GUN CONTROL AND STATES: Governing.com reports the following:
"Court: Citizens Can Challenge State, Local Gun LawsSan Francisco ChronicleA federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that private citizens can challenge state and local gun laws—the first such ruling in the nation—while upholding a ban on firearms at gun shows at the Alameda County, Calif., fairgrounds. The ruling followed last year's landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess guns for self-defense.--end of news story.
"Well this should cause alot of action in state courts and reintensify the control control and anti gun control folks at the local and state level. Obama folks do not seem incline to take on the issue of gun control at this time and that is proably a wise political decision. Not sure that this is an issue that will be a good use of local political capital--at this time of budget problems and revenue crisis.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Michigan's Revenue and Expenditure Woes
Michigan has revenue today to support a population of about 7.5 million people.
The problem is we have over 10 million people in our state.
So we either need more revenue--higher taxes--or we need to continue to make drastic cuts in our state budget and state services. Another answer might be different types of taxes that tax different people and businesses in different ways and produces more tax revenue than we get now.
The problem is we have over 10 million people in our state.
So we either need more revenue--higher taxes--or we need to continue to make drastic cuts in our state budget and state services. Another answer might be different types of taxes that tax different people and businesses in different ways and produces more tax revenue than we get now.
Michigan Problems--Moving families
A recent newspaper report said that a family moves out of Michigan every 12 minutes.
That is not a "brain drain" but rather a huge population drain--with brains and without much brains. Or maybe it is a "smart" idea to get out of Michigan before things get worse. What is worse?
According to the Detroit News Michigan has had over 465,000 people leave since 2001.
Some more facts:
That is not a "brain drain" but rather a huge population drain--with brains and without much brains. Or maybe it is a "smart" idea to get out of Michigan before things get worse. What is worse?
According to the Detroit News Michigan has had over 465,000 people leave since 2001.
Some more facts:
- 18,000 adults with a bachelor's degree or higher left in 2007 alone.
- Of the 465,000 Michigan residents leaving Michigan, they took with them almost $1.2 billion in paychecks than the paychecks of those moving in. That is a 45% increase in lost wages in one year.
- "Those leaving Michigan had incomes 20% higher than those who moved in to Michigan".
- Michigan lost 12,000 school age children in 2007 and that cost school districts approximately $84 million in state aid.
- There are 36,000 emply houses and apartments in Michigan.
- Michigan lost over $100 million in personal income tax revenue in 2007 from those people who left Michigan that year.
- Based on these losses in population we will lose Congressional clout and federal money. We will lose one or two Congressmen after the reapportionment in 2011.
- Detroit News reports that based on analysis of US Census Bureau and IRS data Michigan get less populated, less educated and poorer because of outmigration.
So what do we do? When? How?
Michigan's Constitutional Convention
Once every 16 years Michigan voters get to decide in the voting booth if they want a constitutional convention to amend their constitution.
In 2010 voters get to vote on this issue--the question will be on the ballot. It is called Proposal 10-1.
The newsletter Inside Michigan Politics (www.insidemichiganpolitics.com) commissioned a poll by Marketing Resource Group, Inc. to see if the voters would support a constituional convention. It was conducted in early March. 600 registered voters were polled. The statistical margin of error was 4+/4-%.
Inside Michigan Politics newsletter found in the poll that 41% of the people said yes they would vote for the convention; 40% said no and 19% were undecided.
They then asked those polled that would they still support the convention if they knew that the constitutional convention would cost $45 million. Only 18% said they would vote yes for the convention and 75% said no and 7% were undecided.
Constitutional Conventions elect delegates in general elections and then operate like the legislature for a termed period of time. They hire staff and support personnal. Thus the $45 million.
So, Michigan voters really want an amended constitution and think it is important to do so--but not at a cost of $45 million.
In 2010 voters get to vote on this issue--the question will be on the ballot. It is called Proposal 10-1.
The newsletter Inside Michigan Politics (www.insidemichiganpolitics.com) commissioned a poll by Marketing Resource Group, Inc. to see if the voters would support a constituional convention. It was conducted in early March. 600 registered voters were polled. The statistical margin of error was 4+/4-%.
Inside Michigan Politics newsletter found in the poll that 41% of the people said yes they would vote for the convention; 40% said no and 19% were undecided.
They then asked those polled that would they still support the convention if they knew that the constitutional convention would cost $45 million. Only 18% said they would vote yes for the convention and 75% said no and 7% were undecided.
Constitutional Conventions elect delegates in general elections and then operate like the legislature for a termed period of time. They hire staff and support personnal. Thus the $45 million.
So, Michigan voters really want an amended constitution and think it is important to do so--but not at a cost of $45 million.
President's Success in Europe
The key to Presidential success in international visits is to convince the world's leaders where he is visiting to understand and support the American foreign policy agenda. It is not to lecture or to try to force adoption of the American agenda using hard power, but rather to use soft power.
One has to ask was President Ombama successful in convincing the European leaders that America had a new foreign policy and that they should endorse and support it? Or did he make a few points and then adopt in his language the "European foreign policy agenda"?
Or was President Obama using soft power to convince European leaders that there was a "new" American foreign policy agenda and that he was there to explain and to ask for their support. Was it to first show that he could listen, explain and then slowly seek European leadership support? Is that too slow a system in this new world economy and global agenda?
One has to ask was President Ombama successful in convincing the European leaders that America had a new foreign policy and that they should endorse and support it? Or did he make a few points and then adopt in his language the "European foreign policy agenda"?
Or was President Obama using soft power to convince European leaders that there was a "new" American foreign policy agenda and that he was there to explain and to ask for their support. Was it to first show that he could listen, explain and then slowly seek European leadership support? Is that too slow a system in this new world economy and global agenda?
Monday, March 2, 2009
Canadian Comparisons
The World Economic Forum in 2008 ranked Canada's banking system the healthiest in the world. Our is 40th on the list and Britian's is 44th. Our northern neighbors have not had one bank failure while ours are collapsing all over the place this year.
Its banks are leveraged at 18 to 1 and ours at 26 to one.
It has 12 years of budget surpluses.
Penison system completely revamped and strong.
Canada's health care costs 9.7% of its GDP versus ours at 15.2%
Canada's citizen life expectancy is 81 and ours is 78.
Its healthy life expenctancy is 72 versus ours at 69.
Hmmm, which way is north? Maybe we should look there.
Its banks are leveraged at 18 to 1 and ours at 26 to one.
It has 12 years of budget surpluses.
Penison system completely revamped and strong.
Canada's health care costs 9.7% of its GDP versus ours at 15.2%
Canada's citizen life expectancy is 81 and ours is 78.
Its healthy life expenctancy is 72 versus ours at 69.
Hmmm, which way is north? Maybe we should look there.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Post Racial Society
With the election of President Obama many observers say we live in a post racial society.
I am not sure yet about that assertion and do have my doubts, but I do hope it is true.
However, how do we explain then that 40 percent, yes, 40 percent of black kids under 5 live in poverty.
Hmmmm.
I am not sure yet about that assertion and do have my doubts, but I do hope it is true.
However, how do we explain then that 40 percent, yes, 40 percent of black kids under 5 live in poverty.
Hmmmm.
Michigan Legislature's Priorities
Well, they are back in full swing and introducing scores and scores of bills--some important publc policies, some politics as usual bills and some bills to take care of business back home. Some serious and some silly.
Everyone thinks they know what the legislature should do first in 2009 and the Republicans and the Democrats have a set of priorities that are very different.
So here are a few things that might be priorities for our state, for the Governor and for the state legislature--this is not to say that there are not other serious and silly bills that should get done, but this list is a start of what they might consider for the future of our state:
--Fix our tax system: ranging from going to a graduated income tax (from our current flat tax), sales tax reform (add taxable items, add services tax?) to business/corporate tax reform--incentives, loop holes, Michigan Business Tax Surcharge, etc.. The tax system is out of date and unable to support our state budget. Most agree that it needs review, amendment and reform. So start "it" now. If the legislaturae can't do it then put reforms on the ballot for the people to decide in 2009. At the same time we need a very close examination of our state budget and what we can afford to keep and what we cannot afford to give up--tied to what we must cut.
--Energy reforms: solar, wind, coal, wood--we are behind other states and we need to decide what we can and can't do as a state. If we are to eliminate coal or limit its use we have to make sure we can support what is left of our manufacturing sector and make sure that we do not do something that causes energy shortages for citizens. Provide for incentives for installation of wind and solar and to make the utilities offer citizens good rates for taking some of this power back onto their grid.
--Lobbying, special interest and campaign spending reforms: Michigan's laws in all these areas are outdated and need immediate attention. Transparency is important and we should hold elected officials responsible for their violations of these acts--not just lobbyists and special interest leaders.
--Major corrections reforms: in comparison to the other Great Lakes states we imprison a third more prisoners, our corrections costs are approximately one third higher and our costs are about one third or more higher. That is not good fiscal policy, it is not good corrections or civil liberties policy and it is just plain dumb. We are spending almost as much on corrections as we are on higher education. In fact we give universities between $4000 and 9,000 per full time equated student and we spend over $32,000 per prisoner for the priviledge of housing them in our state. Crime rates don't seem any lower in Michigan do they?
State pension reform: every review of our pension system gives the state the same warning--you are headed for trouble and you have a system that you cannot afford with the revenue you have coming in to your state coffers. Legislators need to look at moving teacher retirement pensions to a defined contributions system and also look at retirement and health benefits for public employees (not just teachers, but all state employees, including elected officials).
Term limits will make the above reforms more difficult but the legislature and the governor have a responsibility to move our state ahead and get our laws and the economy reformed to meet the new challenges our nation and state will face in the next few years. Stimulus bills not withstanding, they cannot ignore these big systemic issues.
What else should be on the "urgent" list?
While we are thinking of what the legislature should do this year, and the huge task ahead, consider the bill introduced by Rep. LaBlanc: a law to designate an official state tartan. Hmmmm. I knew there was something we needed and left off the list!!!
Everyone thinks they know what the legislature should do first in 2009 and the Republicans and the Democrats have a set of priorities that are very different.
So here are a few things that might be priorities for our state, for the Governor and for the state legislature--this is not to say that there are not other serious and silly bills that should get done, but this list is a start of what they might consider for the future of our state:
--Fix our tax system: ranging from going to a graduated income tax (from our current flat tax), sales tax reform (add taxable items, add services tax?) to business/corporate tax reform--incentives, loop holes, Michigan Business Tax Surcharge, etc.. The tax system is out of date and unable to support our state budget. Most agree that it needs review, amendment and reform. So start "it" now. If the legislaturae can't do it then put reforms on the ballot for the people to decide in 2009. At the same time we need a very close examination of our state budget and what we can afford to keep and what we cannot afford to give up--tied to what we must cut.
--Energy reforms: solar, wind, coal, wood--we are behind other states and we need to decide what we can and can't do as a state. If we are to eliminate coal or limit its use we have to make sure we can support what is left of our manufacturing sector and make sure that we do not do something that causes energy shortages for citizens. Provide for incentives for installation of wind and solar and to make the utilities offer citizens good rates for taking some of this power back onto their grid.
--Lobbying, special interest and campaign spending reforms: Michigan's laws in all these areas are outdated and need immediate attention. Transparency is important and we should hold elected officials responsible for their violations of these acts--not just lobbyists and special interest leaders.
--Major corrections reforms: in comparison to the other Great Lakes states we imprison a third more prisoners, our corrections costs are approximately one third higher and our costs are about one third or more higher. That is not good fiscal policy, it is not good corrections or civil liberties policy and it is just plain dumb. We are spending almost as much on corrections as we are on higher education. In fact we give universities between $4000 and 9,000 per full time equated student and we spend over $32,000 per prisoner for the priviledge of housing them in our state. Crime rates don't seem any lower in Michigan do they?
State pension reform: every review of our pension system gives the state the same warning--you are headed for trouble and you have a system that you cannot afford with the revenue you have coming in to your state coffers. Legislators need to look at moving teacher retirement pensions to a defined contributions system and also look at retirement and health benefits for public employees (not just teachers, but all state employees, including elected officials).
Term limits will make the above reforms more difficult but the legislature and the governor have a responsibility to move our state ahead and get our laws and the economy reformed to meet the new challenges our nation and state will face in the next few years. Stimulus bills not withstanding, they cannot ignore these big systemic issues.
What else should be on the "urgent" list?
While we are thinking of what the legislature should do this year, and the huge task ahead, consider the bill introduced by Rep. LaBlanc: a law to designate an official state tartan. Hmmmm. I knew there was something we needed and left off the list!!!
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Quote for Today
14 Feb 2009 04:05 pm
Quote For Today
"When it comes to the culture, conservatives should promote an awareness of the costs of unchecked individual autonomy, while challenging conceptions of freedom that deny the need for self-restraint and self-denial. When it comes to economics, they should emphasize the virtue and necessity of Americans, collectively as well as individually, learning to live within their means. When it comes to foreign policy, they should advocate a restoration of realism, which will necessarily entail abandoning expectations of remaking the world in America's own image," - Andrew Bacevich, TNR.
Do we think American conservatives believe this statement? Especially since it was written published in The New Republic, a liberal leaning publication. It is however a very interesting statement or mission statement.
Quote For Today
"When it comes to the culture, conservatives should promote an awareness of the costs of unchecked individual autonomy, while challenging conceptions of freedom that deny the need for self-restraint and self-denial. When it comes to economics, they should emphasize the virtue and necessity of Americans, collectively as well as individually, learning to live within their means. When it comes to foreign policy, they should advocate a restoration of realism, which will necessarily entail abandoning expectations of remaking the world in America's own image," - Andrew Bacevich, TNR.
Do we think American conservatives believe this statement? Especially since it was written published in The New Republic, a liberal leaning publication. It is however a very interesting statement or mission statement.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Updating the Michigan Constitution
Michigan's constitution has a provision that calls for a vote by the people every 16 years as to whether they want to call a Constitutional Convention to review and re write the constitution.
Each time it has been before the electorate (1974 and 1994) it has been overwhelmingly defeated.
In November 2010 the people will get another chance to vote if they want to amend their constitution via a Constitutional Convention.
If the people approve the ballot proposal (Proposal 10-1) then there will be an election in 2011 to elect delegates to the convention (February primary and May general election). Each current House district will elect one delegate and each Senate District will elect one delegate. it is a partisan election. If a district does not have a delegate elected (none runs) then the Governor gets to fill that slot or if a vacancy occurs the Governor appoints the replacement (must be of same political party as vacating delegate).
The Convention will be reaquired to meet in the Fall of 2011 and continue meeting until they adjourn permanently the Convention.
The Convention delegates will organize themselves similar to the legislature: officers, Convention rules, etc..
Some observers say that the election of delegates (primary and general) could cost more than $50 million and that the cost of operating the Convention, paying the delegates, expenses, etc., could exceed $30 million.
One of the great fears in having a Constitutional Convention is that one ideological group or sector will control the election process and thereby control the output of the convention (conservatives versus liberal and/or Republican Party versus the Democratic Party). Others fear that the convention will be overrun by pro gun, anti abortion, pro choice or some other pro/con group--single issue politics will control and not what is best overall for Michigan.
What issues might come before this 2011 Michigan Constitutional Convention? Hmmmm.
Each time it has been before the electorate (1974 and 1994) it has been overwhelmingly defeated.
In November 2010 the people will get another chance to vote if they want to amend their constitution via a Constitutional Convention.
If the people approve the ballot proposal (Proposal 10-1) then there will be an election in 2011 to elect delegates to the convention (February primary and May general election). Each current House district will elect one delegate and each Senate District will elect one delegate. it is a partisan election. If a district does not have a delegate elected (none runs) then the Governor gets to fill that slot or if a vacancy occurs the Governor appoints the replacement (must be of same political party as vacating delegate).
The Convention will be reaquired to meet in the Fall of 2011 and continue meeting until they adjourn permanently the Convention.
The Convention delegates will organize themselves similar to the legislature: officers, Convention rules, etc..
Some observers say that the election of delegates (primary and general) could cost more than $50 million and that the cost of operating the Convention, paying the delegates, expenses, etc., could exceed $30 million.
One of the great fears in having a Constitutional Convention is that one ideological group or sector will control the election process and thereby control the output of the convention (conservatives versus liberal and/or Republican Party versus the Democratic Party). Others fear that the convention will be overrun by pro gun, anti abortion, pro choice or some other pro/con group--single issue politics will control and not what is best overall for Michigan.
What issues might come before this 2011 Michigan Constitutional Convention? Hmmmm.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Congress and the Stimulus Package
The NY Times article below is a good analysis of the differences between the House and Senate bills. The House bill is directing money to the states and local governments to help stimulate the state and local economies. The Senate version strikes much of this funding. Many members of Congress, in both parties, believe that states have been for a decade building big government programs and refusing to raise taxes to pay for these new programs. Also many believe that states have to do a better job of cutting budgets now and cannot be turning to the federal government for aid. California's Governor is not able or willing to raise taxes in his state and he wants the most funding for his state. A similar story from many Governors. When we look at the devastation that the banking/crdit crisis and the economic failures all across America there does not seem to be much that Governor's and state legislature's can do about a solution--it has to come from the federal Government, in the opinion of many. Loss of state aid in the stimulus bill will cause hundreds of thousands of jobs to be lost in the states.
NY Times
February 8, 2009
Divisions Over the Competing Stimulus Bills
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
WASHINGTON — The Senate agreement on a roughly $827 billion economic stimulus bill sets up tough negotiations with the House, primarily over tens of billions of dollars in aid to states and local governments, tax provisions, and education, health and renewable energy programs.
Congress is racing to try to finalize the legislation this week.
The price tag for the Senate plan is now only slightly more than the $820 billion cost of the measure adopted by the House. Both plans are intended to blunt the recession with a combination of tax cuts and government spending on public works and other programs to create more than three million jobs.
But the competing bills now reflect substantially different approaches. The House puts greater emphasis on helping states and localities avoid wide-scale cuts in services and layoffs of public employees. The Senate cut $40 billion of that aid from its bill, which is expected to be approved Tuesday.
The Senate plan, reached in an agreement late Friday between Democrats and three moderate Republicans, focuses somewhat more heavily on tax cuts, provides far less generous health care subsidies for the unemployed and lowers a proposed increase in food stamps.
To help allay Republican concerns about the cost, the Senate proposal even scales back President Obama’s signature middle-class tax cut. The Senate plan also creates new tax incentives to encourage Americans to buy homes and cars within the next year.
Republican opponents continued to rail against the stimulus plan on the Senate floor on Saturday, though it appeared they would not have the votes to stop it.
The negotiations in Congress will test whether Democrats, who say they won a mandate in November to pursue their goals, are willing to give up some favored long-term policy initiatives to win over more Republican votes.
The talks will also test whether any but the most moderate Republicans will be willing to support the Obama administration, or whether they will simply recoil in an opposition stance.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was in Williamsburg, Va., on a retreat with her fellow House Democrats on Friday, called the emerging Senate cuts to the stimulus program “very damaging” and said she was “very much opposed to them.” But after the Senate reached a deal, Ms. Pelosi expressed resolve to complete the legislation in the days ahead.
Mr. Obama, who has made the economic recovery effort the centerpiece of his agenda, is expected to take a stronger hand in the negotiations and will embark on an aggressive public lobbying campaign.
He will hold a meeting in Indiana on Monday, followed by a formal White House news conference, the first of his term, in prime time on Monday night. He will pitch the plan again on Tuesday in Florida and on Wednesday in Virginia.
In his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, the president praised the Senate deal and urged quick passage of a final bill.
“The time for action is now,” Mr. Obama said. “If we don’t move swiftly to put this plan in motion, our economic crisis could become a national catastrophe.”
Also on Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is expected to announce the broad outlines of a rescue plan for the financial industry. The administration hopes that the announcement will quiet some critics in Congress who say not enough is being done for the housing sector.
After Senate Democrats reached their deal with moderate Republicans on Friday, Republicans who are more conservative refused to put the legislative process on a fast track.
Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, insisted that the deal required careful deliberation and said he would spend the weekend reviewing it, even though it was all but certain that he would not support the measure.
As a result, the Senate met for a rare Saturday session, and Republicans delivered some of their harshest criticism of Mr. Obama since he took office, suggesting that he was pressing Congress to act irresponsibly by warning of imminent catastrophe.
“In discussing with the American people his approach to the stimulus of our economy, he has first really used some dangerous words,” said Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican. Mr. Kyl added, “It seems to me that the president is rather casually throwing out some careless language.”
The majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, said Congress would move quickly to get the bill into conference, in hopes of sending the bill to the White House by the week’s end.
As it stands, three Republicans are expected to join the 58 Democrats in favor of the bill, and the negotiations may tilt slightly in the Senate’s favor as officials try to keep that coalition in place.
Both the House and the Senate must vote again to approve the final legislation, leaving a chance of unexpected pitfalls.
The main fight is likely to be over the Senate’s proposal to cut $40 billion from proposed aid to states. Such aid does not necessarily lift the economy, but it prevents states from carrying out cuts that could make the recession worse, and the money can be deployed quickly, a challenge in any stimulus.
The $40 billion was the largest cut in a paring back of the Senate proposal that helped seal a deal between Democrats and the moderate Republicans, thanks to the efforts of a bipartisan group led by Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska.
Another big difference is the Senate’s inclusion of nearly $70 billion to protect thousands of middle-class Americans from paying the alternative minimum tax in 2009, sparing them from a system originally intended to prevent the wealthy from claiming too many tax deductions.
House Democratic leaders have indicated a willingness to retain that provision even though it could require them to give up tens of billions of dollars in favored spending programs and force them to make wrenching choices.
Adjusting the alternative minimum tax is also unlikely to give much extra lift to the economy, because Congress has adopted similar fixes for years and would probably have done so again regardless of the stimulus.
Other trims the Senate settled on eliminated $19.5 billion in construction aid for schools and colleges and sliced proposed new aid for the Head Start early childhood program by $1 billion.
In some cases, the cuts to the Senate bill brought it closer to the House proposal. For instance, the senators reduced financing to expand broadband data networks in rural and underserved areas to $7 billion from $9 billion. The House has proposed $6 billion.
Some of the Senate’s changes clearly reflected the personal priorities of lawmakers, especially the moderate Republicans who were instrumental in reaching an accord.
The Senate deal, for example, reduced proposed aid to NASA and the National Science Foundation by $200 million each.
But it added $6.5 billion for medical research at the National Institutes of Health, favored by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, one of the three Republicans supporting the plan
Even with Democrats controlling both chambers, the negotiations are likely to be difficult. House Democrats have shown little inclination to cater to Republican wishes, especially given the unwillingness of Republicans to vote for the bill.
So far, Mr. Obama and his aides have strongly resisted any change to his proposal for a middle-class tax cut, which was one of his main campaign promises.
It would provide a tax credit of up to $500 for individuals and up to $1,000 for couples, with the credit phasing out for individuals earning more than $75,000 a year and couples more than $150,000.
The Senate bill would lower that income cap to $70,000 for individuals and $140,000 for couples, saving the government $2 billion but potentially reducing the effectiveness of a tax break that is intended to lift consumer spending.
It is unclear how Congress will deal with two provisions aimed directly at general consumers, including an $11 billion tax break in the Senate bill to spur car sales by allowing buyers to deduct any sales tax and one year of loan interest.
The chambers must reconcile competing homebuyer tax credits.
To stabilize real estate prices, the House would give first-time homebuyers a tax credit of 10 percent of a home’s cost, up to $7,500, with income caps reducing the credit for individuals earning at least $75,000 and couples earning $150,000.
The Senate plan includes a more generous credit of 10 percent, up to $15,000, that would be available to all homebuyers, with no income limits.
A formal conference to resolve the differences between the two bills is expected to begin by midweek.
In the Senate debate, critics of the plan said their main objective was to support proposals that would quickly create jobs or spur consumer spending.
But there were Republicans who vehemently opposed some spending programs in the bill, saying the federal government was overstepping its bounds and should not be getting involved in taking up local responsibilities like school construction.
Many of the education programs in the bill are top priorities of the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin.
In debate on the Senate floor, many Republicans, including the party’s defeated presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, offered amendments to reduce spending and broaden the tax cuts in the plan. The Democrats easily swatted those down.
Critics of the stimulus plan say Democrats have packed it not with the most effective short-term proposals to lift the economy, but with favored, liberal spending programs that will drastically increase the national debt and cause long-term fiscal harm.
“A bill that was meant to be timely, targeted and temporary has instead become a Trojan horse for pet projects and expanded government,” the Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, said in a floor speech on Friday.
Although Mr. Obama made substantial efforts to reach across party lines, not one of the House Republicans voted for the stimulus measure. They complained that House Democrats shut them out of the process.
In the Senate, too, talks proved excruciatingly difficult. In the end, the only Republicans whose support the Democrats won were Mr. Specter, Ms. Collins and Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine.
NY Times
February 8, 2009
Divisions Over the Competing Stimulus Bills
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
WASHINGTON — The Senate agreement on a roughly $827 billion economic stimulus bill sets up tough negotiations with the House, primarily over tens of billions of dollars in aid to states and local governments, tax provisions, and education, health and renewable energy programs.
Congress is racing to try to finalize the legislation this week.
The price tag for the Senate plan is now only slightly more than the $820 billion cost of the measure adopted by the House. Both plans are intended to blunt the recession with a combination of tax cuts and government spending on public works and other programs to create more than three million jobs.
But the competing bills now reflect substantially different approaches. The House puts greater emphasis on helping states and localities avoid wide-scale cuts in services and layoffs of public employees. The Senate cut $40 billion of that aid from its bill, which is expected to be approved Tuesday.
The Senate plan, reached in an agreement late Friday between Democrats and three moderate Republicans, focuses somewhat more heavily on tax cuts, provides far less generous health care subsidies for the unemployed and lowers a proposed increase in food stamps.
To help allay Republican concerns about the cost, the Senate proposal even scales back President Obama’s signature middle-class tax cut. The Senate plan also creates new tax incentives to encourage Americans to buy homes and cars within the next year.
Republican opponents continued to rail against the stimulus plan on the Senate floor on Saturday, though it appeared they would not have the votes to stop it.
The negotiations in Congress will test whether Democrats, who say they won a mandate in November to pursue their goals, are willing to give up some favored long-term policy initiatives to win over more Republican votes.
The talks will also test whether any but the most moderate Republicans will be willing to support the Obama administration, or whether they will simply recoil in an opposition stance.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was in Williamsburg, Va., on a retreat with her fellow House Democrats on Friday, called the emerging Senate cuts to the stimulus program “very damaging” and said she was “very much opposed to them.” But after the Senate reached a deal, Ms. Pelosi expressed resolve to complete the legislation in the days ahead.
Mr. Obama, who has made the economic recovery effort the centerpiece of his agenda, is expected to take a stronger hand in the negotiations and will embark on an aggressive public lobbying campaign.
He will hold a meeting in Indiana on Monday, followed by a formal White House news conference, the first of his term, in prime time on Monday night. He will pitch the plan again on Tuesday in Florida and on Wednesday in Virginia.
In his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, the president praised the Senate deal and urged quick passage of a final bill.
“The time for action is now,” Mr. Obama said. “If we don’t move swiftly to put this plan in motion, our economic crisis could become a national catastrophe.”
Also on Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is expected to announce the broad outlines of a rescue plan for the financial industry. The administration hopes that the announcement will quiet some critics in Congress who say not enough is being done for the housing sector.
After Senate Democrats reached their deal with moderate Republicans on Friday, Republicans who are more conservative refused to put the legislative process on a fast track.
Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, insisted that the deal required careful deliberation and said he would spend the weekend reviewing it, even though it was all but certain that he would not support the measure.
As a result, the Senate met for a rare Saturday session, and Republicans delivered some of their harshest criticism of Mr. Obama since he took office, suggesting that he was pressing Congress to act irresponsibly by warning of imminent catastrophe.
“In discussing with the American people his approach to the stimulus of our economy, he has first really used some dangerous words,” said Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican. Mr. Kyl added, “It seems to me that the president is rather casually throwing out some careless language.”
The majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, said Congress would move quickly to get the bill into conference, in hopes of sending the bill to the White House by the week’s end.
As it stands, three Republicans are expected to join the 58 Democrats in favor of the bill, and the negotiations may tilt slightly in the Senate’s favor as officials try to keep that coalition in place.
Both the House and the Senate must vote again to approve the final legislation, leaving a chance of unexpected pitfalls.
The main fight is likely to be over the Senate’s proposal to cut $40 billion from proposed aid to states. Such aid does not necessarily lift the economy, but it prevents states from carrying out cuts that could make the recession worse, and the money can be deployed quickly, a challenge in any stimulus.
The $40 billion was the largest cut in a paring back of the Senate proposal that helped seal a deal between Democrats and the moderate Republicans, thanks to the efforts of a bipartisan group led by Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska.
Another big difference is the Senate’s inclusion of nearly $70 billion to protect thousands of middle-class Americans from paying the alternative minimum tax in 2009, sparing them from a system originally intended to prevent the wealthy from claiming too many tax deductions.
House Democratic leaders have indicated a willingness to retain that provision even though it could require them to give up tens of billions of dollars in favored spending programs and force them to make wrenching choices.
Adjusting the alternative minimum tax is also unlikely to give much extra lift to the economy, because Congress has adopted similar fixes for years and would probably have done so again regardless of the stimulus.
Other trims the Senate settled on eliminated $19.5 billion in construction aid for schools and colleges and sliced proposed new aid for the Head Start early childhood program by $1 billion.
In some cases, the cuts to the Senate bill brought it closer to the House proposal. For instance, the senators reduced financing to expand broadband data networks in rural and underserved areas to $7 billion from $9 billion. The House has proposed $6 billion.
Some of the Senate’s changes clearly reflected the personal priorities of lawmakers, especially the moderate Republicans who were instrumental in reaching an accord.
The Senate deal, for example, reduced proposed aid to NASA and the National Science Foundation by $200 million each.
But it added $6.5 billion for medical research at the National Institutes of Health, favored by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, one of the three Republicans supporting the plan
Even with Democrats controlling both chambers, the negotiations are likely to be difficult. House Democrats have shown little inclination to cater to Republican wishes, especially given the unwillingness of Republicans to vote for the bill.
So far, Mr. Obama and his aides have strongly resisted any change to his proposal for a middle-class tax cut, which was one of his main campaign promises.
It would provide a tax credit of up to $500 for individuals and up to $1,000 for couples, with the credit phasing out for individuals earning more than $75,000 a year and couples more than $150,000.
The Senate bill would lower that income cap to $70,000 for individuals and $140,000 for couples, saving the government $2 billion but potentially reducing the effectiveness of a tax break that is intended to lift consumer spending.
It is unclear how Congress will deal with two provisions aimed directly at general consumers, including an $11 billion tax break in the Senate bill to spur car sales by allowing buyers to deduct any sales tax and one year of loan interest.
The chambers must reconcile competing homebuyer tax credits.
To stabilize real estate prices, the House would give first-time homebuyers a tax credit of 10 percent of a home’s cost, up to $7,500, with income caps reducing the credit for individuals earning at least $75,000 and couples earning $150,000.
The Senate plan includes a more generous credit of 10 percent, up to $15,000, that would be available to all homebuyers, with no income limits.
A formal conference to resolve the differences between the two bills is expected to begin by midweek.
In the Senate debate, critics of the plan said their main objective was to support proposals that would quickly create jobs or spur consumer spending.
But there were Republicans who vehemently opposed some spending programs in the bill, saying the federal government was overstepping its bounds and should not be getting involved in taking up local responsibilities like school construction.
Many of the education programs in the bill are top priorities of the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin.
In debate on the Senate floor, many Republicans, including the party’s defeated presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, offered amendments to reduce spending and broaden the tax cuts in the plan. The Democrats easily swatted those down.
Critics of the stimulus plan say Democrats have packed it not with the most effective short-term proposals to lift the economy, but with favored, liberal spending programs that will drastically increase the national debt and cause long-term fiscal harm.
“A bill that was meant to be timely, targeted and temporary has instead become a Trojan horse for pet projects and expanded government,” the Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, said in a floor speech on Friday.
Although Mr. Obama made substantial efforts to reach across party lines, not one of the House Republicans voted for the stimulus measure. They complained that House Democrats shut them out of the process.
In the Senate, too, talks proved excruciatingly difficult. In the end, the only Republicans whose support the Democrats won were Mr. Specter, Ms. Collins and Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine.
Taxing CEO Salaries versus Limiting Salaries
The CEO of NetFlix had an interesting alternative to capping CEO salaries (those of companies that took federal aid). He suggests that we raise the income tax rate from 38% to 50% for any salaries that are over $1 million.
Federal and State Government would get the additional tax revenue.
Government would not get itself in the private sector and dictating salaries or other compensation matters that are maybe best left to shareholders.
Federal and State Government would get the additional tax revenue.
Government would not get itself in the private sector and dictating salaries or other compensation matters that are maybe best left to shareholders.
An Outside the Beltway View on Daschle, CEOs Issue and Washington DC behavior
This is an interesting Op Ed piece from the NY Times. Many in Washinton, inside the beltway, have been defending former Senator Daschle and justifyng his "problem". They talked of his dedication to the nation and to public policy. We have heard many opinions defending excessive bonuses and salaries of Wall Street, bankers and some CEOs. This Op Ed piece gives us a peek into to how those outside the beltway might be thinking about this issue and how Americans view the opinion that those of power, Republicans and Democrats, who think the rules do not apply to them--they seem to think of themselves as a priviledged class.
Op-Ed Contributor
My Children Made Me Do It
New York Times, February 9, 2009
By STEPHEN AMIDON
Published: February 7, 2009
Greenfield, Mass.
MY father didn’t leave me much when he died.
Although he was at one time a fast-rising executive in a multinational company, a combination of corporate skullduggery and his own personal demons meant he had little in the bank when he died in 2001, a few days before his 70th birthday.
There was nothing for his four children except a small array of personal items, including a particularly sturdy hairbrush I was astute enough to claim. I still own it, in fact, and use it daily to tame my rapidly thinning hair, which is probably coming unglued due to worry about what sort of inheritance I will be able to provide my own four children.
I got to thinking about that brush when I read that a colleague of Tom Daschle had said that his tax woes — not to mention the lucrative private-sector temptations he gave into — may have stemmed from his desire to make enough money to lay a fat nest egg for his children.
It is hard to see how riding in a free limo benefits future generations, but even if I give Mr. Daschle the benefit of the doubt, I cannot help but note the paradox here. A man’s desire to provide his progeny with a big score has resulted in him saddling them with a very different sort of inheritance — a legacy of embarrassment.
Instead of being remembered as the savior of the nation’s health care system or even as just a middling health secretary, their father will now forever be known as the guy who hitched a ride with some private-equity hot rodders and then neglected to chip in for the gas. Most sons and daughters I know would gladly forgo a portion of their birthright in order to be invited to pool parties at the Obama White House and not to have a dad serving as fodder for late-night television wisecracks.
Inheritances can be tricky things. Even those given with the best of intentions can often go awry. Just ask King Lear. He simply wanted to turn Britain over to his daughters so he could enjoy the medieval equivalent of retirement in Boca Raton, but wound up starting a bloody civil war that brought ruin on his family.
On the other end of the ancestral give-and-take, there’s Richard Carstone, who appears in Dickens’s “Bleak House.” Richard was a nice enough boy who caused his own destruction by obsessively pursuing a share of a disputed legacy.
At the bottom of the barrel, there’s Bernard Madoff, who is reported to have planned to dispense a desk full of booty to his relatives to keep the family fortune one step ahead of the law. Sure, everybody wants to get a surprise bequest from their Uncle Bernie, but probably not if it comes with a co-conspirator rap attached.
Granted, it’s hard to spend much time worrying about setting something aside after a month in which the economy shed nearly 600,000 jobs. Most parents these days are too wrapped up in staying afloat to be able to capitalize their children’s futures.
Still, those moments when I contemplate how little I’ve socked away for my offspring cause me no small amount of anxiety. In fact, the one thing that is sure to get me thinking I should do something I really do not want to do — or perhaps even something I should not do — is the desire to endow my brood. All manner of behavior that would otherwise be considered contemptible seems to be justified in the name of inheritance. Saving for your loved ones, not patriotism, is apparently the last refuge of a scoundrel.
One way I manage this anxiety is to ponder those friends and colleagues who have been well provided for, and to wonder if I really want to leave that sort of feathered nest for my children. Because there is often something not quite right about these fortunate sons of the baby boom.
I am not talking about trust-fund brats who get arrested for throwing hissy fits on Sunset Boulevard. I’m speaking of those perfectly well-mannered folks whose parents left them enough to ensure they never have to lie awake at night worrying about college tuition or second mortgages.
The young family who can afford the brownstone without ever enduring cramped life in an apartment, the couple who are able to jet away on holiday while the rest of us sit in traffic on the way to the local beach, the household whose teenage children are never asked to help out — there is something missing here, the sense of accomplishment derived from patient effort. It is hard not to think that their parents have done them as much harm as good by installing an express escalator on the uphill sections of their lives.
Perhaps this skepticism is just my way of rationalizing an inability to provide my own children with an anxiety-free future. No one wants to struggle and worry; a little help is always appreciated. And in the end, it is up to each of us to figure out how much is enough to leave behind, and how much is too much.
For me, the answer lies with my father, who wound up dragging his weary bones around the country in a series of lousy jobs at a time in life when many of the men who had once worked under him were perfecting their golf swings.
One of the main reasons he continued to work so hard, I believe, is that he was mortified at the thought of being a burden to his grown children. Leaving behind an inheritance of debt would have been a disgrace, his own version of not paying taxes on a freebie.
He was, for all his faults, an honorable man. It was a quality that sometimes held him back, especially during the 1980s, when many of his colleagues were eviscerating their corporation to create the private fortunes that they would one day leave to their own children. My father refused all that because he was more concerned with maintaining his good name.
That sense of decency, his good name, is what he passed on to us. Looking at some of the shamelessly greedy men he worked with, it is an inheritance I am happy to have.
Though I’m also glad I got the brush.
Stephen Amidon is the author, most recently, of the novel “Security.”
Op-Ed Contributor
My Children Made Me Do It
New York Times, February 9, 2009
By STEPHEN AMIDON
Published: February 7, 2009
Greenfield, Mass.
MY father didn’t leave me much when he died.
Although he was at one time a fast-rising executive in a multinational company, a combination of corporate skullduggery and his own personal demons meant he had little in the bank when he died in 2001, a few days before his 70th birthday.
There was nothing for his four children except a small array of personal items, including a particularly sturdy hairbrush I was astute enough to claim. I still own it, in fact, and use it daily to tame my rapidly thinning hair, which is probably coming unglued due to worry about what sort of inheritance I will be able to provide my own four children.
I got to thinking about that brush when I read that a colleague of Tom Daschle had said that his tax woes — not to mention the lucrative private-sector temptations he gave into — may have stemmed from his desire to make enough money to lay a fat nest egg for his children.
It is hard to see how riding in a free limo benefits future generations, but even if I give Mr. Daschle the benefit of the doubt, I cannot help but note the paradox here. A man’s desire to provide his progeny with a big score has resulted in him saddling them with a very different sort of inheritance — a legacy of embarrassment.
Instead of being remembered as the savior of the nation’s health care system or even as just a middling health secretary, their father will now forever be known as the guy who hitched a ride with some private-equity hot rodders and then neglected to chip in for the gas. Most sons and daughters I know would gladly forgo a portion of their birthright in order to be invited to pool parties at the Obama White House and not to have a dad serving as fodder for late-night television wisecracks.
Inheritances can be tricky things. Even those given with the best of intentions can often go awry. Just ask King Lear. He simply wanted to turn Britain over to his daughters so he could enjoy the medieval equivalent of retirement in Boca Raton, but wound up starting a bloody civil war that brought ruin on his family.
On the other end of the ancestral give-and-take, there’s Richard Carstone, who appears in Dickens’s “Bleak House.” Richard was a nice enough boy who caused his own destruction by obsessively pursuing a share of a disputed legacy.
At the bottom of the barrel, there’s Bernard Madoff, who is reported to have planned to dispense a desk full of booty to his relatives to keep the family fortune one step ahead of the law. Sure, everybody wants to get a surprise bequest from their Uncle Bernie, but probably not if it comes with a co-conspirator rap attached.
Granted, it’s hard to spend much time worrying about setting something aside after a month in which the economy shed nearly 600,000 jobs. Most parents these days are too wrapped up in staying afloat to be able to capitalize their children’s futures.
Still, those moments when I contemplate how little I’ve socked away for my offspring cause me no small amount of anxiety. In fact, the one thing that is sure to get me thinking I should do something I really do not want to do — or perhaps even something I should not do — is the desire to endow my brood. All manner of behavior that would otherwise be considered contemptible seems to be justified in the name of inheritance. Saving for your loved ones, not patriotism, is apparently the last refuge of a scoundrel.
One way I manage this anxiety is to ponder those friends and colleagues who have been well provided for, and to wonder if I really want to leave that sort of feathered nest for my children. Because there is often something not quite right about these fortunate sons of the baby boom.
I am not talking about trust-fund brats who get arrested for throwing hissy fits on Sunset Boulevard. I’m speaking of those perfectly well-mannered folks whose parents left them enough to ensure they never have to lie awake at night worrying about college tuition or second mortgages.
The young family who can afford the brownstone without ever enduring cramped life in an apartment, the couple who are able to jet away on holiday while the rest of us sit in traffic on the way to the local beach, the household whose teenage children are never asked to help out — there is something missing here, the sense of accomplishment derived from patient effort. It is hard not to think that their parents have done them as much harm as good by installing an express escalator on the uphill sections of their lives.
Perhaps this skepticism is just my way of rationalizing an inability to provide my own children with an anxiety-free future. No one wants to struggle and worry; a little help is always appreciated. And in the end, it is up to each of us to figure out how much is enough to leave behind, and how much is too much.
For me, the answer lies with my father, who wound up dragging his weary bones around the country in a series of lousy jobs at a time in life when many of the men who had once worked under him were perfecting their golf swings.
One of the main reasons he continued to work so hard, I believe, is that he was mortified at the thought of being a burden to his grown children. Leaving behind an inheritance of debt would have been a disgrace, his own version of not paying taxes on a freebie.
He was, for all his faults, an honorable man. It was a quality that sometimes held him back, especially during the 1980s, when many of his colleagues were eviscerating their corporation to create the private fortunes that they would one day leave to their own children. My father refused all that because he was more concerned with maintaining his good name.
That sense of decency, his good name, is what he passed on to us. Looking at some of the shamelessly greedy men he worked with, it is an inheritance I am happy to have.
Though I’m also glad I got the brush.
Stephen Amidon is the author, most recently, of the novel “Security.”
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Stop the Whine Senator Daschle
He evidently doesn't pay his taxes that are due, makes one million dollars a year, and gets a free limo and driver from a client and hedge fund operator (for several years and worth over $200,000) and he thinks we all ought to feel sorry for him. Pleeeease.
We then read further into today's NY Times story that when he joined hiw lobbying/law firm after being defeated for his Senate reelection, he insisted that he was not a lobbyist, but rather was just a "rainmaker". Like there is a difference. His firm was trying to influence public officials on behalf of their clients--nothing wrong or illegal about that. That is in the great American tradition dating back to our first President and Congress. But not good enough for the Senator. I guess he thought he was above it all. He wanted to engage in "good works" (helping students learn and understand government--a good thing to do but not necessarily unique) and also continue to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for speeches on government. He then wants us to believe that in additon he was going to give his services to a lobbying firm (and get paid handsomely for his services) but he was not a lobbyist, but rather a rainmaker and a policy wonk. I guess he thinks his other colleagues in this lobbying firm are not as good as him and/or are not as "ethical" as him.
What rubbish.
His former Senate colleague, Trent Lott, has this to say in the NY Time story:
“Once you come out and you get into whatever you’re going to do, whether it’s a lawyer or a consultant or a lobbyist, you are representing clients who can then be used against you,” said Mr. Lott, who has more openly embraced the lobbying life since retiring from the Senate. “In the minds of the people, it’s a distinction without a difference. You can’t be advising people on how to deal with Congress without, in effect, at least indirectly influencing Congress.”
Trent Lott is correct--it is a distinction without a difference. The American people know better. Not paying your taxes like every other American is wrong. Making believe you are something you are not and thinking you are better than other American citizens is not the American tradition and is just plain arrogant.
America will be served well by not having someone like this in the President's Cabinet. Back to LOBBYING Senator Daschle!
We then read further into today's NY Times story that when he joined hiw lobbying/law firm after being defeated for his Senate reelection, he insisted that he was not a lobbyist, but rather was just a "rainmaker". Like there is a difference. His firm was trying to influence public officials on behalf of their clients--nothing wrong or illegal about that. That is in the great American tradition dating back to our first President and Congress. But not good enough for the Senator. I guess he thought he was above it all. He wanted to engage in "good works" (helping students learn and understand government--a good thing to do but not necessarily unique) and also continue to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for speeches on government. He then wants us to believe that in additon he was going to give his services to a lobbying firm (and get paid handsomely for his services) but he was not a lobbyist, but rather a rainmaker and a policy wonk. I guess he thinks his other colleagues in this lobbying firm are not as good as him and/or are not as "ethical" as him.
What rubbish.
His former Senate colleague, Trent Lott, has this to say in the NY Time story:
“Once you come out and you get into whatever you’re going to do, whether it’s a lawyer or a consultant or a lobbyist, you are representing clients who can then be used against you,” said Mr. Lott, who has more openly embraced the lobbying life since retiring from the Senate. “In the minds of the people, it’s a distinction without a difference. You can’t be advising people on how to deal with Congress without, in effect, at least indirectly influencing Congress.”
Trent Lott is correct--it is a distinction without a difference. The American people know better. Not paying your taxes like every other American is wrong. Making believe you are something you are not and thinking you are better than other American citizens is not the American tradition and is just plain arrogant.
America will be served well by not having someone like this in the President's Cabinet. Back to LOBBYING Senator Daschle!
Supreme Court Justice Wants Special Treatment and Verbally Attacks Student To Get It
Justice Scalia decided that he could call a university student a few names and dodge a question about why he is on book tour promoting his book (and making money from the sales) and yet he thinks that cameras should not be allowed in the Court. The student tied these two facts together with some other thoughts and asked a terrific and a very pointed but polite question. Justice Scalia's eqo never seems to stop growing. Read the story below from the Legal Times.
February 04, 2009
Florida Student Asks Scalia a Question -- and Gets Scolded
Where others fear to tread, a 20-year-old college student from Tequesta, Fla.,boldly stepped forward Tuesday to ask Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a question he did not like during a public appearance in West Palm Beach. "That's a nasty, impolite question," said Scalia, himself an expert on tough questioning, and he at first refused to answer it.
This morning we tracked down student Sarah Jeck, the Florida Atlantic University honors college junior who incurred Scalia's wrath, and she seemed a little stunned, but not cowed, by his reaction. "He can dish it out, but he can't take it, I guess," she says. "I'm generally a very polite person. I'm really surprised the way it turned out. It was not a preposterous question."
So what did Sarah Jeck ask that caused the volatile justice to erupt? According to her own notes and this account in today's Sun-Sentinel, Jeck asked whether the rationale for Scalia's well-known opposition to cameras in the Supreme Court was "vitiated" by the facts that the Court allows public visitors to view arguments and releases full argument transcripts to the public, and that justices go out on book tours.
It's that last part that probably grated, because Scalia could, at that precise moment, have been said to be on a book tour. He was speaking before the Palm Beach County Forum Club and Bar Association, while his book -- Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, co-authored by Bryan Garner -- was for sale at a table outside the hall.
Jeck, a political science major, is taking a judicial process class and is looking at the issue of cameras in the courts as her thesis topic. So when she learned Scalia was coming to town, it seemed like a reasonable question to her and her prof Martin Sweet. By tradition, the club invites local university students to forum events and lets them ask questions. "We knew it was a little jab, but his response was unanticipated," she says.
After Scalia made his comment to Jeck, he took several written questions and then circled back to Jeck's query, according to this story in the Palm Beach Post. Scalia said he originally supported the idea of camera access in the courts, but came to oppose it because the inevitable "30-second takeouts" would not give a true picture of what is going on. "Why should I be a party to the miseducation of the American people?" According to Jeck, Scalia made no reference to his book tour as a possible contradiction to his views on public access to the Court.
We asked Jeck two more questions in our brief phone interview this morning. First, is she planning to go to law school? "Yes," she said without hesitation. And second, did she buy Scalia's book? Just as definitively, she said, "I'm a college student. I don't have $30."
February 04, 2009
Florida Student Asks Scalia a Question -- and Gets Scolded
Where others fear to tread, a 20-year-old college student from Tequesta, Fla.,boldly stepped forward Tuesday to ask Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a question he did not like during a public appearance in West Palm Beach. "That's a nasty, impolite question," said Scalia, himself an expert on tough questioning, and he at first refused to answer it.
This morning we tracked down student Sarah Jeck, the Florida Atlantic University honors college junior who incurred Scalia's wrath, and she seemed a little stunned, but not cowed, by his reaction. "He can dish it out, but he can't take it, I guess," she says. "I'm generally a very polite person. I'm really surprised the way it turned out. It was not a preposterous question."
So what did Sarah Jeck ask that caused the volatile justice to erupt? According to her own notes and this account in today's Sun-Sentinel, Jeck asked whether the rationale for Scalia's well-known opposition to cameras in the Supreme Court was "vitiated" by the facts that the Court allows public visitors to view arguments and releases full argument transcripts to the public, and that justices go out on book tours.
It's that last part that probably grated, because Scalia could, at that precise moment, have been said to be on a book tour. He was speaking before the Palm Beach County Forum Club and Bar Association, while his book -- Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, co-authored by Bryan Garner -- was for sale at a table outside the hall.
Jeck, a political science major, is taking a judicial process class and is looking at the issue of cameras in the courts as her thesis topic. So when she learned Scalia was coming to town, it seemed like a reasonable question to her and her prof Martin Sweet. By tradition, the club invites local university students to forum events and lets them ask questions. "We knew it was a little jab, but his response was unanticipated," she says.
After Scalia made his comment to Jeck, he took several written questions and then circled back to Jeck's query, according to this story in the Palm Beach Post. Scalia said he originally supported the idea of camera access in the courts, but came to oppose it because the inevitable "30-second takeouts" would not give a true picture of what is going on. "Why should I be a party to the miseducation of the American people?" According to Jeck, Scalia made no reference to his book tour as a possible contradiction to his views on public access to the Court.
We asked Jeck two more questions in our brief phone interview this morning. First, is she planning to go to law school? "Yes," she said without hesitation. And second, did she buy Scalia's book? Just as definitively, she said, "I'm a college student. I don't have $30."
Monday, January 19, 2009
OBAMA APPROVAL RATING-
from www.fivethirtyeight.com
Obama: Highest Initial Approval For Elected President?
#fullpost {display:none;}
Barack Obama's favorability ratings have continued to improve as we approach Tuesday's inauguration. But how do they compare to those of his predecessors?The two highest initial, post-inauguration approval ratings as measured by Gallup belong to presidents who took over for others whose terms ended prematurely. About 86 percent of Americans approved of Harry Truman when he took over for FDR. And 77 percent approved Lyndon Johnson when he took over for JFK. The highest initial approval rating for a newly elected president, on the other hand, appears to belong to Kennedy, whom Gallup pegged at 72 percent approval shortly after his inauguration in 1961.Barack Obama has an excellent chance to exceed Kennedy's numbers. The Pollster.com averages show that 70 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Obama versus 16 percent unfavorable. Although favorability ratings aren't the same thing as approval ratings, they tend to closely track one another. Also, it appears that there may typically be something of a bounce in an incoming president's approval scores immediately after his inauguration, so Obama's numbers may (temporarily) get even better.My guess is that when Gallup comes out with its first post-inauguration approval ratings for Obama later this week, it will show him with about 76 percent approval, 11 percent disapproval and 13 percent uncertain, which would indeed be the best numbers on record for a newly-elected president. At the very least, Obama is virtually assured of starting out on better footing than his two immediate predecessors in the White House, as Bill Clinton had emerged victorious in a three-way race in which he got just 43 percent of the popular vote, and George W. Bush's disputed victory in 2000 had come only after weeks of uncertainty and litigation.
Obama: Highest Initial Approval For Elected President?
#fullpost {display:none;}
Barack Obama's favorability ratings have continued to improve as we approach Tuesday's inauguration. But how do they compare to those of his predecessors?The two highest initial, post-inauguration approval ratings as measured by Gallup belong to presidents who took over for others whose terms ended prematurely. About 86 percent of Americans approved of Harry Truman when he took over for FDR. And 77 percent approved Lyndon Johnson when he took over for JFK. The highest initial approval rating for a newly elected president, on the other hand, appears to belong to Kennedy, whom Gallup pegged at 72 percent approval shortly after his inauguration in 1961.Barack Obama has an excellent chance to exceed Kennedy's numbers. The Pollster.com averages show that 70 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Obama versus 16 percent unfavorable. Although favorability ratings aren't the same thing as approval ratings, they tend to closely track one another. Also, it appears that there may typically be something of a bounce in an incoming president's approval scores immediately after his inauguration, so Obama's numbers may (temporarily) get even better.My guess is that when Gallup comes out with its first post-inauguration approval ratings for Obama later this week, it will show him with about 76 percent approval, 11 percent disapproval and 13 percent uncertain, which would indeed be the best numbers on record for a newly-elected president. At the very least, Obama is virtually assured of starting out on better footing than his two immediate predecessors in the White House, as Bill Clinton had emerged victorious in a three-way race in which he got just 43 percent of the popular vote, and George W. Bush's disputed victory in 2000 had come only after weeks of uncertainty and litigation.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
History of slavery and the Presidency
On Tuesday, we will swear into office the 44th President of the United States.
12 of these 44 Presidents have owned slaves, 8 of them while in office.
Another fact that makes Tuesday even more interesting.
12 of these 44 Presidents have owned slaves, 8 of them while in office.
Another fact that makes Tuesday even more interesting.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Martin Luther King and Barack Obama in 2009
Tommorrow, January 19th is our federal holiday, Martin Luther King Day and Tuesday, January 20th our nation's 44th President and first African American President will be inaugurated as President.
"Pelosi: Let's Pay Tribute (Associated Press/1.16.09)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) circulated a statement today in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is Monday. In it, she linked the historic significance of Obama on his way to become the first black president: "Just as Barack Obama's historic inauguration makes this Martin Luther King Day more poignant, our commitment to fulfilling Dr. King's dream must become more powerful."
As Obama stands on the inaugural platform by the Capitol on Tuesday, Pelosi continued, he "will look across the expanse of the National Mall to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where one of America's most courageous and compassionate prophets of peace -- Reverend Martin Luther King -- called upon our nation to fulfill the promise of its founding dream for all of our people." (end of press release)
It is obviously an amazing two days for all Americans, but especially for African Americans. I read a story yesterday about Martin Luther King's sister taking a group of young students on a tour of the house where he grew up. One can only imagine what those Americans who led and struggled thru the Civil Rights movement with Rev. King will be thinking this week. Also how must the leaders of those more radical leaders of civil right groups, like the Black Panthers, be feeling about our country and about their history and experiences.
NPR did an interview with a retired White House Butler. The White House Butlers over history have been and are mainly African Americans. This gentleman was asked how he believes the current Butlers will feel the when they come face to face with the first African American President of the United States. It was a beautiful and interesting interview.
One wonders about the segregationalists from the Civil Rights era (and today) that are still alive today and how this coming week processes thru their minds and souls. Will it change in their last days how they view America and the issue of race and hatred. Maybe not but it must have an impact. It must be a stunning occurrence.
The other person in our historywho had an huge impact on civil rights, almost equal to that of Martin Luther King, is President Lydon Johnson. The President who hailed from the segragationalist south, Texas, and was the most unlikely political leader in American to bring about intergration and move the civil rights movement forward. He got civil right legislatin thru the Congress that former President John Kennedy could not get passed. He took huge risks for his presidency and did what he thought was right for America. He led housing and school integrration. he changed American society and American law. He used federal troops to make sure people could get into school and universities, ride on buses and move thru our country freely--regardless of their color. He made into law what Martin Luther King and thousands and thousands of other Americans fought for years and years to become law.
The fight for civil rights, for civil liberties and for equal opportunity is not over. It does not end with the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States on Tuesday. However it is interesting to think about what Americans past and present will be thinking about in the next two days as we celebrate two wonderful American events. It is interesting to think about how our country will change after tommorrow.
"Pelosi: Let's Pay Tribute (Associated Press/1.16.09)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) circulated a statement today in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is Monday. In it, she linked the historic significance of Obama on his way to become the first black president: "Just as Barack Obama's historic inauguration makes this Martin Luther King Day more poignant, our commitment to fulfilling Dr. King's dream must become more powerful."
As Obama stands on the inaugural platform by the Capitol on Tuesday, Pelosi continued, he "will look across the expanse of the National Mall to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where one of America's most courageous and compassionate prophets of peace -- Reverend Martin Luther King -- called upon our nation to fulfill the promise of its founding dream for all of our people." (end of press release)
It is obviously an amazing two days for all Americans, but especially for African Americans. I read a story yesterday about Martin Luther King's sister taking a group of young students on a tour of the house where he grew up. One can only imagine what those Americans who led and struggled thru the Civil Rights movement with Rev. King will be thinking this week. Also how must the leaders of those more radical leaders of civil right groups, like the Black Panthers, be feeling about our country and about their history and experiences.
NPR did an interview with a retired White House Butler. The White House Butlers over history have been and are mainly African Americans. This gentleman was asked how he believes the current Butlers will feel the when they come face to face with the first African American President of the United States. It was a beautiful and interesting interview.
One wonders about the segregationalists from the Civil Rights era (and today) that are still alive today and how this coming week processes thru their minds and souls. Will it change in their last days how they view America and the issue of race and hatred. Maybe not but it must have an impact. It must be a stunning occurrence.
The other person in our historywho had an huge impact on civil rights, almost equal to that of Martin Luther King, is President Lydon Johnson. The President who hailed from the segragationalist south, Texas, and was the most unlikely political leader in American to bring about intergration and move the civil rights movement forward. He got civil right legislatin thru the Congress that former President John Kennedy could not get passed. He took huge risks for his presidency and did what he thought was right for America. He led housing and school integrration. he changed American society and American law. He used federal troops to make sure people could get into school and universities, ride on buses and move thru our country freely--regardless of their color. He made into law what Martin Luther King and thousands and thousands of other Americans fought for years and years to become law.
The fight for civil rights, for civil liberties and for equal opportunity is not over. It does not end with the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States on Tuesday. However it is interesting to think about what Americans past and present will be thinking about in the next two days as we celebrate two wonderful American events. It is interesting to think about how our country will change after tommorrow.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Presidential Team of Rivals at the Pentagon and State Department
Presidential power has been analyzed and debated by scholars and practitioners. A new book is out on the topic and is a great read. A review from the Wall Street Journal today is below.
Recently a conservative commentator cited a poll that said that 59% of Americans supported the new Obama cabinet and thought it reflected "America". By now we all have read that President Elect Obama is a fan of the book called "A Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. So will Obama cabinet be like Lincoln's? How should Obama manage his rivals: the Sect of State; National Security Advisor; Sect of Defense; National Security Council Director; the Homeland Security Secretary; the CIA Director and the FBI Director?
Can this be managed? Obama does not have a lot of room to "play" here--his team of rivals must figure out how to work together and the President must find a way to manage, direct and secure these rivals on his defense, national security and foreign affairs teams.
The below article is an interesting discussion and anlaysis.
Team of One
How a president must manage his 'rivals' at the Pentagon and State Department.
By JONATHAN KARL Wall Street Journal
In a recent interview, Vice President Dick Cheney outlined his view of presidential power by noting that the American president is followed at all times by a military aide carrying the so-called nuclear football, which can be used to launch an immediate nuclear attack. "He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen," Mr. Cheney said. "He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in."
The president may have the power to annihilate the world, but the experience of the past half-century shows that he may find it harder to get his own cabinet agencies to do what he wants. Peter Rodman's "Presidential Command" is a brilliant tutorial on the way presidents, regardless of party or ideology, have struggled to control the vast national-security bureaucracy that they inherit after taking the oath of office.
Mr. Rodman, who died in August at the age of 64, knew this world as well as anyone. Beginning as a 26-year-old assistant to Henry Kissinger in President Nixon's National Security Council, he worked under five presidents in the State Department, the Pentagon and the NSC. "Presidential Command" should be required reading for President-elect Barack Obama's national-security team and, if he has the time, for Mr. Obama himself.
"Every President in our history," President Truman wrote in his memoirs, "has been faced with this problem: how to prevent career men from circumventing presidential policy." Truman faced the problem most dramatically in 1948, when he recognized the state of Israel over the objections of virtually everybody at the State Department, from the secretary on down. "I wanted to make it plain," he explained, "that the President of the United States, and not the second or third echelon in the State Department, is responsible for making foreign policy, and, furthermore, that no one in any department can sabotage the President's policy."
Presidential Command By Peter W. Rodman (Knopf, 351 pages,) President Nixon's approach was to pretend that the State Department didn't exist. He conducted policy through what Mr. Rodman calls "a committee of two." When Nixon met with foreign leaders, Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, was frequently the only other person in the room (aside from an interpreter). Transcripts would be forwarded to State, but they were often edited. The transcripts of Nixon's early exchanges with the Soviets, for example, left out references to a summit meeting he was secretly trying to arrange.
The secrecy was driven by Nixon's paranoia about press leaks but also by his well-founded belief that the senior ranks of the State Department were hostile to his policies. When the possibility that Nixon would pursue a diplomatic opening to China became public, Mr. Rodman writes, "delegations of senior State Department diplomats even came to the White House to counsel him against it, since it risked provoking the Soviet Union."
The "committee of two" approach brought coherence to Nixon's policy, but at a cost. The Pentagon set up a spying operation to figure out what President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were up to. They even placed a "mole" on Mr. Kissinger's NSC staff. Pentagon officials learned about Mr. Kissinger's plans to visit China only because their spy had rummaged through papers in Mr. Kissinger's hotel room while on a trip to Pakistan.
Nixon's abuses of power led to an effort to rein in the "imperial presidency." President Gerald Ford also had to deal with fallout from the investigations of the Senate's Church Committee, which revealed publicly, for the first time, the assorted misdeeds of the CIA. As Congress attempted to assert control over intelligence operations, Mr. Ford's CIA director, William Colby, decided that the CIA was more beholden to Congress than the White House because, he later explained, "the center of political power had moved to Congress." Colby defied a presidential order not to give highly classified documents to the Church Committee by "lending" them instead.
Like Nixon, Jimmy Carter installed a strong national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. But for balance he also picked a strong secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, who held often opposing views. This meant loud disagreements over policy and theoretically gave the president a wider range of options to choose from. Mr. Carter's approach made sense on an organizational chart, but in fact, Mr. Rodman contends, it "only enshrined the philosophical schizophrenia of its chief."
Mr. Rodman's central argument is that presidents perform best when they are consistently engaged in matters of national security and when they empower subordinates to impose policy on the bureaucracies at State and the Pentagon. President Clinton's successes, for example, came when he gave clear direction and appointed a powerful envoy -- George Mitchell for Northern Ireland and, eventually, Richard Holbrooke for Bosnia. President George W. Bush called himself the "decider," but Mr. Rodman argues that many of his foreign-policy failures -- including the incoherence of his approach to North Korea or the absence of a workable plan for postwar Iraq -- came in part from "a systematic failure to manage conflicts among his advisors."
We don't know what Mr. Rodman would think of Mr. Obama's incoming national-security team. He didn't know that Hillary Clinton would be heading the State Department when he wrote that the "pivotal" figure is a "strong and loyal Secretary of State." And he wasn't writing about Mr. Obama when he warned: "The risk involved in the future is that a president who is not a master in foreign affairs may have a difficult time keeping an energetic secretary under control."
Much has been made of Mr. Obama's Lincolnesque "team of rivals" approach to assembling his cabinet. Mr. Rodman's history lesson suggests that installing strong people to challenge the president can be a good thing -- if leadership ultimately comes from the top. Mr. Rodman offers the apocryphal story of Abraham Lincoln asking his cabinet to vote on whether to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. After all his cabinet secretaries voted "no," the story goes, Lincoln declared: "The ayes have it!""
Mr. Karl is the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News.
Recently a conservative commentator cited a poll that said that 59% of Americans supported the new Obama cabinet and thought it reflected "America". By now we all have read that President Elect Obama is a fan of the book called "A Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. So will Obama cabinet be like Lincoln's? How should Obama manage his rivals: the Sect of State; National Security Advisor; Sect of Defense; National Security Council Director; the Homeland Security Secretary; the CIA Director and the FBI Director?
Can this be managed? Obama does not have a lot of room to "play" here--his team of rivals must figure out how to work together and the President must find a way to manage, direct and secure these rivals on his defense, national security and foreign affairs teams.
The below article is an interesting discussion and anlaysis.
Team of One
How a president must manage his 'rivals' at the Pentagon and State Department.
By JONATHAN KARL Wall Street Journal
In a recent interview, Vice President Dick Cheney outlined his view of presidential power by noting that the American president is followed at all times by a military aide carrying the so-called nuclear football, which can be used to launch an immediate nuclear attack. "He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen," Mr. Cheney said. "He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in."
The president may have the power to annihilate the world, but the experience of the past half-century shows that he may find it harder to get his own cabinet agencies to do what he wants. Peter Rodman's "Presidential Command" is a brilliant tutorial on the way presidents, regardless of party or ideology, have struggled to control the vast national-security bureaucracy that they inherit after taking the oath of office.
Mr. Rodman, who died in August at the age of 64, knew this world as well as anyone. Beginning as a 26-year-old assistant to Henry Kissinger in President Nixon's National Security Council, he worked under five presidents in the State Department, the Pentagon and the NSC. "Presidential Command" should be required reading for President-elect Barack Obama's national-security team and, if he has the time, for Mr. Obama himself.
"Every President in our history," President Truman wrote in his memoirs, "has been faced with this problem: how to prevent career men from circumventing presidential policy." Truman faced the problem most dramatically in 1948, when he recognized the state of Israel over the objections of virtually everybody at the State Department, from the secretary on down. "I wanted to make it plain," he explained, "that the President of the United States, and not the second or third echelon in the State Department, is responsible for making foreign policy, and, furthermore, that no one in any department can sabotage the President's policy."
Presidential Command By Peter W. Rodman (Knopf, 351 pages,) President Nixon's approach was to pretend that the State Department didn't exist. He conducted policy through what Mr. Rodman calls "a committee of two." When Nixon met with foreign leaders, Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, was frequently the only other person in the room (aside from an interpreter). Transcripts would be forwarded to State, but they were often edited. The transcripts of Nixon's early exchanges with the Soviets, for example, left out references to a summit meeting he was secretly trying to arrange.
The secrecy was driven by Nixon's paranoia about press leaks but also by his well-founded belief that the senior ranks of the State Department were hostile to his policies. When the possibility that Nixon would pursue a diplomatic opening to China became public, Mr. Rodman writes, "delegations of senior State Department diplomats even came to the White House to counsel him against it, since it risked provoking the Soviet Union."
The "committee of two" approach brought coherence to Nixon's policy, but at a cost. The Pentagon set up a spying operation to figure out what President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were up to. They even placed a "mole" on Mr. Kissinger's NSC staff. Pentagon officials learned about Mr. Kissinger's plans to visit China only because their spy had rummaged through papers in Mr. Kissinger's hotel room while on a trip to Pakistan.
Nixon's abuses of power led to an effort to rein in the "imperial presidency." President Gerald Ford also had to deal with fallout from the investigations of the Senate's Church Committee, which revealed publicly, for the first time, the assorted misdeeds of the CIA. As Congress attempted to assert control over intelligence operations, Mr. Ford's CIA director, William Colby, decided that the CIA was more beholden to Congress than the White House because, he later explained, "the center of political power had moved to Congress." Colby defied a presidential order not to give highly classified documents to the Church Committee by "lending" them instead.
Like Nixon, Jimmy Carter installed a strong national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. But for balance he also picked a strong secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, who held often opposing views. This meant loud disagreements over policy and theoretically gave the president a wider range of options to choose from. Mr. Carter's approach made sense on an organizational chart, but in fact, Mr. Rodman contends, it "only enshrined the philosophical schizophrenia of its chief."
Mr. Rodman's central argument is that presidents perform best when they are consistently engaged in matters of national security and when they empower subordinates to impose policy on the bureaucracies at State and the Pentagon. President Clinton's successes, for example, came when he gave clear direction and appointed a powerful envoy -- George Mitchell for Northern Ireland and, eventually, Richard Holbrooke for Bosnia. President George W. Bush called himself the "decider," but Mr. Rodman argues that many of his foreign-policy failures -- including the incoherence of his approach to North Korea or the absence of a workable plan for postwar Iraq -- came in part from "a systematic failure to manage conflicts among his advisors."
We don't know what Mr. Rodman would think of Mr. Obama's incoming national-security team. He didn't know that Hillary Clinton would be heading the State Department when he wrote that the "pivotal" figure is a "strong and loyal Secretary of State." And he wasn't writing about Mr. Obama when he warned: "The risk involved in the future is that a president who is not a master in foreign affairs may have a difficult time keeping an energetic secretary under control."
Much has been made of Mr. Obama's Lincolnesque "team of rivals" approach to assembling his cabinet. Mr. Rodman's history lesson suggests that installing strong people to challenge the president can be a good thing -- if leadership ultimately comes from the top. Mr. Rodman offers the apocryphal story of Abraham Lincoln asking his cabinet to vote on whether to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. After all his cabinet secretaries voted "no," the story goes, Lincoln declared: "The ayes have it!""
Mr. Karl is the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News.
"Say No to New Coal Power Plants: Detroit Free Press Editorial--are they correct?
The Editorial is wrong about Northern Michigan University's proposed "power plant". Dead wrong. It says that Northern is going to "expand its existing coal unit..." NMU does not have a coal burning plant--it buys its electricity from the Board of Light and Power--BLP.
What Northern is doing is proposing to build a wood burning power plant that will burn timber and forest waste product. Its permit allows NMU to burn coal up to 30% of the time when it cannot get wood/timber due to weather, road conditions etc..
NMU currently gets its power from the BLP which burns coal 100% of the time.
The NMU plant would be a 70% improvement--at a minimum.
So is the Free Press correct about blocking all new coal power plants? Business leaders say Michigan will need 3 to 5 new power plants in next 10 years. Environmental groups say they should be forced to build power plants that use renewable energy--solar, wind, wood, etc..
Can a state like Michigan survive and compete if it cannot build a new power plant in next five years because of this ban? Would any industrial state be able to compete with off shore manufacturing that do not have these limitations? Would it be able to compete with the southern states who are building coal burning plants now? Will more Michigan jobs move to the south while we look for alternative energy sources. Are there adequate alternative energy sources that can provide enough power for campuses and manufacturing plants--not to mention residences?
Are the legisaltures and Governors up to the task? Term limits and partisanship seem to make them move even slower than before. What can government do to help in the developmetn of alternative energy sources? Do they have the financial resources to assist with research and development? These are all questions that need to be addressed immediately.
Maybe an interesting thing to do would to encourage a citizen internet debate on this problem. Maybe we would come up with some interesting public policy alternatives.
We know coal is not good for our health and environment in the long term. Can we afford a coal ban in the short term.
Here is the editorial.
Detroit Free Press
IN OUR OPINION
Say no to new coal power plants
January 9, 2009
"The environmental groups have it right.
Michigan ought to declare a moratorium on new coal-fired utility plants. This may even prove a blessing to the outfits that want the plants, given the difficulties of financing big projects these days.
Somehow, Michigan has become a magnet for proposals to generate electricity from coal. Five groups have requested permits from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality; three more have announced plans. It's unlikely anyone could prove Michiganders need that much electricity, let alone that they should have to put up with the tradeoffs in poorer air quality and mercury dropping out of the smoke into the state's lakes and streams.
Back when Michigan's economy was merely slipping, as opposed to cliff-diving, the most detailed forecast of future electricity demand called for just one new coal plant.
Thus, it seems reasonable to hold off on permits for coal plants for at least a year. That should provide a better picture on the financial markets, the demand for electricity and, perhaps most important, what kind of greenhouse gas regulations may emerge in Washington.
Coal has the unwanted distinction of being the dirtiest fuel in common use today and the one that throws off more carbon dioxide for the amount of energy derived from burning it. (Mining it is also phenomenally destructive, especially in Appalachia, where the preferred technique is blowing up mountaintops and letting the rubble drop into streams -- a travesty no one in Michigan would ever put up with.) Although America has coal in relative abundance, the shift away from it cannot come soon enough.
Either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system will lead to higher costs for coal-generated electricity. Other forms of electricity generation, from wind generation to home-based solar units, may suddenly look like bargains -- and it makes no sense to make a huge collective investment in coal plants when the cost of the electricity that emerges remains so uncertain. Some analysts believe wind power already is competitive, price-wise, with power from a newly built coal plant.
Northern Michigan University is the only proposed plant to have received a DEQ permit to expand its existing coal unit, and the decision was appealed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is disappointing that a university, of all institutions, didn't pursue alternative energy sources, but Northern's plan is among the smallest of the proposed plants. Michigan will have a sounder energy future if the rest get put on hold."
What Northern is doing is proposing to build a wood burning power plant that will burn timber and forest waste product. Its permit allows NMU to burn coal up to 30% of the time when it cannot get wood/timber due to weather, road conditions etc..
NMU currently gets its power from the BLP which burns coal 100% of the time.
The NMU plant would be a 70% improvement--at a minimum.
So is the Free Press correct about blocking all new coal power plants? Business leaders say Michigan will need 3 to 5 new power plants in next 10 years. Environmental groups say they should be forced to build power plants that use renewable energy--solar, wind, wood, etc..
Can a state like Michigan survive and compete if it cannot build a new power plant in next five years because of this ban? Would any industrial state be able to compete with off shore manufacturing that do not have these limitations? Would it be able to compete with the southern states who are building coal burning plants now? Will more Michigan jobs move to the south while we look for alternative energy sources. Are there adequate alternative energy sources that can provide enough power for campuses and manufacturing plants--not to mention residences?
Are the legisaltures and Governors up to the task? Term limits and partisanship seem to make them move even slower than before. What can government do to help in the developmetn of alternative energy sources? Do they have the financial resources to assist with research and development? These are all questions that need to be addressed immediately.
Maybe an interesting thing to do would to encourage a citizen internet debate on this problem. Maybe we would come up with some interesting public policy alternatives.
We know coal is not good for our health and environment in the long term. Can we afford a coal ban in the short term.
Here is the editorial.
Detroit Free Press
IN OUR OPINION
Say no to new coal power plants
January 9, 2009
"The environmental groups have it right.
Michigan ought to declare a moratorium on new coal-fired utility plants. This may even prove a blessing to the outfits that want the plants, given the difficulties of financing big projects these days.
Somehow, Michigan has become a magnet for proposals to generate electricity from coal. Five groups have requested permits from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality; three more have announced plans. It's unlikely anyone could prove Michiganders need that much electricity, let alone that they should have to put up with the tradeoffs in poorer air quality and mercury dropping out of the smoke into the state's lakes and streams.
Back when Michigan's economy was merely slipping, as opposed to cliff-diving, the most detailed forecast of future electricity demand called for just one new coal plant.
Thus, it seems reasonable to hold off on permits for coal plants for at least a year. That should provide a better picture on the financial markets, the demand for electricity and, perhaps most important, what kind of greenhouse gas regulations may emerge in Washington.
Coal has the unwanted distinction of being the dirtiest fuel in common use today and the one that throws off more carbon dioxide for the amount of energy derived from burning it. (Mining it is also phenomenally destructive, especially in Appalachia, where the preferred technique is blowing up mountaintops and letting the rubble drop into streams -- a travesty no one in Michigan would ever put up with.) Although America has coal in relative abundance, the shift away from it cannot come soon enough.
Either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system will lead to higher costs for coal-generated electricity. Other forms of electricity generation, from wind generation to home-based solar units, may suddenly look like bargains -- and it makes no sense to make a huge collective investment in coal plants when the cost of the electricity that emerges remains so uncertain. Some analysts believe wind power already is competitive, price-wise, with power from a newly built coal plant.
Northern Michigan University is the only proposed plant to have received a DEQ permit to expand its existing coal unit, and the decision was appealed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is disappointing that a university, of all institutions, didn't pursue alternative energy sources, but Northern's plan is among the smallest of the proposed plants. Michigan will have a sounder energy future if the rest get put on hold."
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Alternative to Kennedy to Replace Hillary
How about the New York City Council President Christine Quinn, who is openly gay. Governor Patterson if he likes firsts would certainly get that with this appointment.
Washington Post today also suggests that Patterson could a first with the appointment of the first Hispanic to the US Senate from New York: Bronx Boro President Adolfo Carrionn.
Most observers think the deal to appoint Caroline Kennedy is already sealed and delivered, but maybe Patterson might want to pull off a "first". Question is could either of these two firsts keep the seat if Republicans mount a major campaign to re capature the seat in 2010. Same question should be asked about Kennedy--lots of rich folks have spent alot of their money and still lost. On the other hand so have a lot of them won--including the current Governor of New Jersey.
Washington Post today also suggests that Patterson could a first with the appointment of the first Hispanic to the US Senate from New York: Bronx Boro President Adolfo Carrionn.
Most observers think the deal to appoint Caroline Kennedy is already sealed and delivered, but maybe Patterson might want to pull off a "first". Question is could either of these two firsts keep the seat if Republicans mount a major campaign to re capature the seat in 2010. Same question should be asked about Kennedy--lots of rich folks have spent alot of their money and still lost. On the other hand so have a lot of them won--including the current Governor of New Jersey.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
LANSING -- Michigan has paid a developer $16 million after seizing land for a highway project in metro Detroit. (Detroit Free Press, 1.2.09).
Amazing that Michigan is facing an immediate shortfall of $106 million and looking at a $1.5 billion budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year would now have to pay out $16 million on a court ordered settlement. Developer greed and a lawyer's greed. Case goes all the way up to State Supreme Court. State was going to pay in 1995 $2.8 million and court gets it up to $16 million. What happened the courts staying out of policy making. The state ought to give the name and email address of the developer and his lawyer to every child in every school district and university. They should email them the next time their tuition goes up or their school cuts a K-12 program. What a disaster. Just what Michigan does not need--another $16 million to have to cut from its budget. Ugh. Maybe we should start a Michigan Hall of Shame and post this type of judicial and developer activity.
Amazing that Michigan is facing an immediate shortfall of $106 million and looking at a $1.5 billion budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year would now have to pay out $16 million on a court ordered settlement. Developer greed and a lawyer's greed. Case goes all the way up to State Supreme Court. State was going to pay in 1995 $2.8 million and court gets it up to $16 million. What happened the courts staying out of policy making. The state ought to give the name and email address of the developer and his lawyer to every child in every school district and university. They should email them the next time their tuition goes up or their school cuts a K-12 program. What a disaster. Just what Michigan does not need--another $16 million to have to cut from its budget. Ugh. Maybe we should start a Michigan Hall of Shame and post this type of judicial and developer activity.
Mexicans and Obama
While in Mexico during the month of December it was interesting to note how the Mexican press covers the upcoming Obama Inaugural. A great deal of interest and hope by average Mexicans in everyday work life. They have many questions and are very hopeful about the future relationship between their country and the United States of America. They seem very optimistic that the new administration will again attempt to address the immigration problems between our two countries. Although with the economic crisis in both countries there is less interest in immigrating to the U.S. Although many want the future opportunity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)