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Scott Walker Wants to Know If Wind Power Is Making People Sick

by JulioQwojsz Posted on February 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The two-year, $68 billion budget proposal Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker unveiled Tuesday includes a request for $250,000 to study the health impacts of wind turbines.

Page 449 of the budget proposal includes a recommendation from the governor “directing the commission to conduct a study on wind energy system-related health issues.” The request states that a report should be submitted to the governor and legislature within a year after the budget goes into effect.

“The request for a Wind Energy Health Issues Study was included with the intent to provide the Public Service Commission with comprehensive information to consider as they receive requests for future wind energy projects,” said Laurel Patrick, Walker’s press secretary, in a statement to The Huffington Post.

Wind power in the state has been the subject of some public debate, drawing campaigns paid for by conservative groups with ties to fossil fuel interests on one side and by renewable energy advocates on the other.

Last October, health officials in Brown County declared that eight turbines located at the Shirley Wind Farm posed a health hazard to residents. The chairwoman of the local board of health cited “ear pain, ear pressure, headaches, nausea” and “sleep deprivation” as symptoms among nearby residents. Local reports suggest Brown is the first county in the country to reach such a conclusion.

The conservative Heartland Institute, which advocates for “free-market solutions,” has touted the Brown County decision, and used it as an opportunity to criticize the state for “imposing its wind power mandates.” Heartland has received funding in the past from fossil fuel interests. Walker has appeared as a guest speaker at the group’s events.

Previous studies have found no link between wind farms and increased health problems. The Wisconsin Wind Siting Council, an advisory group to the state’s public service commission, issued a report to the state legislature last fall that concluded that “some individuals residing in close proximity to wind turbines perceive audible noise and find it annoying,” but “it appears that this group is in the minority and that most individuals do not experience annoyance, stress, or perceived adverse health effects due to the operation of wind turbines.”

Canada’s health department also undertook a large-scale study of the subject in 2012, and concluded last year that wind turbine noise could not be linked to sleep disorders, illnesses, dizziness, ringing in the ears, migraines or headaches, perceived stress, or quality of life concerns. The only thing Canadian health officials did find to be related to wind turbine noise: annoyance with features of turbines, such as noise, shadows cast by the blades, blinking lights, vibrations and visual impacts. They found that louder turbines had a greater impact in that regard. A panel of health experts in Massachusetts also released a study on wind turbine health impacts in 2012 that reached similar conclusions.

Those studies have not diminished the complaints of some residents who live near turbines, however, and that has prompted additional research in this field.

Some renewable energy advocates in the state said they welcome the additional research funded by the Walker budget, as long as it’s based on sound science.

“All peer-reviewed studies to date indicate using the wind is a safe way to generate electricity, far safer for human health than other forms of electricity production, such as coal,” Tyler Huebner, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, told HuffPost. “If approved and funded, this study should be specifically designed so that the results would be acceptable to the appropriate peer-reviewed science or medical journal. That way, this study would meaningfully expand the body of knowledge on wind and health.”

Others were more skeptical of the governor’s motives. Chris Kunkle, the regional policy manager for the pro-wind group Wind on the Wires, said the study proposed in the budget is “just another example of Gov. Walker’s targeting of an industry that is incredibly successful in largely every other state in the Midwest.”

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Scott Walker Wants to Know If Wind Power Is Making People Sick

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America’s Newest Diplomat Will Defend LGBT People Around the World

by Joe Mosh Posted on February 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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LGBT communities around the world will soon have a powerful advocate in the State Department whose sole job is to watch out for their interests. Later this month, the State Department will name a special envoy to focus on the rights of LGBT people globally, a department official tells Mother Jones. In an emailed statement, the official said that Secretary of State John Kerry and his staff are in the final stages of selecting an openly gay Foreign Service officer as the United States’ first-ever diplomat to focus on LGBT issues. The position will not require Senate confirmation.

Congress has attempted to push for a special envoy on LGBT issues in the past: In 2014, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced the International Human Rights Defense Act, which proposed establishing the position and taking steps to make the protection of LGBT individuals a foreign policy priority. Markey’s 2014 bill failed to become law. He reintroduced it last month, but the measure’s fate is uncertain—mostly because of opposition from congressional Republicans. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the chairman of the House subcommittee on human rights, said last week in a hearing that he does “not construe homosexual rights as human rights,” and suggested that the White House’s public support of LGBT rights negatively affected the United States’ ability to work with Nigeria to combat terrorism. On the same day Smith made these remarks, Nigerian police arrested a dozen people for attending a same-sex wedding.

The State Department official called Markey’s bill a “very helpful vote of confidence” but said, “We wouldn’t want to wait for passage to do something we’ve long thought was the right thing to do and which has been in process.” Appointing a special envoy for LGBT rights has long been a priority for Kerry, who has tried to make defense of LGBT rights a hallmark of his tenure as secretary and was vocal on LGBT issues as a senator. In recent years, some foreign governments have taken harsh action against LGBT people, provoking outrage among human rights advocates globally. In 2014 alone, Gambia passed a law punishing homosexuality with life in prison, Kyrgyzstan moved to pass a “gay propaganda” bill even harsher than Russia’s, and the Ugandan government fought to reinstate a law that would punish homosexuality with a life sentence. LGBT people are criminalized to some extent in 76 countries, a group that includes countries like Pakistan and Iran as well as Jamaica and Singapore.

As secretary of state, Kerry has attempted to push back against anti-LGBT sentiment and law: He has spoken with some African heads of state about their countries’ policies, and has supported legal and media networks that support LGBT communities in Africa and Eastern Europe. Now, the United States will have a full-time diplomat committed to doing that work. “It’s been long in the making,” the official wrote in an email, “because the Secretary insisted the envoy be a career Foreign Service officer from inside the institution, someone who is part of the fabric of the institution, a diplomat by training.”

Advocates for appointing a special LGBT envoy had expressed concern that any action the State Department takes could potentially be undone when a new administration takes over in 2016. But precedent suggests that LGBT-oriented diplomatic progress is unlikely to be rolled back. In 1999, President Bill Clinton appointed the first openly gay US ambassador, James Hormel, as a recess appointment, bypassing deeply critical social conservatives in the US Senate.* President George W. Bush would go on to appoint an openly gay ambassador himself.

Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state at the time, was the first State Department head to allow domestic partners, including same-sex partners, to accompany overseas staff, and require that foreign governments officially accredit them. Selim Ariturk, president of GLIFAA, an organization that represents LGBT individuals in the foreign service, is optimistic about the State Department’s latest step. The envoy, he says “will be uniquely situated at the intersection of human rights and gender rights issues, and will allow the State Department to make progress combating the violence that plagues LGBT communities around the world.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Hormel’s current position.

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America’s Newest Diplomat Will Defend LGBT People Around the World

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The U.S. and India keep pushing toward a climate deal

by WillardSomerset Posted on January 12, 2015

The U.S. and India keep pushing toward a climate deal

By on 12 Jan 2015 12:40 pmcommentsShare

Preparations are well underway for President Obama’s visit to India later this month. New Delhi is emptying the cattle from its streets. The U.S. Secret Service is installing anti-aircraft guns on the city’s rooftops. And U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry just made a visit himself to lay the groundwork for some big announcements — most notably on climate change.

Officials in the U.S. delegation traveling with Kerry told the Associated Press that there could soon be news about a solar energy deal, a joint effort to bring electricity to the country’s rural areas, and, possibly, a carbon-reduction pact, hinted about for months, that Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would both sign.

The possibility of a climate deal between the U.S. and India, the world’s third largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases, is inviting comparisons to the big U.S.-China announcement late last year. It’s unlikely, however, that we can expect anything so far-reaching; India has repeatedly reminded the world that its people are very poor, and argued that it therefore deserves some leeway on the whole emission-reduction thing. The country points out that even as its emissions continue to grow (see graph on the left below), its per-capita emissions are well below the world average (see graph on the right).

(Click to embiggen.)

Still, in the run-up to Obama’s visit, Kerry, who brokered the China-U.S. deal, has been putting climate change front and center. At a speech yesterday in Gujarat, Modi’s home state — at which both U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim were present — Kerry used dire terms to call for action in the face of an impending crisis.

“There is one enormous cloud hanging over all of us which requires responsibility from leaders,” Kerry said. “Global climate change is already violently affecting communities not just across India but around the world. It is disrupting commerce, development, and economic growth. It’s costing farmers crops. It’s costing insurance companies unbelievable payouts. It’s raising the cost of doing business, and believe me, if it continues down the current trend-line, we will see climate refugees fighting each other for water and seeking food and new opportunity.”

As India’s carbon emissions continue to grow, Modi has been making a number of decisions on the environment that combine a gung-ho attitude toward technology and innovation with a deregulatory approach to business. It makes for an interesting environmental agenda in which polluters anticipate facing less scrutiny while the country simultaneously pushes renewable energy and encourages building sustainability.

Modi has been particularly keen on seeking foreign investment for solar power, which, at the moment, still costs up to 50 percent more than India’s No. 1 source of power, coal. At the same investment summit where Kerry spoke on Sunday, U.S.-based SunEdison and the Indian energy conglomerate Adani Enterprises announced a $4 billion investment in a joint project to produce low-cost solar panels. The proposed factory would become one of India’s largest manufacturers of solar panels, with plans to make them so cheaply that they “can compete head to head, unsubsidized and without incentives, with fossil fuels,” according Ahmad Chatila, president and CEO of SunEdison. (Adani, apparently hedging its bets, also announced an agreement to explore liquified natural gas opportunities with an Australian energy company.)

The announcement of any emission-reduction agreement between the U.S. and India will come, if it comes, in two weeks, when Obama comes to New Delhi for the city’s Republic Day celebration. Reuters notes that there’s a possibility that the leaders will be wreathed in air pollution during a Jan. 26 parade, at which Obama will be guest of honor. New Delhi’s smog is dense, and lately it’s been bad enough, according to a U.S. EPA scale, to cause “significant aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly” and a “significant increase in respiratory effects in the general population.” At the 2010 Republic Day celebration, the pollution was so thick that the crowds couldn’t see that year’s guest of honor, the president of South Korea.

The pollution would tinge any environmental announcement between the two leaders with a bit of irony. Even if India, with its low per-capita emissions, wants to leave the fight against climate change up to countries that bear more historical responsibility for the problem, there is a strong interest in improving air quality for the tens of millions of Indians living in its major cities. That, too, could prompt the country to come up with a plan to shift away from or limit the use of dirty fuels.

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The U.S. and India keep pushing toward a climate deal

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, global climate change, LAI, LG, ONA, Prepara, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The U.S. and India keep pushing toward a climate deal

This Is What Every Fire Season Could Soon Look Like

by ReginalJobe Posted on January 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jane Derijcke sorts through her burnt possessions in Hastings, Victoria, after a wildfire destroyed her home. Mike Keating/Newspix/Rex Features via AP

Australian fire crews are battling some of the worst wildfires the state of South Australia has seen in decades. The South Australian Country Fire Service, the agency in charge of response, says 22 firefighters have been injured so far. The service says the conditions over the weekend are rivaled only by those experienced during the notorious “Ash Wednesday” fires of 1983, which killed 75 people.

The South Australian blazes, centered in the Adelaide Hills that surround the state capital, began last Friday. Since then, the fires have consumed more than 46 square miles, and destroyed or damaged 26 homes, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. While residents have begun the tortuous process of picking through the rubble of burnt-out houses, the battle across southern Australia, including in the neighboring state of Victoria, is far from over. On Monday, roughly 700 firefighters took advantage of relatively cooler temperatures—they are currently battling fires into the night. But conditions are expected to worsen on Tuesday and Wednesday, with temperatures likely to soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

The fires have reignited the country’s ongoing debate about how best to tackle climate change, which is helping fuel an ever-increasing number of wildfires, and lengthening Australia’s fire seasons. “Every year we are going to face these extreme weather events, which are going to cost lives and infrastructure, and enough is enough,” said Christine Milne, the leader of the country’s Greens party.

Here are some photos from this weekend:

Columns of smoke rise from the Adelaide Hills in this photo taken on January 2. More than 30 homes are already feared destroyed. Hewitt Wang/Xinhua/ZUMA

Firefighter Lukas Lane-Geldmacher rescues a dog from the Tea Tree Gully Boarding Kennel and Cattery during the Adelaide Hills fire on January 3. Dylan Coker/Newspix/Rex Features via AP

Fire crews battle a wildfire in Kersbrook, outside Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. Campbell Brodie/Newspix/Rex Features via AP

South Australia wasn’t the only state impacted by fires. Here, John Gaylor stands amid the wreckage of his firewood business in Hastings, Victoria. Mike Keating/Newspix/Rex Features via AP

Trees blackened by this weekend’s fires in the Adelaide Hills. Hewitt Wang/Xinhua/ZUMA

This spectacular and frightening photo, taken by Ben Goode, and shared on his Facebook page, Earth Art Photography:

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Post by Earth Art Photography.

And finally, these firefighters have a pointed message for the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, who is known for scrapping the nation’s cap-and-trade program, and gutting various government agencies tasked with fighting climate change:

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This Is What Every Fire Season Could Soon Look Like

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Congress will soon approve Keystone, say Republicans

by DaltonHauslaib Posted on January 5, 2015

Congress will soon approve Keystone, say Republicans

By on 5 Jan 2015commentsShare

The new Republican Senate leadership seems to be holding true to its word: Approval for the Keystone XL pipeline will top the 2015 legislative agenda. The head of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), plans to hold a hearing on the pipeline on Wednesday and introduce a bill to approve it on Thursday.

A pro-Keystone bill came one vote short of passing in the Senate in November — and that was back when Democrats were still in control. This time, Republicans say, newly elected senators such as Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) will ensure that there are at least 60 votes, enough to overcome the threat of a filibuster and pass the legislation. But Senate leadership likely still won’t have the 67 votes they’d need to overcome a veto by President Obama, should he issue one.

So, assuming Keystone clears Congress in the next few weeks, how will Obama respond? The president has repeatedly put off making a call on the controversial pipeline, saying he’s waiting for the State Department to finish its assessment of the project. Toward the end of 2014, he was sounding like he wasn’t much a fan — when a Washington Post reporter asked Obama about Keystone last month, he responded that the project would have little positive effect in the U.S.:

“[S]ometimes the way this gets sold is, let’s get this oil and it’s going to come here and the implication is that’s gonna lower oil prices here in the U.S. It’s not. There’s a global oil market. It’s very good for Canadian oil companies and it’s good for the Canadian oil industry, but it’s not going to be a huge benefit to U.S. consumers. It’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to U.S. consumers.”

This would seem to suggest that when Republicans try to force Obama’s hand on the project, they can expect a veto — or at least that’s what climate hawks are hoping.

Keystone is also facing another challenge: Its path through Nebraska is held up by that state’s Supreme Court, which is currently deciding whether the governor wrongly cleared the way for the pipeline through a special legislative session in 2012, instead of letting the state’s Public Service Commission, which usually handles those decisions, make the call. The Nebraska court’s ruling is also expected very soon.

Source:
U.S. Senate panel to introduce Keystone XL bill Thursday

, Reuters.

In Keystone pipeline case, what might Nebraska court do?

, Reuters.

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The Gap Between the Rich and the Rest of Us Is The Widest It’s Been In 30 Years. Here’s One Reason Why.

by CharoleXSH Posted on December 26, 2014

Mother Jones

The wealth gap between the richest 20 percent of Americans and everyone else is the widest it’s been in three decades, according to a report released last week by the Pew Research Center. Many factors contribute to this great divide: tax rates on the rich have been falling for decades; the Great Recession decimated the assets of a lot of low- and middle-income folks; and technology is replacing workers. One often-overlooked factor, though, is that 16.7 million poor Americans don’t have a bank account. Lack of access to this basic financial tool cramps poor Americans’ ability to prove credit-worthiness and build assets, and forces them to rely on expensive alternative financial services, trapping them in a cycle of debt and instability.

Here’s a look at banking access in the US and how it affects Americans’ ability to grab onto the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder.

Many more people in the US lack bank accounts than in other wealthy developed nations, according to the latest World Bank data, which is from 2011.

The percentage of Americans without bank access has fluctuated since the Great Recession. In 2009, 7.6 percent of Americans lacked a bank account. In 2011, that number was 8.2 percent, and in 2013, 7.7 percent—or approximately 16.7 million adults—had no banking access, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Eighteen percent of people in the bottom 40 percent of the income spectrum lacked an account at a formal financial institution in 2011, according to the World Bank. Non-whites are less likely to have a bank account:

The main reason people don’t open bank accounts is that they lack sufficient funds to open one or can’t afford the fees associated with the account. But some people simply don’t trust financial institutions.

Bank fees associated with checking accounts have skyrocketed over the past few years, with the percentage of truly free checking accounts falling from 76 percent in 2009 to 38 percent in 2013, according to the most recent data from Bankrate, a consumer financial services company. The average minimum balance required to open a checking account rose nine percent over the past year to $66, and the average overdraft fee reached $32.74, a record high. ATM fees are at all-time highs, too.

“Even plain vanilla checking accounts have gotten more expensive,” Abby McCloskey, a program director at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote at Forbes last year. “Free checking was long championed by the FDIC to bring the unbanked into mainstream banking, and it has all but disappeared as banks cut costs.” (The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Congress created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to protect average Americans from banks’ predatory practices, is weighing new regulations on overdraft fees.)

When low-income customers close their accounts to avoid minimum balances and fees, they’re forced to rely on alternative financial services including payday lending, money orders, check cashing, and pawn shops—which often charge even more exorbitant fees and penalties. The average household that uses these alternative financial services spends $2,412 per year on interest and related fees, according to a report released this year by the Postal Service’s inspector general. A 2011 Pew survey of 2,000 low-income families in Los Angeles found that using alternative financial services consumed 6 percent of an average household’s income, whereas buying the same services at a bank ate up just half a percent of an average family’s income.

Americans without bank accounts also tend to miss out on tax benefits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit—mostly because people without bank accounts are less likely to file tax returns. More than two-thirds of families with bank accounts in Pew’s LA study filed their tax returns. Just 38 percent of the families without bank accounts filed. Three quarters of the families that filed got a tax refund.

Not surprisingly, low-income people with access to bank accounts are more likely to save money and have better overall economic health. Check it out.

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The Gap Between the Rich and the Rest of Us Is The Widest It’s Been In 30 Years. Here’s One Reason Why.

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The Cost of US Wars Since 9/11: $1.6 Trillion

by IXYEmeryebk Posted on December 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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The cost of US war-making in the 13 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks reached a whopping $1.6 trillion in 2014, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

The $1.6 trillion in war spending over that time span includes the cost of military operations, the training of security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, weapons maintenance, base support, reconstruction, embassy maintenance, foreign aid, and veterans’ medical care, as well as war-related intelligence operations not tracked by the Pentagon. The report tracks expenses through September, the end of the government’s 2014 fiscal year. Here’s a breakdown of where most of that money went:

The key factor determining the cost of war during a given period over the last 13 years has been the number of US troops deployed, according to the report. The number of troops in Afghanistan peaked in 2011, when 100,000 Americans were stationed there. The number of US armed forces in Iraq reached a high of about 170,000 in 2007.

Although Congress enacted across-the-board spending cuts in March 2013, the Pentagon’s war-making money was left untouched. The minimal cuts, known as sequestration, came from the Defense Department’s regular peacetime budget. The Pentagon gets a separate budget for fighting wars.

In the spending bill that Congress approved earlier this month, lawmakers doled out $73.7 billion for war-related activities in 2015—$2.3 billion more than President Barack Obama had requested. As Mother Jones‘ Dave Gilson reported last year, US military spending is on pace to taper far less dramatically in the wake of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars than it did after the end of the Vietnam War or the Cold War.

Other reports have estimated the cost of US wars since 9/11 to be far higher than $1.6 trillion. A report by Neta Crawford, a political science professor at Boston University, estimated the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as well as post-2001 assistance to Pakistan—to be roughly $4.4 trillion. The CRS estimate is lower because it does not include additional costs including the lifetime price of health care for disabled veterans and interest on the national debt.

Chart by AJ Vicens.

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The Cost of US Wars Since 9/11: $1.6 Trillion

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The Most Comprehensive Overview Yet of the Kinks’ Glorious Youth

by VernonUJDD Posted on December 22, 2014

Mother Jones

The Kinks
The Anthology—1964-1971
Sanctuary/BMG

The Kinks’ early years have been rehashed repeatedly over the last two decades, so don’t expect any major revelations from yet another archival dig. However, The Anthology—1964-1971 offers the most comprehensive overview yet of the London band’s glorious youth. With five discs and 140 tracks, this massive set is hardly for the casual listener. It includes demos, rehearsal snippets, alternate takes, and obscure mixes in the service of luring hardcore fans who think they’ve already heard it all. It traces the Kinks’ rapid evolution from a scrappy R&B band playing Chuck Berry and Little Richard covers to purveyors of furious rockers like “You Really Got Me” (arguably an inspiration for heavy metal and punk) to Ray Davies’ emergence as a singularly gifted writer who delivers wry social commentary on “A Well Respected Man,” attains magical beauty with “Waterloo Sunset,” and engages in subversive gender-bending in “Lola.” At their most elegant, the lads still displayed a strong rock and roll streak, thanks to brother Dave Davies’ wicked lead guitar and Mick Avory’s thrashing drums. And while the Kinks continued making strong music into the ’90, these amazing recordings are their best.

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The Most Comprehensive Overview Yet of the Kinks’ Glorious Youth

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Are Republicans Really Ready to Embrace Net Neutrality?

by IvoryT33yv Posted on December 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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Well, this is unexpected. Democrats are generally in favor of net neutrality, the principle that all websites should be treated equally by internet service providers. Companies can’t pay extra for faster service and ISPs can’t slow down or block sites they don’t like. Naturally, since Democrats are in favor of this, Republicans are opposed. But maybe not all that opposed:

Republicans in Congress appear likely to introduce legislation next month aimed at preventing Internet providers from speeding up some Web sites over others….Industry officials said they are discussing details of the proposal with several Republican lawmakers, whom they declined to name. The officials also said the proposal is being backed by several large telecommunications companies, which they also declined to name.

One important piece of the proposed legislation would establish a new way for the FCC to regulate broadband providers by creating a separate provision of the Communications Act known as “Title X,” the people said. Title X would enshrine elements of the tough net neutrality principles called for by President Obama last month. For example, it would give FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler the authority to prevent broadband companies from blocking or slowing traffic to Web sites, or charging content companies such as Netflix for faster access to their subscribers — a tactic known as “paid prioritization.”

….“Consensus on this issue is really not that far apart,” said an industry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were ongoing. “There’s common understanding that rules are needed to protect consumers.”

Huh. I wonder if this is for real? The reported price for supporting this legislation is relatively small: the FCC would be prohibited from regulating the internet as a common carrier under Title II, something that even net neutrality supporters agree is problematic. The problem is that although Title II would indeed enshrine net neutrality, it comes with a ton of baggage that was designed for telephone networks and doesn’t really translate well to the internet. This would require a lot of “regulatory forbearance” from the FCC, which is almost certain to end up being pretty messy. A new net-centric Title X, if it truly implements net neutrality, would be a much better solution. It would also be immune to court challenges.

One possibility for such a law would be a modified version of net neutrality. My sense has always been that the real goal of net neutrality supporters is to make sure that internet providers don’t provide fast lanes for companies willing to pay more, and don’t slow down or block companies they dislike (perhaps because the companies provide services they compete with). At the same time, everyone acknowledges that video requires a lot of bandwidth, and internet providers legitimately need incentives to build out their networks to handle the growing data demands of video. So why not have content-neutral rules that set tariffs based on the type of service provided? Video providers might have to pay more than, say, Joe’s Cafe, but all video providers would pay the same rate based on how much traffic they dump on the net. That rate would be subject to regulatory approval to prevent abuse.

I dunno. Maybe that’s too complicated. Maybe it’s too hard to figure out traffic levels in a consistent way, and too hard to figure out how much video makes you a video provider. Maybe rules like this are too easy to game. In the end, it could be that the best bet is to simply agree on strong net neutrality, and then let ISPs charge their customers for bandwidth. If you watch a ton of Netflix, you’re going to pay more. If you just check email once a day, you’ll get a cheap plan.

In any case, it’s interesting that President Obama’s announcement of support for strong net neutrality has really had an effect. It apparently motivated the FCC to get more serious about Title II regulation, and this in turn has motivated the industry to concede the net neutrality fight as long as they can win congressional approval of a more reasonable set of rules. The devil is in the details, of course, and I have no doubt that industry lobbyists will do their best to craft rules favorable to themselves. Luckily, there’s a limit to how far they can go since it will almost certainly require Democratic support to pass a bill.

Anyway, this is all just rumors and reports of rumors at this point. Stay tuned to see if it actually pans out.

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Are Republicans Really Ready to Embrace Net Neutrality?

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The Spending Bill Includes a Huge Insurance Industry Giveaway Too

by Ajax Isaac Posted on December 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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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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