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Obama admin punts on oil train safety — and another bomb train explodes

by CeliaLoper Posted on March 6, 2015

Obama admin punts on oil train safety — and another bomb train explodes

By on 6 Mar 2015 2:12 pmcommentsShare

An oil train derailed and exploded in rural Illinois on Thursday afternoon — the third one in North America in three weeks. As of midday Friday, the fire was still burning, though fortunately no one has been injured.

Which makes it all the more galling that the Obama administration passed up a key opportunity to try to make oil trains safer, as Reuters is reporting.

For awhile, the administration was considering taking some action to regulate explosive gas in the growing number of trains carrying crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken shale drilling boom throughout North America. But the administration backed off, leaving the job up to North Dakota’s government instead.

From Reuters’ Patrick Rucker:

Last summer, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx took his concerns about Bakken fuel to the White House and sought advice on what to do about the danger of [explosive gas], according to sources familiar with the meeting who were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. …

The Transportation Department was warning that Bakken fuel was uncommonly volatile and explosion-prone. Foxx’s agency conceived an oil train safety plan in July with an array of measures that aimed to make sure oil train cargo moved safely on the tracks.

Tankers would have toughened shells. Oil train deliveries would slow down. Advanced braking systems would be adopted.

But the rule would do nothing to limit volatile gas.

Foxx brought his concerns about the unresolved issue of dangerous gas, commonly measured as vapor pressure, and his agency’s limited power to curtail the problem to President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough. The administration decided to just let the existing oil train safety plan take root.

The problem with relying on North Dakota to regulate the oil trains is that the explosion issue is a national, and even international, one. The tanker cars travel along routes that criss-cross the U.S. and Canada, often passing through populated urban centers. “These trains are going all across the country so it absolutely has to be the feds who are in charge,” said Karen Darch, mayor of Barrington, Ill., a town through which a number of oil and gas trains pass each week.

North Dakota produces more than 1.2 million barrels of crude oil daily, and 60 percent of that moves to refineries and ports by rail. The number of oil trains on the rails has increased by more than 40 fold in the past five years to over 400,000 cars in 2013, according to data from the nonprofit group ForestEthics and similar numbers from the Association of American Railroads. ForestEthics estimated last year that around 25 million Americans live in a potential blast zone.

The plan proposed by the Department of Transportation — to slow trains down and require sturdier, thicker tank cars — won’t go far enough to prevent explosions. Yesterday’s accident in Illinois and last month’s in West Virginia both involved newer, supposedly tougher rail cars, but they obviously didn’t prevent the blowups.

North Dakota’s new regulations, set to go into effect next month, aren’t expected to solve the problems either. They will set a limit for the vapor pressure of oil in tank cars, but the limit isn’t very tight. The crude oil on the train that exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec in 2013, was below that limit, which means North Dakota’s regs wouldn’t have prevented the 47 deaths that resulted from that accident.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) of New York — a state through which hundreds of cars full of Bakken crude pass each day — is calling on Foxx and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to work together to come up with regulations with more of a bite. But if the Obama administration has already opted to take a pass, as the Reuters report indicates, his push might not amount to much.

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Obama admin punts on oil train safety — and another bomb train explodes

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The US Is the Only Country In the World That Locks Up Kids For Life. Could That Finally Change?

by LanHaileswgqpij Posted on February 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Travion Blount was only 17 when a Virginia court dealt him six life sentences. Two years earlier, he’d robbed a group of teenagers with two older friends at gunpoint during a house party. They stole phones, money, marijuana, and purses. Blount hurt no one, but one of the older boys struck someone with the butt of his gun. Blount’s friends pled guilty and got 10 and 13 years. He went to trial instead, and when he lost, they sent him away to die in prison.

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The US Is the Only Country In the World That Locks Up Kids For Life. Could That Finally Change?

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Science Says FitBit Is a Joke

by OlivaPohlman Posted on February 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Recently, bands in assorted colors began appearing on the wrists of everyone from young athletes to old lawyers. FitBits, FueldBands, and other wearable fitness trackers promised to enhance the health of the wearer by accurately monitoring every step, calorie, and sleep pattern. But, according to a new study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the apps on your smartphone do the job just as well, or even better—at least in terms of measuring your steps and your calories.

“There is strong evidence that higher levels of physical activity are associated with weight loss,” says Mitesh Patel, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine and health care management at the University of Pennsylvania. “For most adults that want to track their general activity, smartphones will meet their needs.”

Penn researchers compared 10 of the top-selling smartphone fitness applications and pedometers with wearable devices, tracking 14 healthy adults as they walked on the treadmill.

According to the results, the smartphones were just as accurate and consistent as wearable devices. Wearable devices had as much as a 22 percent variation in the range of step counts compared to the observed number of steps taken. There was only a 6 percent difference in the range of the step counts from smartphones in comparison to observable steps. The number of steps is important to accurately estimate the number of calories burned, which the apps and devices track by detecting the shifting position of your body.

If smartphones are just as accurate, why spend $100 or more on a fancy tracker bracelet?

“Smartphones may be harder to carry with more vigorous activity such as running or biking, and that might be one reason an individual chooses to use a wearable device,” explains Patel, pointing to an obvious objection for people who might reject smartphones as fitness trackers.

But fitness trackers still might not be the right choice for heavy exercisers. According to Live Science, a site that tracks scientific news, when fitness trackers first came out, workout enthusiasts were disappointed in the basic functions like step counters. “A lot of people stopped using fitness trackers altogether because it wasn’t telling much more then they already knew,” Wes Henderek, a market researcher at NPD Group told Live Science. JAMA also reported that only about 1 to 2 percent of adults own wearable devices, and one-third completely stop using the devices after only six months.

More than 65 percent of American adults own smartphones and generally carry them throughout the day. For those hoping to get a handle on how active they were during the day, smartphone applications that track food consumption, activity, sleep, and other health factors may be more convenient and less expensive.

“While smartphones and wearable devices can help track health behaviors, they may not alone drive behavior change,” says Patel. The key, he says, is to figure out how to engage individuals so they use technology to lead them to changing unhealthy behavior, especially those that most in need of making the change.

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Science Says FitBit Is a Joke

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Chris Christie Is Now Waging 23 Court Battles to Keep State Documents Secret

by TammaraGrinder Posted on February 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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On his first day as governor of New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie promised “a new era of accountability and transparency.” But five years later, local reporters and watchdog groups accuse Christie’s administration of making unprecedented efforts to keep public records a secret.

Stonewalled my the Christie administration, media outlets have been forced to sue to obtain even routinely disclosed information, such as payroll data. Rather than release documents connected to the George Washington Bridge scandal, pay-to-play allegations, possible ethics violations, and the out-of-state jaunts Christie has made while weighing a run for president, Christie’s office and several state agencies have waged costly court battles. As the 2016 presidential primary race draws closer, and Christie considers jumping in, his administration is fighting 23 different open records requests in court.

“The track record is abysmal,” says Jennifer Borg, general counsel for the North Jersey Media Group. Her organization, which publishes The Record, has sued the state for public documents a half-dozen times since Christie took office. When a judge determines that the state withheld records illegally—which happens frequently—her group wins legal fees. As of September 2014, Christie’s administration had paid $441,000 to North Jersey Media Group and other media outlets for records. And that doesn’t count the cost of government lawyers’ time.

The fight has become so expensive for the state because when newspapers go to court for these records, they usually win. But winning doesn’t automatically produce the sought-after records. “We can and do beat them in court. But as long as they’re appealing—I don’t want to call it a Pyrrhic victory, but we’re not going to get the records,” says Walter Luers, an attorney who helped a transparency project run by the state Libertarian Party sue for public access for Christie’s travel expenses. “Appeals take two to three years. We’re already into the presidential elections. By the time we get these records, Christie could have a new address.”

Christie’s reluctance to let these records go is understandable. On Tuesday, for example, The New York Times published an investigation of ritzy trips, underwritten by megadonors and foreign leaders, the governor has taken abroad. Some of those accounts were based on public documents that local newspapers obtained through lawsuits.

Below is a roundup of the Christie administration’s most closely-guarded secrets.

Out-of-state travel. Christie has traveled around the country to raise money for the GOP and to test the waters for a 2016 presidential run. But no one knows whether it’s influential donors or taxpayers who are footing the bill for Christie’s travels. Last year, New Jersey Watchdog, a conservative news site, demanded to know who picked up the tab for more than 60 unofficial trips Christie took out of state beginning in 2012. Christie’s office denied its request, and a judge tossed Watchdog‘s resulting lawsuit in July for being too broad.

In a separate request, New Jersey Watchdog asked for records detailing Christie’s out-of-state air travel expenses. That request also went to court, and the judge ordered the governor’s office to release some travel documents. The records showed the state reimbursing an unknown third party thousands of dollars for Christie’s trip to the 2013 Super Bowl in New Orleans.

Taxpayer-fueled fundraising. Because Christie’s travel is connected to his fundraising work as the Republican Governors Association chair, the RGA probably paid for many of his trips. But The Record, one of Jersey’s largest newspapers, and WNYC, a radio station, requested documents indicating whether taxpayers shouldered any of Christie’s travel costs—such as overtime for the security detail that always accompanies the governor—while he raised cash for the GOP.

Christie’s office sent WNYC “a document so heavily redacted as to be all but meaningless,” says Laura Walker, the president of New York Public Radio, which owns WNYC. The outlet is suing for unredacted files. The Record also went to court for the documents, and the state and the newspaper are trying to reach a settlement.

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Lawmaker Endorsed by NRA Aims to Make Schoolkids Study NRA Curriculum

by CarinEWPBavsc Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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In August of last year, a 16-year-old high-schooler in Summerville, South Carolina, turned in a creative writing assignment about shooting his neighbor’s pet dinosaur. The school’s “zero tolerance” policy for guns prompted a search of the student’s belongings that turned up no weapons. Nonetheless, he was arrested and suspended for what he said was a joke, if one in questionable taste.

South Carolina state Rep. Alan Clemmons hopes to use that incident to force public schools to dedicate three weeks each year to teaching a gun-focused curriculum developed or recommended by the National Rifle Association. Traditionally, zero tolerance policies have applied to students bringing weapons to school or simulating their use with toys or hand gestures—not to academic discussion of guns. Still, in the bill Clemmons filed in the state legislature last month he states that these NRA-approved lessons are needed to combat an “intolerance for any discussion of guns or depiction of guns in writing or in assignments in public schools, which is an affront to First Amendment rights and harshly inhibits creative expression and academic freedom.”

“If anything comes up in a school setting that has to do with firearms, then it’s a suspendable offense and criminal charges could ensue,” Clemmons told WMBF News. “The second amendment should be freely debated in schools and instead the second amendment is being squelched in our schools.”

If passed, the Second Amendment Education Act would require that three consecutive weeks of each year in elementary, middle, and high school be spent studying the second amendment. As Ian Millhiser at Think Progress points out, that’s an enormous chunk of the school year, especially given that some South Carolina schools devote just two weeks to slavery and a week and a half to World War II.

The law would also require that every December 15—the day after the anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook school in Newtown—be designated “Second Amendment Awareness Day.” To celebrate the occasion, schools will be required to hold mandatory poster or essay contests at every grade level, with the theme “The Right To Bear Arms; One American Right Protecting All Others.” The South Carolina Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus will be in charge of choosing first, second, and third place winners in both contests.

Both chambers of South Carolina’s legislature are Republican-controlled, and Gov. Nikki Halley has an A+ rating from the NRA. Still, this bill may be too extreme to pass:

“Even amongst a conservative constituency in South Carolina, I think they can rate that they have more abiding problems than this,” says Dr. Dave Woodard, a political science professor at Clemson University who’s long served as a political consultant to Republican candidates in South Carolina.

“Most people are more concerned with math and science, and the fact that historically, South Carolina’s rankings in education have been abysmal. Nobody, I think, would say ‘The best way to improve education is to have a three-week segment on the Second Amendment. Boy, that’ll move us up in the national rankings!'” says Woodard.

The bill includes a list of gun-related topics that must be worked into the curriculum. Several—including the individual right to bear arms—are straight out of the revisionist interpretation of the Second Amendment that the NRA and its supporters have helped popularize since the 1970s.

The curriculum would require students from first grade and up to get into the weeds of constitutional scholarship on the Second Amendment. Students will be asked to study Supreme Court cases “including the United States v. Cruikshank, the United States v. Miller, the District of Columbia v. Heller, and McDonald v. Chicago.” (The majority arguments in Heller and McDonald grew out of the push by pro-gun researchers to redefine the Second Amendment.) The bill also mandates that students learn about “the constitutionality of gun control laws,” the causes of mass shootings, and “the impact of legislative reactions to gun violence on Constitutional rights and the impact on reducing gun violence, if any.”

Clemmons identifies as a Second Amendment advocate. He has repeatedly received an A rating from the NRA, and has taken part in events with the group in his state. In 2013, he was featured on the NRA’s website after taking a trip to Connecticut to convince gun manufacturers, put off by tightening gun control legislation in the state post-Newtown, to move their operations to South Carolina.

It’s unclear if Rep. Clemmons or his cosponsors have hashed out the logistics of the NRA’s involvement in developing or approving a curriculum: Jennifer Baker, a spokeswoman for the NRA, tells Mother Jones that the NRA has not made any recommendations on the syllabus envisioned by the bill, nor have South Carolina legislators made plans with the NRA about the group’s future role. Attempts by Mother Jones to contact Rep. Clemmons have not been answered, but we will update this story if we receive a response.

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Lawmaker Endorsed by NRA Aims to Make Schoolkids Study NRA Curriculum

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We Could Soon Be Spending a Lot More Money Fighting Ebola

by BlaineCady Posted on December 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Funding for the fight against Ebola could soon increase sharply. The omnibus spending bill currently being negotiated in Congress will reportedly include most of the $6.18 billion that President Barack Obama requested to help combat the disease. Most of that money would be directed toward American and international efforts at the source of the outbreak in West Africa. But in addition to the international aid, Obama’s request includes tens of millions of dollars to help hospitals in the United States prepare for the virus—money that experts say would also help protect Americans from future outbreaks of other infectious diseases.

More MoJo coverage of the Ebola crisis.


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This GIF Shows Just How Quickly Ebola Spread Across Liberia


Survey: Four Out of Five Nurses Have Gotten No Ebola Training At All


Liberia Says It’s Going to Need a Lot More Body Bags


How Long Does the Ebola Virus Survive in Semen?


Liberians Explain Why the Ebola Crisis Is Way Worse Than You Think

The funding would be used to purchase protective gear for a national stockpile, expand traveler monitoring at airports, and increase testing capacity in the United States. Obama’s request also includes $166 million for equipment and training at 50 new hospital-based “Ebola treatment centers” that would be able to isolate patients and test for the disease on site.

This might seem like a lot of money, given the extremely low number of Ebola infections in the United States. Despite widespread fears, there have been only four cases of the disease in the US since the outbreak began (excluding the handful of patients who were brought to the US for treatment). But the American Hospital Association, a hospital lobby group, actually says the request is too low: In a letter to Congress last week, the group asked for an additional $500 million specifically for US hospitals.

One reason hospitals could use the extra help is that treating even a single Ebola patient is enormously expensive. Care for two patients at the Nebraska Medical Center, one of only four US hospitals equipped with biocontainment units, cost about $30,000 per day, or $1.16 million overall, according to Jeff Gold, the hospital’s chancellor. The daily cost of treating one patient, Dallas nurse Nina Pham, at a biocontainment unit at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Maryland was even higher—about $50,000 per day, or $400,000 for Pham’s eight-day stay.

At a hearing in November, Gold said he was not yet sure if his Nebraska hospital would get its money back from the patients’ private insurers. He urged Congress to cover the costs, arguing that the “financial sustainability” of his and other hospitals “is critical to containing any future outbreak of an infectious disease.”

Experts say the the case of Pham and her colleague, Amber Vinson, illustrates the need for improved resources and training. The two nurses were were infected with Ebola while treating Thomas Duncan, a Liberian who contracted the disease in Monrovia before visiting family in Texas. Duncan was treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, which had neither the right facility nor the trained staff needed to handle a contagious Ebola patient. As subsequent reports revealed, Pham and other hospital staff were forced to learn how to use the necessary protective gear only after Duncan arrived. The incident revealed some of the weaknesses in the US health care system’s approach to handling the virus.

“We underestimated the preparedness of hospitals,” says Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “We made the assumption that they handle blood and body fluids all the time so this would be no different. The challenge is the volume of body fluids from this disease is enormous—that meant the protective gear needed had to be greater than before.”

Other diseases, other benefits

Advocates for increased funding argue that even if a major Ebola outbreak never occurs in the US, the money could help prepare hospitals for future diseases.

“The US health system should not respond by creating a disease silo that focuses solely on Ebola,” professors Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University and William Foege of Emory University wrote in an opinion piece with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), which was published last month on the website of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The trio called for “sustained and flexible enhancement” of the American public health system and lauded Obama’s request for potentially making such an improvement possible.

The Ebola treatment centers proposed in Obama’s request would be “essential” to responding to new infectious threats, “such as a rapidly moving pandemic influenza or bioterror event,” they said.

In an email, Gostin said that while these sorts of improvements are needed to prepare for a number of diseases, it was the Ebola outbreak that made them “politically possible.”

Benjamin agreed that preparing hospitals to fight Ebola would simultaneously help them get ready for other infectious diseases. Citing a “growing list” of emerging threats—including the coronaviruses and strains of influenza and bird flu—Benjamin said US hospitals need to be better prepared for other for life-threatening diseases that can spread through bodily fluids.

“At some point, we’ll get our hands around this Ebola thing and it will go away,” he said. “But what about the next one?”

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We Could Soon Be Spending a Lot More Money Fighting Ebola

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President Obama Wants More Cops To Wear Body Cams

by donkorleone842 Posted on December 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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The White House wants Congress to spend $75 million on body cameras for law enforcement. The funding, which could pay for as many as 50,000 devices, comes as part of a larger proposal to provide $263 million in new funding to train and equip local police departments.

Calls for more body cams have increased in the wake of Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson. As we reported in August:

“I think body cameras are definitely a net good,” says David Harris, a law professor and police behavior expert at the University of Pittsburgh. “They are one of the most prominent technologies to come along in a long time in terms of accountability, evidence gathering, and in terms of, frankly, changing behavior on either side of the camera. Nothing is a silver bullet, but this has the potential to be a substantial advance.”

Harris, who consults for law enforcement agencies on the side, points to a study by police in Rialto, California. After introducing body-worn video cameras in February 2012, that department reported an 88 percent reduction over the previous year in complaints against officers—and the use of force by its officers fell by nearly 60 percent. A separate British study of one small police department looked at data collected in 2005 and 2006 and found a 14 percent drop in citizen complaints in the six months after cameras were introduced compared to same six-month period of the previous year.

Obama’s proposal could pay for as many as 50,000 body cams but, as the Verge points out, there are 750,000 police officers in the US—and even if each of them had a body cam on it still probably wouldn’t be a panacea for police abuse. A bad cop with a body cam is still a bad cop.

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President Obama Wants More Cops To Wear Body Cams

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After a Year Off, the Triumphant Return of My Annual Black Friday Post

by oraglobcvz Posted on November 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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According to the retail industry, “Black Friday” is the day when retail profits for the year go from red to black. Are you skeptical that this is really the origin of the term? You should be. After all, the term Black ___day, in other contexts, has always signified something terrible, like a stock market crash or the start of the Blitz. Is it reasonable to think that retailers deliberately chose this phrase to memorialize their biggest day of the year?

Not really. But to get the real story, we’ll have to trace its origins back in time. Here’s a 1985 article from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Irwin Greenberg, a 30-year veteran of the retail trade, says it is a Philadelphia expression. “It surely can’t be a merchant’s expression,” he said. A spot check of retailers from across the country suggests that Greenberg might be on to something.

“I’ve never heard it before,” laughed Carol Sanger, a spokeswoman for Federated Department Stores in Cincinnati…”I have no idea what it means,” said Bill Dombrowski, director of media relations for Carter Hawley Hale Stores Inc. in Los Angeles…From the National Retail Merchants Association, the industry’s trade association in New York, came this terse statement: “Black Friday is not an accepted term in the retail industry…”

Hmm. So as recently as 1985 it wasn’t in common use nationwide. It was only in common use in Philadelphia. But why? If we go back to 1975, the New York Times informs us that it has something to do with the Army-Navy game. The gist of the story is that crowds used to pour into Philadelphia on the Friday after Thanksgiving to shop, they’d stay over to watch the game on Saturday, and then go home. It was the huge crowds that gave the day its bleak name.

But how old is the expression? When did it start? If we go back yet another decade we can find a Philly reference as early as 1966. An advertisement that year in the American Philatelist from a stamp shop in Philadelphia starts out: “‘Black Friday’ is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. ‘Black Friday’ officially opens the Christmas shopping season in center city, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing.”

But it goes back further than that. A couple of years ago I got an email from a Philadelphia reader who recalled the warnings he got from the older women at Wanamaker’s department store when he worked there in 1971:

They warned me to be prepared for the hoards of obnoxious brats and their demanding parents that would alight from the banks of elevators onto the eighth floor toy department, all racing to see the latest toys on their way to visit Santa. The feeling of impending doom sticks with me to this day. The experienced old ladies that had worked there for years called it “Black Friday.”

“For years.” But how many years? Ben Zimmer collects some evidence that the term was already in common use by 1961 (common enough that Philly merchants were trying to change the term to “Big Friday”), and passes along an interview with Joseph Barrett, who recounted his role in popularizing the expression when he worked as a reporter in Philadelphia:

In 1959, the old Evening Bulletin assigned me to police administration, working out of City Hall. Nathan Kleger was the police reporter who covered Center City for the Bulletin. In the early 1960s, Kleger and I put together a front-page story for Thanksgiving and we appropriated the police term “Black Friday” to describe the terrible traffic conditions. Center City merchants complained loudly to Police Commissioner Albert N. Brown that drawing attention to traffic deterred customers from coming downtown. I was worried that maybe Kleger and I had made a mistake in using such a term, so I went to Chief Inspector Albert Trimmer to get him to verify it.

So all the evidence points in one direction. The term originated in Philadelphia, probably sometime in the 50s, and wasn’t in common use in the rest of the country until decades later. And it did indeed refer to something unpleasant: the gigantic Army-Navy-post-Thanksgiving day crowds and traffic jams, which both retail workers and police officers dreaded. The retail industry originally loathed the term, and the whole “red to black” fairy tale was tacked on sometime in the 80s by an overcaffeinated flack trying to put lipstick on a pig that had gotten a little too embarrassing for America’s shopkeepers. The first reference that I’ve found to this usage was in 1982, and by the early 90s it had become the official story.

And today everyone believes it, which is a pretty good demonstration of the power of corporate PR. But now you know the real story behind Black Friday.

UPDATE: And what’s the future of Black Friday? Global domination! According to the redoubtable folks at eDigitalResearch, three-quarters of UK consumers have now heard of Black Friday. And they’re treating it with the same respect we do. From Marketing magazine today: “Black Friday is living up to its ominous name, with police being called to supermarkets across the UK, websites crashing and at least two arrests being made for violent behaviour, as bargain-hungry shoppers vie for the best deals.” Boo-yah!

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After a Year Off, the Triumphant Return of My Annual Black Friday Post

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Will Obama Pull the Plug on Wind Energy?

by FrederiFad Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Yesterday President Obama threatened to veto a $440 billion package of tax breaks negotiated by a bipartisan group of legislators led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). The bill, a White House spokesperson said, disproportionately benefits businesses over families. The bill excludes a child tax credit for the working poor that had been a top goal for Obama, but makes permanent a group of tax incentives for big businesses that had been provisional.

But if Obama does kill the deal, he’ll also create a casualty that seems odd for a president who in recent weeks has made climate change a central issue: The tax credit for wind energy, which Reid’s bill would resuscitate for a few years before phasing out in 2017.

The Production Tax Credit (PTC) provides wind energy developers a tax break of 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour of energy their turbines produce for the first ten years of operation, which industry supporters say is a important lifeline to help wind compete against heavily-subsidized fossil fuel power sources. For over a decade, wind power has been locked in a boom-and-bust cycle as the PTC expires and then is re-upped by Congress: Every time the credit stalls or looks like it might disappear, contracts dry up, manufacturers shut down production, and jobs get cut. The same could happen again soon: The PTC expired again last year, and so the fate of Reid’s tax bill will be the fate of a cornerstone of America’s clean energy economy.

Any project that broke ground before the PTC expiration last year still got to keep the credit, so the wind industry is still on an up cycle. So far this year, wind accounts for 22 percent of new energy capacity, second only to natural gas, according to federal data. And with or without subsidies, wind is now one of the cheapest electricity sources out there. Those are critical pieces of the puzzle if the US is to meet President Obama’s new goal to reduce the nation’s carbon footprint 26-28 percent by 2025.

But wind’s halcyon days won’t last unless the PTC is extended soon, said Daniel Shury, a market analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

“The momentum will peak next year, and then we’ll start to feel the effects,” Shury said. “Without the PTC extension, the main US manufacturers are going to start running out of orders by 2016.”

The Reid bill throws a bone to conservative lawmakers and advocacy groups who have called the PTC a handout for an industry that should be able to support itself by now: gradually phasing out the credit by 2017. The American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, has supported such a plan, saying it would give manufacturers, developers, and other wind investors a degree of certainty about future market conditions that they don’t currently have. Shurey agrees: The actual amount of the credit is far less important, he said, than a clear, consistent signal to frame contracts and investments around.

Whatever tax deal Congress ultimately passes will probably include the PTC, says Jim Marston, vice president of US energy policy at the Environmental Defense Fund. Some of the credit’s biggest proponents are powerful Republicans from windy states, such as Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who said on the Senate floor last week that gutting the PTC “would cost jobs, harm our economy, the environment and our national security.” But a veto could mean a long delay—and more of the uncertainty that the wind industry fears.

Continued here: 

Will Obama Pull the Plug on Wind Energy?

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Pines, Radius, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta, wind energy, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Will Obama Pull the Plug on Wind Energy?

Texas official ignores voters’ ban on fracking

by Steven Posted on November 10, 2014

Texas official ignores voters’ ban on fracking

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10 Nov 2014 5:21 PM

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As predicted, mere hours after the first-ever fracking ban passed in Texas, industry reps took to the courts. By 9:09 a.m. on Nov. 5, both the Texas Oil and Gas Association and the Texas General Land Office had filed lawsuits that aim to prevent the city of Denton from enacting its ordinance on Dec. 2 — and Texas legislators are already drawing up plans to make future fracking bans like this one illegal.

The blowback here, of course, is because Denton is sitting on top of the Barnett Shale — one of the country’s largest natural gas fields — and those who’re doing the drilling would like to continue, thank you very much. The lawsuits argue that a city can’t override the state’s authority to regulate the oil and gas industry.

So, in the meantime? Business as usual, according to The Dallas Morning News:

Railroad Commission Chairwoman Christi Craddick came out strongly against a fracking ban passed this week in North Texas, pledging to continue giving permits to companies that seek to drill in Denton. …

“It’s my job to give permits, not Denton’s … We’re going to continue permitting up there because that’s my job,” she said.

Although local residents are concerned about fracking’s effects on air and water quality, the local economy, and human health, Craddick claims the ban passed because the oil and gas industry simply did not do enough in the realm of community education:

“We missed as far as an education process in explaining what fracking is, explaining what was going on. And I think this is the result of that, in a lot of respects, and a lot of misinformation about fracking,” Craddick said.

Misinformation, eh? That’s why 59 percent of Denton voters passed the ban — they just didn’t know how safe and equitable fracking really is! Considering this was Denton’s most expensive political campaign ever, it seems the industry did at least try, before it failed, to give that “education process” a shot.

While this is not the first fracking ban to prompt expensive legal battles over regulatory authority, it’s the first one in oil-rich, oil-powerful Texas, so this is a battle to watch.

Source:
Craddick: Railroad Commission will continue permitting in Denton, not ruling out action against ban

, Dallas Morning News.

Texas Oil Regulator Says It Will Not Honor Town’s Vote To Ban Fracking

, Think Progress.

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Original source:

Texas official ignores voters’ ban on fracking

Posted in Anchor, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Texas official ignores voters’ ban on fracking