Monthly Archives: March 2010

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!!!

International Women’s Day at the White House

The White House commemorated International Women’s Day earlier this week with a reception at the White House that included accomplished women of varying professions meeting accomplished young women from area high schools. The WH put up vide of this event — this is about 40 mins long, but the first 7 or so are the Intro by Michele Obama followed by President Obama (about 13 mins or so) talking about the importance of women as fully vested players in American civic and economic life. This first part, where Michele Obama speaks before her husband does is delightful:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr-SefjSFDk[/youtube]

Weekend Open Thread

Welcome to a rain-soaked, windy open thread. I don’t know about you but I think I’m actually living in a marsh. Are you ready for an open thread?

Texas decided to cut Thomas Jefferson out of its history standards. He so inconvenient after all, with his insistence that there is a separation between church and state.

The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

– The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

– The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”

All week we’ve been discussing incrementalism and progressive legislation. Steve Benen picks this up and discusses some important legislation and how they have changed:

On all of the major progressive breakthroughs from recent generations, it’s not even a close call.

When Medicaid passed, for example, it did very little for low-income adults, which is now seen as the point of the program. There were no doubt progressive advocates who, at the time of its passage, feared that it wasn’t ambitious enough, and that if they didn’t get improvements in the bill up front, they wouldn’t happen. With the benefit of hindsight, we know those fears were incorrect.

When Medicare passed, it all but ignored people with disabilities, didn’t cover prescription drugs, and made no allowances for home health services. It was, at best, a limited program at its inception. There may have been liberal Dems who thought that if they didn’t get improvements in the bill up front, they wouldn’t happen. With the benefit of hindsight, we know those fears were incorrect.

When Social Security passed, the benefits were negligible, and the program excluded agricultural workers, domestic workers, the self-employed, railroad employees, government employees, clergy, and those who worked for non-profits. The original Social Security bill offered no benefits for dependents or survivors, and included no cost-of-living increases. There were plenty of liberals at the time who thought Dems had watered down the plan to the point where its value had all but disappeared, and that if they didn’t get improvements in the bill up front, they wouldn’t happen. With the benefit of hindsight, we know those fears were incorrect.

Even the Civil Rights Act, in order to secure passage, needed to drop its voting rights provision. It wasn’t there up front, but it happened soon after.

Mr. President, One More Thing Before You Go

Well, it looks like we finally might be getting down to it. After all this time, there might soon be an actual health care reform bill for the President to sign. According to Karen Tumulty at Swampland, the House is looking to schedule a vote on the Senate’s health care bill for next Friday or Saturday. The main hold-up at the moment is the CBO score on the reconciliation package. Assuming that comes back in the next few days, and with favorable numbers, the vote can be scheduled.

The original most recent deadline of St. atrick’s Day (in honor of O’Bama’s heritage?) was set primarily because the President was scheduled to fly to Indonesia and Australia on Wednesday. Due to the historic and imminent nature of the House vote, Obama has decided to delay his departure to the land of the vegemite sandwich until Sunday.

How exactly the House will pass the legislation is still up in the air. They may just simply vote on the Senate bill, send the reconciliation package to the Senate, and trust that the upper house will promptly pass it. But, since the two houses don’t much trust each other and sound like two teenagers hanging up the phone (“You pass it first….No, you pass it first…No, you pass it first…OK, we’ll pass it together — one, two, three….”) there are a couple little maneuvers the House could try. Either way, it looks like maybe next Saturday we’ll all be glued to C-SPAN to watch the vote. We will all be glued to C-SPAN, right?

Equating Morality with the Checkbook

Delaware Politics and Sussex County Angel have posts up (it is actually the same post by blogger Angel Clark) arguing for the morality of the death penalty in Delaware. But Angel Clark does not argue morality. She argues the fiscal aspect of the death penalty.

Despite its controversy, the death penalty is still legal in Delaware. [..] Since 1991 there have been 14 legal executions in Delaware including the last hanging in the state (1996). The youngest of these was 27 at the time of death and each committed at least one murder. One particularly gruesome case was Brian Steckel. Steckel was executed in 2005 (the most recent legal execution in Delaware) on three counts of first degree murder. He raped and killed Sandra Lee Long and then set her on fire. After this he wrote letters to her mother gloating about his deeds. It cost approximately $66 a day to incarcerate this creature (I will not call him a man). That’s $24,090 a year. Despite the “immorality” people claim are associated with legal executions, I consider it to be more immoral to the mother of Sandra Lee Long to force her to pay to keep Steckel alive.

Um, what? One would expect a post on the morality of the use of the death penalty, whether here in Delaware, or elsewhere throughout the country, that we at least talk about the morality of death penalty itself. Is it right for society to kill, when it is quite clear in both the new and the old Testament that killing is a sin and immoral. Is it right for society to stoop to the level of the barbaric criminal and act in the same fashion (and Angel does talk about this, saying lethal injection is clearly not as barbaric as bludgeoning someone to death, and that is true, but both have the same end result, which is the real issue).

I am agnostic when it comes to the death penalty. I think killing is wrong, whether the state or a criminal does it. But there are just some crimes for which no other punishment is appropriate. For example, serial killers and terrorists quilty of mass murder, like Osama bin Laden. But what I don’t think about is the cost of incarcerating the criminal, whether they are awaiting their punishment on death row or spending their life in prison. To base a decision to kill someone on financial considerations is what is immoral. Indeed, Angel overpays her hand here by saying the mother of the victim is being forced to pay to keep the killer of her daughter alive. Um, no she is not. Not out of her own pocket anyway. It is not like the State of Delaware has presented an invoice to the mother demanding payment. And if we start arguing that people should not have their tax dollars go to pay for things that they disagree with, well we will have a problem on our hands, because many people have a problem with paying for war, and still others have a problem with their money funding faith based organizations, and I could go on and on.

Markell Strips Down

Governor Markell will be joining the other insane swimmers this afternoon in Rehoboth, as they all take part in the Polar Bear Plunge. I believe the Polar Bear Plunge was postponed from February due to one of the many blizzards we received this winter, so the Governor is being wise in doing it now rather than when the air temperature would have been below freezing. Sure, the water temp will still be cold and heart stopping, but at least the air temp is 50.

I guess this is a tradition now, as I frighteningly recall Governor Minner taking the plunge as well.

Mr. Reagan, We’re Ready for Our Close-Up

With Fox Noise snapping up Republican leaders to the soft chairs of punditry, will there be anyone left to run against Obama in 2012? Mike Huckabee recently said that his is quite content on being on television.

“It’s kind of given me a new perspective of the power of the media more so than the power of good policy. Running for president did not necessarily cause people to say ‘Oh, I know who you are.’ But being on Fox News has. It’s really embarrassing when you’re running for president of the United States and nobody seems to have any clue.”

Another 2012 Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin is continuing on the celebrity train with an appearance on Jay Leno and even working on creating a TV series, while Newt Gringrich — who is awaiting God to tell him what to do — has created an industry of . . . well . . . being Newt Gingrich. Criticizing from the Roger Ailes lap is easy, but real governing is hard. As we’ve seen time after time, Republicans distaste of government makes them totally ineffectual at governing.  Though the spotlight might bring a glitter and adulation to these GOP celebrities, it can also wilt any real or imagined political power they may have.