Other Stuff

I just can't get across all the beauteous links I have to share with the world with the space I am fortunate enough to be given at FDL as I await the dedicated site. So, um, here:

• Gavin Newsom has a new ad up doubling down on changing the Constitution and ending the 2/3 rule (he mentions it twice in a 1:00 ad). I think this is the beginning of more to come, as Newsom recognizes that moving into an aggressive reform pose is the only way for him to differentiate himself from Jerry Brown, who will find this too hot to handle.

• The unions are coming out hard against the Baucus bill, for two reasons: the public option and the tax on high-end insurance plans. On the former I'm glad to see them so aggressive; on the latter I just don't think it's good public policy to prop up an inefficient system of providing health care to people. Congress is debating this intensely, and my hope would be that the public option would be enough for the unions to back the bill even with a high-end tax, although I do think it should be indexed so we don't get a perpetual problem like the AMT.

• A deal in Honduras? But President DeMint said that the coup plotters were freedom fighters!

• Nancy Pelosi wants to allow children to remain on their parent's health plans up to 26 years of age. Great policy and great politics. This is one of those short-term deliverables that Mike Lux is talking about.

• Republicans are going to lose a House race in New York because of a third party from the far right getting all the attention and all the money. The Democrat in NY-23 (no great shakes himself) is outspending her 12-1 on TV. Nobody should trust Republicans to get their act together long enough even to make a dent in the Democratic majority.

• Abortion bans do not cut the abortion rate. They kill women.

• Why should the public be allowed to see Blackwater on trial for the Nissour Square murders? You'd think we have an open and transparent judicial system or something! I'm not talking about putting them on Court TV, the public would be banned from even ATTENDING the hearings.

• Wow, this isn't good.

American officials in Baghdad urged Iraqi lawmakers Tuesday to pass an election law crucial for organizing a January vote that the Obama administration considers key to withdrawing U.S. combat troops.

In a statement, U.S. Ambassador Christopher R. Hill and Gen. Ray Odierno, the American military commander here, said they were concerned that parliament hasn't yet reached an agreement on the law. They urged lawmakers "to act expeditiously on this important legislation that will set the terms for successful, transparent political participation in this milestone event." A day earlier, Ad Melkert, the U.N. representative in Iraq, voiced similar concerns.

The Iraqi Parliament doesn't exactly move swiftly, and we're talking about an election scheduled for just a few months from now. In addition to delaying withdrawal it could throw Iraq's political system into crisis. Yikes.

• The green jobs bill in New York could be a model for the nation. It creates jobs and reduces emissions. Win-win.

12.2%

The latest unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia reported jobless rates of at least 10.0 percent in August. Michigan continued to have the highest unemployment rate among the states, 15.2 percent. Nevada recorded the next highest rate, 13.2 percent, followed by Rhode Island, 12.8 percent, and California and Oregon, 12.2 percent each. The rates in California, Nevada, and Rhode Island set new series highs.

So much for that canard that businesses are flocking to Nevada, considering it has a higher unemployment rate than we do. Nonetheless, California is in deep trouble, with a loss of 741,000 jobs over the last year, an increase of 4.6% in the jobless rate since last August.

And there are no economic recovery plans in the works. I guess we're supposed to sit and wait until things get better.

The Schwarzenegger Plan For Indefinite Depression

Senate Democrats have sent a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger asking him to reconsider his veto of the renewable energy standard and subsequent executive order. The strongly worded letter has about as much currency as the eleventy billion-dollar bill, but it does explain why the Governor's hypocritical action is a bad deal for California.

Respectfully, an Executive Order does not have the force and effect of law. Additionally, such a proclamation will only cause confusion and uncertainty to California's energy markets, jeopardizing California's role as the world leader in renewable energy development and green jobs.

As you noted when you signed AB 32, the landmark "Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006," administrative actions are no substitute for a statute that is permanent and enforceable.

Directing the California Air Resources Board to implement an RPS program is a fundamentally flawed approach. The CARB is not an energy agency; it is an air quality regulatory agency. There are numerous provisions of law which impair the CARB's ability to implement a renewable portfolio standard. Assigning this new responsibility to the CARB will not result in new renewable energy being built soon--it will only lead to litigation, regulatory confusion, and delay.

In our view, it is essential to green businesses and the renewable energy investment community which bring jobs and capital into California, that California's 33% RPS be statutorily established and not subject to the whims of changing administrations.

There's only one reason that Schwarzenegger gave the CARB the ability to implement a renewable energy standard - so he can go on talk shows and crow that he's instituted an environmental achievement. Except, as is explained here, it won't. It will get tied up in court challenges and confusion, without a clear mandate for the standard or penalties thereto.

Schwarzenegger has responded to this by calling the Legislature's bill "protectionist," and saying that if we get water from the Colorado River, we should be able to get renewable energy from other states as well. The difference is that a commodity is not the same as a job. The twin goals of a renewable energy standard are to spur the usage of renewables as a means to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and to build a green-collar economy that will create millions of new jobs. Schwarzenegger would rather give those jobs away. And given the perilous state of the economy here in California, we simply cannot afford that.

Job losses in the public sector will prolong the economic pain in California through 2010 even as a recovery gets under way nationwide, two forecasters predict.

Jeff Michael, a forecaster at the University of the Pacific, said Tuesday that California's recession will be over before the end of the year. But the cutbacks in state and local government, along with the continuing fallout from the mortgage meltdown, will make 2010 feel like another year of recession, Michael said in UOP's latest quarterly forecast.

Similarly, the newest UCLA Anderson Forecast predicts a sluggish recovery because of the weak public sector. UCLA senior economist Jerry Nickelsburg is more optimistic than Michael about the housing market, and says California will outperform the U.S. economy starting in 2011.

Yet both economists say Californians can expect continued high unemployment for a couple more years or so. The unemployment rate is currently 11.9 percent in California and 11.8 percent in greater Sacramento.

And yet here is Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoing the only major bill that would produce any semblance of an economic recovery for California.

Bait And Switch: The Governor's Executive Order To Destroy California's Green Economy

As Jim Evans, Communications Director for Sen. Steinberg, notes, the Governor is poised to veto a bill he championed, which would mandate the highest renewable energy standard in the nation, requiring utilities to get 33% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. But it's far worse than just a veto. Schwarzenegger wants to then set the standard himself by executive order. You can see why this would please him - he would be able to say that he boldly moved the state forward in the renewable energy space, while vetoing the bill from the Legislature that would do the same thing. And he wold significantly weaken the standard in a variety of ways.

The order presumably would set no limit on how much of the green power could be imported from other states.

Environmentalists who have been told about the governor's still-evolving plans said Schwarzenegger also was considering directing the California Air Resources Board to look at broadening the state's definition of renewable energy sources to include large hydroelectric dams and nuclear energy plants.

Critics questioned whether Schwarzenegger's order would be binding once he leaves office at the end of 2010. The validity of the order would be subject to a variety of potential legal challenges, they predicted.

So Schwarzenegger would allow utilities to outsource all the green jobs that would be created if power needed to be created on California soil, ruining the one area of potential economic recovery in the bill. He would put the standard on shaky legal ground, open to litigation and an unclear mandate. And he would hand a gift to the nuclear power industry by twisting arms at the Air Resources Board to change their definition of renewable energy.

This isn't just short-sighted, it's downright criminal. A high renewable standard could spurn all kinds of economic activity, but without a limit on importation, that activity will just go elsewhere instead of California. This is an effort of questionable legality for Schwarzenegger to reward corporate cronies with lower purchasing prices for green energy at the expense of California jobs.

Astounding.

Legislature Passes Groundbreaking Renewable Energy Legislation; "Green" Governor Will Veto

SB14, which would set a first-in-the-nation standard that utilities must receive 33% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, passed the Legislature late last night.

“Increased development of renewable energy in California has tremendous potential as an economic development tool. These are clean, green jobs that belong in California. SB 14 sets a clear target with a real deadline, and then makes it as easy as possible to bring renewable energy on line.

In light of the state’s ambitious new carbon emission targets, SB 14 will give energy agencies the flexibility they need in order to meet those goals. Current law “caps” the amount of renewable energy that the Public Utilities Commission may order utilities to buy or build at 20 percent. This bill would remove this cap and require utilities to acquire 33 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2020.”

This would make California's renewable energy standard one of the most aggressive in the world. The Governor, feted in magazines and national media as an environmental leader, has vocally backed the 33% standard in the past. But power plant generators have pressured Schwarzenegger to veto the bill. And according to the LA Times, he will.

The Senate did manage to pass the energy bill, which would raise to 33% the amount of energy the utilities must get from renewable sources. Final approval by the Assembly of some minor amendments was expected.

However, a high-ranking administration official said late Friday that the governor may not sign the bill, SB 14 by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), because of provisions limiting the amount of energy that could come from outside California. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the bills were not yet on the governor's desk.

That would really be the icing on the cake to the worst Governorship in California history. The one issue on which he staked his legacy, and he is likely to veto the bill most likely to drive the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly because it would keep too many jobs in the state. Adding a renewable energy standard and mandating a majority of that energy be generated in state, is probably the only bill passed this year that looks to expand the local economy. And because of that, Schwarzenegger will veto it.

And the same magazines will put him on the cover with the slogan "The Greenenator" and talk up his environmental credentials.

Truthers, Birthers, And Their Proper Side Of The Fence

I've seen Van Jones speak and had the opportunity to talk to him at the DNC last year. I'm going to rerun a bit of that discussion and have you tell me if these are the words of a Communist:

On green jobs, which is Jones' real focus area, he stressed that we need to move the environmental conversation from a cultural one to a political one. The green-collar economy "can be a place for people to earn money, not spend money. We need collective action for green citizenship, to create the jobs of the future in a Green New Deal. As long as carbon is free we're never going to move forward." He was pleased by the recent efforts by municipalities and states (green jobs bills have been passed in Massachusetts and Washington state, and the US Conference of Mayors is on board as well), but recognizes that the federal government must be involved as well. "This is about laws, not gizmos. Technology cannot be the savior. This has to be a bottom-up, inside-outside AND a top-down strategy. If the Feds are MIA, human life will be MIA in the future."

We talked about the offshore drilling debate, where Jones clearly stated that the Republicans won the day by lying to the American people. He had three major points:

• There is no such thing as American oil. There is oil drilled by multinationals that is sent overseas to China and India. American offshore driling will do nothing to solve any American oil problems.

• We banned drilling in offshore areas not to save birds and fish, but because of coastal families and coastal communities, because kids were walking into the water and coming out with oil on them, because property values were plunging. Democrats should not be willing to throw away America's beauty for a 2-cent solution in 10 years.

• We've seen the new phenomenon of the "dirty greens," who want to have an "all of the above strategy" on energy, with solar and wind, but also clean coal and drilling offshore and shale and all these dirty polluters. "All of the above" is not a strategy. It's not a wise choice, but a stupid swipe at a persistent problem.

That sounds like pretty mainstream liberal conceptions on energy and the environment. Jones was an activist who went into the government because he saw the need for a federal strategy to deal with green jobs.

But because he was previously involved with Color of Change, who has engineered a successful boycott of Glenn Beck, the Foc News crew has wanted to collect Jones' scalp. So they point to comments and replay them over and over. Not really anything he did, but things he said (ooh, he called Republicans assholes! What delicate sensibilities these chaps have), things he's signed. Although, I have to agree, this was certainly a mistake.

President Obama’s “green jobs czar” Van Jones has been targeted again and again by conservatives for his controversial views and now they’ll have another item to use as fodder.

Mr. Jones signed a statement for 911Truth.org in 2004 demanding an investigation into what the Bush Administration may have done that “deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

Jones has thus far apologized for prior statements and said he didn't agree "now or ever" with the 911 Truth letter. But if he has to leave his job at the White House, that will be the reason. And he absolutely made a mistake

But it brings up something interesting. There are now around a dozen Republican members of Congress who have co-sponsored legislation, essentially asking the President to reveal his birth certificate. The Birther phenomenon is at least as crazy and irresponsible as the Truther phenomenon. Why would it be OK to have 12 members of Congress who are conspiracy theorists, and not one in the White House? Now, the members of Congress would tell you they're not conspiracy theorists. So would Van Jones.

The range of debate that's acceptable and unacceptable keeps changing, somebody send me a scorecard.

Waxman-Markey Showdown Today

The key for me on the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill, which may or may not pass the House today (actually, my money's on pass), was always whether or not it gets the ball rolling on renewables, efficiency and emission reduction. I don't think we'll ever have the sufficient political will to do what's necessary based on the science - there are just too many variables and regional obstacles - and so we'll need to adapt and innovate our way out of this mess. Time Magazine has a pretty good pieceon those political obstacles.

If Nancy Pelosi gets her way by the end of the week, the U.S. House of Representatives will have passed landmark global-warming legislation. But you might not know it from the near unanimously bad reviews so many different interested parties are giving it. Groups as disparate as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Farm Bureau, the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers have expressed either strong concerns or outright opposition to the bill.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Global warming has long been a Democratic priority — and with House Speaker Pelosi and President Barack Obama behind it, many didn't think Democrats would have had such a hard time reaching a consensus on legislation. But getting enough rural and moderate Democrats to sign on was no easy task; the final (some would say watered down) deal is a hard-won, middle-of-the-road bill that is still likely to lose Democratic votes from both the right and the left, though it may gain some moderate Republicans.

Al Gore thinks this bill does provide a decent start and sets the table for the Copenhagen talks in December; others disagree. There are warnings that the bill would allow companies to move overseas for their fuel, expanding our trade deficit and cutting jobs. There's just as reasonable a theory that the renewable and efficiency targets in the bill would create lots of jobs here in America, manufacturing jobs in parts and supplies for the new energy economy.

It really is a toss-up to me. The President has done some really bad environmental things in the courts, but he appears to genuinely want this bill to pass. I think Digby gets the politics right - a loss here in the House would mean nothing more for a couple years, and would stall the momentum for the more progressive elements of the Obama agenda. Regardless of what passes today, the fight goes on for those who want to see the planet protected and a new economy bloom.

Consensus By A Thousand Cuts

Environmentalist Henry Waxman and seeming global warming denier Collin Peterson are moving to an agreement on a climate and energy bill.

House Democrats are within sight of agreement on a comprehensive energy and global warming bill, but it is still unclear if they have satisfied enough rural and fiscal conservative lawmakers to guarantee the votes for floor passage by next week.

"I think we made some real progress," Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told reporters yesterday as he left a meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.). "There's still black smoke going up. The white smoke, however, we might be able to send some up, but only after we have resolved these final issues. We made some real progress in that meeting. But it's not final yet."

Waxman described a "conceptual understanding that we're now looking at in more detail" with Peterson, adding that the work now rests on staff to come up with legislative language that could be unveiled as soon as today or Monday.

Peterson also sounded an optimistic note yesterday about the negotiations. "We got a couple things resolved," he told E&E. "They came up with a new idea that has good possibilities. We're going to take a look now and see if it works."

It doesn't look like a huge set of concessions, mainly on rural electricity and carbon allowances as well as the EPA ruling on biofuels (that's going to be near-impossible to dislodge, and it's a shame), but of course we've been nicking at this thing for a long time, taking away a little something here and a little something there. I still think we have a decent bill that's worth passing, particularly because of the job possibilities in the energy space - 1.7 million jobs looks pretty good right now. But it's a far cry from what's needed.

VA-Gov: Terry McAuliffe's Money To The Rescue

The NYT Mag has a profile of Terry McAuliffe, who to me represents the worst of the Clinton-era corporate Democrats, but who is re-inventing himself as a candidate for Governor of Virginia. He's simply swamping the state with money, much of it out-of-state (82%) and corporate money, and using his peripatetic style to attract votes. Apparently he's campaigning on a message of jobs - a keen political insight considering the country has lost 5.7 million of them in the last year-plus:

His campaign is tailored for these times. “Jobs is the issue — the issue, the issue, the issue,” Cranwell, the Virginia Democratic chairman, told me. And wherever McAuliffe goes, he is surrounded by campaign placards reading, “New Energy for New Jobs.” He talks everywhere, albeit often vaguely, about using economic incentives to attract out-of-state industry and to promote clean-energy technology. When Terry McAuliffe pitches Terry McAuliffe, it is not as the former head of the Democratic National Committee but as the businessman who started his first enterprise, tarring driveways for Syracuse neighbors, when he was 14. “If the biggest problem facing Virginia today were crime, Terry would not be a plausible candidate,” says Paul Begala, who first worked with McAuliffe on Richard Gephardt’s presidential campaign in 1988 [...]

As he campaigns, McAuliffe’s economic plan is “probably the most aggressive economic plan that has ever been put out in the country,” if McAuliffe does say so himself. By the time he is done as governor, he will “create more jobs than all the other 49 governors,” Virginia will supplant California as the film-production capital of the world and Old Dominion University in Norfolk will become the nation’s leading research university.

His business acumen, however, mainly involves shilling for candidates and taking money off the top of deals, not creating thousands of middle class jobs for Virginians. I mean, this is ridiculous:

In December, in response to Moran's claim to be the only candidate who had run a business and raised a family in Virginia, McAuliffe boasted of launching five businesses in Virginia.

It turned out that all five are investment partnerships, with no employees, registered to his home address in McLean.

McAuliffe may or may not have some liabilities - the $100,000 investment in the ultimately failed company Global Crossing, which netted him $18 million while employees lost their pensions - on the business and jobs front. He's always been a salesman, and that sales pitch might get him through an election. But I worry more about his policy menu:

There are a few policy differences among the Democrats, in particular Moran and McAuliffe. Moran opposes offshore oil and natural-gas drilling and the construction of a coal-burning plant in Surry, and he has pledged to fight to repeal a 2006 state constitutional amendment banning gay marriages and civil unions. McAuliffe has said he is open to coal-burning plants and offshore drilling for natural gas, though only under stringent circumstances. While McAuliffe says he also opposed the gay-marriage amendment, he has argued that it is politically unrealistic to think the state’s two Legislatures would ever vote to repeal it.

Terry McAuliffe strikes me as a huckster, not a leader. He'll compromise and not advocate. He'll listen to donors while talking to voters. And he's apparently winning the primary. I hope Brian Moran can come back.

The Thorny Green Jobs Issue

I truly recommend this David Leonhardt interview with President Obama. Regardless of where you stand on his policies, you can agree that he understands the issues and can articulate a sharp vision. Here he talks about the need for a more balanced economy.

That’s why I don’t just want to see more college graduates; I also want to specifically see more math and science graduates, I specifically want to see more folks in engineering. I think part of the postbubble economy that I’m describing is one in which we are restoring a balance between making things and providing services, whether it’s marketing or catering to people or servicing folks in some way. Those are all good jobs, and we’re not going to return to an economy in which manufacturing is as large a percentage as it was back in the 1940s just because of automation and technological advance [...]

But the broader point is that if you look at who our long-term competition will be in the global economy — China, India, the E.U., Brazil, Korea — the countries that are producing the best-educated work force, whose education system emphasizes the sciences and mathematics, who can translate those technology backgrounds or those science backgrounds into technological applications, they are going to have a significant advantage in the economy. And I think that we’ve got to have enough of that in order to maintain our economic strength.

I think a healthy economy is going to have a broad mix of jobs, and there has to be a place for somebody with terrific mechanical aptitude who can perform highly skilled tasks with his hands, whether it’s in construction or manufacturing. And I don’t think that those jobs should vanish. I do think that they will constitute a smaller percentage of the overall economy. And so what we’re going to have to do is, with a younger generation, find new places for that kind of work.

The possibilities are there, though. I spoke during the campaign of this company that I visited, McKinstry, in Seattle, where you’ve got a bunch of welders and tradesmen who are now retrofitting buildings. They’re not performing the same kind of manufacturing that their fathers might have, but with similar skill sets they are now making hospitals and schools and office buildings much more energy efficient, and then that’s providing enormous value to the economy as a whole.

Interestingly enough, the current issue we're having with green jobs is that we're retaining the construction and labor sector but losing the knowledge sector, precisely the opposite of the President's proposed vision.

As the Obama government gets ready to raise a protectionist wall against offshoring, the US firms seem to be shipping more jobs to India.

The US firms have offshored 22,000 green technology jobs to India since January 1, 2009, Doug Brown, co-author of the influential 2009 Green Outsourcing Report, informed TNIE [...]

Noting an interesting irony the authors of the report say, “In the US, green stimulus plan is creating low-wage installation and construction jobs.” But, in India, which is usually associated with cheap and low-skill work, “…New green jobs include higher dollar engineers, strategic business management and support technicians charged with designing innovative environmental friendly solutions,” they add.

A country that can employ all these laborers to retrofit homes and build out the smart grid has some chance of stability, but only at the low-wage end. But the design and engineering sector has floated away to India.

And while providing green jobs in low-income communities may breathe economic life into those areas, the people living there may not be able to, well, breathe.

A read of the "Justice in the Air" report would maybe change that perspective. Using data from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory and Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators reports, researchers were able to locate where toxic air pollution from industrial facilities is strongest. They also determined the percentage of racial minorities and low-income families who live in those heavily impacted areas. To no surprise, they found that African-, Latino- and Asian-Americans suffer the worst health risks. For example, 69 percent of those whose health is impacted by ExxonMobil's pollution are minorities [...]

So, how exactly can a green-jobs movement alleviate poverty without equal concern for pollution exposure and health consequences? What good is giving a person a job if their frail health from toxic pollution will affect their productivity? Most of the jobs that have been tagged for the poor -- you know, the ones that "can't be exported" and "don't require a diploma" -- are outdoor jobs. So if you're installing a solar panel on a roof, weatherizing a building, cleaning up waste, or doing urban garden work, chances are in America (if you're poor and/or black/Latino) you'll be doing this in an area prone to air pollution.

We need to address these issues of environmental justice. At-risk communities bear the brunt of toxic pollution. Heck, even James Inhofe sponsored a black carbon bill, so it's not like we need to drop these concerns for political expediency.

The green jobs movement makes some intuitive sense, but there are larger questions that need to be addressed, through regulating the air we breathe, through improving our educational competitiveness so all of the green economy can stay in America.

It's Comical To Say John Boehner Knows What He's Talking About

Sadly, the Minority Leader of House Republicans is not the first to relate global warming to cow farts, although when Crazy Dana Rohrabacher did it I believe he used dinosaur flatulence as the example instead.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what is the responsible way? That's my question. What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?

BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide.

This is just comically wrong, and we can all laugh about it, but this is dangerous to our future and our economy. As Joe Romm notes, "Anti-science conservatives are now the cement shoes on the American people, pulling us down into the ocean hot, acidic dead zone." If you want to know why we haven't progressed on renewable energy or fuel-efficient cars or green technologies, look no further. Here are some real-world consequences.

China’s leaders are investing $12.6 million every hour to green their economy. Other countries are equally energetic in their embrace of alternative energy technologies; they are setting targets and investing billions of dollars to spur the development of entirely new markets in wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, energy efficiency, high-speed rail, and other clean and innovative solutions to global warming.

The United States, too, is poised to transform its economy to create millions of new jobs and help create a cleaner, safer planet by investing in a green, renewable-energy based economy. The Obama administration wants to unleash the ingenuity of our private sector to rein in pollution and put millions of Americans back to work. Yet China is spending twice as much as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spends to lay the foundations for a green energy economy, despite the U.S. economy being 1.5 times as large as China’s. And across Europe and Asia, other governments have diversified their energy portfolios and encouraged entrepreneurs to start and expand clean and renewable energy companies.

As venture capitalist John Doerr recently pointed out in his testimony before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, “If you list today’s top 30 companies in solar, wind and advanced batteries, American companies hold only 6 spots. That fact should worry us all.”

Read that whole thing. We're simply falling behind the rest of the world in the industry that will lead the 21st century. And know-nothing, status-quo obstructionist conservatives are the reason why. Clinging to the dirty industries of the past only makes us a fossil. I think the Obama Administration and most Democrats know this and want to fix it, but time is running out and anti-science troglodytes like John Boehner aren't helping. He says that his party has a plan but that plan merely is to obstruct any progress.

...Just to show you the sense of urgency here, one company wants to bury emissions under the ocean. And people are listening to them.

Unions Beat Pirates

It was a tailor-made quote for the labor movement, and they picked it up and ran with it.

We're seamen. We're union members. We stuck together and we did our jobs.

Business leaders and their enablers in Congress still want you to believe that unions are scorned by the public. Wrong again. And this kind of reminder is great.

By the way, I like the accommodations I'm seeing in the labor movement toward larger goals. The blue-green alliance on climate issues is one of the more exciting developments in the progressive movement which could spur the development of good, green union jobs, and the historic accord on immigration adds another partner to the coalition. As the face of the average union member is increasingly Hispanic, getting AFL-CIO and Change to Win to support comprehensive immigration reform was almost an imperative for them, but kudos for them triumphing over fear and demonization which has crippled past efforts at coalition-building.

I know that the Employee Free Choice Act appears dead at this point, but this broad coalition that can now demand it has at least the potential to change some minds.

The Most Important Part Was Off-Book

So I decided to take in the President's economic speech this morning. Ultimately, speeches mean far less than actions, and right now the actions still reflect a mixed picture. But a speech can move the public, can get them comfortable with the big picture of the President's program aside from the day-to-day ups and downs, and on that front I think Obama did a solid job. He stressed the five pillars for economic recovery - investments in clean energy, education and health care, new financial regulations, and long-term deficit reduction, all of which is fine. These were the key set of paragraphs:

It is simply not sustainable to have a 21st century financial system that is governed by 20th century rules and regulations that allowed the recklessness of a few to threaten the entire economy. It is not sustainable to have an economy where in one year, 40% of our corporate profits came from a financial sector that was based too much on inflated home prices, maxed out credit cards, overleveraged banks and overvalued assets; or an economy where the incomes of the top 1% have skyrocketed while the typical working household has seen their income decline by nearly $2,000.

For even as too many were chasing ever-bigger bonuses and short-term profits over the last decade, we continued to neglect the long-term threats to our prosperity: the crushing burden that the rising cost of health care is placing on families and businesses; the failure of our education system to prepare our workers for a new age; the progress that other nations are making on clean energy industries and technologies while we remain addicted to foreign oil; the growing debt that we’re passing on to our children. And even after we emerge from the current recession, these challenges will still represent major obstacles that stand in the way of our success in the 21st century.

There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men. The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was destroyed as soon as the storm hit. But the second is known as the wise man, for when “…the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house…it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”

We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity – a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad.

That's a very strong perspective, particularly the highlighted portion, addressing inequality and the out-of-balance economy. But the very best part of the speech didn't appear in the prepared remarks. Talking about education, he paused to say that we need American students to make things again. Here's a rough transcript:

And by the way, one of the changes that I'd like to see, and I'm going to be talking about this in the weeks to come. It's once again seeing our best and our brightest commit themselves to making things. Engineers, scientists, innovators. For so long, we have placed at the top of our pinnacle folks who can manipulate numbers. And engage in complex financial calculations. And that's good, we need some of that. But you know, what we could use are some more scientists and engineers who are building and making things that we can export to other countries.

This is the rot at the heart of the American economy right now, a sinking feeling that we are no longer creative, that we no longer have the same spirit in the 21st century that we assumed to hold in the 19th and 20th, the feeling of sloth, the idea that the world is passing us by, the unease as we try to sustain ourselves through selling each other lead-filled Chinese toys and pushing numbers around on a page. This is exactly the risk at the center of an unbalanced economy, much like an unbalanced stock portfolio. Having given away innovation, having given away industry, we turned Wall Street into the manufacturing capital of the nation, much to our peril. The jobs of the future cannot remain in the same fields as the jobs of the past. We need a continued focus on green jobs, not just at the level of engineering and innovation and technology, but at the lower levels of building and creating from raw materials the new energy devices and smart grids and high speed rail cars.

And we can only do this by shrinking the size of the financial sector relative to the overall economy, and diversifying our economic picture so we are not at the mercy of the banksters. For the first time, I get the sense that the President recognizes this imbalance and is committed to reversing course. I don't completely agree with his methods - he dismissed nationalization of the insolvent banks by saying that it would prove too costly, which is a debate we need to have, but which neglects the cost of throwing money into a black hole aimed at recapitalization, only to have to go back and nationalize eventually - but I can now fairly judge his desired end state. And I like what I see.

The Rise Of Van Jones

It's great news that Van Jones has been tapped for a high-level job in the Obama Administration, as a special adviser for green jobs. Having his voice at the Presidential level is bound to be valuable, and great for at-risk communities who will not be forgotten with Jones as their defender. At the same time, I have to agree with the first comment in this Grist story.

If it is more than a rumor, then Van faces some decisions that would keep me awake at night. Would he be more effective where he is, or on the insde of the administration??? How much power would he really have?? Could he go along with the administration the next time it starts talking about "clean coal?"

Indeed, he might have to make that determination almost immediately. Because the FutureGen project, a "clean coal" research facility in Illinois, is likely to be funded with stimulus money in the short term. This is just research, of course, and even Energy Secretary Steven Chu supports it "with modifications." But the fact is that clean coal technology hasn't worked and offers a false sense of hope that we can just keep burning dirty fuels and not get dirty ourselves. It would be nice to have Van Jones' perspective on this, but he's embedded inside the Administration now.

Leadership is self-generating, but leadership like Van Jones' comes around only once in a long while. We have a lot of battles in California over green jobs and alternative energy that could have used a strident voice like Jones'. There's an effort to triple our commitment to clean energy through a renewable portfolio standard. The Senate leader's top priority is career tech education with an eye to green jobs and the new economy. Perhaps Jones' departure means that new leaders will take hold of these issues and push them forward. But perhaps not. It leaves a big hole.

I congratulate him as I've congratulated other Californians who have moved to Washington. But it's interesting, from my perspective, that the two individuals most likely to be able to drive a movement politics in the Golden State - Hilda Solis and Van Jones - have packed up and joined the Obama Administration. I can't say I blame them, this state is a basket case. And their talents will be used well.

LA City Elections: Promise, Pitfalls, Potential For Change

Today is Election Day in LA City, and given the turnouts we've seen in other off-year elections, as well as the fact that the mayoral race, the biggest ticket on the ballot, is basically a coronation, turnout is likely to be very small, save for the wide-open 5th District City Council race, which is really anybody's to win (very unusual in LA politics). The expectation is about 15%. Despite the fact that Los Angeles actually has a fairly rich culture of political activism, from the Latino student sit-ins to recent Prop. 8 actions and hundreds more, the recent history is that city elections do not draw much of a crowd. That's a shame in a city that's larger than the total populations of many states, and it reduces accountability on the elected officials.

I don't live in Los Angeles, but I work here, and I have a conflicted view about the way the city runs. I think if every resident were forced to watch The Garden, the Oscar-nominated documentary about South Los Angeles residents being forcibly evicted from a community garden, nobody would vote for anyone currently on the City Council, least of all Mayor Villaraigosa. The film, almost a real-life version of The Wire, revealed a city government of backroom deals and power-brokers able to make their voices heard well beyond the needs of the community. You can add to that the rare bit of journalism from the LA Weekly about the City Council, and you could be convinced that the lack of accountability from the electoral process has bred a toxic atmosphere at City Hall. The likely consolidation of power that would result from Villaraigosa allies in the city attorney and city controller offices would lead you even closer to that conclusion.

Yet among the morass, there are some very earnest public servants trying to manage a very unwieldy city, with a host of unique problems and challenges that would vex any lawmaking body on Earth. Set aside this year's $1 billion dollar budget; the problems of immigration, gang violence, income inequality, traffic, health care, air pollution, education, and much, much more all converge in this city. From 10,000 feet these problems look intractable, and yet there are gradual, slow steps toward mitigation, and even areas where Los Angeles is a national model. The sales tax receipts from Measure R may finally bring sustainable transit infrastructure to fruition for more than a handful of the city's residents. The Green Trucks Program is an innovative, first-in-the-nation effort to bring labor and environmental groups together to reduce pollution, create living wage jobs and help save the planet. And the city's Green Jobs Training program is seen as so potentially game-changing that it was used as a model in a White House staff report from their Middle Class Task Force:

The City of Los Angeles has undertaken or is in the midst of undertaking several initiatives that, together, begin to constitute a model for how cities can maximize the benefits of “going green” for working families. As is often the case, necessity was the mother of policy innovation. A few years ago, the city faced a number of stark challenges including: a state renewable energy mandate (a statewide “portfolio standard” requiring 20% renewable energy by 2017) and a state cap on greenhouse gas emissions; an impending shortage of skilled construction workers; entrenched poverty and joblessness in many low-income neighborhoods; and toxic levels of diesel pollution that were imposing huge health costs and blocking the growth of the nation’s largest port complex.

In the past year, Los Angeles has adopted a comprehensive approach to redevelopment which will ensure that city-subsidized development projects are built green and serve as vehicles for moving low-income residents into middle-class construction careers. The Port of Los Angeles has also begun to implement a comprehensive solution to freight-related air pollution that will increase efficiency, enhance security, and improve work conditions and living standards for port truck drivers. Most important is the fact that these initiatives are being undertaken on a large scale: the city’s construction policy is expected to impact 15,000 jobs over five years while the Clean Trucks Program (discussed below) could affect as many as 16,000 port truck drivers.

In 2008, the City of Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) adopted a landmark policy designed to protect the environment, safeguard the interests of taxpayers, and ensure that city-supported projects create good construction jobs and career pathways for city residents. The Construction Careers and Project Stabilization Policy establishes minimum labor standards and a process for avoiding labor disruptions by means of a master agreement between the CRA and local building trades unions. The policy requires participating contractors and unions to make construction job opportunities available to local residents, including individuals who face barriers to employment such as a criminal record or a limited education.

The policy is being implemented alongside a requirement that large subsidized projects meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. In this way, city leaders have begun to lay the foundations for building a green-collar construction workforce in Los Angeles. The UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education
projects that the policy will make at least 5,000 apprentice-level construction jobs available to residents of neighborhoods with high levels of unemployment over the next five years. At least 1,500 jobs are expected to go to individuals who might otherwise remain homeless, unemployed, dependent on welfare programs, or caught up in the criminal justice system. But the most important result of the Construction Careers policy will be to leverage public investments in economic development to turn short-term jobs into long-term careers in the construction industry.

I wish there was more structural accountability in Los Angeles, from the Mayor on down. I wish the city wasn't so dominated by big-city machine politics and red-letter projects that often fail to follow through on their promise. And where criticism is warranted, I'm sure to be first in line. But Los Angeles is a very complex and hard-to-pigeonhole place, and that is true of its politics as well.

The White House Goes All In On Green Jobs

Joe Biden presided over a summit in Philadelphia of his Middle Class Task Force today, and the subject was green jobs. Vice President Biden had an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer today making the case.

So what exactly are "green jobs"? They provide products and services that use renewable energy resources, reduce pollution, and conserve energy and natural resources.

Investing in green jobs also means keeping up with the modern economy. At a time when good jobs at good wages are harder and harder to come by, we must find new, innovative opportunities.

According to the Council of Economic Advisers, green jobs pay 10 to 20 percent more than other jobs. They also are more likely to be union jobs. Building a new power grid, manufacturing solar panels, weatherizing homes and office buildings, and renovating schools are just a few of the ways to create high-quality green jobs that strengthen the foundation of this country.

It's the ultimate win-win. Green jobs can revitalize impoverished communities by bringing back industry, increase unionization and the rise of the middle class, add to re-industrialization, reduce energy costs for the whole country, make us energy independent and save the planet. Most important at this point, they can help increase GDP, as Gar Lipow explains:

The main extra benefits economists overlook are the helpful side effects other than mitigating the climate crisis -- "positive externalities," in economic jargon.

For example, about half of all economic activity takes place in climate-conditioned buildings. Greening these buildings could increase[PDF] productivity [PDF] by around 10 percent. Similarly, switching most long-haul freight trucking miles to long-haul freight rail would increase productivity in transportation. Many energy-saving practices in industry, such as reducing scrapping and reducing spills and other types of emitting stoppages, would increase productivity as well. A switch to wind and solar would reduce labor productivity in the electricity sector; the conventional wisdom is that a switch to organic agriculture would do the same in that sector, though I think this is much less certain that people think. At any rate, sectors where productivity would rise greatly outnumber the tiny sectors where it might fall -- resulting in a huge net increase, probably greater than 5 percent for the economy as a whole.

Another example would be huge benefits to health. Eliminating or greatly reducing the use of fossil fuels would reduce air pollution, water pollution, and exposure to toxics. A switch to organic and low input agriculture would decrease direct ingestion of toxics, and increase available vitamins and minerals in food. Whether such a switch alone would encourage a switch to healthy increase in the consumption of non-starchy vegetables and fresh fruits I don't know, but it certainly could be part of policy that accomplished this. Overall, I think it is almost impossible that switching from fossil fuels to renewables and efficiency, that switching from toxic soil-consuming agriculture to non-toxic soil building agriculture, from unsustainable to sustainable forestry, would not increase GDP.

Because so much of the Administration's success depends on major increases in GDP after the recession ends to close the debt and reduce unemployment, they know that green jobs which can spur industrial growth are crucial. We're seeing much more activity in this area than even talked about during the campaign.

Here's a liveblog of the summit, with remarks from Biden and green jobs advocate Van Jones, among others. And here's a staff report from the White House going into more detail on the preferred policies on green jobs from the Administration, in the stimulus and beyond. Finally, the Departments of Energy and Housing & Urban Development have announced a partnership to spend $16 billion dollars in stimulus funds to retrofit and weatherize existing homes, lowering energy consumption in those homes by 20-40% and creating thousands of jobs.

These aren't bumper stickers or slogans, these are real policies that will have a lasting effect.

Obama's Way Forward On Energy and Climate Change

Another major piece of the Obama agenda expressed yesterday is on energy and climate change issues. The President called for a cap and trade system to shrink carbon emissions:

Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years. We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history – an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.

We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

First to what has already been passed. There are great incentives through tax breaks and public investment programs in the stimulus pacakge to get people to change their lifestyles to a more green and energy-efficient one. The build-out of a national clean-energy smart grid is one of the most exciting infrastructure projects of the past 30 years. Too much of our wind and solar energy systems would be best placed in areas that are not currently fed by high-voltage transmission lines back to any grid. Streamlining this would save billions in power already generated by reducing congestion and inefficiency, and open large spaces up to renewable energy.

But the biggest two parts of this, the legislation that Obama is calling for, are the RES (renewable energy standard) and a cap-and-trade system. The RES has the votes and will get done, and hopefully the Congress will shoot for a high percentage of electricity from renewables by 2020 (50%? Dare to dream?). As for cap and trade, here are some details:

On energy policy, Mr. Obama’s budget will show new revenues by 2012 from his proposal to require companies to buy permits from the government for greenhouse gas emissions above a certain cap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the permits would raise up to $300 billion a year by 2020.

Since companies would pass their costs on to customers, Mr. Obama would have the government use most of the revenues for relief to families to offset higher utility bills and related expenses. The remaining revenues would cover his proposals for $15 billion a year in spending and tax incentives to develop alternative energy.

This may be surprising to Congressional Dems, some of whom may expect to be using for a variety of energy and environmental purposes.

But I’ve been saying for a while that, as a matter of politics, the vast majority of the revenues from the auction will need to be returned to taxpayers — that is to say, the vast middle class. I think at least 60% to 80% needs to be refunded to start with, rising to 80% to 90% within 10 years. Otherwise conservative opponents will simply attack this entire effort as a tax. Yes, they’ll do so anyway, but if the bottom of three to four quintiles are made whole, the argument can be refuted.

What is cap and trade? Kevin Drum has a pretty thoughtful article about it at Mother Jones.

The theory is straightforward. Suppose you have two plants, and the first one is able to eliminate one ton of pollutants at a cost of $10,000. The second plant, perhaps because it uses a different fuel or newer boiler technology, can do the same for only $4,000. Under command and control, if you required them to remove one ton each, the cost would total $14,000.

But what if all you mandated was that two tons of pollutants be removed overall (the cap part) and allowed the plants to work out how to do it? Naturally, the first plant would just pay the second plant $4,000 to remove an extra ton of pollutants from its emissions (the trade part). At first this seems suspect: The first plant is being allowed to merrily pollute away. But you've still removed two tons of pollutants, and since it was done more cheaply—for $8,000 instead of $14,000—you can afford to ratchet down the cap. You can require that three tons of pollutants be eliminated overall, and since this still costs only $12,000, everyone comes out ahead. The public gets cleaner air, and the plants save money.

There are ways to make cap and trade essentially a carbon tax refunded to consumers, and that's by ensuring that the carbon credits are sold at auction. There are drawbacks to it, particularly if the rest of the world doesn't go along, but Europe is already on board, and while initially the results were mixed, they are effectively pricing carbon now, and we can learn from their early mistakes. It's not the end of the fight, but it's a good tool. Drum concludes:

"Cap and trade is just a tool," says the NRDC's Bryk. It might be the backbone of any effective long-term carbon reduction policy, but it's not the only tool we need. Or even necessarily the best. If you want to improve vehicle mileage, for example, raising federal fuel-efficiency standards is "much cheaper for consumers than raising the price of gas," she says. Michael O'Hare, a public-policy professor at UC-Berkeley, emphasizes the need for the government to take a more active role than just setting carbon prices. Sure, higher energy prices might motivate people to change their behavior. "But," he points out, "even if I want to take the tram, I can't do it if there's no tram."

In other words, command and control will remain absolutely necessary. As will taxes. Even with a well-designed cap-and-trade plan in place, we'll need tougher efficiency standards, higher fuel taxes, more sensible land-use policies, green research programs, and plenty more. But in the same way that cutting calories is the core of any weight loss no matter which fad diet you follow, raising the price of carbon is the core of any climate plan. With luck, this could be the year we finally figure that out.

Ultimately, I think technology is the killer app here. Raising the price for carbon output will spur the innovation to find clean energy solutions, and if industry is successful, we'll see a major paradigm shift. What's most important about this is that those solutions will eventually require millions of green jobs and a return to the American manufacturing base that held us in good stead from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the beginning of the outsourcing craze. Major legislation on the climate wouldn't just be good policy - it's essential.

You can become a Climate Precinct Captain able to help with building a grassroots movement around these issues at 1sky.

Losing The Climate Spin War

I don't really know what quite went on here, but TPM followed all day this effort to delay President Obama's environmental nominees, terming it "the first shot" in the battle against action on climate change. Elena Schor claimed that an anonymous Senator was holding up Nancy Sutley (for head of the Council on Environmental Quality) and Lisa Jackson (for head of the EPA), with the actual pressure being put on the "climate czar" Carol Browner:

... it's about Carol Browner, the incoming White House climate and energy adviser. As Sen. Jim Inhofe (OK), senior Republican on the environment committee and the leading fly in the climate change ointment, told the Washington Times:

"I'm quite concerned that [Sutley's] role has been diluted by the addition of former EPA Administrator Carol Browner as White House climate and energy czar. The new Senate-confirmed CEQ chair will be expected to have the full authority to represent the White House on all matters before this committee."

By holding up Jackson and Sutley, Senate Republicans are doing more than just signaling their discontent that they won't get to question and vote on Browner -- although Sen. Bob Corker [R-TN] suggests to the Times that Browner be called in for a "quasi-confirmation" hearing. They're previewing their strategy to knock down the climate regulation bill that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), environment committee chairman, will release later this year.

Then Schor claimed that Wyoming Senator Tom Barrasso was behind the delay; then it wasn't him; then the nominees could be cleared by tomorrow; and then, they were confirmed along with several other cabinet heads (I think only Geithner, Solis and Holder are left, though I could be missing one or two, and of course there is no nominee for Commerce Secretary).

Exactly what the hell happened here? Between Schor's over-reporting and Matt Cooper's thousand-word musings about Caroline Kennedy, I'm thinking of turning away from the new TPMDC.

However, it would be silly to ignore that the Republicans will stop at nothing to halt meaningful action on climate change. And, that they're winning. Not because nutcase James Inhofe says so, but because the issue is simply not a tangible enough concern to force it into Washington's power centers:

the latest Pew poll on priorities contains grim news for those of us who think we're rapidly destroying out planet: the public couldn't care less. Global warming, once again, ranks as the lowest priority from a list of 20, and the more general category of "protecting the environment" fell 15 percentage points from last year.

And as if that's not bad enough, Revkin also points to a new Rasmussen poll, which finds that 44% of U.S. voters don't believe humans are the cause of global warming, compared to only 41% who do. That's even worse than last year's results.

In one sense, this is because the economy and jobs have superseded the environment and everything else as the biggest concern. (People should listen to Van Jones more, who solves both of these vexing problems with the promise of green jobs). But the need for action grows larger every year, and yet the willingness to do so wanes. I think part of this is the PR machine being global warming denial. I mean, this memo from the coal industry tells you about everything you need to know:

A Virginia-based public relations firm called the Hawthorn Group sent out a newsletter to their "friends and family" outlining the work they did on behalf of a coal industry lobby group called the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.The newsletter outlines in quite a bit of detail about how Hawthorn spindoctored coal during the Presidential election.

The newsletter starts:

"We thought the most fixated of the political and communications "junkies" might find interesting some highlights of a recent grassroots campaign Hawthorn created and managed for the American Coalition of Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE)."

Hawthorn celebrates the fact that their coal-is-clean campaign was a success:

"In September 2007, on the key measurement question—Do you support/oppose the use of coal to generate electricity?—we found 46 percent support and 50 percent oppose. In a 2008 year-end survey that result had shifted to 72 percent support and 22 percent oppose. Not only did we see significantly increased support, opposition was cut by more than half. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain addresses a crowd wearing "Clean Coal hats" in Pennsylvania."

Instead of actually demostrating that somehow coal is clean, Hawthorn used age-old PR tactics to create the image instead:

"Building on our existing 200,000-strong grassroots citizen army, we leveraged the presidential candidates' own supporters, finding advocates for clean coal among the crowd to carry our message. We got these on-the-spot advocates to show strong public support to the candidates and to the media, and enhanced that visibility by integrating online media that created even more of a buzz. We did this by sending "clean coal" branded teams to hundreds of presidential candidate events, carrying a positive message (we can be part of the solution to climate change) which was reinforced by giving away free t-shirts and hats emblazoned with our branding: Clean Coal. Attendees at the candidate events wore these items into the events."

Polluting industries have a huge megaphone and lots of money to deny the problem, deny that anything can be done, warn that job loss and economic contraction would ensue, and on and on. And yet with each passing day, the landscape is charred by the effects of a warming planet. The trees are dying, the ice is melting, the planet still has that fever. And we aren't gaining much traction to get us out of it.

President Obama, if you care about this, it's time for one of those stemwinders of a speech.

Shovel-Ready Isn't Enough

In the transition report on job creation and the economic recovery package, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein admit that tax cuts are ineffective relative to public spending relative to jobs, but that there aren't enough "shovel-ready" projects out there to provide immediate stimulus, so tax cuts are a good alternative because they can be delivered quickly and efficiently. I'm not sure that's entirely true, and it's based upon what you consider "shovel-ready." Urban planning on infrastructure still requires jobs, after all. And there is an urgent need to think big and invest in industries which will have a long-term impact on productivity and future job creation, particularly by reviving America's manufacturing base. This John Judis opinion piece is really good.

One area that is ripe for such investment--and that is not, from what I have seen, a declared priority of the Obama administration--is high-speed rail. Amtrak's Acela trains--the closest thing we have to one--average less than 100 mph between Washington D.C. and Boston, whereas trains in Western Europe and Japan go more than twice as fast. Many of them also run on electricity. They would be the most energy-efficient and quickest means of getting between places like Boston and New York, or Los Angeles and San Francisco. But they would require a massive investment. For instance, installing high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor could cost about $32 billion, while California's high-speed rail system would require up to $40 billion. A system that would address the other areas of the country could easily raise the cost to the hundreds of billions. The House transportation and infrastructure committee has currently proposed $5 billion in stimulus funds for intercity rail--not even a down payment on what it would cost to convert the U.S. to high-speed rail.

Investing in high-speed rails would be very expensive, but unlike tax cuts--the benefits of which can be siphoned off in the purchase of imported goods--the money spent would go directly to reviving American industry and improving the country's trade balance. That doesn't just mean jobs creating dedicated tracks or new rail stations: Though the U.S. abandoned train manufacturing decades ago to the French, Germans, Canadians, and Japanese, this kind of production could be undertaken by our ailing auto companies or aircraft companies--if the federal and state governments were to place orders. And building trains that would run on electricity would be a paradigmatic example of the "green jobs" that Obama often touts.

Though a massive investment in high-speed rail brings its own set of complications, it's worth keeping these kind of examples in mind when one hears from the Obama people that they can't find sufficient infrastructure projects to fund. The question I would pose is this: Are we not at some point going to have to go beyond repairing roads and bridges in our conception of public spending and public works, and contemplate the kind of ambitious industrial expenditures that the country made on war production in 1941?

It's simply not the case that high-speed rail doesn't require quick up-front spending - the California HSR system approved by voters in November is struggling to survive because they can't secure any funding from the bond markets. That money funds environmental impact studies, surveying, assessments from architects and planners - it may not be bricks and mortar, but that would create non-trivial amount of white-collar jobs.

The problem here is well-described by Ezra Klein. There are "shovel-ready" projects that relate to infrastructure, and there are long-term infrastructure projects that cannot begin construction in a year. But the Obama stimulus will only satisfy those short-term infrastructure needs. This sustains the economy of sprawl, and does not serve our long-term infrastructure needs.

That would all be fine if forward-thinking infrastructure investment were a regular priority of the government. But it's not. And though deficits don't matter at this moment in time, in three or four years, after we've finished with all this spending, they're likely to matter quite a lot. Spending new money will become harder, not easier. We may end up with an investment program that, particularly on transportation, entrenched a lot of our bad habits, did fairly little to modernize, and made it harder to fund infrastructure investment qua infrastructure investment down the line.

It's a serious problem, and I hope some money is carved out in the recovery package as well as the next highway bill for longer-term investment. Otherwise, we will fail to create a culture of sustainability and continue to fall behind the rest of the world, not to mention eliminating a key area of green jobs and manufacturing in the future.

Smart Spending

I never expected a massive Keynesian stimulus to be easy. But the fact that the Obama transition needs to allay fears about the package is worrying. What economy are these neo-Hooverists looking at? Jobless claims keep jumping - expect another half-million to be out of work by next month. The housing market is still crippled with no sign of recovery. And even the lead economist of the IMF, no left-wing liberal, is warning of another Great Depression if governments don't replace consumer spending with massive spending of their own.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF, is pushing governments to increase their own spending in order to support growth. The IMF has always been a big enemy of deficits. Why the reversal?

We are facing a crisis of an exceptional breadth, the basis of which is a collapse of demand. The consumer and business confidence numbers have never fallen this much since they've first been recorded. We've NEVER seen this!...

It is imperative to curb the this loss of confidence, to relaunch it and, if necessary, replace private demand, if we want to avoid a recession that turns into a Great Depression. Of course, in normal times, we would recommend that Europe reduce its budget deficits. But these are not normal times.

The fears that the Obama team is responding to are largely about limiting pork-barrel spending in the final bill. I think the nation can survive if a pet project makes its way into a trillion-dollar bill. Somebody has to build that pet project, too, and the whole point is to get money into people's hands in exchange for public works. However, that's not to say that we shouldn't be careful about the spending. On the contrary, I believe that funneling money to build more highways and roads that perpetuate unsustainable suburban sprawl is a bad idea. The opportunity of the stimulus is that we can create new economic opportunities based on building green industries and projects that can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

"We've let our infrastructure crumble for a long, long time from water to roads to bridges. It makes sense to invest in them now," Biden said.

But environmentalists and their allies view old-fashioned highway construction as encouraging longer commutes and increasing the energy-consumption crisis of the past year. "They're going to put a bunch of money through a broken system to stimulate the economy. That doesn't make sense to me," said Colin Peppard, a transportation expert for Friends of the Earth.

Peppard's group recently began a "Road to Nowhere" campaign, saying that new roads would lead to "new pollution -- keep the economic stimulus clean."

This doesn't mean that existing infrastructure shouldn't be upgraded in the meantime. But projects like rail, smart energy grids, building out broadband, and developing alternative energy need to get their share of the pie. And there are examples of where "old infrastructure" and "green infrastructure" can work together. The best example is in the building trades. The commercial real estate industry wants their own bailout, and they're going to be the next of many industries seeking one. Now, just handing over money to developers who bought high and are underwater, when the default process works perfectly well and wouldn't disrupt the greater economy much at all, makes no sense. However, if we offered developers a deal like the Architecture 2030 proposal, which would save money in energy costs and have a societal good, that would be worthwhile. And it could be extended to ordinary homeowners as well.

An outfit called Architecture 2030, founded by Edward Mazria, suggests that we offer homeowners not just low-interest loans, but a sliding scale of low-interest loans that's conditioned on renovating their homes to increase energy efficiency. Their proposed scale is on the right. The nickel explanation is below:

"Mazria walked me through a hypothetical example that highlighted the huge incentives the plan could unleash. Say you're a homeowner with a $272,000 mortgage at 5.55%, paying about $1550 a month. You decide you want your mortgage rate to drop to 3%. In order to qualify for the reduction, you have to improve the energy efficiency of your home 75% below code, and it's going to cost you a pretty penny: about $40,000.

Existing tax credits would take care of about $10,000 of that cost. The rest would get tacked on to your existing mortgage, bringing it up to $302,000. But, at 3%, you'd be paying only about $1280 — saving almost $300 a month on the mortgage alone, plus another $150 in reduced energy costs. The value of your home rises, you have more disposable income, you've given work to someone to do the upgrades for you — and s/he's now paying federal taxes, and you've reduced your carbon footprint."

The Architecture 2030 folks claim that their program (which has a component for commercial buildings as well) would cost a mere $170 billion over two years, and in return would create over 8 million new jobs, jump start a new $1.6 trillion renovation market, save consumers a boatload of money, and reduce CO2 emission by about half a billion tons. What's not to like?

I think they're being a little sunny about the positive impact, but not very much.

We definitely need to be smart like this, but it's a tough job. There are a lot of competing interests at play, and nobody's going to be totally happy. At the very least, however, this cannot look like a highway bill.

...Matt Stoller has a good piece on the politics of this. The Blue Dogs appear to favor highway and road projects, but the question is whether they have enough clout to get what they want. Also, a bill like this includes Congresscritters seeking money for their districts that split ideological lines. For instance, the major green jobs repositories in California are Bakersfield and Palm Springs, which have Republican members. I don't think the Blue Dogs are going to be able to dictate this so easily.