The Energy Plant Explosion You DIDN'T Hear About

I'm a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their 16 Deaths Per Day campaign for worker safety. Join us on Facebook.



The disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine in Coalmont, West Virginia has justifiably brought a lot of attention to the issue of worker safety and the need for strong regulation to protect America's workers. But as Chris Bowers points out, this is the kind of story you can write every day in America. Worker safety didn't become a problem because of one mine explosion in West Virginia. Indeed, 16 American workers die every single day, on average, at the workplace, and the federal agencies tasked with making sure that doesn't happen need more resources and more tools to combat such tragedies.

Why, just days before the Massey Energy mine accident, another energy plant saw a deadly workplace disaster:

The death toll from Friday’s fire at Tesoro’s Anacortes refinery in Washington state grew to five, according to news reports.

Three refinery workers were earlier reported to have died following the fire, and a fourth and fifth died of their injuries after being taken to a hospital in Seattle, according to news media reports.

Two other injured workers remained in critical condition at the Seattle hospital.

Sources indicated to Reuters that the fire was caused by a failed heat exchanger, which alternately heats and cools hydrocarbons at the plant. Workers were replacing a separate heat exchanger when this one failed, causing an explosion.

The Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency which oversees refineries like this, was already investigating a flash fire at a separate Tesoro refinery in Utah from last October, as well as multiple other fires across the country. A similar blast killed 15 workers at a BP refinery in Texas in 2005. This is becoming an epidemic.

CSB (Chemical Safety Board) Chairman and CEO John Bresland said, “The CSB has 18 ongoing investigations. Of those, seven of these accidents occurred at refineries across the country. This is a significant and disturbing trend that the refining industry needs to address immediately.”

And yet, the Chemical Safety Board cannot issue citations or fines, only safety recommendations. They can request that a refinery shut down because of safety concerns, but they cannot mandate it.

This is just an example of where government lacks the tools and resources necessary to keep American workers safe at their jobs. There are worker's memorials all over the country which are a living reminder that we have not succeeded in creating safe and secure workplaces. Every April, Worker's Memorial Day serves to deliver that reminder.

That's where the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA) comes in. The Obama Administration under the leadership of Hilda Solis is actually doing a great job of restoring the gutted agencies under the Labor Department's purview, which have been ravaged by 30 years of deregulation and industry capture. But the regulations themselves need to be beefed up, in addition to having better regulators and better tactics. David Michaels and Jordan Barab are leading the Occupational Health and Safety Administration into a new era. They actually slapped the largest fine in history on BP for their failure to fix safety violations even AFTER their 2005 refinery explosion. OSHA is reconfiguring their inspections to target severe violators.

All of this is good. But now they need to be given the ability to succeed. PAWA would do that, by extending OSHA coverage to 8 million more workers, by updating civil and criminal penalties for violations, and by providing an effective deterrent to employers to maintain unsafe workplaces.

We need to eliminate the kinds of headlines we see in West Virginia or Washington or Texas. We need employers to live up to their responsibilities. We need to protect America's workers.

Prioritize The Populism

Out of nowhere, the Obama Administration and its federal agencies have started to crack down on speculation and monopolies, while improving individual safety. These populist positions deserve pride of place from the White House; they should talk a lot more about them.

Hold a press event about stopping oil speculation:

In a big departure from the hands-off approach to market regulation of the last two decades, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler, said his agency would consider new limits on the volume of energy futures contracts that purely financial investors would be allowed to hold.

The agency also announced that it would pull back part of the veil on the oil and gas markets, publishing more detailed information about the aggregate activity of hedge funds and traders who arbitrage between domestic and foreign energy prices.

....Oil prices have swung wildly in the last year, hitting about $145 a barrel last summer, then plunging to $33 in December before rising to about $70.

....A growing number of critics have blamed some of the extreme volatility on the role of purely financial investors — those who are simply betting on the direction of energy prices, as opposed to those who actually use such products, like airlines....Non-commercial traders accounted for almost a fifth of the activity in several major oil and gas products for the week that ended June 30, according to data compiled by the commodities agency.

Matt Taibbi, in his great story on Goldman Sachs, writes about how last year, "a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed." That's just unconscionable, and the CFTC has a role to play in dialing that back.

Furthermore, the President should deliver a live speech on telecom monopolies:

The U.S. Justice Department has begun looking at big telecom companies to try to determine if they have abused their market power, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition Monday.

The journal, which cited people familiar with the matter, said that the Antitrust Division's review was in its very early stages and was not official.

Lawmakers have recently raised questions about whether large wireless carriers were hurting smaller rivals by entering exclusive agreements with the makers of popular phones.

I think they could reel in a lot of people by telling them they shouldn't have to change carriers to use an iPhone.

Finally, rather than a fact sheet and a webcast, how about a prime-time special on food safety?

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is issuing a final rule to control Salmonella contamination of eggs during production. This rule is estimated to reduce the number of foodborne illnesses associated with consumption of raw or undercooked contaminated shell eggs by approximately 60%, or 79,000 illnesses every year, and will generate annual savings of over $1 billion [...]

Stepped Up Enforcement in Beef Facilities: FSIS is issuing improved instructions to its workforce on how to verify that establishments handling beef are acting to reduce the presence of E. coli. Also, FSIS is increasing its sampling to find this pathogen, focusing largely on the components that go into making ground beef.

Preventing Contamination of Leafy Greens, Melons, and Tomatoes: By the end of the month, FDA will issue commodity-specific draft guidance on preventive controls that industry can implement to reduce the risk of microbial contamination in the production and distribution of tomatoes, melons, and leafy greens. These proposals will help the Federal government establish a minimum standard for production across the country. Over the next two years, FDA will seek public comment and work to require adoption of these approaches through regulation [...]

Building a National Traceback and Response System: A system that permits rapid traceback to the source of foodborne illness will protect consumers and help industry recover faster. Yet despite the dedicated efforts of food safety officials across the country, our current capacity to traceback the sources of illness suffers from serious limitations [...]

Improving Organization of Federal Food Safety Responsibilities: Building a more effective safety system requires federal agencies to improve management of their food safety responsibilities and coordinate more effectively with each other.

I hear that the President's approval rating is sinking in Ohio. They are experiencing a terrible economy like the rest of the country, but they also see bank bailouts without the same attention paid to the auto industry, and think they're getting the shaft. Maybe if they knew that their government was trying to stop oil speculation to lower the price of their gas, stop the phone companies from ripping them off, and stop food manufacturers from making them sick, they'd have a little more comfort that their President is on their side.

Ignoring The Obvious

Over the weekend, the New York Times had an article with the thesis statement that the legislative machinery is rusty and unused to the kind of ambitious policy agenda that Barack Obama has proposed.

Lawmakers, senior staff members and other experts agree that a combination of divided government, thin majorities, the running battle for Congressional control and an emphasis on national security caused a decline in the old-school legislative give-and-take that will be required to deliver major health, energy and education measures to President Obama.

“We have been miniaturized,” said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a moderate Republican from Maine and a veteran of health care negotiations. “You have three talking points on a card. We are going to have to be taught and relearn the process, crack the notebooks.”

Congress has not even managed to produce its basic spending bills on time in recent years and has exhausted considerable energy dealing with recurring tax and Medicare snags. Big bills have been few and far between — the 2003 Medicare drug plan and a 2007 energy law are examples — as lawmakers nibbled around the edges of problems [...]

As members of Congress and analysts look at the daunting demands for legislation emanating from the White House, some wonder if Congress is up to the task.

“Do we have a Lyndon Johnson in the Senate at the moment, someone who can push through legislation?” asked Stanley E. Collender, a former top aide on Capitol Hill and a longtime observer of Congressional budget fights. “We haven’t seen it in a while.”

There's no doubt that some of this is true. The "Masters of the Senate" have come and gone, and the reasons cited do tell part of the story. Furthermore, the internal dynamics of the Republican opposition tend them in the direction of unthinking opposition, behaving like perpetual candidates in a contested primary (Similarly, the glory-seeking Evan Bayhs of the world see value in obstructionism and shining attention on themselves). But this article never gets around to mentioning the special interests who frustrate progress on a daily basis. And we see them lining up, one by one, particularly with respect to the domestic agenda, to throw sand in the gears of the legislative machinery. As campaigns grow more expensive, and as inequality increases with the biggest firms getting bigger, these impediments have simply metastasized.

For example, lobbyists for practically every corporation want to halt the move to tax overseas profits from offshore tax havens, something the entire world came to an agreement on at the G-20. Corporate farming interests succeeded in removing cuts to farm subsidies from the budget resolution. And despite the rhetoric that action on the climate and on the economy are inextricably linked, oil companies have flat out given up on renewable sources of energy, and appear to have convinced the Administration to cave on the 100% auction element of their cap and trade proposal.

The Obama administration might agree to postpone auctioning off 100 percent of emissions allowances under a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas pollution, White House science adviser John P. Holdren said today, a move that would please electricity providers and manufacturers but could anger environmentalists [...]

During the presidential campaign, Obama called for auctioning off all greenhouse gas emissions permits at the outset, rather than just a portion of them. Many industry leaders say a phase-in will be essential to easing the transition to a low-carbon economy.

"The idea, obviously, is to end up with a bill that reflects both the thinking of Congress and the administration, a bill that the president can sign," Holdren said, adding that when it comes to a 100 percent auction, "Whether you get to start with that or get there over a period of time is something that's being discussed."

We have a model for "getting there over a period of time," in Europe, where they wasted a decade making almost no progress on reducing carbon until they just went ahead and moved to a full auction. The whole point of cap and trade is to price carbon, not give it away for free, because the pricing element encourages the innovation needed to make the needed reductions.

Some, like Chris Bowers, are optimistic that public investment will continue to grow. The question remains whether that will manifest in government spending that improves lives, or the kind of corporate welfare and Treasury raids we have seen over the last decade. Call me skeptical. And I think the reason is simple - a political class too intertwined with a corporate elite, too attentive to their concerns over the concerns of their constituents. Perhaps full public financing of all campaigns is the answer, and what we should be fighting for. Or maybe we just need A New Way Forward to sever that symbiotic relationship and restructure the economy.

Lost in the talk of tea parties by anti-tax zealots are the A New Way Forward demonstrations this weekend. It is crucial that we send a message that real structural change is not optional but necessary. I urge you to find the demonstration in your area and attend.

The Looming Budget Fights

The Obama Administration budget has a number of elements that would restore fairness and progressivity to the tax code, end the creeping privatization of government functions, cut down on waste, fraud and abuse in contracting, and invest in some of the most important elements, notably education, health care and clean energy, that will drive our economic future. It is a telling quirk of the entrenched nature of Washington, however, that the most promising parts of this budget, the parts that do the most to shake up the status quo, are precisely the parts that will be fought so strenuously by those who wish to maintain that status quo.

For instance, there's the perfectly sensible alteration of the financial aid system for higher education, which would eliminate the middleman in the student loan market, reducing rates for college students while saving the government money through increasing efficiency and cutting subsidies to loan officers.

Among other changes, the Obama budget eliminates the Federal Family Education Loan Program, which excessively subsidizes banks, and moves to the U.S. Department of Education’s Direct Loan program. The Congressional Budget office projects this move to save $94 billion over nine years. The Obama budget then redirects the savings to students. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in 2010-2011, $5 billion would be cut from subsidies to banks and lenders, and invested in students instead.

Redirecting the bank subsidies toward Pell grants would solidify the grant program as the premier source of assistance for low-income students. The Pell grant maximum would increase from $5,350 to $5,550; the estimated national average Pell grant award would increase by $121, from $3,299 to $3,423. Increasing the award will also enable an additional 130,000 more students to attend college per $100 increase in the maximum award.

However, because this system would take aim at the student loan industry that has built up in particular Democratic areas, top Democrats want to scuttle the deal.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) are opposed to provisions in Obama’s budget plan that would remove private banks from the federal student loan program and transfer the expected savings — $94 billion over a decade, according to the CBO— to a new program that would instead guarantee Pell Grant funding for eligible students [...]

Conrad is under some pressure from his home state to preserve a role for banks in the federally backed student loan program.

“If the president’s proposal goes through, that will deeply affect the Bank of North Dakota,” according to Julie Kubisiak, the director of student loans at the state-owned bank. She said the bank’s entire advisory board, consisting of the governor, attorney general and other officials, have written to the state’s Congressional delegation opposing the change.

That's ALL this is about. There's some lip-flap about not wanting to create a new entitlement by guaranteeing Pell Grant funding, but it's B.S. The banks want to keep their subsidies. I mean, it's not like they've created any hardship for the country lately, is it?

Then there's the battle over ending subsidies to the oil industry:

The Obama administration's push to raise taxes on the oil industry is reigniting a battle the industry fought and won last year.

Under pressure to narrow projected deficits, President Barack Obama's 2010 budget proposal calls for raising more than $31 billion over the next decade by eliminating the oil and gas industry's eligibility for various tax breaks.

The plan would slap companies with a new excise tax on production in the Gulf of Mexico worth $5.3 billion between 2010 and 2019, and repeal the industry's eligibility for a manufacturing tax credit worth $13.3 billion in that period. The industry says the final cost of Mr. Obama's proposals on petroleum production could top $400 billion, once his plan to put a price on greenhouse-gas emissions is factored in [...]

The oil industry, which in its campaign donations has long favored Republicans, is taking its case to voters. A new ad campaign by the American Petroleum Institute in about a dozen states says new taxes would "hobble our ailing economy" and "cost thousands of American jobs."

"I think we should pay our fair share of taxes, but I don't think we should look at this industry as the source of all money to pay for the renewable energy industry," said Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron Corp. Mr. Robertson said Mr. Obama's tax proposals will discourage domestic oil and natural-gas production and undermine his goal of reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

I know that President Obama vowed to fight the special interest he takes on in his budget. And It's good to see the grassroots advocacy groups rallying behind this, particularly against conservative Democrats who want to hide their views from their constituents. But the power is very entrenched. So this will be a very big struggle.

The Dangerous Politics Of Cap And Trade

I mentioned earlier that I am less hopeful on getting meaningful carbon pricing legislation through Congress this year than getting health care reform. The main reason is that too many Americans experience the broken health care system directly for politicians to evade public anger over it. Climate change is simply more abstract, making it a tougher sell. And you can very easily turn the idea of capping emissions and selling carbon credits at auction to polluters into "an energy tax." This is from a letter from GOPers on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to their colleagues, and the rhetorical gambit is clear.

The President's 2010 Budget proposal contains a risky, ill defined new energy tax that has the potential to continue the economic recession for many years to come. We are writing this letter to alert you to this situation and ask that you join us in a budget resolution amendment to strike and such provision.

Specifically, the President's 2010 Budget proposal asks to collect $646 billion dollars in new "Climate Revenues" from the American people. The government will collect these new revenues through a cap and trade scheme in which " allowances" are sold to the highest bidder. The government won't tax consumers directly, but it will impose new costs on energy producers and users who will in turn pass those higher costs on to consumers, which will result in higher electricity bills, gasoline prices, grocery bills, and anything else made from conventional energy sources. In short, consumers will feel as if they are paying a new tax on energy.

The stated price tag for this new energy tax is $646 billion, yet recent news reports indicate that administration officials are privately admitting their program will actually generate between "two and three times" this amount of revenue, or between $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion. However, these numbers represent only the cost from 2012 through 2019. The budget summary describes the energy tax extending at least through 2050. At the 2012 through 2019 average annual rate, families and workers would face through 2050 between $6.3 trillion and $9.3 trillion in higher energy taxes.

Left unsaid is that the government would funnel most if not all of that tax to those same consumers in the form of the "Making Work Pay" tax credit. Really this is an effort to keep the oil industry in business - and the industry obviously believes it can work, as they divest from renewable energy and into biofuels, the production of which emits just as much carbon.

There are good signs as well - Lindsay Graham and John McCain have signed on to climate change legislation, but of course they would like nothing more than to eliminate the auction for carbon credits and give away polluting rights for free. That was the structure of the McCain-Lieberman (later Lieberman-Warner) cap and trade bill from last session. The hint toward using budget reconciliation clearly got McCain and Graham out of their chairs on this one. But a bad climate bill that ditches auctioning off pollution rights wouldn't be anything to cheer about. It would reward big business, plain and simple.



As Brad Plumer notes:

You see what happens if the permits are auctioned off and the revenue is divided among Americans equally. The overall impact is actually progressive, and lower-income households come out ahead—the extra amount they pay for dirty energy is more than offset by the rebate. But if the permits are given out to companies for free, it's only wealthier Americans who benefit—they're the ones running the companies making windfall profits, after all—while everyone else gets squeezed.

Given the option of another tax break for the wealthy or movement on other issues like investing in renewables and a hard standard for electricity generation... let's say it's a toss-up.

Drill Now, Stop Later Proposal Torched

The State Lands Commission scuttled a proposed compromise that would have brought new oil drilling to the Santa Barbara coast for the first time in California since 1969, in what is seemingly a victory for environmental and coastal protection advocates. However, some are arguing that the proposal, which would have mandated closure of 4 additional oil platforms off the coast within 13 years, should have gone through.

But a parade of local officials, residents and environmental activists insisted the plan would have advanced efforts to protect the coast by eventually closing four of the region's 20 platforms.

"For the first time in history, the public and the state will be able to shut down existing oil production," argued Linda Krop, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Center and one of the people behind the proposal. "Without this project, they'll continue indefinitely -- perhaps another 40 years." [...]

Nineteen of the 20 platforms that dot the ocean off Santa Barbara and Ventura counties are in federal waters. Shuttering four of them, says Krop of the Environmental Defense Center, would make it difficult for the federal government to lease underwater tracts accessible from those platforms.

And with closure of the two processing plants, the prospect would have been more unlikely, she said.

Read the whole article. There was a significant green alliance in favor of this drilling-for-closure exchange. I tend to agree with the Lands Commission that the proposal for closure wasn't completely enforceable, but then, that's their job to write the law with some enforcement, isn't it? (I guess their concern is that these are federal waters and the state would be limited to enforce end-dates.) I also understand John Garamendi's stated rationale, that approving one lease would set off a parade of oil companies coming to sully the coast, but off course those are approved on a case-by-case basis as well.

If we're going to talk seriously about drilling off the coast in the future, there should be at least a couple bright lines - closure deals like this, and the implementation of an oil severance tax so that we're not the only state in the country that doesn't charge a fee to industry for taking our natural resources out of the ground.

It's an interesting debate - legislators are split, with coastal Assemblymembers opposing but the locals in Santa Barbara in favor, and even Lois Capps thinks it's a worthwhile deal. Endless oil and gas concerns off the coast ought to be dealt with, it's a good question to ask whether this is the right way.

The Power Of One Man

This activist Tim DeChristopher, who bidded up parcels of land sought by oil and gas interests for drilling is really a hero. I guess the Bureau of Land Management was all upset because an auction broke out at their nice little auction.

The process was thrown into chaos and the bidding halted for a time before the auction was closed, with 116 parcels totaling 148,598 acres having sold for $7.2 million plus fees.

"He's tainted the entire auction," said Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah.

Hoffman said buyers will have 10 days to reconsider and withdraw their bids if they think they paid too much.

Huh? Paid TOO MUCH? If a buyer is paying millions of dollars for oil-rich land, they obviously think it's worth it. What DeChristopher did was prove that the BLM was giving away federal land, basically owned by the taxpayers, to noncompetitive interests at obscenely low rates, and that the bidders would clearly pay more if forced. I thought these capitalists believed in the free market?

Now, DeChristopher did win some auctions, about 22,500 acres' worth, and he fully intends not to pay. Then again, this is hardly different from the oil companies who buy up these lands with no intention of using them, just to pad their stock price. The oil companies get enough tax breaks to cancel out their below-market payments for the land, and it merely becomes an asset in their list of oil reserves. It's the same thing.

Selma Sierra, who heads the BLM in Utah, said only 6 percent of lease parcels would ever see drilling because of the "costly and speculative" nature of the business. The federal government also typically imposes environmental safeguards on drilling parcels, Sierra said.

In other words, "Drill here, drill now" is a fiction. Thanks to this BLM official for making it so clear.

Considering how rapidly we're experiencing the effects of climate change, and considering how long this oil company racket has lasted without anyone inside or outside the government stepping up, I'd call this perfectly justified. Not only should the government drop charges against DeChristopher, they should thank him for resetting the market. And activists can learn a lot from the creativity of this guy.

What The Hell Are We Going To Do About The Economy?

Paul Krugman is concerned, and when he gets concerned, I start to get concerned. After opening the week by stating that the economy looks to be falling off a cliff, now he appears doubtful that even a major investment in infrastructure will do the trick:

Two points:

1. The economy is falling fast. We’ll see what tomorrow’s employment report says, but we could well be losing jobs at a rate of 450,000 or 500,000 a month.

2. Infrastructure spending will take time to get going — a new Goldman Sachs report suggests that projects that are “shovel-ready” are probably only a few tens of billions worth, and that a larger effort would take much of a year to get going. Meanwhile, it’s very questionable how much effect tax rebates will have on consumer demand. So it may be hard for stimulus to get much traction until late 2009 — and that’s even if Congress goes along, which may be a problem given all the bad analysis and disinformation out there.

He wonders if we're not headed for double-digit job loss before things right themselves.

And we may be. But we certainly WILL be if we don't use a substantial amount of stimulus money on aiding state and local governments. They're basically going to have to cut their way out of all this loss of tax revenue from the early unemployment and property value losses, and that will mean less state employees, cops, firefighters, teachers and nurses. Keeping them up and running will at least staunch the bleeding and keep the cycle from spinning downward (less state revenue means more cuts means more unemployment means less state revenue means more cuts). In addition, as Ed Kilgore says:

I'd go further than Matt on this subject and observe that states have significant control over some of the "automatic stabilizers" that he's attributing to the federal government (e.g., Medicaid, SCHIP and transportation programs); without some new assistance, states may not only counter-act the "automatic stabilizers" but could actually subvert them. That's clearly what some Republican governors like Mark Sanford have in mind when they call for abolition of federal "mandates" rather than federal assistance: let us completely decimate Medicaid beyond what we are already allowed to do, and we'll be fine!

So an effective stimulus package must not only provide heavy assistance to state and local governments; it must also be sufficiently conditional to ensure that the Mark Sanfords of the world don't use the money to cut taxes as well as services.

Absolutely. The other part of this is that the states are obviously much closer to knowing what infrastructure projects are ready to go, and any money left over from fixing their budget holes could be easily directed to those spending projects. Obama appears favorable to this idea.

It's not a handout or a bailout, insisted the host of the economic forum, Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, president of the National Governors Association. Rather, it's the "best remedy for getting America back to work," Rendell said.

"We think that we can create literally millions of new jobs and at the same time lots of orders for concrete and steel companies and asphalt companies and lumber companies and the like," Rendell said [...]

Obama on Tuesday pledged to move as quickly as possible on a stimulus package that could hasten an economic turnaround, beginning at the state level.

"I recognize that every single one of you is struggling to come up with a budget at a time when you're facing great and growing needs," said Obama, who asked the governors for the meeting. "More and more people are turning to you for help for health care, for affordable housing, to prevent foreclosures even as the credit markets are tightening and tax revenues are making it more difficult to provide that help."

Just as a corollary, I want to add that just because we're focusing on the spending side of the equation for now (and the neo-Hooverists who want to balance the budget in the midst of a deep recession are insane), that doesn't mean we can't look toward the future and come up with some revenue streams and sensible cutbacks as well. Scrutinizing federal agencies with an eye toward streamlining makes some sense, but that's not going to really have much of an impact beyond the margins. There are some other options:

• If we're not going to institute a windfall profits tax on the oil companies, we can at least roll back the subsidies that they clearly don't need, even when oil is below $50 a barrel. This savings can be plowed into the green jobs aspects of the stimulus.

• Let's come up with a legitimate way to deal with offshore tax cheats. I hate the idea of amnesty, but if losing a little in penalties and maybe a bit of the tax owed means that the government's coffers get replenished, I say we go for it. This actually worked fairly well in California with a similar type of program. We're talking about $30-40 billion annually.

• As Joseph Cirincione makes clear, there's a major budget cutback that would be simple and have pretty much no side effects - cut the nuclear weapons budget and reduce stockpiles to the level where we can only destroy the planet 100 times over instead of 1,000.

We must, of course, spend what we need to defend the country. But a good part of the military budget is still devoted to programs designed for the Cold War, which ended almost 20 years ago. This is particularly true of the $31 billion spent each year to maintain and secure a nuclear arsenal of almost 5,400 nuclear weapons, with 1,500 still deployed on missiles ready to launch within 15 minutes.

We can safely reduce to 1,000 total weapons, as recommended by Senator John Kerry and other nuclear experts. That reduction would save over $20 billion a year, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

We're in bad shape, but we do have options.

Transition Report Card

I think even the most jaded observer can admit that Barack Obama is running an almost flawless transition. And it has engendered significant public support. (The comparison to the current guy in charge is probably helping a bit as well.)

The question on the minds of progressives is whether or not he's going to use this political capital for good or evil, so to speak. I think there are a lot of positive signs out there, with respect to policy if not his cabinet appointments. On health care Obama has assembled a team committed to getting something substantial done, with the know-how and contacts on Capitol Hill to do so. On the economic crisis he has consistently talked about jobs programs and green stimulus packages and a clean energy future with massive infrastructure building, and now he's inviting state governors into the process, suggesting that badly needed relief for state and local governments is on the table. Today he responded to early views on the bailout by arguing that help for homeowners is still badly needed, as evidenced by the projection of a doubling in delinquent mortgages over the next year. On foreign policy, Obama is calling back all political ambassadors from their posts in a powerful signal that the Age of Bush is over, and he's meeting with retired generals today to discuss the need for a clean break with Bush's "interrogation, detention and rendition policies."

It's not all good news - Obama is singaling that he will not pursue a windfall profits tax on oil companies, and likewise may delay implementing a rollback of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. I agree with Sirota on this:

...it seems like the Obama team is buying into the right-wing frame that raising any taxes - even those on the richest citizens and wealthiest corporations - is bad for the economy. Of course, that frame is debunked by history. And while sure, it's OK to rack up deficits so as to spend our way out of the economic crisis, it's sorta silly to ignore the tax moves that could be implemented to limit those deficits where possible.

Oh, and one last thing - if oil prices are down and oil industry profits are truly down, what's the harm in passing a windfall profits tax? Even if you buy the right-wing nonsense about a windfall profits tax "hurting the industry" or "hurting the economy" when it is applied, if there really are no windfall profits to tax, then it won't be applied.

At some point we are going to need revenue to pay for some of this stuff, and we shouldn't be bluffed off of it and believe the false rhetoric that tax cuts pay for themselves.

There is another area where the Obama team has cleared up some confusion, however: they remain firmly committed to the Employee Free Choice Act.

An aide to Barack Obama reaffirmed the President-elect's support for the labor movement's chief legislative priority in a one-word statement issued to the Huffington Post on late Tuesday.

Asked if Obama's support for the Employee Free Choice Act remained as strong as his public proclamations suggested on the campaign trail, transition spokesman Dan Pfeiffer responded, succinctly, "Yes."

This is good news, but on this front, I sincerely hope he's ready for a hell of a fight. Republicans will be united in their opposition to this measure - because they know it's a progressive feedback loop, as Chris Bowers calls it, which will increase union membership, the amount of money unions can spend on progressive priorities, and the amount of union workers who will vote Democratic. It indeed will go a long way toward burying the GOP for decades, although I'm not sure they need any help with that.

So can the GOP block it? When it came up for a vote earlier this year, only Arlen Specter voted for cloture. Whether he would vote for cloture again depends on whether he's more afraid of his 2010 re-election or a right-wing challenge in a primary. So far, it looks like it's the latter, as he's backtracking on his support. Most other Republicans have said publicly they're against any changes to labor law. Which means Al Franken's election is absolutely crucial to getting this passed (and Franken's people now say he's up by 22 votes), as well as not losing any Democrats. Mark Pryor is already wavering, for example.

But when I interviewed Sen. Pryor last week on my television program, gone was the vitriol, which had angered so many. Instead, Pryor mollified his position. When asked if he would again line up as a co-sponsor of the legislation, he indicated he wouldn't.

In fact, he attempted to alleviate concerns that the bill would be on the fast track that union leaders had hoped for in the new Congress. He predicted that a President Obama wouldn't push the measure in the first six months of his administration and that he might wait until 2010 to bring it up.

"That bill has really never had the chance to go through committee, be amended and have floor debate ... in the Senate," he cautioned. As a result of that process, he predicted that the bill would change in committee hearings and that any Senate bill would look much different than the House bill.

Sen. Pryor's preference is now to find common ground between business and Labor. He said he'd met with both groups and, without providing many details, he added that he now supports amendments aimed at bridging the wide gap between the two.

I would say that at this moment, it doesn't happen, sadly. At least not in its current form. Business and Republicans are going to make a goal-line stand on this one. Our hope is not that Obama just announces his support but actually works for passage with individual lawmakers. Also, this is one where Sen. Reid has to make the Republicans really filibuster - sit them down in the well of the Senate and let them talk until they're blue in the face and have this play out across the country.

Overall, I'm positive on Obama's performance so far, but he has so much to contend with that it's going to be a tough first year.

Drill Here, Drill N- What, A Vote? Retreat, Retreat!

Well, the Democrats called the bluff of the Drill Now crowd, and exposed them as hypocrites. Yesterday, they passed a comprehensive energy bill that reflected a true compromise. The main details of the bill are here. This measure lifts the moratorium on offshore drilling beyond 50 miles with the particular state's permission, and fully lifts it 100-200 miles offshore. It also includes tax credits for renewable energy, sets a 15% standard for renewables by 2020 (which is short of the EU's plan for 20% and Al Gore's plan for 100%, but it's better than what we currently have), eliminates tax breaks and subsidies for Big Oil, reforms the Mineral Management Service and their oil-for-sex scandal (which McCain lobbyists are right in the middle of), releases oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, forces oil companies to actually pay royalties on public lands, incentivizes energy efficiency and conservation, and institutes "use it of lose it" measures to ensure that oil companies actually use the lands they currently have.

In other words, oil companies get their drilling, but the American people get their share of the proceeds, and we finally start moving toward a post-carbon society.

That sounds like "all of the above" to me, but the Republicans wanted no part of it. In fact, they tried to adjourn Congress, in what has to be the most craven move of... well, of the week. The GOP spent 6 weeks pitching a fit about drilling, and when they get a bill that they can vote on, they want to duck it by shutting down Congress. In the end, only 15 Republicans voted for the compromise (here's the roll call), while the rest bitched and moaned that the bill was a "hoax" and a "sham".

The sham was the months-long effort on drilling in the first place. They were good at the rhetoric of "all of the above" on energy, but when push came to shove they couldn't do anything that would hurt the record profits of Big Oil in the least. It's "drill only" and it's always been "drill only," despite the fact that conservation over the last few months has done more to lower gas prices than offshore drilling ever could.

Republicans are trying to play the public for suckers, again. And they're desperate to keep the failed policies of the past firmly in place. I don't know if the Democrats have the chops to make that message stick, but we'll see.

Sheldon Whitehouse Gets "Senator For Life"

While John McCain and the Republicans are steadfastly trying to eliminate issues and facts from the election altogether, there is one exception to that rule - offshore drilling. There's a large enough group of lawmakers working on this that something is likely to come out of Congress in the waning days of the session, and most likely it won't be that great. From a practical standpoint, Republicans can simply wait out the Congressional moratorium which has to be renewed every year and let it elapse, meaning that they would then be able to deliver leases to oil and gas companies allowing for exploration as close as 3 miles from the shoreline. Democrats are trying to gain a political advantage by showing how bankrupt the "all of the above" energy plan Republicans appear to endorse truly is, by forcing a series of votes where the GOP will cling to its Big Oil buddies, and vote down removing their tax breaks, incentives for solar and wind, etc. And there is some movement by more threatened Republicans to embrace a more comprehensive bill which would incentivize renewables and cut Big Oil subsidies in addition to limited allowances on drilling.

However, I think that this argument made by Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is the one worth repeating a thousand times between now and November.

WHITEHOUSE: Gentlemen, we’re in the middle of a near total mortgage system meltdown in this country. We have a health care system that burns 16 percent of our GDP, in which the Medicare liability alone has been estimated at $34 trillion. We’re burning $10 billion a month in Iraq.

This administration has run up $7.7 trillion in national debt, by our calculation. And there is worsening evidence every day of global warming, with worsening environmental and national security and economic ramifications. In light of those conditions, do any of you seriously contend that drilling for more oil is the number one issue facing the American people today?

(Long silent pause during which nobody answers.)

WHITEHOUSE: No, it doesn’t seem so.

And relatedly, the Republicans who brought you all of these policy failures, in the economy, health care, Iraq, housing, and the environment, are telling you that the answer completely lies in drilling.

Trust them?

The words "snake," "oil" and "salesmen" come to mind.

Today In Palin

As we await the hard-hitting, brutally frank, just-the-facts-ma'am interview that I'm sure Charlie Gibson is about to throw down for his prime-time special on 20/20, today options for questions sprouted up practically all over the place.

First, we have yet another of her "accomplishments" called into question as just a substanceless catch-phrase. The natural gas pipeline she claims to have built is anything but.

Certainly she proved effective in attracting developers to a project that has eluded Alaska governors for three decades. But an examination of the pipeline project also found that Ms. Palin has overstated both the progress that has been made and the certainty of success.

The pipeline exists only on paper. The first section has yet to be laid, federal approvals are years away and the pipeline will not be completed for at least a decade. In fact, although it is the centerpiece of Ms. Palin’s relatively brief record as governor, the pipeline might never be built, and under a worst-case scenario, the state could lose up to $500 million it committed to defray regulatory and other costs.

Indeed, claiming any kind of major fiscal success in Alaska at a time of record energy prices is kind of like saying that the King of Saudi Arabia is a competent fiscal steward. It's not his leadership, but the resources in the ground that provide the wealth. Alaska is a petro-state that nevertheless steals from the federal government treasury billions upon billions in largesse to finance themselves. It's true that its proximity demands some manner of federal aid, but look at what Palin has requested in earmarks over the past year:

According to Alaska's 2009 catalog of earmark requests the state's sea life are in great need of federal money. As Politico points out, Palin's office requested $2 million in federal monies to study crab mating habits; $494,900 for the recreational halibut harvest and $3.2 million for seal genetics research.

Those requests for the study of wildlife genetics and mating habits seems pretty antithetical to the long-standig views of Palin's running mate, John McCain.

Might be a good question for either Palin or McCain.

Meanwhile, the continuing saga of Troopergate has added more surprises and revelations. Palin was apparently warned by a judge to stop disparaging her sister's ex-husband, even before she became governor of the state.

Court records obtained by NEWSWEEK show that during the course of divorce hearings three years ago, Judge John Suddock heard testimony from an official of the Alaska State Troopers' union about how Sarah Palin—then a private citizen—and members of her family, including her father and daughter, lodged up to a dozen complaints against Wooten with the state police. The union official told the judge that he had never before been asked to appear as a divorce-case witness, that the union believed family complaints against Wooten were "not job-related," and that Wooten was being "harassed" by Palin and other family members.

Court documents show that Judge Suddock was disturbed by the alleged attacks by Palin and her family members on Wooten's behavior and character. "Disparaging will not be tolerated—it is a form of child abuse," the judge told a settlement hearing in October 2005, according to typed notes of the proceedings. The judge added: "Relatives cannot disparage either. If occurs [sic] the parent needs to set boundaries for their relatives."

Indeed, after she clearly fired Public Safety head Walt Monegan for his refusal to fire Wooten, an adviser to her warned her of the abuse of power perception, telling her that "'the situation is now grave' and recommended that she and her husband, Todd Palin, apologize for 'overreaching or perceived overreaching' for using her position to try to get Trooper Mike Wooten fired from the force." He also told her to fire any staff members who contacted Monegan over the firing.

Of course, Palin didn't step back then, and she's certainly not now, enlisting her state Attorney General to help quash subpeonas that may arise during the legislative investigation.

"The eyes of the nation have now turned upon us,'' senior Assistant Attorney General Michael Barnhill wrote. "We think there is a legitimate concern that this investigation is no longer being conducted in a fair manner.''

Barnhill complained in a seven-page letter about public comments made by Hollis French, a Democratic senator, that Palin or her aides may have broken the law by allegedly obtaining personnel files of the fired state public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan.

TPM Muckraker is skeptical that much will come of the investigation, as Republicans in the state who were eager to look into this before Palin was made their party's Vice Presidential nominee feel less inclined to do so now.

But there's one story that could absolutely get lots of attention, and should, especially by women.

Speaking to a teleconference audience of reporters around the nation, former Gov. Tony Knowles and current Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein -- both Democrats -- accused Palin of misleading the public in her new role as the vice presidential running mate of Arizona Sen. John McCain.

While some of their complaints have already been aired, Knowles broke new ground while answering a reporter's question on whether Wasilla forced rape victims to pay for their own forensic tests when Palin was mayor.

True, Knowles said.

Eight years ago, complaints about charging rape victims for medical exams in Wasilla prompted the Alaska Legislature to pass a bill -- signed into law by Knowles -- that banned the practice statewide.

"There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla," Knowles said.

Note that it essentially was an Obama surrogate that pushed this story into the mainstream. It's getting other traditional media pickup, too.

I cannot imagine someone so callous as to charge victims of rape for their own exams. That's shocking. Disgusting. It speaks to judgment. And it should be known by every family in America.

UPDATE: Great catch by Jed - McCain voted against Joe Biden's bill which ended the practice of charging victims for rape exams. McCain and Palin really are soulmates.

This HAS to be an ad.

Best Little Whorehouse In Denver

Charlie Savage advances the ball on this story of debauchery at the Minerals Management Service in the Department of the Interior. If we weren't talking about billions of wasted dollars it'd actually be funny.

As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct [...]

The investigations are the latest installment in a series of scathing inquiries into the program’s management and competence in recent years. While previous reports have focused on problems the agency had in collecting millions of dollars owed to the Treasury, and hinted at personal misconduct, the new reports go far beyond any previous study in revealing serious concerns with the integrity and behavior of the agency’s officials.

In one of the new reports, investigators concluded that Ms. Denett worked with two aides to steer a lucrative consulting contract to one of the aides after he retired, violating competitive procurement rules.

Two other reports focus on “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” in the service’s royalty-in-kind program. That part of the agency collects about $4 billion a year in oil and gas rather than cash royalties.

It's really an eye-opening report. The graft here is widespread, and these aren't rinky-dink companies engaging in this - Chevron and Shell are implicated.

Showing that impeccable timing that always seems to characterize Congressional Democrats, they today released their offshore drilling plan, which is tone deaf in so many ways:

• The price of oil has dropped 30% from its height, and the price of gas nearly 20%, without one drop of new oil being drilled, entirely due to lower demand and increasing transit ridership. Such conservation not only works, it works at a level that the pathetic amounts of coastal drilling never can.

• The federal agency that would be tasked with approving and managing all these new oil leases is having coke orgies with Big Oil.

Bill Nelson, at least, has stepped up and said that there should be no new drilling as a cause of this.

But of course, such a maneuver would mean that logic is taking over in the government.

There Is No Other Good Title For This But "Drill Baby Drill"

Really, I tried to come up with something different, but it's too perfect:

Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties engaged in illicit sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday.

The alleged transgressions involve 13 Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.

In bed with Big Oil. Literally.

Meanwhile OPEC's going to cut supply, making a total mockery out of any of these "drill now" efforts, because no amount of spigot opening on our coasts could have as much of an impact as one nod of the head from the Saudis. We have to get off oil. But with Republicans in the White House, we won't, because the GOP and Big Oil are fucking each other. Actually fucking each other.

Please go back to talking about lipstick now.

Van Jones, Green Jobs, and Happy Meal Politics

Some great people have been sashaying through the Big Tent to huddle up with the bloggers. And the traditional media has joined them, to take exciting pictures of people typing to show how the bloggers kick it. Rockin'!

I did get a chance to spend a few minutes with Van Jones, an environmental and green jobs activist, to talk about the future of energy and how we can beat the Republicans at their own game. He also offered a candid assessment of the state of the Presidential campaign.

Jones thinks that the progressive movement and Democratic groups have been "hurt by having a good candidate. We were so galvanized against Bush in 2004 that every outside group went nuts, threw everything we had at the Republicans, and we almost came up with the win despite a less inspiring candidate. This year, the spirit of 2004 has been lost. Obama made the mistake of defunding the outside groups and we've become complacent to an extent." Jones said that last week's hit by the Obama campaign on the McCain housing issue was good, but it needs to be a 10-week phenomenon, not a 1-week phenomenon.

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.

Democrats are right on price - if you cut demand and expand supply through renewables, the price will drop. They are right on people, because those steps will create millions of jobs. And they're right on the planet, because it's the only solution to preserve our environmental future. What the Republicans are offering is Happy Meal Politics, the kind of politics that offers everything for free with no residual consequences.

Jones is a great messenger, and a real leader in the green movement. Democrats would do well to listen to him.

The Law Catches Up To Fourthbranch?

This is intriguing (h/t Think Progress):

A two-year-old letter by Vice President Dick Cheney that pushed a controversial Alaska natural-gas pipeline bill is getting renewed scrutiny because of recently disclosed evidence in the Justice Department's corruption case against Sen. Ted Stevens. In a conversation secretly tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006, Stevens discussed ways to get a pipeline bill through the Alaska Legislature with Bill Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about $250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits. According to a Justice motion, Stevens told Allen, "I'm gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, 'Look … you gotta get this done'." Two days later, Cheney wrote a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to "promptly enact" a bill to build the pipeline.

Fourthbranch should know his Nixon - the tape will get you every time. And was there any doubt that a corruption scandal involving pay for favors between government and the oil industry would involve him?

This should absolutely not be investigated any further. Like Scott McClellan said, it would be "divisive".

Just Another Day On A Rig

My belief is that this McCain boomlet in the polls is largely due to his acting Presidency during the fighting in Georgia while Obama was on vacation. Perception is often reality, and when one guy looks the part and the other guy is chomping on Hawaiian cheeseburgers, there's an effect. Never mind that McCain completely overreacted and such hotheaded-ness is the last thing we need in a President.

But that's generally over now, and now McCain is back to the same old politics, yesterday jumping on an oil rig to make the point that... they can bear his weight? What?

Senator John McCain finally headed out to an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday morning to sound his call for more offshore drilling, a refrain he has repeated almost daily in this summer of gas-pump sticker shock. Hurricane Dolly had forced Mr. McCain to cancel a trip to the rig planned in July.

“Americans across our country are hurting because of the cost of energy,” Mr. McCain planned to say on the rig,” after an hour and 15-minute helicopter flight from Kenner, La., a suburb of New Orleans. “Gas prices are through the roof. Energy costs have seeped into our grocery bills, making it more expensive to feed our families. And now, as people prepare for the winter, they are going to be hit with higher costs for home heating oil. It is time for America to get serious about energy independence, and that means we need to start drilling offshore at advanced oil rigs like this.”

It's weird that the 70-cent drop in oil prices due to falling demand hasn't been mentioned since conservatives started up the Mighty "drill now" Wurlitzer. The fact that there's a way to continue to reduce demand, lower emissions and cause less damage to the environment goes down the memory hole. Increased drilling adds to our dependence on oil, the opposite of what's needed.

This rig McCain was on, by the way, is partially owned by Exxon, but at this point, what isn't, right?

There's the long-version rebuttal, from the Obama campaign:

“For three decades, as our energy crisis grew, decision-making in Washington has been rigged against our national interests and the interests of American consumers. And for almost that long, Senator McCain has been part of the problem. For decades, he has stood with the big oil companies and voted against the development of the alternative energy we need. When a critical proposal came before the Senate late last year that would have provided tax incentives for the development of alternative energy by revoking $13 billion in giveaways to the oil companies, he was the only Senator who didn’t vote - and we came up one vote short. And now he’s standing with the oil companies in opposing a bipartisan compromise in Congress that would expand offshore drilling and, at the same time, make serious investments in alternative energy to break our dependence on foreign oil. When it comes to solving our energy problems, John McCain is just more of the same and America can’t afford it.”

And the short version, from surrogate Tom Vilsack:

"[McCain] continues to reject bipartisan compromise because it would roll back massive tax breaks for the oil companies," he said. "That is not putting the country first, it is putting the interest of oil companies first."

This feeds directly into the coming floor fight in Congress. Republicans simply won't repeal tax breaks for Big Oil, not even now, after years and years of record profits. They won't establish a renewable standard. Their "all of the above" plan just means open the coasts and send money to oil companies who won't drill but will put the leases into their reserves and raise their stock price. A smart campaign (I know, wishful thinking) will reveal that Republicans are in love with Big Oil and don't want to actually lower gas prices. MoveOn is already making this bet, spending half a million dollars to tie Elizabeth Dole and McCain to Big Oil in North Carolina.



Republicans are basically trying to hide on this issue by saying that the bill should move through the regular committee process. They don't want to make the hard vote against drilling that they would make if it includes repealing the tax breaks.

The problem, of course, is that if there's no deal by October 1, the coastal drilling ban, which needs annual approval by Congress, gets lifted. (Couldn't that make for some nifty ads by Democratic challengers, by the way, calling out longtime Reps. for voting to ban offshore drilling for 25 years?)

Republicans As Dumb As Posts On Energy

Wow, these are just two amazing statements on the drilling debate. First, Rep. John Shimkus accidentally tells the truth at an event in the coal region of Illinois:

You know, if drilling is good, drilling and mining is better. … It’s drilling and mining and using great resources like Illinois coal. You all follow the congressional baseball game. I wore this uniform proudly. It says, ‘The Miners.’ The mining industry and coal is part of the solution.

Yes, why don't we use whale oil too? Shimkus is right, but he doesn't know how right he is. If there's any other argument for how Republicans are stuck in an unsustainable past while Democrats are actually looking toward the future of energy, this is it.

Then there's Newt Gingrich's intentionally stupid comments, where he decides to confuse Big Oil with small businessmen who own gas stations.

GINGRICH: Well, I got a very funny e-mail from a retired military officer in Tampa who pointed out that most tire inflation is done at service stations and you pay for it. And it’s actually a higher profit margin than selling gasoline. So Sen. Obama was urging you to go out and enrich Big Oil by inflating your tires instead of buying gas.

Apparently, he believes that oil companies are in the business of selling air. Why does Newt Gingrich hate small businesses so much?

Why these dishonest attacks are going unchallenged is beyond me.

Losing On Drilling

So we're going to lose on this drilling thing. Well, maybe. Despite the fact that additional drilling as a means to lower gas prices makes no logical sense, the problem is that the moratorium on offshore areas needs to be reaffirmed annually by Congress. It usually gets rolled over in a continuing resolution to keep the government working. But the Republicans have signaled their intention to block any effort to reinstitute the ban, and it's likely they have the votes, at least in the Senate, to do that. Plus, Speaker Pelosi is already announcing that there will be a bill with drilling. There is, however, a catch.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Saturday when the U.S. Congress returns next month from its summer recess, Democrats will offer legislation that could give oil companies drilling access to more offshore areas.

In the Democrats' weekly radio address, Pelosi of California said expanding drilling areas would be part of a broader bill which addresses other energy issues [...]

Pelosi said the legislation would require oil companies to pay billions of dollars in drilling royalties, which would be invested in clean energy resources.

Democrats also want to release supplies from the U.S. emergency oil stockpile to help lower gasoline prices, increase drilling in an Alaskan oil reserve that is already open to exploration and require utilities to generate a portion of their electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind energy.

In addition, Pelosi said, the legislation would seek to rein in excessive energy market speculation that many U.S. lawmakers blame for running up crude oil and gasoline prices.

"This comprehensive Democratic approach will ensure energy independence which is essential to our national security, will create millions of good paying jobs here at home in a new green economy, and will take major steps forward in addressing the global climate crisis," Pelosi said.

The gambit here is that Republicans will never back removing subsidies for oil companies, being then seen as frauds, but I don't even see that in this iteration of the bill. Of course, the bipartisan "Gang of 10" bill does include that aspect.

Even then, I don't see how Republicans suffer any more than normal from being in bed with Big Oil. They've won the opening round of the debate, and Democrats are negotiating with themselves. Meteor Blades explains the reality here:

There is a widespread – though far from universal view – that accepting the Gang's approach is the politically astute, expedient and smart thing to do. Undercut the GOP advantage on the drilling issue by yielding to the inevitable, as some have put it, and thereby inoculate Democrats on Election Day. A cheap bargain, the argumnet goes, because companies will never drill anyway or the new President can reverse the deal come January.

Thus, on the cusp of a new administration, after 27 years of lousy energy policies that have brought us to our current situation, there is a scurry to pass a cobbled-together energy policy – still not completely written – with just a couple of weeks of discussion. One final victory for a lame-duck administration run by oil men and their pals whose secret energy meetings on government time we are still not privy to. Odds are there will not be a reversal of this policy once passed.

Just one of the areas that deserves far more debate is, surprise, oil and gas leasing. When leases on private land pay royalties of 12% to 25%, why should taxpayers only receive 12% to 16%? What about decades of royalty underpayments on taxpayer-owned land and Indian tribal land and allotments? What about the 68 million acres already being leased but not being drilled? Why grant more oil-shale leases when the five current demonstration leases are years from producing commercially viable oil from a source whose promise of bonanza has failed three times in the past 120 years, bankrupting dozens of companies and soaking up hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies? [...]

As unlikely as is finding 60 votes in the Senate and 218 in the House to renew the ban, it's nothing compared with getting the 67 Senate votes and 290 House votes required to override a Bush veto. And if the ban is attached to a continuing resolution, then the question arises: Who wins the battle over drilling vs. everything else the government does?

No Social Security checks go out, Veterans' Administration hospitals start turning people away, and, of course, gas prices remain near $4. With three weeks to sort it all out, right in the middle of a watershed election campaign, who would really "pay a terrible price in November"?

The smart money says we're headed for another lame energy policy, not a far-sighted, planet-friendly, grandchildren-friendly, well-integrated, comprehensive package of proposals but a mish-mash of contradictory elements that nudges us into a different lane of the disastrous road we've been hurtling down since we took our first sip of Saudi crude six decades ago.

I think that's the most likely scenario. And it's not like you're going to get an honest rendering of this debate from a media, when their convention coverage is owned by Exxon Mobil, for example.

I think at this point I prefer the "praise the Lord" approach to the problem over anything Congress does. After all, prices have gone down 35 cents in the past month - prayer works!

(That's the other thing, nobody seems to be focusing on the fact that prices are way down, and it's because demand is down, no thanks to the politicians. If policies were put in place to encourage lower demand - investments in transit, telecommuting, flex hours, smarter urban planning - prices would go down vastly more than the "drill and hope" scenario. Why has not one Democrat made that argument in public?)

The Drilling Endgame

The Hill reports that Nancy Pelosi has become willing to accept a vote on offshore drilling. She's really following the lead of the presumptive Presidential nominee here.

Republicans, reacting to high gas prices, have demanded a vote on additional oil exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf, where drilling is currently blocked by a moratorium. Until now, Pelosi (D-Calif.) has resisted the idea as a “hoax.” But in an interview on CNN’s Larry King Live, she indicated that she was open to a vote.

“They have this thing that says drill offshore in the protected areas,” Pelosi said. “We can do that. We can have a vote on that.”
She indicated such a vote would have to be part of a larger package that included other policies, like releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which she said could bring down prices in a matter of days.

“But it has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and is not just a hoax on them,” Pelosi continued.

Here's the transcript. Staffers are claiming that this is not a change in position, but I agree with Stoller - Pelosi and Obama are setting a trap.

Here's Pelosi on Larry King Live.

King: Do you expect -- do you suspect the oil companies of having a lot of clout here, influence over the Republicans?

Pelosi: Of course. Yes, they rule. And that's what we'll find out.

And she is saying that a vote for drilling is possible, but only if it includes renewable energy standards, wind, solar, and biofuel incentives. And in all likelihood, the vote will include removing the subsidies for oil companies, which McCain will not do (he calls it raising taxes).

So basically Obama and Pelosi are going to try to put McCain and the Republicans in a box. They can have their drilling, but only if oil company subsidies are removed to pay for renewable energy programs for the long-term.

Their hope is that the public can see Exxon John and the Republicans unwilling to do anything for the future energy needs of the planet but drilling. Even this highly misleading Fred Hiatt op-ed acknowledges that drilling won't help with gas prices and won't be sufficient without strong investments in alternative energy. So they're hoping that this can be a teachable moment in November.



I'm a little skeptical, just because Republicans are masters of the hissy fit and they'll shriek that Pelosi is playing games and they won't allow a clean shot. Plus McCain won't show up to vote, which might be helpful in its own right, but doesn't hammer the point home. I don't have a lot of faith in Democrats to carry this message off, even though it should work in theory.

As for the SPR, I would agree to releasing some of it, but of course that's just a delay, because Republicans will then argue that we need more drilling to replenish the SPR. So that's not really an answer.

Republican House candidates are starting to use the drilling messaging, so if you're going to embarrass the GOP as whores to Big Oil, do it soon.

UPDATE: This of course won't work because, in the words of Michelle Bachmann, Jesus saved the planet, not Nancy Pelosi.

This woman is in the United States Congress.

UPDATE II: Calling Exxon John out on his position on wind energy is a good start. He actually has the nerve to feature wind turbines in his ads despite opposing tax breaks for wind developers in the latest farm bill.