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The Filibuster Is Dead (Partly)

by q1jurse Posted on November 21, 2013

Mother Jones

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CNN reports that by a vote of 52-48 in the Senate, the filibuster of judicial and executive branch nominees has been eliminated. The nuclear option has been detonated.

UPDATE: I was in the middle of writing a post about this when the vote was taken. Here’s what I was writing:

A few minutes before the vote, Dana Bash was on CNN talking about the Democratic effort to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees. “It’s going to make things a lot more tense in the Senate, if you can believe that,” she said. “I imagine it will provoke a lot of anger on the Republican side,” said another anchor. This was followed by some back-and-forth about just how angry Republicans would get and how they’d take advantage of this during next year’s midterms.

This is typical, and telling. Republican anger is always taken as a given, and always treated as genuine. But for some reason Democrats don’t get the same consideration. This despite the fact that Democrats stepped away from this brink several times already earlier this year, and the only reason they’re going forward now is because Republicans have finally pissed them off beyond endurance. Even the moderates have reached the end of their ropes. If things are tenser now in the Senate, Republican need only look in the mirror to find the cause. They’re no longer even pretending that they’ll allow President Obama to perform the normal functions of his office—functions that every other president in history has performed without any serious obstacles.

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The Filibuster Is Dead (Partly)

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Patent Reform Takes a Hit From the Tech Industry

by KaraBloomer Posted on November 20, 2013

Mother Jones

Tim Lee reports that a key provision in Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s patent reform bill has been axed:

One provision would have expanded what’s known as the “covered business method” (CBM) program, which provides an expedited process for the Patent Office to get rid of low-quality software patents….The CBM program provides a quick and cost-effective way for a defendant to challenge the validity of a plaintiff’s patent. Under the program, litigation over the patent is put on hold while the Patent Office considers a patent’s validity. That’s important because the high cost of patent litigation is a big source of leverage for patent trolls.

The original CBM program, which was created by the 2011 America Invents Act, was limited to a relatively narrow class of financial patents. The Goodlatte bill would have codified a recent decision opening the program up to more types of patents….But large software companies had other ideas. A September letter signed by IBM, Microsoft and several dozen other firms made the case against expanding the program. The proposal, they wrote, “could harm U.S. innovators by unnecessarily undermining the rights of patent holders. Subjecting data processing patents to the CBM program would create uncertainty and risk that discourage investment in any number of fields where we should be trying to spur continued innovation.”

It would be hard to overstate just how self-serving and absurd the IBM-Microsoft position is. The notion that an expedited process for evaluating business process patents would discourage investment is laughable. This is the purest example of special pleading since Rob Ford tried to justify his crack use by explaining that he was hammered at the time.

Which wasn’t that long ago, was it? This just goes to show how common special pleading is—and also goes to show just how seriously we should take it. The good news here is that apparently the CBM provision is still alive in the Senate, so there’s still a chance it could make it into the final bill. We can hope.

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Australia’s climate-denying prime minister is convinced he’s the authority on climate change

by VedaGLWCow Posted on October 28, 2013

Australia’s climate-denying prime minister is convinced he’s the authority on climate change

By

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Global warming is bringing droughts, heat waves, floods, and fires to Australia. The good news for the land down under, however, is that its new prime minister, Tony Abbott, is the self-declared expert on all things climate related. And he says everything is just fine.

The Australian state of New South Wales has been enduring some of its worst bushfires in recent history, fueled by unseasonably hot and dry spring conditions. Asked by CNN about the fires and global warming, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, explained that there is “absolutely” a link between climate change and wildfires in general: “the science is telling us that there are increasing heat waves in Asia, Europe, and Australia; that these will continue; that they will continue in their intensity and in their frequency.”

Abbott dismissed those comments by saying that Figueres was “talking out of her hat.” (Which might well be true, if her hat was fashioned from her résumé cataloging her many years of international climate policy work.)

When that failed to shut up the journalists who kept connecting the dots between bushfires and climate change, Abbott piled on the rhetoric, describing their coverage as “complete hogwash.”

Andrea Schaffer

Don’t worry about those little bushfires, like this one that spewed smoke over Sydney on Oct. 17.

Meanwhile, Abbott is urging Australia’s senate to pass legislation that would dump the former government’s carbon tax, saying he will replace the tax with something he has called “direct action,” in which the government would pay companies to reduce their carbon footprints. Fairfax Media asked 35 prominent university and business economists whether they thought a price on carbon or “direct action” would be more effective in reducing carbon emissions:

Thirty — or 86 per cent — favoured the existing carbon price scheme. Three rejected both schemes.

Internationally renowned Australian economist Justin Wolfers, of the Washington-based Brookings Institution and the University of Michigan, said he was surprised that any economists would opt for direct action, under which the government will pay for emissions cuts by businesses and farmers from a budget worth $2.88 billion over four years.

Professor Wolfers said direct action would involve more economic disruption but have a lesser environmental pay-off than an emissions trading scheme, under which big emitters must pay for their pollution.

BT Financial’s Dr Chris Caton said any economist who did not opt for emissions trading “should hand his degree back”.

In the face of this blowback, do you suppose Abbott is easing up on his misplaced self-assuredness? Surely not. Instead, he’s sticking to his favored trash-talking approach to politics. He told The Washington Post that the recently ousted Labor Party government — which introduced the carbon tax and other climate change–fighting initiatives that he’s now working to destroy — was “wacko,” “incompetent,” and “embarrassing.”


Source
Tony Abbott says UN climate head is ‘talking through her hat’ about fires, The Guardian
‘Complete hogwash’? When Bolt grilled Abbott, it sure was, Crikey
Tony Abbott’s new direct action sceptics, Canberra Times

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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Replacing poultry inspectors with factory workers might not be greatest idea, says GAO

by marekso65 Posted on September 6, 2013

Replacing poultry inspectors with factory workers might not be greatest idea, says GAO

By

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Let’s hope this chicken was inspected by a government worker.

Who would you rather have check factory chickens for signs of illness and smears of crap — a USDA inspector or a factory employee?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has long stationed its own inspectors along factory lines at poultry plants. But now it’s preparing to reassign those workers to other tasks and allow the agricultural companies to inspect their own birds along processing lines, which would help speed up business operations.

Food-safety groups are raising alarms about the proposed shift, and a new government report indicates that they might well have reason to be concerned.

The USDA’s draft poultry-inspection rules are based on the results of pilot projects in which private-industry inspections were shown to be safe, the department says. But the new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office says the USDA lacks the data needed to make such claims. The GAO report points out that the department “has not thoroughly evaluated the performance of each of the pilot projects over time even though the agency stated it would do so when it announced the pilot projects,” and at least in one case it used “snapshots of data” from limited periods of time instead of data from the whole period of the pilot project.

USDA poultry inspectors are also opposed to the changes, The New York Times reports:

In affidavits given to the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal assistance group for whistle-blowers, several inspectors who work at plants where the pilot program is in place said the main problem was that they were removed from positions on the assembly line and put at the end of the line, which made it impossible for them to spot diseased birds.

The inspectors, whose names were redacted, said they had observed numerous instances of poultry plant employees allowing birds contaminated with fecal matter or other substances to pass. And even when the employees try to remove diseased birds, they face reprimands, the inspectors said.

Any chance this will all be sorted out before Thanksgiving?

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: Food

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EPA chief nominee clears one hurdle, but more lie ahead

by Cass Barret Posted on July 10, 2013

EPA chief nominee clears one hurdle, but more lie ahead

By John Upton

Derek Bridges

Sen. David Vitter says he’s now OK with the EPA having a leader.

Gina McCarthy is one step closer to being confirmed as administrator of the EPA, after a key Republican senator dropped his filibuster threat. But other GOP senators are still opposed, so the absurdly long wait to fill the spot — a record-breaking 146 days and counting — isn’t over yet.

McCarthy, currently assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, was nominated by President Obama for the country’s top environmental job in early March. But Republicans have blocked her confirmation, taking the opportunity to accuse the EPA of insufficient transparency, among other transgressions.

One of those obstructionists has been Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), but on Tuesday he relented, announcing on his website that he would support allowing a Senate vote on the nomination, which is expected next week:

Vitter (R-La.), top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), today said that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has made major progress on the five transparency requests the EPW Republicans have been demanding throughout the Gina McCarthy nomination process. In a May 16 letter sent to the EPA, Vitter said if the EPA made progress on the requests, he intended to support handling the McCarthy nomination on the Senate floor without a filibuster. Today, he agreed to fulfill that commitment after receiving historic agreements from the EPA.

Obama administration officials hope Vitter’s volte-face will convince some of his colleagues to drop their opposition. From a Tuesday article in Politico:

It remains to be seen how yielding other Republican critics of McCarthy’s will be, although observers have said for some time that the Senate is likely to confirm her.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) has had a hold on McCarthy’s nomination over issues in his state. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) — who held up her nomination to head the agency’s air office in 2009 — has remained staunchly opposed to McCarthy becoming administrator, particularly because of the agency’s climate change regulations.

“We certainly hope that the caucus falls in line with Sen. Vitter and supports an up and down vote on McCarthy’s nomination,” an administration official told POLITICO on Tuesday. “I think this will certainly help move the GOP caucus.”

Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) broke into a wide smile when a POLITICO reporter told her about Vitter’s statement.

But by Wednesday morning, Politico was reporting that hurdles still remain:

Just hours after Vitter (R-La.) announced yesterday that he would not support filibustering McCarthy’s nomination, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said his long-standing hold on her remains. And several Republicans who had been seen as possible McCarthy supporters signaled this week that they’re on the fence.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are reportedly mulling a procedural strategy, the so-called “nuclear option,” that could see McCarthy’s nomination approved by a simple majority vote, which would circumvent opposition from the minority Republicans. “I’m hoping very much that if there is an obstruction that we will simply use our parliamentary options to get a 51-vote confirmation on her,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said.

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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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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EPA delays fracking safety study until 2016

by Georgeysm Posted on June 24, 2013

EPA delays fracking safety study until 2016

By John Upton

iQoncept

We told you last week that the EPA is abandoning an investigation that linked fracking chemicals with groundwater contamination in Wyoming. Amid controversy over that move, news about EPA delaying another fracking study got overlooked by most media.

In 2010, Congress ordered the EPA to look into the dangers posed to drinking water sources by hydraulic fracturing. That research was expected to be completed in 2014. But last Tuesday, an EPA official told attendees of a shale-gas conference in Cleveland, Ohio, that it wouldn’t be done until 2016.

The Akron Beacon Journal was one of the few outlets to cover the news:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is analyzing the threat that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, poses to drinking water, but that study won’t be completed until 2016.

That assessment came Tuesday from Jeanne Briskin, coordinator of hydraulic fracturing research at the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. …

Briskin said the EPA probably would complete and release a preliminary report in late 2014. It is “complex research,” she said. …

Briskin outlined what her agency has done so far and the work that still must be completed. It is sampling water in two drilling counties in Pennsylvania plus in Colorado, North Dakota and Texas.

Nine energy companies and nine drilling-supply companies have cooperated with the EPA research, and 1,000 chemicals have been identified as being used in the fracking process, Briskin said.

The news follows an April announcement made by the EPA in the Federal Register that it was giving the public an extra six and a half months to submit information that could inform the agency’s study.

It’s nice that EPA is trying to be thorough with its research and is giving citizens more of a chance to contribute to the process. But considering how quickly fracking is spreading around the country, three more years is a long time to wait.

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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Coal companies get sweetheart deals on federal leases, shortchange taxpayers

by William V. Wainscott Posted on June 12, 2013

Coal companies get sweetheart deals on federal leases, shortchange taxpayers

By Claire Thompson

Shutterstock

As if climate disruption, air pollution, health problems, and landscape destruction weren’t bad enough, here’s another reason to hate the coal industry: Coal companies are shortchanging U.S. taxpayers out of tens of millions of dollars they should be paying for the rights to mine federal land.

A new report [PDF] from the inspector general of the Interior Department reveals that the Bureau of Land Management routinely underestimates the value of coal, letting companies like Peabody and Arch Coal snap up federal mining rights for a song, often with little or no competition. More than 80 percent of coal leases up for auction in the past 20 years received only one bid, the report found.

The New York Times reports:

The report said that the process by which the value of the leases is computed is faulty, costing the government millions. At the current rate of coal leasing, the inspector general found, every penny-a-ton undervaluation costs the taxpayers $3 million.

Further, the Bureau of Land Management allows coal companies to expand their leaseholdings by as much as 960 acres with no competitive bidding and little oversight, the report says. The bureau has approved 45 such lease modifications since 2000 without adequate documentation, the report states, potentially costing taxpayers $60 million.

Allowing coal companies to pay bargain-basement prices for mining rights supposedly keeps coal-fired power cheap for Americans. But as we turn to cleaner and increasingly cheaper sources of energy, coal’s share of the electricity market is falling — from 50 percent to 40 percent over the past decade. That’s leading U.S. coal companies to ship their goods to Asia, where coal sells for four to seven times more than it does in the U.S., yet the BLM isn’t properly accounting for that higher export value, the report found.

Interior is conducting a separate investigation into whether coal being exported to Asia is properly valued by the BLM. Meanwhile, at the request of Congress, the Government Accountability Office is taking its own look at coal leasing programs.

Luke Popovich of the National Mining Association called the loss of value highlighted by the inspector general’s report a “rounding error” compared to the $2.4 billion in royalties and lease payments the government collected from the coal industry last year. Hardly. An independent study published in 2012 estimated that the BLM’s consistent undervaluing of coal cost the government $30 billion over the last 30 years. Add in all the hidden external costs of coal mining and production, and this is looking like a really terrible deal for taxpayers.

The BLM says it’s revamping it process and convening a task force to consider how it values coal leases. Green groups like the Sierra Club are unimpressed; they’re calling for a moratorium on all coal leasing on federal land.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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One of the awful things about a nuclear meltdown could be the traffic

by Joe Mosh Posted on April 15, 2013

One of the awful things about a nuclear meltdown could be the traffic

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Get me out of here!

It’s hard to imagine a worse traffic jam than the traffic jam that slows your escape from a nuclear meltdown.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office is warning other federal agencies that they need to be thinking about that scenario as they plan emergency responses to nuclear accidents.

Current planning focuses on evacuating or sheltering people living and working within a 10-mile radius of a nuclear power plant. Such planning assumes that everybody living, say, 11 miles from an exploding nuclear reactor would sit on their asses watching the disaster unfold on CNN. And the GAO thinks that’s unlikely. Those people might instead rush into their cars and onto the streets in an understandably panicked bid to escape the area, worsening traffic congestion and making escape more difficult for those closer to the accident.

From a GAO report published last week:

Those in the 10-mile zone have been shown to be generally well informed about these emergency preparedness procedures and are likely to follow directions from local and state authorities in the event of a radiological emergency. In contrast, the agencies do not require similar information to be provided to the public outside of the 10-mile zone and have not studied public awareness in this area. Therefore, it is unknown to what extent the public in these areas is aware of these emergency preparedness procedures, and how they would respond in the event of a radiological emergency. Without better information on the public’s awareness and potential response in areas outside the 10-mile zone, [the Nuclear Regulatory Commission] may not be providing the best planning guidance to licensees and state and local authorities.

Four senators requested that the GAO conduct the study after the Associated Press published a series in 2011 on weaknesses in emergency planning around nuclear plants. From a new AP article:

Environmental and anti-nuclear groups have pressed federal regulators to expand planning to 25 miles for evacuation and 100 miles for contaminated food. They also want community exercises that postulate a simultaneous nuclear accident and natural disaster.

Nuclear sites were originally picked mainly in rural areas to lessen the impact of accidents. However, in its 2011 series, the AP reported population growth of up to 350 percent within 10 miles of nuclear sites between 1980 and 2010. About 120 million Americans — almost 40 percent — live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, according to the AP’s analysis of Census data. The series also reported shortcomings in readiness exercises for simulated accidents, including the failure to deploy emergency personnel around the community, reroute traffic, or practice any real evacuations.

The series further documented how federal regulators have relaxed safety standards inside aging plants to keep them within the rules and avoid the need for shutdowns.

Asked about the GAO study, Paul Blanch, a retired engineer who has worked on nuclear safety for the industry, questioned whether it’s even possible to plan for an effective, managed evacuation of residents in a very populated area. “I absolutely believe they would panic, and they’d clog the roads,” he said.

NRC spokesperson Neil Sheehan apparently took some time out of his busy day to mull the report before emailing a thoughtful, thorough response to the AP: “We disagree with the view that evacuations cannot be safely carried out.”

OK then.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Big Sugar could get a big government bailout

by xf0ks040u Posted on March 14, 2013

Big Sugar could get a big government bailout

By Susie Cagle

Trigger warning, healthy eaters. The USDA is considering a big sugar bailout. Here’s how that would work: The agency would buy 400,000 tons of sugar from surprisingly productive sugar companies in order to give those sugar companies enough cash to pay back the the $862 million they borrowed from the USDA last October. And then you would riot in the streets because what the hell is going on, USDA?!

The Wall Street Journal reports on the part before the rioting:

The USDA makes loans to sugar processors annually as part of a program that is rooted in the 1934 Sugar Act. The loans are secured with some 4.1 billion pounds, or 2.05 million tons, of sugar that companies expect to produce from the current harvest. That comes to almost a quarter of total U.S. output that the USDA forecasts for this year.

If domestic sugar prices bounce back before a final decision [on the bailout] is made, the USDA would back away from plans to intervene in the market, [said USDA economist Barbara Fecso]. A final decision could come as early as April 1. …

The loan program was designed to operate at no cost to taxpayers. A June 2000 study by the Government Accountability Office, then called the General Accounting Office, estimated the program’s cost to the U.S. economy at $700 million in 1996 and $900 million in 1998.

The bailout would help bolster the price of sugar, therefore driving up the cost of sweetened goods. But even if you hate sugar and all the terrible things it does to our bodies, you’re still paying for it.

Is that enough, though, to ally carrot and cupcake lovers in what New York Magazine wishes were a militant social movement?

Big Sugar has spent decades paying its way into politicians’ hearts, demanding price controls and tariffs that boost profits and artificially inflate sugar prices, and using its political clout to establish a permanent life-support mechanism for an industry whose major product is causing many Americans to die.

Why wait? Let’s Occupy Sugar, and Occupy it now.

Speaking of unholy alliances, New York points to a 2012 report by the Heritage Foundation. Free-market-loving Heritage hates Big Sugar. The foundation points to big political spending by sugar companies, just the kind of sweet stumping that killed New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s soda ban.

Heritage Foundation

Not feeling riled yet? Maybe have an angry-making Coke first.

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

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