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California’s cap-and-trade program now covers cars

by GrantBramlett Posted on January 2, 2015

California’s cap-and-trade program now covers cars

By on 2 Jan 2015commentsShare

After a long PR battle between oil industry lobbyists and California’s regulatory agencies, the state’s cap-and-trade program was extended on Jan. 1, on schedule, to cover companies that sell fuel to drivers. That means fuel retailers will have to either provide lower-carbon fuels or buy permits for the pollution their products put into the air.

Industry front groups have been labeling this new extension of the cap-and-trade program a “hidden gas tax.” Citing calculations based on outdated figures, these groups have been threatening that, starting this month, prices at the pump will go up for Californians by as much as $0.76 per gallon.

That’s not true, say the California government and independent economists. Yes, some of the cost — something in the neighborhood of 9 or 10 cents per gallon — could be passed on to consumers. But with gas prices across the U.S. falling ever lower, California drivers likely won’t notice much of a difference. Furthermore, as the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Simon Mui points out, AB 32 — the California climate change legislation that led to the creation of the cap-and-trade program — takes steps to encourage fuel efficiency and to promote alternatives to gasoline-powered cars, from electric vehicles to high-speed trains. Those initiatives, NRDC estimates, could end up saving families hundreds of dollars in transportation costs each year.

So why is the industry warning of a major hike in fuel prices even when independent analysts are saying Californians can expect to pay only an additional dime a gallon? Some consumer advocates worry it’s a sign that the industry may try to have the last word by artificially hiking prices in protest of the program. For instance, the oil industry might pull one or more of the state’s 14 refineries offline, causing prices to spike. So last month, Consumers Union, the policy arm of Consumer Reports, sent a letter to the state agency that oversees fuel markets warning it to watch for market manipulation from a spiteful industry.

“Oil companies launched a ballot initiative, backed a number of failed bills to dismantle clean energy efforts and have spent $70 million lobbying Sacramento politicians” to undermine the state’s climate law, said Shannon Baker-Branstetter, policy counsel for Consumers Union, in a press release put out with the letter. “Through it all, consumers have been steadfast in their support of clean energy and energy efficiency.” Baker-Branstetter noted that even as oil prices are falling, industry-backed groups “continue to claim that gas price spikes are coming starting in January 2015. … We want to make sure that California consumers are protected against possible market manipulations.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that, perhaps in response to these concerns, California’s Energy Commission appointed new members to the state agency that monitors how regulations affect fuel prices — including the head of antitrust operations in the state attorney general’s office.

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California’s cap-and-trade program now covers cars

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The Spending Bill Includes a Huge Insurance Industry Giveaway Too

by Ajax Isaac Posted on December 11, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

You can add insurance industry subsidies to the list of giveaways being shoved into the massive, last-minute government spending bill Congress is trying to vote on to avert a government shutdown. (Update: The bill passed the House.) A seven-year extension of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA)—which is essentially a government promise to bail out insurance companies after a major terrorist attack—has become part of this appropriations measure. The insurance industry and some of its bigger corporate clients claim renewing the 9/11-inspired law is critical to keeping the industry alive. Critics, citing the industry’s own risk analysis, say it’s pretty much useless.

TRIA, which is set to expire December 31, was approved by Congress after the September 11 attacks. Before then, a major attack was considered such a far-off possibility that terrorism insurance was generally included in commercial policies without added cost. But the attacks were a catastrophe for the industry, costing more than $40 billion in today’s dollars—the greatest loss for a non-natural disaster on record. After those payouts, many companies either stopped offering terrorism coverage or made it enormously expensive, according to a Congressional Research Service report on the subject. In 2002, Congress passed TRIA, which requires insurers to offer terrorism coverage—and promises to bail them out if a future terrorist attack causes losses above a certain threshold. With this law, the government acts as an insurer for the insurers—but it doesn’t charge them a dime for the protection.

The TRIA renewal in the spending bill will shift more of the burden of covering losses due to terrorist attacks to the insurance industry relative to the previous law. The threshold for an industry bailout would double, from $100 million in damages to $200 million, and the portion of losses covered by the government would fall from 85 percent to 80 percent. The law does include a provision the government could use to get some of its bailout money back; it would allow the government to tax policyholders, but this is not mandatory.

Critics, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have called TRIA a giveaway for the industry. Similar programs exist in Europe and Australia, but those programs bill insurance companies in advance for the protection, instead of giving it away for free and then possibly taxing policyholders after the fact. If the government did charge for TRIA coverage, it could collect about $570 million annually, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Consumer Federation of America, citing the insurance industry’s own risk analysis, notes that only the owners of “high-risk” terrorist targets— large, commercial buildings in New York City, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Chicago—and their insurers benefit from TRIA. Although terrorism insurance rates would increase if TRIA were repealed, the group says, few policyholders would see the difference.

If there were a terrorist attack on one of those large commercial buildings, the industry is probably equipped to handle the loss without a government backstop. In the first half of 2014, American property and casualty insurers (TRIA’s main industry beneficiaries) were sitting on a record surplus of $683.1 billion, according to an industry report—enough to cover 15 times the losses endured on September 11.

In a September 8 letter to Congress, 400 companies and trade associations, from AIG to United Airlines and Walt Disney, contended that TRIA maintained “economic stability in the face of ongoing terrorist threats,” and that without it insurance companies would be unable to provide adequate coverage. A few weeks later, the Insurance Information Institute, an industry-funded advocacy group, cited ISIS’s promise to attack the United States as a reason for extending the law.

More than 100 companies and trade associations lobbied Congress on TRIA. Looks like it was money well spent.

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The Spending Bill Includes a Huge Insurance Industry Giveaway Too

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Cheap gas will make Thanksgiving traffic even worse this year

by LloydCrommelin Posted on November 25, 2014

Cheap gas will make Thanksgiving traffic even worse this year

By on 25 Nov 2014commentsShare

Think last year’s Thanksgiving traffic was bad? This year, it’ll be even worse. Drivers should expect this Wednesday’s travel times to be 25 to 36 percent longer — and for rush hour to start two hours earlier — than on a typical Wednesday, according to the annual INRIX Thanksgiving Traffic Forecast. Basically, INRIX analysts say, don’t even bother trying to drive between 2 and 5 p.m. on Wednesday, unless by “drive” you mean “sit and stare at a Coexist bumper sticker,” which, I know, is everyone’s favorite thing.

Still, we’re a masochistic bunch. AAA projects that over 46 million people will journey more than 50 miles for Thanksgiving this year — the biggest number since 2007, and a 4.2 percent increase from last year.

And why, for heaven’s sake?! Probably ’cause gas is cheap: This week, we’re seeing the lowest gasoline prices since 2009. The national average is $2.85 a gallon right now, 43 cents cheaper than last Thanksgiving. That means drivers in Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle, in particular, are going to be sitting in some of the thickest gridlock in years, according to INRIX:

INRIX

Yeah, Los Angeles drivers know a thing or two about traffic, but man, the above chart suggests that the average pre-Thanksgiving trip is probably going to take them more than a third longer than the average traffic-clogged day, says analyst Jim Bak.

“Los Angeles is simply the worst place to be on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving,” said Bak. “The combination of people arriving for the holiday with those leaving town and normal commuter traffic will result in steady traffic all day long.”

Oh boy! Now that sounds like a happy holiday — and yet another reason we really, really don’t want cheap gas.

Source:
Inrix Thanksgiving Traffic Forecast Predicts Longer Delays This Year for Drivers on Wednesday Afternoon

, INRIX.

AAA: More Thank 46 Million Americans to Celebrate Thanksgiving with a Holiday Getaway, Most Since 2007

, AAA.

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Cheap gas will make Thanksgiving traffic even worse this year

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The Filibuster Isn’t Going Away, It’s Just Changing Parties

by ROWDarcisvg Posted on November 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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Danny Vinik says that with Democrats soon to be the minority party in the Senate, Harry Reid will employ the filibuster just as much as Mitch McConnell ever did:

Reid has a history of supporting the filibuster when in the minority and criticizing it when in the majority. There’s no reason to expect that to change with McConnell as majority leader.

And that’s a good thing. If Republicans are going to reap the political benefits of indiscriminate filibustering, then Democrats should do so as well. The advantage of filibustering is that it allows a party to block progress without taking all of the blame for it, for the simple reason that most of the public—and, surprisingly, most of the media—don’t realize that filibusters are basically thwarting majority rule. Presidential vetoes, on the other hand, are easy for the public and media to understand and easy to appropriate blame. If Democrats relinquished the tool now, they’d give up a chance to make the same sort of gains. It’d be the equivalent of unilateral disarmament.

Agreed. In fact, it never even occurred to me that Democrats might use the filibuster any less than Republicans have over the past six years. The GOP has taught a master class in the virtues of obstruction, and there’s no reason to think that Democrats haven’t learned the lesson well. The only question is whether Reid will be able to hold his caucus together as well as McConnell held together his.

Actually, I take that back. That’s not the only question. Here’s the one I’m really curious about: will the media treat Democratic filibusters the same way they treated Republican filibusters? To put this more bluntly, will they treat Dem filibusters as routine yawners barely worth mentioning? Or, alternatively, will they treat them not as expressions of sincere dissent against an agenda they loathe, but as nakedly cynical ploys employed by vengeful and bitter Democrats for no purpose other than exacting retribution against Mitch McConnell? Just asking.

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The Filibuster Isn’t Going Away, It’s Just Changing Parties

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Arizona School District Cutting Contraception from High School Biology Text

by MartinCrofts Posted on November 4, 2014

Mother Jones

Via Steve Benen, here’s the latest from Gilbert, Arizona:

School district staff here will “edit” a high-school honors biology textbook after board members agreed that it does not align with state regulations on how abortion is to be presented to public-school students.

….The book in question, Campbell Biology: Concepts & Connections (Seventh Edition), has a chapter that discusses abstinence, birth-control methods, tubal ligations and vasectomies and drugs that can induce abortion.

….The board made its decision after listening to a presentation from Natalie Decker, a lawyer for Scottsdale-based Alliance Defending Freedom….Decker did not recommend a way to change the book but said it could be redacted or have additional information pasted in. “The cheapest, least disruptive way to solve the problem is to remove the page,” board member Daryl Colvin said.

This whole thing is ridiculous, and the prospect of taking a razor blade to p. 547 of this textbook is cringe-inducing. Hell, as near as anyone can tell, the book doesn’t even violate Arizona law, which requires public schools to present child birth and adoption as preferred options to elective abortion. Apparently there are just some folks in Gilbert who don’t like having the subject presented at all.

Still, ridiculous as this is, I do have a serious question to ask. I checked, and this is not a “Human Sexuality” text or a “Health and Family” book. It’s straight-up biology: photosynthesis, genes, evolution, eukaryotic cells, vertebrates, nervous systems, hormones, the immune system, etc. etc. So why, in a generic biology textbook, is there a special boxed page devoted to specific technical means of contraception in human beings? That really does seem like something pasted in to make a point, not because it follows naturally from a discussion of reproduction and embryonic development in class Mammalia.

So….what’s the point of including this in the first place? To annoy conservatives? To satisfy some obscure interest group? If this book were used in a sex ed class, that would be one thing. It would clearly belong. But in a standard biology text? I don’t really get it.

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Arizona School District Cutting Contraception from High School Biology Text

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The One Percent Just Keeps Getting Richer, According to the 2014 Global Wealth Report

by LyndonSkene Posted on November 3, 2014

Mother Jones

This story was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

Global inequality, like global warming, is a disease that may be too far along to ever be cured.

We seem helpless, both in the US and around the world, to stop the incessant flow of wealth to an elitist group of people who are simply building on their existing riches. The increasing rate of their takeaway is the message derived from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook (GWD).

It’s already been made clear that the richest Americans have taken almost all the gains in US wealth since the recession. But the unrelenting money grab is a global phenomenon. The GWD confirms just how bad it’s getting for the great majority of us.

1. US: Even the upper middle class is losing

In just three years, from 2011 to 2014, the bottom half of Americans lost almost half of their share of the nation’s wealth, dropping from a 2.5 percent share to a 1.3 percent share (detail is here).

Most of the top half lost ground, too. The 36 million upper middle class households just above the median (sixth, seventh, and eighth deciles) dropped from a 13.4 percent share to an 11.9 percent share. Much of their portion went to the richest one percent.

This is big money. With total US wealth of $84 trillion, the three-year change represents a transfer of wealth of over a trillion dollars from the bottom half of America to the richest one percent, and another trillion dollars from the upper middle class to the one percent.

2. US: In three years, an average of $5 million went to every household in the one percent

A closer look at the numbers shows the frightening extremes. The bottom half of America, according to GWD, owned $1.5 trillion in 2011. Now their wealth is down to $1.1 trillion. Much of their wealth is in housing equity, which was depleted by the recession.

The richest Americans, on the other hand, took incomprehensible amounts of wealth from the rest of us, largely by being already rich, and by being heavily invested in the stock market. The following summary is based on GWD figures and reliable estimates of the makeup of the richest one percent, and on the fact that almost all the nation’s wealth is in the form of private households and business assets:

In three years the average household in the top one percent (just over a million households) increased its net worth by about $4.5 million.
In three years the average household in the top .1 percent (just over 100,000 households) increased its net worth by about $18 million.
In three years the average household in the top .01 percent (12,000 households) increased its net worth by about $180 million.
In three years the average member of the Forbes 400 increased his/her net worth by about $2 billion.

3. World: The one percent’s wealth grew from $100 trillion to $127 trillion in three years

A stunning 95 percent of the world’s population lost a share of its wealth over the past three years. Almost all of the gain went to the world’s richest one percent.

Again, the gains seem almost incomprehensible. The world’s wealth grew from $224 trillion to $263 trillion in three years. The world’s richest one percent, who owned a little under $100 trillion in 2011, now own almost $127 trillion. For every dollar they possessed just three years ago, they now have a dollar and a quarter.

From New York and LA and San Francisco to London and Kenya and Indonesia, the rich are pushing suffering populations out of the way to acquire land and build luxury homes. The “winner-take-all” attitude is breaking down society in the US and around the world.

More Madness

There’s a lot more in the GWD, and it doesn’t get any prettier. It tells us what unregulated capitalism does to a society.

In an upcoming post, we’ll consider what has to be done to end the madness.

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The One Percent Just Keeps Getting Richer, According to the 2014 Global Wealth Report

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Chris Christie Needs to Rehearse His Lines Better

by CQZRaymonr Posted on October 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Paul Waldman comments on Chris Christie’s latest outburst against a heckler:

My favorite part is how Christie keeps calling him “buddy” (reminded me of this). Now try to imagine what would happen if Barack Obama shouted “Sit down and shut up!” at a citizen. Or almost any other prominent politician, for that matter; commentators would immediately start questioning his mental health. But even though it’s been a while, shouting at people was how Chris Christie became a national figure talked about as a potential presidential candidate in the first place….If you standup at a town meeting and ask him an impertinent question about something like the state budget, he’ll shout you down (to the cheers of his supporters).

Here are a few ways to explain this pattern of behavior:

  1. This is a calculated way of showing that he’s a Tough Guy, which Christie knows Republicans love
  2. This is just who Christie is, and if nobody was around he’d still be picking fights with people
  3. Both 1 and 2

I lean toward number 3. It isn’t just play-acting, because Christie obviously gets sincerely pissed off when he’s challenged by people he thinks are beneath him. At the same time, he’s a smart enough politician to know that the cameras are on, and there’s some benefit to reinforcing the persona he has created.

I admit that this is mostly just curiosity on my part, since Christie’s act long ago got nearly as stale as Sarah Palin’s. But take a look at the video. Unlike Waldman, I vote for No. 1. To me, Christie appears entirely under control. I don’t doubt that there’s some real annoyance there (even a Vulcan would get annoyed at your average heckler), but overall Christie’s response gives the impression of being practically scripted. There are even a couple of instances where Christie seems like he forgot his lines and hurriedly tosses them in before heckler guy goes away and ruins his chance to get off his best zingers.

So vote in comments. Is it real anger, or has it just become a well-rehearsed schtick by now? In this case, at least, I vote for schtick.

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Chris Christie Needs to Rehearse His Lines Better

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Why climate rap actually improves the dreaded school assembly

by JoellenPr Posted on October 29, 2014

SCHOOLED

Why climate rap actually improves the dreaded school assembly

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29 Oct 2014 5:07 PM

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Grist wrote about the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) and its upbeat school presentations back in 2009, just after the program got rolling in a handful of San Francisco Bay Area high schools. The “ACE Assembly” revamps the deadly school assembly — and a deadly topic like climate change — with animation, music, and freestyle rapping to inspire students to get up and do something.

Since then, the program has spread all over the country and reached almost 2 million students. And it just got major accolades: A study published in the academic journal Climatic Change found, after surveying 2,847 students in 49 high schools, that this kind of thing works (… well, if you can measure “engagement” in hard numbers). A before-and-after survey found some impressive changes:

– Students demonstrated a 27 percent increase in climate science knowledge.

– More than one-third of students (38 percent) became more engaged on the issue of climate change.

– The number of students who talked to parents or peers about climate change more than doubled.

Mostly, though, the research underscores something teachers have known for a lonnngggg time: Make learning fun, and it’ll stick. “Exposure to climate science in an engaging edutainment format,” the researchers claim, “changes youths’ knowledge, beliefs, involvement, and behavior positively.”

I’d venture to guess that educating anybody, at any age, could fall under that rubric. There’s a reason why the adults at Grist love depressing yet adorable animations and raps about Monsanto. Just sayin’.

Source:
New Study: The ACE Program Works

, Alliance for Climate Education.

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Which World Series Team Has the Less Obnoxious Owner, Giants or Royals?

by FloreneGKQN Posted on October 28, 2014

Mother Jones

Game 6 of baseball’s World Series is tonight in Kansas City, and the stakes are high: The San Francisco Giants could clinch their third championship in five years with a win, while the hometown Royals need a win to stay alive. Don’t have a rooting interest, or looking for another reason to tune in? Check out Mother Jones‘ report from last year on the political and business dealings of Major League Baseball’s owners. If you like Karl Rove, you may want to pull for the Giants—but if rationalizing child labor is more your taste, go Royals!

Here’s the dish on the Giants’ Charles B. Johnson:

Johnson, a mutual-funds baron and the 211th-richest person in the world according to Forbes, spent some $200,000 to try to defeat California’s Proposition 30, the sales and income tax increase that included elements of the state’s millionaire’s tax initiative. (Prop. 30 passed in November.) Other political expenditures: $50,000 for Prop. 32, which would have kept unions and corporations from using automatic payroll deductions to bankroll political activity, and $200,000 for Karl Rove’s American Crossroads.

And the Royals’ David Glass:

In 1992, when he was still president and CEO of Walmart, Glass was confronted by NBC’s Dateline with evidence of child labor at a T-shirt factory in Bangladesh. His response: “You and I might, perhaps, define children differently.” As Glass explained, looks can be deceiving—Asians are short. Then he ended the interview. Meanwhile, as the Royals’ owner he’s pocketed profits without making any discernible investment in the on-field product. He also once revoked press credentials of reporters who asked critical questions.

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Which World Series Team Has the Less Obnoxious Owner, Giants or Royals?

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This Quirky Indie Rocker Can Help You Win at Scrabble

by SantiagMorrice Posted on October 18, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Stephin Merritt, the singer for the Magnetic Fields, refuses to play Scrabble with me.

I can’t help but be a tiny bit disappointed. The ubiquitous word game, after all, is the reason I’m sitting down with him in this San Francisco bakery-cafe. Merritt is in town promoting 101 Two-Letter Words, a collection of poems—illustrated by the loveably oddball New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast—that he wrote to help himself remember the shortest words in Scrabble’s official dictionary.

But when I challenge him to a match, Merritt shakes his head. “The last time I attempted Scrabble with an interviewer,” he says in his slow, gravelly voice, “I accidentally stole 12 tiles from the Bryant Park public Scrabble set.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise that he doesn’t want his attention divided. Merritt isn’t known for doing things halfway. His band’s best-known record, the aptly named 69 Love Songs, is a three-volume epic that ranges from gospel to punk. On another album, i, every song title begins with the letter I.

He’s also not fond of repetition. In addition to his work with the Magnetic Fields, Merritt has written several Chinese operas, a score for a silent film version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and music for the audiobook of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. This poetry collection is his first. “I think I would get bored easily if I did the same thing again and again,” Merritt says, so “I don’t.”

The idea for 101 Two-Letter Words, which hit bookshelves at the end of September, came to him while he was on tour playing Scrabble and Words With Friends to kill time in hotels and airports. His opponents included a copyeditor, a journalist, and the novelist Emma Straub. He found himself losing often. So, in a ploy to remember strategically important words like “aa” (a type of lava) and “xu” (a unit of currency), he began composing quatrains for each.

Roz Chast/W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

“After a few,” he writes in the book’s introduction, “I thought I’d better write all of them down, and how better to do that than to write a book? I never finish anything without a deadline anyway.”

Merritt says he doesn’t have a favorite poem from the book, as he’s “not a person who has favorite things.” But he does, disproving his own claim, have a favorite illustration: The poem for “be” reads “‘Be yourself,’ all thinkers say; how odd they think alike. ‘Be yourself,’ says Lao Tzu; ‘Be yourself,’ says Wilhelm Reich.”

To accompany it, Chast has drawn what Merritt describes as “an ugly American tourist couple with his/her shirts.” His shirt says, “Be yourself.” Hers says, “I’m with stupid.”

“It blew me away,” Merritt says.

Roz Chast/W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The book owes much of its aesthetic to Edward Gorey, whose unsettling illustrated books Merritt grew up on.

“As a child with dark, morose-looking eyes, I looked like an Edward Gorey character,” he tells me. “I guess I knew that I was going to meet some horrible end. Impaled by a candlestick or something like that. Sucked into the pneumatic tube in the department store.”

Merritt never considered setting the poems to music, he says. Each song would have been only about 15 seconds long—not enough to jog his memory. But some aspects of his creative process are consistent, no matter the medium. He prefers to work in the nearest gay bar (loud, drunk straight people annoy him), with a cocktail in one hand and his notebook in the other, trying to tune out the television and let his brain wander. If he’s at home, he says, there are too many other pressing things for him to do.

Stephin Merritt performs in New York. WFUV/Flickr

I ask him whether thematic constraints, such as writing only love songs or focusing on two-letter words, help stimulate his thinking. He frowns. “It puzzles me that people keep asking me that, he says, because doesn’t everyone give themselves thematic constraints in their work? Isn’t that what a work is?”

“Yes, definitely,” I counter. “But not everyone makes an album where every song begins with I.”

“No,” he says. “I think most people make albums where everything is more similar than I do. People make albums with only five instruments on them, doing more or less the same thing again and again for the entire album, and no one bats an eyelash. If I did that, I would be bored, and so would the audience. Everyone has constraints; I just have unusual constraints, I think. The Rolling Stones have sounded like Muddy Waters for 50 years, and no one has said, ‘Don’t you find that limiting?'”

With this book, Merritt says, he didn’t even choose his own constraints. He had a specific set of words he wanted to learn, and there happened to be 101 of them. He adds that he’s always been drawn to small things: He plays the ukulele, he drives a Mini Cooper, and his pet chiuahua Irving (after Irving Berlin) slept in his shirt while he wrote some of the poems.

Merritt has a theory about the origins of this affinity: “I’m 5-foot-3.”

So, I ask, have the poems succeeded? Is he now better at Scrabble?

Without a doubt, he says. And his mother is too, ever since he gave her a copy.

“It’s not like I have a moral crusade to help people improve their game,” he adds. “But why not? It makes the world a little more fun.”

Originally posted here – 

This Quirky Indie Rocker Can Help You Win at Scrabble

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