and seeds, while avoiding over 150 common unwanted Poor Food ingredients such as sugar, high fructose corn syrup, refined flour, GMOs, MSG, artificial colors, flavors and sweeteners, pesticides, nitrites/ nitrates, gluten, and chemical preservatives like BHA and BHT. So while other food swapping grocery guides may give the green light to eating Kellogg's Froot Loops with Sprinkles, Oscar Mayer Turkey Bologna and Hostess Twinkies based on their lower calories, sodium, and/or fat levels, you won't find these heavily processed, food-like products identified as Rich Food choices in Rich Food, Poor Food. That doesn't mean this guide to micronutrient-sufficient living leads readers to a boring culinary lifestyle. Quite the contrary! The Caltons offer Rich Food choices in every aisle of the store including desserts, snacks, sauces, hot dogs, and other fun foods! This indispensable grocery store guide raises the bar on food quality as it takes readers on an aisle-by-aisle tour, teaching them how to identify potentially problematic ingredients, while sharing tips on how to lock in a food's nutritional value during preservation and preparation, save money, and make homemade versions of favorite grocery store staples. Regardless of age, dietary preference or current health, Rich Food, Poor Food turns the grocery store and farmers market into a micronutrient pharmacy–filling the shopping cart with a natural prescription for better health and longevity.

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Rich Food Poor Food – Jayson Calton

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Illinois’ New Fracking Regulations Might Not Be So Tough After All

by czwcqtpj Posted on June 18, 2013

Mother Jones

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Monday afternoon Illinois governor Pat Quinn signed what the Associated Press touted as the “nation’s toughest fracking regulations,” creating a framework to manage hydraulic fracturing, in which chemicals are piped into rock at high pressure to release stored-up natural gas. But the new regulatory effort, which sharply divided the state’s environmental community and inspired fervor in the southern counties where drilling is most likely to take place, looks more like a tactical concession than an environmental victory.

The law, which was crafted through six months of stakeholder negotiations between the state, select environmental groups, and representatives from the oil and gas industry, includes stringent rules meant to increase public transparency, more closely monitor environmental impact, and provide avenues for recourse in case something goes wrong. But amid biting criticism from activists and advocacy groups that were excluded from the negotiations, environmental organizations involved in the process have argued that although they believe the law was a necessary foothold in the effort to control what seemed to be an inevitable boom in fracking in Illinois, this is by no means the end of the fight.

“It bothers me that the bill is being presented as a model for other states,” says Ann Alexander, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council who was part of the negotiations. “It represents a floor. Yes it’s strong; no, it’s not adequate.” What new law does provide is a baseline for measuring the actual impact of fracking and a mechanism for pushing back if something does go wrong, explains Jenny Cassel, a lawyer with the Environmental Law & Policy Center, another group that was involved in the negotiations.

Critics have attacked the law as regulatory window dressing. “These rules are arbitrary compromises based on negotiations with industry,” says Dr. Sandra Steingraber, a professor at Ithaca College and a vocal anti-fracking activist who led the charge against the bill. “They guarantee neither public health nor environmental integrity.”

Fracking was already legal in Illinois, although there was no fracking-specific regulation on the books, and industry interest has been growing, creating a sense that fracking was unavoidable. Illinois sits atop the New Albany shale play, an area projected to hold 3.79 trillion cubic feet of shale gas. Drilling leases have funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into the coffers of counties and residents by way of fees and leases, and according to an AP investigation of state records, high-volume fracking had already begun. After it became clear the regulatory bill would become law, major drilling operations were started in Wayne County, some four and a half hours south of Chicago.

A full moratorium on fracking failed in the Illinois legislature last year, and representatives from the coalition of environmental groups that negotiated the new law have argued that compromise was better than nothing. But Steingraber believes that the lack of regulation wasn’t a reason to give ground. “The industry was waiting for the rules of the road before it came in,” she says. “This bill is a green light. It’s a starting gun.”

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Illinois’ New Fracking Regulations Might Not Be So Tough After All

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The Booming Global Arms Trade Is Creating a New Cold War

by 7wxhk83 Posted on May 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Did Washington just give Israel the green light for a future attack on Iran via an arms deal? Did Russia just signal its further support for Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime via an arms deal? Are the Russians, the Chinese, and the Americans all heightening regional tensions in Asia via arms deals? Is it possible that we’re witnessing the beginnings of a new Cold War in two key regions of the planet—and that the harbingers of this unnerving development are arms deals?

International weapons sales have proved to be a thriving global business in economically tough times. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), such sales reached an impressive $85 billion in 2011, nearly double the figure for 2010. This surge in military spending reflected efforts by major Middle Eastern powers to bolster their armories with modern jets, tanks, and missiles—a process constantly encouraged by the leading arms manufacturing countries (especially the US and Russia) as it helps keep domestic production lines humming. However, this familiar if always troubling pattern may soon be overshadowed by a more ominous development in the global arms trade: the revival of far more targeted Cold War-style weapons sales aimed at undermining rivals and destabilizing regional power balances. The result, inevitably, will be a more precarious world.

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The Booming Global Arms Trade Is Creating a New Cold War

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Official at Heart of IRS Tea Party Scandal Spiked Audits of Big Dark-Money Donors

by Shicsshaw Posted on May 23, 2013

Mother Jones

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You’d have to search long and hard to find a member of Congress not outraged that politics and partisanship crept into the work of the IRS, leading to the wrongful targeting of tea partiers and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. “The American people have a right to expect that the IRS will exercise its authority in a neutral, non-biased way,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said on Tuesday. “Sadly, there appears to have been more than a hint of political bias” by the IRS staffers vetting nonprofit applications. Hatch’s Republican colleagues in the House and Senate could hardly contain their anger. “Do either of you feel any responsibility or remorse for treating the American people this way?” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the former IRS chiefs Douglas Shulman and Steven Miller on Tuesday.

More MoJo coverage of the IRS tea party scandal


Actually, Tea Party Groups Gave the IRS Lots of Good Reasons to Be Interested


The IRS Tea Party Scandal, Explained


Is This Big Tea Party Group Really an Innocent Victim of the IRS?


How Congress Helped Create the IRS-Tea Party Mess


Official at Heart of IRS Tea Party Scandal Spiked Audits of Big Dark-Money Donors


5 Things You Need to Know in the Inspector General’s IRS Tea Party Scandal Report

Yet lawmakers have no qualms with using politics to bend the IRS to its will. In 2011, under pressure from House and Senate Republicans, Miller, then the IRS’ deputy commissioner, spiked audits investigating whether five big donors to 501(c)(4) groups—the type of nonprofit that can get involved in campaigns and elections but can’t make politics its “primary activity”—avoided paying taxes on their donations. Miller’s decision erased any worry that wealthy donors might have had about giving millions to nonprofits during the 2012 campaign season.

For some tax lawyers, it was a surprising move that raised red flags. “They were stopped mid-audit, which is an extraordinary move,” says Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer who ran the IRS division that oversees politically active nonprofits for 10 years. “I’ve been practicing tax law for close to 40 years, and I’ve never seen that. To have Miller reach out and stop those audits, that’s something that really deserves an inquiry.”

The identities of the donors and nonprofits being scrutinized were never revealed. Owens says he suspects most, if not all, of the five had contributed to Republican groups because GOP lawmakers were the ones raising a ruckus on Capitol Hill. Greg Colvin, a San Francisco-based attorney who represented one of the donors, declined to give any details about his client and the donation under review.

The tax matter at issue was whether these donors had sidestepped the gift tax. Created in 1924, the gift tax acts as a safeguard of sorts, backstopping both the estate tax and the income tax. Before its creation, people could donate all their money before they died to avoid the estate tax or give away their assets to relatives in lower income tax brackets. The gift tax does not apply to donations to traditional charities (the Red Cross), trade groups (the US Chamber of Commerce), or political nonprofits formed under the 527 section of the tax code (Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and America Coming Together). In the 1980s, the IRS said that the gift tax did cover contributions to 501(c)(4)s, yet for decades the agency never bothered donors about the gift tax on their donations to such nonprofits.

That changed in early 2011, when the IRS told five big donors to 501(c)(4) groups that they were being investigated for possibly dodging the gift tax. One of these letters read, “Donations to 501(c)(4) organizations are taxable gifts and your contribution in 2008 should have been reported on your 2008 Federal Gift Tax Return.” That was a potentially a big deal. The way the gift tax works, a donor who in 2008 gave more than $2 million to one or more nonprofits could owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to the taxman—a doozy of an unexpected tax bill. If the IRS vigorously applied the gift tax to these sort of donations, donors would be less likely to give (or would give less) to nonprofits, tax experts say.

In May 2011, news of the IRS’ big-donor probe went public. Republicans reacted furiously. On June 3, 2011, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House ways and means committee, sent a letter to then-IRS commissioner Doug Shulman demanding the names and titles of IRS staffers involved in the gift tax probe, and the criteria used to pick which donors to scrutinize. “Every aspect of this tax investigation, from the timing to the sudden reversal of nearly thirty years of IRS practice, strongly suggests that the IRS is targeting constitutionally-protected political speech,” Camp said. (The IRS denied that the probe was influenced by politics in any way.)

The following month, Miller halted the agency’s donor audits. In a public memo, he wrote, “This is a difficult area with significant legal, administrative, and policy implications with respect to which we have little enforcement history.” The IRS would study the gift tax, Miller added, and if it launched future audits of donors, it would do so only after alerting the public.

If nonprofit donors had once worried about getting slapped with a big tax bill, Miller’s memo eased those fears—just in time for the 2012 campaign season, in which politically active nonprofits raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars. Miller’s memo “gave donors a green light” to finance 501(c)(4)s, Colvin says. “Ever since then donors have been able to give to c-4 organizations who may or may not be active in politics.”

Miller, who lost his job in the latest IRS scandal, was not a political appointee, unlike Shulman, who was named to his post by President George W. Bush. (The staffers who launched the short-lived gift tax probes weren’t political appointees, either.) Yet Marcus Owens, the former IRS director, says Miller’s decision to stop the audits smacked of politics after receiving so much pressure from Congress. “The deputy commissioner’s office does not normally step in to stop audits,” he says. “It’s getting too close to politics at that point.”

Colvin says that Miller and the IRS did the right thing by stopping the donor audits, which had little precedent. “I thought that was a pretty good example of a situation that had the potential to be a scandal and it turned out to be much better managed than this latest thing,” Colvin says.

But all the tax experts tend to agree that the gift tax law, like the rules and guidelines for politically active nonprofits, badly needs fixing. The gift tax is so murky, Colvin says, that some of his clients proactively have paid millions in taxes to avoid the slim chance of an IRS audit. Yet other donors don’t sweat it and pay no gift taxes at all. Ellen Aprill, a Loyola Law School professor, says, “If you’re trying to reform 501(c)(4) groups, you should try to address the uncertainty about the gift tax too.”

As for Republicans in Congress, they seem to want it both ways: hammering IRS officials for letting partisanship influence their agency’s work, yet at the same time applying all the political pressure they can muster to get what they want.

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Official at Heart of IRS Tea Party Scandal Spiked Audits of Big Dark-Money Donors

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Electric Car Guru Elon Musk Ditches Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us Group

by Lou Bovee Posted on May 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and the private space travel company SpaceX, has parted ways with FWD.us, the tech-centric political group that Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg launched last month. So, too, has investor and entrepreneur David Sacks, who created the social network Yammer and financed the satiric 2005 movie Thank You for Smoking. The tech news website AllThingsD first reported the departures of Musk and Sacks, and their names have been removed from the list of nearly two-dozen “major contributors” to FWD.us.

Zuckerberg and Facebook “Causes” creator Joe Green founded FWD.us to lobby on behalf of Silicon Valley firms in Washington. They quickly earned the endorsements of a host of other tech superstars. The group—which, as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, does not have to disclose its donors—has reportedly raised more than $25 million so far. The group chose the ongoing fight over comprehensive immigration reform as its first foray into Congressional politics, seeking to expand the number of visas available to engineers and other high-skilled workers that tech companies would like to recruit. By all accounts, FWD.us’ message has gotten a warm reception on Capitol Hill.

But the group caused a political firestorm recently when it ran TV advertisements praising Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) for supporting more oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Another ad depicted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) criticizing Obamacare and President Obama’s refusal (so far) to green-light the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. FWD.us ran the ads to give Begich and Graham some political cover on immigration reform, the theory being that by touting the senators’ conservative bona fides, they could give them the space to take a moderate position on an immigration reform bill. The Begich and Graham ads ran for a week and are no longer on the air. Liberal and environmental groups reacted furiously to FWD.us’ conservative and anti-environmental message, protesting at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California. And last week, nine progressive groups, including MoveOn.org, Progressives United, the Sierra Club, and Daily Kos, pledged to pull down their existing paid Facebook ads or cancel future ad buys for at least two weeks.

It’s not surprising that Musk would break with FWD.us. Tesla Motors builds high-end electric cars; its entire business model is built around a clean-tech economy. Musk also sits on the board of SolarCity, a company that delivers, installs, and maintains solar panels powering homes, businesses, and government offices.

Musk sent this statement to AllThingsD: “I agreed to support Fwd.us because there is a genuine need to reform immigration. However, this should not be done at the expense of other important causes. I have spent a lot of time fighting far larger lobbying organizations in DC and believe that the right way to win on a cause is to argue the merits of that cause. This statement may surprise some people, but my experience is that most (not all) politicians and their staffs want to do the right thing and eventually do.”

FWD.us spokeswoman Kate Hansen emailed this statement to Mother Jones: “We recognize that not everyone will always agree with or be pleased by our strategy—and we’re grateful for the continued support of our dedicated founders and major contributors. FWD.us remains totally committed to supporting a bipartisan policy agenda that will boost the knowledge economy, including comprehensive immigration reform.”

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Electric Car Guru Elon Musk Ditches Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us Group

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Should America export its fracked gas? Why greens say no.

by Dedra Temores Posted on May 7, 2013

Should America export its fracked gas? Why greens say no.

By John Upton

Dominion

Cove Point, built as a natural gas import terminal, destined to be a natural gas export terminal.

Frackers already contaminate America’s groundwater, make people sick, produce radioactive waste, and contribute to earthquakes. Processing and moving the natural gas that they produce leads to nasty spills and deadly explosions. And cheap natural gas makes it harder for renewable energy to compete.

But, hey, at least almost all of that cheap fuel is being used by Americans in America, right?

That may not continue to be the case. The Obama administration is poised to rule on a slew of applications to export natural gas to other countries through hulking industrial terminals dotted along U.S. coasts. Over the weekend, Obama appeared to reveal his hand on the issue, forecasting that the U.S. would likely become a net gas exporter by 2020, reports The Financial Times.

According to the newspaper, administration officials fear that a restriction on natural gas exports, as is being sought by American environmentalists and manufacturers, would send a bad signal about the country’s support for free trade.

Environmentalists fear that allowing such exports would exacerbate the fracking boom, harm the environment along the routes of new natural gas pipelines, and cause pollution and industrial accidents at natural gas export terminals. (The manufacturers aren’t worried about any of that; they just want to keep the cheap gas to themselves.)

One such export terminal is planned at Cove Point, Md., along the shores of Chesapeake Bay and close to the vast Marcellus Shale natural gas reserves. Dominion, the energy company that owns the facility, received federal permission in 2011 to export gas through the terminal to certain countries. Now it is seeking permits needed to liquefy natural gas there before loading it onto tanker ships. Like other planned natural gas export hubs, Cove Point was built to receive imported natural gas, back before America’s fracking boom took hold, and now it’s being converted into an export hub.

The Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and other environmental groups jointly filed documents [PDF] on Friday calling on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to conduct a thorough environmental review of Dominion’s proposal.

From a press release issued by the groups:

The coalition argues the development of this terminal in Lusby, MD would result in major damage to the Chesapeake Bay, coastal forests, and the local economy, which currently support more than a trillion dollars in economic activity from the seafood and tourism industries. …

Major concerns include a substantial increase in ship traffic of huge — and potentially explosive — LNG [liquefied natural gas] tankers on the Bay and to Cove Point, as well as the risks posed by dumping billions of gallons of wastewater into this large and complex estuary, made up of a network of rivers, wetlands, and forests.

Residents of nearby Myersville, Md., meanwhile, object to Dominion’s plans [PDF] to install a large natural gas compressor inside their town.

The issue of natural gas exports is scheduled to be debated today during a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing. From The Hill:

The House hearing on Tuesday will touch on 20 proposals under Energy Department (DOE) review that would green light exports to nations that lack a free-trade agreement with the United States.

Such deals face more administrative scrutiny, as federal law requires them to be in the national interest. Democrats have urged the department to exercise caution, fearing approving too many will cause domestic prices to spike.

Meanwhile, energy-hungry foreign governments — including those in Japan and India — have lobbied the White House to promptly approve applications for exports.

Some lawmakers have accused President Obama of slow-walking the decisions. They fear the United States will miss out as countries such as Australia and Canada rush into the market.

So stay tuned on this one. The damage that fracking causes in America could soon be exacerbated, for the good of the world. And for the good of the energy industry.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Should America export its fracked gas? Why greens say no.

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