climateadaptation:

“Obama is right on both fronts. Clean policies not only offer necessary protections, they stimulate jobs.

From Scotland to Shanghai to Sao Paolo, the world is moving decisively toward a clean technology conversion and the jobs that come with it for urgent environmental, security and competitiveness reasons.

Unbiased research is clear:

• A Deutsche Bank report in July found that ”countries with more ‘TLC’ – transparency, longevity and certainty – in their climate policy frameworks will attract more investment and build new, clean industries, technologies and jobs faster than their policy-lagging counterparts.” The United States was singled out as a laggard.

• A report by the University of Massachusetts’ Political Economy Research Institute showed that EPA-mandated clean tech upgrades to America’s Eisenhower-era power plant fleet will generate about 290,000 net new domestic jobs a year in each of the next five years.

• Two Citi Investment Research reports showed that boosting automobile fuel economy standards will boost automakers’ variable profits and sales – especially for the Detroit 3 – and also boost US-based suppliers of fuel-savings technologies. In fact, GM is already pushing to export Michigan-made Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrids to China, the world’s largest auto market, later this year.

• Several recent news accounts (see here and here) point to a lack of clear policy in the U.S. – and its presence elsewhere – as a central reason other countries’ clean tech industries are swiftly eclipsing U.S. firms’ market share. And when American Electric Power this summer abandoned its pioneering effort to capture carbon dioxide from an existing coal-burning power plant, the New York Times reported: “The technology had been heralded as the quickest solution to help the coal industry weather tougher federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions. But Congressional inaction on climate change diminished the incentives that had spurred A.E.P. to take the leap.””

Source: Forbes Magazine

The nation’s unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis.

…The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts. Together, the economy and the tax bills enacted under former president George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent by President Obama, wiped out $6.3 trillion in anticipated revenue. That’s nearly half of the $12.7 trillion swing from projected surpluses to real debt. Federal tax collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years.

…All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt, according to a separate Washington Post analysis of CBO data over the past decade. Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate.

…The annual surpluses that set the nation on this course emerged in the final years of the Clinton administration.

…What to do with the surplus became a central issue of the 2000 presidential campaign, with Vice President Al Gore arguing that much of it should be put in a “lockbox” to protect Social Security and Medicare. Bush pushed for a broad tax cut, arguing that taxpayers at all income levels were owed a refund.

…As soon as he took office, Bush pushed Congress to make good on his tax pledge

…Congress approved a $1.35 trillion tax cut in record time. A second package, worth $350 billion, followed in 2003.

…Bush’s first Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, resigned after the White House decided to pursue the 2003 measure. “I believed we needed the money to facilitate fundamental tax reform and begin working on unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare,” O’Neill said in an interview.

…“Nobody would have thought that all these things would have happened after you cut taxes,” Domenici said. “That you’d have two wars and not pay for them. That you’d have another recession. A huge extravaganza of expenditures” for the military and homeland security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “You would pause before you did it, if you knew.”

…In the end, Bush cut taxes and spent more money. Good times masked the impact, as surging tax revenues reduced the size of year-to-year deficits during the first three years of his second term. But after the economy collapsed during Bush’s final year in office, deficits — and therefore the debt — began to explode as Obama sought to revive economic activity with more tax cuts and federal spending.

… Policies and legislation from both parties have contributed to the deficit. It is clear that Bush/republican policies have contributed more. Republicans had no plan and no interest in paying for their massive spending programs. In light of the debate surrounding the deficit now, republican arguments should be considered irrelevant. They very hesitantly own up to their massive spending during the Bush years as they criticize Obama for his relatively lower contributions to the deficit. Much of it being tax cuts that they strongly support. That is the nature of politics. The important thing is to be cautious listening to politicians. It is far better to read up, research and think critically on your own about the issues present in today’s political debate. Educate yourself!

alwaysinrepair:

It is important for people and especially young people to read up on the history of the U.S. budget deficit and how things got to the point they are at today.

The Washington Post provides an extensive overview of all things related to the budget and fiscal policy debate. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about the related issues to check out their overview here. Included is a good article describing the policies enacted over the past 11 years that have contributed to the large budget deficit.

A summary of the article is below:

Read More

motherjones:

Who knew?

jedsundwall:

Delayed-notice search warrants issued under the expanded powers of the Patriot Act, 2006–2009.

(via Patriot Act – NYMag)

lilmaj132:

“Jon Huntsman Jr, a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Mr Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the Republican party in the United States, namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party”. This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.

To see what Mr Huntsman means, consider recent statements by the two men who actually are serious contenders for the Republican nomination: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

Mr Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory”, one that has “got some gaps in it”, an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got people’s attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

That’s a remarkable statement – or maybe the right adjective is “vile”.

The second part of Mr Perry’s statement is, as it happens, just false: the scientific consensus about man-made global warming – which includes 97% to 98% of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences – is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting.”

-Paul Krugman

Trust me, read the whole piece.

timetruthhumor:

motherjones:

Kevin Drum writes:

This might disturb you at first, but remember: the free market is always right, so clearly we’ve collectively made a rational choice here. We’ve decided that although our healthcare costs are far higher than in Europe, this is worth it in return for far higher death rates from hospital infections.

USA!

 Well, the Republicans told us over and over again during the health care debate that the USA had the best health care system in the world. So, are the Republicans really, really stupid when it comes to reading facts and figures or are they lying?

loathliness:

American voters are symbolically conservative but operationally liberal…When asked about specific government programs and specific social goals, the American public generally wants the government to do more, spend more, and redistribute more. But at the same time, citizens are considerably more likely to identify themselves as conservatives than as liberals. The American public, in other words, generally wants more government-based solutions to social problems, but overwhelmingly identifies with the ideological label that rejects those solutions.

Politicians know this fact to be true. The GOP talks and talks ad nauseum about reducing spending, but cannot articulate any spending cuts of substance they would actually make if they could. This is precisely because they know that voters like the idea of small government in principle, but love individual government programs in practice.