Author Archives: cassandra_m

About cassandra_m

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

DelCOG Event — What Really Happened to the Economy

This is an announcement from a DelCOG that I received via email. I am going to try to go to this — it looks really interesting!
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Lecture and Panel Discussion Presented By Delaware Press Association & The Delaware Coalition for Open Government

“WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO OUR ECONOMY: The Consequences of Not Knowing”

Keynote Speaker: Michael Greenberger, Nationally renowned lawyer, professor and economic advisor

Panel Discussion followed by Q & A

Thursday, September 17, 2009
7:30 p.m.

Delaware Theatre Company
200 Water Street
Wilmington, Delaware 19801

Reception in the lobby after the program

Free and Open to the Public

Coordinating sponsors DelCOG and DPA cordially invite you to come to a free and informative public forum on the topic “WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO OUR ECONOMY: The Consequences of Not Knowing.” The event will be held at Delaware Theatre Company, 200 Water Street, Wilmington, on Thursday, September 17, at 7:30 p.m.

Keynote Speaker:
Michael Greenberger, nationally renowned lawyer, professor and expert on financial regulation

Moderator:
Ralph Begleiter, Distinguished Professor of Communication at the University of Delaware and former CNN World Affairs Correspondent

Additional Panelists:
Cris Barrish, Senior Reporter, The News Journal
Alan Garfield, Professor, Widener University School of Law, specializing in Constitutional Law
The Hon. Karen Peterson, Delaware State Senator

Keynote speaker Michael Greenberger, nationally renowned lawyer, professor and economic advisor, will make sense of a chain of complex, unregulated financial deals that brought the global economy to near ruin. In plain language, Mr. Greenberger will explain how unheralded permission to conduct business without transparency unleashed a “shadow market” devoid of rules, reporting and oversight. He will explore how lack of transparency and regulation in financial institutions affects each of us and will look at rules that could reduce the risk of another economic meltdown.

An expert on financial regulation, Mr. Greenberger teaches a seminar on “Futures, Options and Derivatives” and courses on Constitutional Law at the University of Maryland School of Law. He has been technical advisor to a United Nations General Assembly Commission on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System and director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He has testified before Congress about problems in U.S. financial markets caused by complex, unregulated financial derivatives.

Following the lecture, a panel of experts, including Mr. Greenberger, will discuss the information power struggle. The panel will take questions from the audience.

There will be a reception in the lobby following the program.

Free parking in the theatre’s lot or in the lot north of the theatre.

The program is part of an ongoing series of “We the People” events, partly funded by a grant from the Delaware Humanities Forum, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This program is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact DelcogData@aol.com or 302-655-2175.

Cap and Trade One Year Anniversary and the World Has Not Come To An End

Oh yes — we already have cap and trade!

It is called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and it is a year old this month. 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.

Delaware is even making money on this — the last auction saw all of the Delaware allowances sold and the state got $1.7M. Since the program began, the state has gotten about $10M. Even better, no businesses have been run out of town, there has not been a huge jump in the price of energy (I understand that there is a proposal with the PSC to reduce the cost of natural gas to consumers now) — in short, none of the doomsday scenarios predicted by the usual suspects have come true.

In fact, this program highlights some long term issues with the way it has been structured — there are too many allowances for the current emissions inventory. In this last auction, allowances price dropped 30% in 3 months. Too many allowances means that the price signals you might get from the allowances themselves are not as effective as they could be. And this program has long intervals built in before any “look back” provisions could be invoked. So there is not much opportunity to better align the number of allowances available to the emissions in inventory.

Hope our legislators are watching this closely — there are real lessons here in crafting a cap and trade program, including that it is not the tax apocalypse as too many of the fear and loathing crowd would have you to believe.

In Which The News Journal Phones It In Again

…and show themselves to not be paying attention to one of the biggest legislative efforts of a lifetime.

Today The Editors (a term probably more symbolic than a reflection of the actual work being done) published an editorial in which they intone with all seriousness — Health plan will cost money: It’s time Washington admits it.

Where the hell have these people been all year? Beginning with hearings in the Senate a year and half or so ago though this spring and summer when actual bills have been written and voted out of various committees, there has been an incredible amount of work and horsetrading ongoing on on these bills. And the press has (some better than others) been following lots of the horserace (not as much on the features of the bills) — but one thing you do get if you are paying attention to this is that how to pay for it is complicated and contentious. But they are trying to pay for it.

So how do you — especially if your business is to watch these narratives — come away from the last few months not knowing that not only does Washington know that these programs will cost money, but that they are trying to pay for it?

Apparently the NJ Editors are following some radio talking head who wouldn’t be able to follow legislative ebb and flow if his life depended upon it. And now they’ve published this incredibly misinformed attempt at wagging their finger at a Congress and Administration that not only knows that this costs money, but has been very clear about attempts to pay for it and not add to the deficit.

Every health reform bill out there comes with a way to pay for the programs. Some are better than others and none of them is a silver bullet. I can’t tell you whether any one of them does what it says it will in terms of paying for itself perfectly. But not one of them pretends that these programs don’t cost money.

It simply amazes me that these people can get themselves worked up to scold people for non-existent reasons. The people in DC working on this are pretty clear (as evidenced by the bills they are producing) that they have to pay for this. They may or may not be successful at paying for these programs as they go. In this, however, they are not like the Bush Administration and their Republican Congresses who deficit-financed every single program they implemented — from tax cuts to Medicare Part D to their wars. That profligate deficit-spending deserved more finger-wagging than it got and it is remarkably brain-dead for the News Journal to discover the evils of deficits now, in the middle of a legislative effort that is pretty obviously trying not to add to it. If they weren’t trying to pay for this thing, it would have been passed by now.

Too bad the NJ doesn’t value its own column inches better than this.

Newt Gingrich FAIL — Adults Only Late Night Edition

I laughed so had at this that I almost fell out of my chair:

Newt Gingrich’s 527 group sent a letter to porn exec Allison Vivas Wednesday telling her she’d won their “Entrepreneur of the Year” award and inviting her to an “intimate event” with Gingrich.

“I’m honored, and more than a little surprised, to receive this prestigious award,” Vivas said today in a cheeky press release. “Rest assured, I’ll take the opportunity to inform Mr. Gingrich of some of the major challenges facing the adult entertainment industry in the current market .., from obscenity prosecutions to content piracy, I’ll make sure he walks away from that dinner educated about the realities of the online porn market.”

Apparently this has been in circulation all day, and Gingrich’s spokesman says it was a mistake. MISTAKE? Do make sure to go see the actual award letter. It is almost a pitch for a film. The second page of that letter shows the “props” involved.

Bet it wasn’t a mistake, though….

Special Election Tomorrow! UPDATE with CapeGazette Endorsement

The Special Election for the House seat in the 37th is tomorrow, 12 September. Rob Robinson is the Democratic candidate, running against local lobbyist Ruth Briggs-King. If you are in the 37th — make sure you go vote on Saturday. If you are not in the 37th and want to help out, volunteers are needed to work the polls and get out the vote all day! So please call 858-0336 to volunteer, or email Katie (kellis@deldems.org) with your availability!

UPDATE: Tommywonk shows how Robinson is head and shoulders better on environmental, energy and land use issues.

Redwaterlily discusses Briggs-King’s oddly tortured relationship with the word “lobbyist”. That whole exchange sounds like Alice-In-Wonderland to me.

UPDATE 2: The Cape Gazette has endorsed Robinson for the seat!

An anonymous tipster forwards on this Letter to the Editor written by a Robinson supporter. It is getting to the end of the cycle and it looks like the letter won’t be published, so here you are:

Dear Editor,

Perhaps she is too humble to mention it on her campaign website or in her speeches, but I am writing to applaud Ruth Briggs-King for her tireless work for those neglected, needy developers.
As a registered lobbyist for the Sussex County Association of Realtors, Briggs-King fights to make sure developers are allowed to subdivide land, re-zone neighborhoods, and make sure environmental regulations are not too strict. But most of all, she is a tireless fighter who believes that developers should be allowed to build, build, and continue building no matter the conditions of our roads, schools or infrastructure.
Certainly, all of us, at one time or another, have thought to ourselves that we should help our local, those destitute masses of developers, but Briggs-King found the time. She found the time to fight against foes like residents who want to keep their neighborhoods quiet and safe, city councils who want to protect their town’s way of life, and of course, those heartless souls who say that our roads are not big enough for thousands of new homes.
While the rest of us simply feel sorry for developers, Briggs-King is a fighter against those wacky people who think our inland bays should be protected from run off.
So, if you want someone who will go to Dover and fight every day for developers, Ruth Briggs-King is your candidate.
If you want a candidate who will ignore the wishes of most residents, so that those wonderful developers can keep building, Ruth Briggs-King is your candidate.
If you think that Route 9 needs more traffic, then Ruth Briggs-King is your candidate.
Please me join me Sept. 12th and vote for Ruth Briggs-King who will protect Delaware’s jewel-the developers.

Sincerely,
XXX XXXXXXX

Newark Film Festival

Not a paid announcement, but definitely want to point everyone to one of my favorite Delaware events — the Newark Film Festival. It started yesterday and runs though the 17th with films running at the Cinema Center 3 in Newark. You can see all of the showtimes here.

They re-run the Best of the Festival films at the Delaware Art Museum from September 25-27.

Of local political interest is the local political documentary, Keeping the Peace, which follows Michael Berg during his run for congress in 2006, to screen at Newark Cinema Center Sept 13, 7pm. That should be really interesting.

The Trouble with Triggers

Tom Carper (and other Senators) have been hyping a “fall-back trigger” for implementing a Public Option for health insurance reform. The Public Option has strong progressive support and is one of the last big questions to settle in this process.

Timothy Noah over at Slate has done interesting reporting on the history and effectiveness of legislative “trigger” options. And apparently legislative triggers turn out to be legislative duds. Offering the legislators who support them an interesting camouflage — a way to look wise and considered on a proposal by voting for the promise of a review and implementation of an alternative if the current solution is not working. Except in practice, these triggers are routinely ignored by Congress. Take the prescription drug trigger that Carper routinely holds up as an example:

In 2003, when Congress added a drug benefit to Medicare, it worried that its new program to provide coverage through private plans subsidized heavily by the government would prove ineffective. But a trigger to end the program focused only on whether these private plans would serve all regions of the country, which they did. The trigger failed to address the real problems that emerged: fraud, abrupt changes in formularies and drug charges after beneficiaries signed up, and high costs. Meanwhile, a separate trigger in the bill required the president to address projected shortfalls within 15 days of receiving notice that 45 percent or more of Medicare funding was drawing down general revenues. Congress would then appropriate the necessary additional funds under an expedited procedure. But when President Bush notified Congress in 2006 that the 45 percent threshold had been exceeded, Congress did nothing. The threshold has been exceeded every year since then. Congress continues to do nothing.

So Carper holds up as a middle of the road option this trigger scheme, when if fact, it doesn’t quite work for the example he is so very proud of.

There’s more, too — David Sirota has written in his column and over at Open Left how “triggers” killed the effort to allow reimportation of drugs:

a group of congressional progressives and maverick Republicans waged a battle against the pharmaceutical industry and for a bill to allow the reimportation of prescription drugs from other industrialized nations. It was (and is) a commonsense proposal – other industrialized nations allow reimportation, and that reimportation helps lower prices by allowing consumers to buy FDA-approved medicines at the lowest world market price.

[…] So rather than kill the bill outright, the congressional Republican leadership and the industry hacks in both the Clinton and Bush administrations came up with a “compromise.” The bill could be passed and the celebratory press releases could be written, but only if the underlying legislation quietly gave the Secretary of Health and Human Services the final trigger power to ultimately implement the reform. Specifically, the Secretary would have to certify that imported medicines were 100 percent “safe” (at the time, the drug industry was pushing the lie that imported medicines from places like Canada were totally unsafe – prompting one honest Republican governor to ask, “where are the dead Canadians” from all the supposedly unsafe medicines).

This trigger provision, of course, made sure reimportation was never implemented at all, as no HHS secretary has agreed to sign any certification. As this New York Times story showed, the trigger was a well-calculated poison pill written by the drug industry. Hence, Americans are still legally barred from wholesale reimportation of medicine. […]

And as Sirota notes, ABC News is reporting that Carper and other Dems are advocating this “trigger” business with the President:

“If there is no meaningful competition after a couple of years, we would create competition through a public plan,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., in an interview with ABC News. “I think that could end up being the compromise because it bridges the differences between those who are for a robust public option and those who are adamantly opposed to a public option.”

“I raised it with the president,” Carper continued, referring to his public option with a trigger proposal.

So I think we have our answer about Carper and the Public Option. He is a NO vote and is hiding behind this trigger to avoid saying NO.

Health Insurance Reform — Where We Are Now

One of the things that is true about the discussion about this reform effort is that too few people really understand what is currently in the bills drafted. Part of that is because we get distracted by the misinformation about death panels, government taking over medical care and the other litany of lies that fired up the teabaggers over the last month.

But the Washington Post has a great article that is a FAQ for the reform effort — 8 Questions About Health-Care Reform. And it is good. Go read the entire thing to see where the effort is right now (this was written before the Baucus bill was released). But here is a great summary of what is common to all of the bills:

  • Require every American to carry insurance, with discounts for people who cannot afford it and penalties for people who refuse to buy coverage.
  • Require most employers to contribute to the cost of employee coverage or pay into a health fund, while small firms would be exempt or receive tax credits to reduce the price.
  • Expand the Medicaid health program for the poor.
  • Provide insurance discounts for people earning less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $73,000 for a family of three.
  • Impose new restrictions on insurance practices, such as prohibiting the denial of coverage because of preexisting conditions.
  • Create a new marketplace, dubbed an “exchange” or “gateway,” for individuals and small businesses to comparison-shop for insurance.

What we are still hashing out is how to pay for it and the Public Option, basically.  And it is important to keep in mind  how far Congress has come so far.  Congress is also working on methods to pay for this — unlike the Medicare Part D (or any of the other BushCo initiatives) which was allowed to become part of the structural deficit.   All of these are important changes.  I am of the opinion that a Public Option is crucial to the long-term functioning of this reform, but there is no doubt that these are good steps forward.

Afternoon Open Thread

David Neiwert is the author of The Eliminationists — How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, a book I’m currently reading. If you’ve followed any of Neiwert’s work at Orcinus or at Crooks and Liars, you know that his longtime project is reporting on the fringe right and increasingly he has been reporting on how the ideas and speech of these fringe groups gets mainstreamed. It is maddening reading — less for the persistently hateful content of this speech, or even for the unthinking acceptance of this kind of talk from so-called Christians and family-values purveyors, but for the real complicity of not just the media, but the entire political class in normalizing this clueless stuff.

I’ll probably have more to say about this book when I’m done with it, but in the meantime, here is video of Neiwert talking about his book on a recent radio program. This is about 30 mins long, but definitely worth the time.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etoyumdyRS4[/youtube]

And you — what are you reading and thinking about this afternoon?