Daily Archives: March 14, 2010

Late Night Video: Mr. Trololo

The Mr. Trololo video is sweeping the inter tubes and should be watched if you haven’t already seen it. According to Pravda, yes that newspaper, this is a video of the Soviet era performer Eduard Khil singing “I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home” . Khil, interviewed in the Christian Science Monitor, said:

On the phone, he explained that the reason the iconic song has no lyrics is that the original ones, about a cowboy riding the range while his wife sits at home knitting socks, were banned as “too naughty” by Soviet censors of the day.

“A theme like that was unacceptable, so we decided to sing it without any words at all,” he said. “So, in this case, I was an instrument rather than a singer.”

The Geekanator and the Governator

I will let you decide which is which…..

Pic is courtesy of Governor Markell’s Twitter stream. I believe they were all laughing because Governor Markell said to Governor Schwarzenegger at the start of their meeting: “I apologize for all the cameras, they follow me everywhere.”

Impeach Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas was in the court majority in the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which overturned a century’s worth of regulations barring unlimited spending by corporations in political campaigns. Virginia Thomas, Clarence Thomas’s wife, is preparing to take advantage of this SCOTUS ruling to start her own Tea Party group, which will take corporate donations to spend on support of political candidates.

She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative “core principles,” she said.

The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources — including corporations — as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.

…

Justice Thomas, 61, recently expressed sensitivity to such concerns, telling law students in Florida that he doesn’t attend the State of the Union because it is “so partisan.” Thomas, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush, has been a reliable conservative vote since he joined the court in 1991.

Experts say Virginia Thomas’ work doesn’t violate ethical rules for judges. But Liberty Central could give rise to conflicts of interest for her husband, they said, as it tests the norms for judicial spouses. The couple have been married since 1987.

Gee, I’m glad he’s “sensitive.” If he really cared, he’d give up his Supreme Court seat or ask his wife to stay on the sidelines. I think we’ll need to watch this group very, very closely – I’d certainly like to know who’s funneling money to the wife of a Supreme Court justice. Will Thomas recuse himself from decisions affecting these clients and these groups associated with her politics?

Delaware Makes $2M on Cap and Trade and the World Still Has Not Come to an End

Sacré bleu! Cap and trade, you say??

Yes — as we’ve previously reported (here and here), Delaware has been part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Imitative since September 2008. This program, you’ll recall:

10 states in the northeast banded together to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants in the region and installed their own version of a cap and trade program. Every power plant in the area needs to buy allowances to emit greenhouse gasses. Allowances are sold on auction quarterly. At some point, the number of allowances on the market get scaled back — increasing the price of the allowance and sending a signal to the plant that it may be cheaper to reduce their emissions.

The NJ reports today that the State of Delaware made $2M in the latest auction round of emission allowances. Total amount of allowances sold on March 10th, yielded $87,956,944.56 for investment in the clean energy economy for the 10 states participating in this initiative.

Each state participating uses its share of the proceeds to invest in clean energy or conservation programs. For Delaware, 65% of the proceeds go to the SEU; 15% to weatherization programs for low-income residents; 10% for greenhouse gas reduction efforts and 5% for fuel assistance programs. (No idea what happens to the remaining 5%). In addition, companies who provide clean energy services to these power plants or who are in the weatherization and efficiency business report job increases as a result of the RGGI program:

The workforce at the Center for Ecological Technology, a company that conducts RGGI-funded efficiency work on behalf of electric utilities in New England, has doubled over the last year, from 50 to 100 full-time employees, according to Laura Dubester, the company’s Co-Director. New positions range from field technicians and quality control personnel to IT and customer service specialists.

The program is still flawed (as we wrote back in September) by it’s relatively modest goals and a structure that still supports too many credits — depressing the prices and unlikely resulting in the kind of aggressive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions needed. I’m hoping that someone is studying this to really assess its impact on emissions. But this is still a good look at how cap and trade works (including its financial benefits) and certainly not one of the regulated plants under this program is going out of business any time soon.

Grade the Earmarks

Following up on Scott P’s interesting thinking on earmarks (yes I know), here is an interesting approach to the earmark question — Congressman Tim Walz (MN-1) has asked his constituents to vote and comment on the earmark applications submitted to his office. You can see them all (plus the feedback form) here. And if you click over to look, as you review the list of earmark requests (99 requests?? Yikes!), you have the opportunity to review the documents on each request. Each is available in a zip file to download so you can bring yourself up to speed on each request.

No matter what you think of earmarks, this is certainly a fairly unique way of choosing what to submit to the Appropriations Committee. And it certainly takes advantage of the fact that people think that it is everyone else’s earmarks that are the problem and lets them get involved with choosing and advocating.

He’s clear about the process (submitting an earmark to Appropriations is no guarantee of funding) and clear about his evaluation criteria: 1) Transparency and Accountability, 2) Job Creation or Transformative Impact and 3) Public Support for the effort proposed. And he commits to posting up his requests for earmarks up on his website.

What I like about this is the collaborative spirit — asking his constituents to help weigh in AND posting the applications up on line. It looks to me that even posting the entire application up on line seems new (but I didn’t look at all of their webpages, either) and a very welcome bit of disclosure and transparency. This is one idea I wish our Congressional delegation would steal.

US To Get Its Learnin’ On

On Monday, the Obama Administration will be sending Congress its blueprint for education reform said President Obama in his weekly video address. A couple of points from Obama’s video address Saturday are:

  • Much of America’s success in the 20th Century was due to a great educational system that focused on science
  • Other nations around the world are investing in education because they know how important it is
  • States will compete for funding in as way to improve standards and the quality of teaching
  • Schools that achieve excellence will be rewarded
  • Teachers will be better trained, better supported and be treated as professionals
  • All students should graduate from high school and be prepared for college and a career

Obviously the Republicans aren’t on board and are awaiting to play politics as usual, while the American Federation of Teachers is “surprised” by the proposal. It’s time to move on from the failed No Child Left Behind where children are taught to pass a achievement test instead of being given an education.

With a goal of having every child read at grade level by 2014, No Child Left Behind has been criticized by current Education Secretary Arne Duncan as “utopian” and as failing to properly reward schools for progress.

Here is the text from Obama’s address this weekend or you can watch the video below.

Ask the FCC Chair a Question

This coming Tuesday, the FCC is announcing its National Broadband Plan, outlining the path to get all of us connected to fast and affordable internet service. Once the plan is announced, the FCC Chair, Julius Genachowski, will sit for a You Tube interview — answering questions submitted by citizens and chosen (via ratings) by us.

The NYT summarizes the plan:

According to F.C.C. officials briefed on the plan, the commission’s recommendations will include a subsidy for Internet providers to wire rural parts of the country now without access, a controversial auction of some broadcast spectrum to free up space for wireless devices, and the development of a new universal set-top box that connects to the Internet and cable service.

Go here to start looking (and rating) questions in any of the seven categories You Tube has structured this Q&A by. Questions can be via video submitted to Citizen Tube or via text. You have until tonight at 11:59PM PT to weigh in.

Example 8397

We all know that the Republican Party doesn’t want to govern, doesn’t know how to govern and does everything possible to make sure no one can govern. Given all of that there should be no surprise that House Minority Leader Jim Boehner or The Orange One as he is affectionately known as at Hollywood Tans  on D Street has appointed two fiscally incompetent Congressman to President Obama’s debt-reduction committee: Paul Ryan and Jeb Hensarling. Paul Ryan is the Republican wonder boy who STILL wants to privatize Social Security while raising your taxes. And you might remember Jeb Hensarling as the GOP waterboy who was schooled by President Obama earlier this year.

A Congressional Democrat staffer said this about The Orange One’s picks:

It speaks volumes about the GOP agenda for America that the three House Republican members named to the Deficit Commission strongly support privatizing Social Security and all voted last year to dismantle Medicare as we know it.

The Hillary Clinton Vibe

The Castle campaign is starting to take on what I call the Hillary Clinton Vibe. The vibe happens when a campaign that is pursuing an “inevitable” strategy starts believing it is really inevitable, and that leads to sloppy work. This video is evidence of that:

Now that’s enthusiasm!!!