July 23, 2015
Finally
I wrote here a while back about the Galleon being built in San Diego. Well they finally got it out of the build site and have it a a ship yard so the finishing details can be done. They ended up putting it on a barge (not easy) and carting it across the bay. The original idea was to truck it down the road and launch it by crane at a dock. When that became undo-able they where going to launch it by sliding it down a old sea plane ramp. That wasn't going to work so they had to move to the barge. It increased the cost by $1.5 million...
Oh... Makes sense now....
Why Is Greece Cutting Pensions Instead of Its Massive Military Budget?
By Sam Ross-Brown
The Greek Parliament is set to vote today on reforms required for opening negotiations on a badly needed 86 billion euro bailout. Those reforms mostly include tax increases and budget cuts—conditions now painfully familiar to millions of Greeks who have already suffered through more than five years of crushing austerity.
But one part of the Greek budget that’s unlikely to be seriously cut back is defense. Which is a shame, because unlike pensions or fuel subsidies, it’s one area the government could easily afford to trim. Since the mid-1970s, in fact, and right through the last five years of fiscal crisis, Greek military spending as a percentage of GDP has been the highest among EU or NATO countries (aside from the U.S.).
That’s right: The nation at the heart of the Eurozone’s existential crisis, an economy that’s contracted by a full 25 percent since 2009 and has suffered Great Depression-level unemployment for the past five years, also has the continent’s biggest military budget. And it’s not just the budget itself. Despite participating in little more than peacekeeping operations in recent decades, Greece has the highest ratio of military personnel to population in Europe. And to this day, Greece’s 1,300-strong inventory of tanks is twice the number of the United Kingdom.
Why the massive military? Since the end of Greece’s military junta in the mid-’70s successive governments in Athens have justified the large defense budget as a safeguard against neighboring Turkey, with which Greece has fought numerous wars throughout its history. But more recently that argument has come to make less and less sense. After all, since 1952, both countries have been members of NATO, and thus bound by treaty to come to the other’s defense. And in the late 1990s when Turkey unsuccessfully attempted to join the EU, Greece’s then-Foreign Minister George Papandreou offered critical support.
But even stranger is the fact Germany has been one of Greece’s leading suppliers of arms right through the last five years. As Helena Smith reports for The Guardian, German-made weapons account for more than a quarter of Greek arms imports. Despite Germany’s critical role in demanding round after round of harsh austerity, Greece has long been its largest market for weaponry.
To be fair, Greece’s defense budget hasn’t totally escaped cuts during the crisis. Since 2009, Greece has reduced its military spending by a full 54 percent, and while that’s significant, defense still accounts for 2.4 percent of Greece’s GDP—higher than Britain, Germany, or France, all nations that, unlike Greece, have seen major combat within the last two decades. In other words, the cuts since 2009 have moved the share of Greece’s defense spending from more than 3 percent of its economy to around 2.4 percent (higher than all Eurozone nations, but just below the Pentagon).
What’s more, it seems unlikely that defense cuts will be allowed to go much further. A few weeks ago, as Greece faced enormous pressure to once again cut its pension program, the European Commission came up with a compromise. If Greece slashed its military budget by 400 million euros, it could defer the pension cut. But the International Monetary Fund reportedly balked at the proposal, and the deal didn’t go through. Greeks braced themselves for another round of deep pension cuts and Greece’s military budget—enormous for the size of the country—remained unscathed. In fact, NATO recently estimated that instead of shrinking, Greece’s defense budget may actually increase over the next year.
For the past five years, ordinary Greeks have overwhelmingly paid the price for their government’s financial misdeeds. It’s time Greece’s defense budget shares some of that pain.
By Sam Ross-Brown
The Greek Parliament is set to vote today on reforms required for opening negotiations on a badly needed 86 billion euro bailout. Those reforms mostly include tax increases and budget cuts—conditions now painfully familiar to millions of Greeks who have already suffered through more than five years of crushing austerity.
But one part of the Greek budget that’s unlikely to be seriously cut back is defense. Which is a shame, because unlike pensions or fuel subsidies, it’s one area the government could easily afford to trim. Since the mid-1970s, in fact, and right through the last five years of fiscal crisis, Greek military spending as a percentage of GDP has been the highest among EU or NATO countries (aside from the U.S.).
That’s right: The nation at the heart of the Eurozone’s existential crisis, an economy that’s contracted by a full 25 percent since 2009 and has suffered Great Depression-level unemployment for the past five years, also has the continent’s biggest military budget. And it’s not just the budget itself. Despite participating in little more than peacekeeping operations in recent decades, Greece has the highest ratio of military personnel to population in Europe. And to this day, Greece’s 1,300-strong inventory of tanks is twice the number of the United Kingdom.
Why the massive military? Since the end of Greece’s military junta in the mid-’70s successive governments in Athens have justified the large defense budget as a safeguard against neighboring Turkey, with which Greece has fought numerous wars throughout its history. But more recently that argument has come to make less and less sense. After all, since 1952, both countries have been members of NATO, and thus bound by treaty to come to the other’s defense. And in the late 1990s when Turkey unsuccessfully attempted to join the EU, Greece’s then-Foreign Minister George Papandreou offered critical support.
But even stranger is the fact Germany has been one of Greece’s leading suppliers of arms right through the last five years. As Helena Smith reports for The Guardian, German-made weapons account for more than a quarter of Greek arms imports. Despite Germany’s critical role in demanding round after round of harsh austerity, Greece has long been its largest market for weaponry.
To be fair, Greece’s defense budget hasn’t totally escaped cuts during the crisis. Since 2009, Greece has reduced its military spending by a full 54 percent, and while that’s significant, defense still accounts for 2.4 percent of Greece’s GDP—higher than Britain, Germany, or France, all nations that, unlike Greece, have seen major combat within the last two decades. In other words, the cuts since 2009 have moved the share of Greece’s defense spending from more than 3 percent of its economy to around 2.4 percent (higher than all Eurozone nations, but just below the Pentagon).
What’s more, it seems unlikely that defense cuts will be allowed to go much further. A few weeks ago, as Greece faced enormous pressure to once again cut its pension program, the European Commission came up with a compromise. If Greece slashed its military budget by 400 million euros, it could defer the pension cut. But the International Monetary Fund reportedly balked at the proposal, and the deal didn’t go through. Greeks braced themselves for another round of deep pension cuts and Greece’s military budget—enormous for the size of the country—remained unscathed. In fact, NATO recently estimated that instead of shrinking, Greece’s defense budget may actually increase over the next year.
For the past five years, ordinary Greeks have overwhelmingly paid the price for their government’s financial misdeeds. It’s time Greece’s defense budget shares some of that pain.
Hiding all that money...
Where Candidates Stash Their Cash
Republican presidential candidates love to park their campaign money at a Virginia bank with one branch.
By Phil_Mattingly
Chain Bridge Bank’s single location is next to a wine store and a café on the ground floor of a luxury condo building in suburban McLean, Va., about a half-hour outside downtown Washington. It looks like any small-town bank. Tellers keep bowls of candy at their windows, and staff members talk to customers about no-fee checking accounts. But right now, Chain Bridge, which has about 40 employees, is responsible for more of the hundreds of millions of dollars flooding into the 2016 presidential race than any other bank in the country.
According to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Chain Bridge is the sole bank serving Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, which reported raising $11.4 million as of June 30, and his allied super-PAC, Right to Rise, which says it’s raised $103 million so far. Donald Trump’s campaign banks at Chain Bridge, and it’s listed as the primary financial institution for the campaigns of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and former Texas Governor Rick Perry. It’s also the only bank used by super-PACs supporting neurosurgeon and author Ben Carson, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, former technology executive Carly Fiorina, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, all Republicans.
Founded in 2007, Chain Bridge served John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008 and Mitt Romney’s in 2012. House Speaker John Boehner keeps fundraising accounts there; so does the Republican National Committee. It’s also served political action committees for Altria Group, the National Association of Convenience Stores, and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. “The largest issue that we would always have with people is that they’d be like, ‘Why would we use this Podunk little bank in McLean, Virginia?’ ” says Bradley Crate, Romney’s 2012 chief financial officer. He routinely refers clients of his consulting firm Red Curve Solutions to the bank, including both Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Trump. Chain Bridge offers services tailored to the idiosyncrasies of campaigns, which deposit and then spend enormous sums quickly, with no credit history to lean on. “I know I can call my contacts at Chain Bridge Bank and have an account open in like 15 minutes,” Crate says. “If you go to a much larger bank, you have a bureaucracy you have to deal with.”
The bank requires employees to list cell phone numbers on their business cards so clients can reach them after hours. It will greenlight credit cards immediately for campaign staffers scattered across the country without waiting for credit checks, and it will let campaigns make large wire transfers as soon as their accounts are open. It will also send and receive wire transfers until the Federal Reserve window closes, usually around 5 p.m.—more than two hours later than most banks. That extra time can make a difference. “If you’re a presidential campaign and you need to be up on the air in Iowa tonight, then you need your wire to go to television stations in Des Moines this afternoon,” says Peter Fitzgerald, the bank’s founder and chairman. “That’s a big deal for campaigns.”
Fitzgerald knows that from experience. A Republican, he was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1992 and to the U.S. Senate in 1998. He declined to run for a second term, and in 2004 his seat was won by Barack Obama. Fitzgerald, the scion of an Illinois banking family, remained in northern Virginia and opened Chain Bridge—named for a nearby Potomac River crossing—with $18.2 million in capital, about half of it from outside investors and half from his family wealth.
Chain Bridge initially focused on plain-vanilla customers, building deposits and making safe loans. Its shift to serving campaigns was an accidental byproduct of that cautious strategy. As the financial crisis developed in the summer of 2008, and larger banks showed signs of distress, compliance consultants working for McCain began looking for a haven for his campaign cash. The cash was then with Wachovia, which was having trouble borrowing enough money to fund daily operations—a problem for the campaign, which had to be able to withdraw millions on short notice to buy ads or pay canvassers.
McCain had been friendly with Fitzgerald in the Senate, and his team looked at Chain Bridge as an alternative. The bank was small, with just $62 million in deposits, but solid: It had no subprime mortgages on its books and didn’t rely on borrowing to fund its operations. The campaign made the switch. By October, Chain Bridge’s deposits had doubled to $123 million, according to FDIC filings. “It really is by happenstance that it all started,” Fitzgerald says.
Other banks have made inroads into the campaign market. BB&T, a Southeastern regional bank with headquarters in Winston-Salem, N.C., holds campaign accounts for Republicans Ted Cruz, George Pataki, Carson, Fiorina, Graham, and Rubio. (Its former president, John Allison, became president of the libertarian Cato Institute.) Some Democratic candidates also favor small banks—Bernie Sanders is at the People’s United Bank in Burlington, Vt.; both Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley have accounts at Amalgamated Bank, founded in 1923 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in New York. The largest majority union-owned bank in the U.S., it also does business with the Democratic National Committee and other partisan groups.
None are as dependent on their political business as Chain Bridge. Its deposits tend to swell in election years and dissipate as soon as ballots are cast. Its 2013 annual report made reference to the phenomenon to explain one reason its earnings fell 3 percent that year: “Average earning assets in 2012 were inflated due to seasonal deposit balances.” The bank’s recovery comes earlier and earlier with each campaign cycle. In the fourth quarter of 2014, deposits fell 13 percent. By March the bank had more deposits and had grown larger by assets than at any point in its history. “It’s the rise of the super-PACs,” says Fitzgerald, who was one of only a dozen Senate Republicans to vote in favor of McCain’s 2002 campaign finance reform. Co-authored with former Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, the legislation barred corporations and wealthy individuals from making large contributions to party committees.
The Supreme Court upended the McCain-Feingold law with its 2010 Citizens United ruling, which allowed unlimited donations to super PACs, as long as they don’t coordinate with candidates. “It’s not even a presidential year yet, and they’re out there raising furiously,” Fitzgerald says. Republican candidates and outside groups raised more than $293 million in the first half of 2015. That doesn’t include figures for all super-PACs, which have until the end of July to report their fundraising totals, or most nonprofit issue-advocacy entities, which don’t have to reveal fundraising at all.
Chain Bridge reported $369 million in deposits at the end of the first quarter of 2015. That includes the proceeds of Bush’s whirlwind fundraising tour in the early months of the year for Right to Rise but doesn’t reflect money raised by the official Bush campaign or recent fundraising by other candidates and super-PACs. (Fitzgerald is a Bush supporter, a fact he says he’s made clear to his other clients.)
The bank puts most of the money it receives from campaigns into its excess reserves account at the Fed, where it earns interest. “Knowing that campaigns might need to take money out at any time, we more or less have to keep the deposits in cash,” Fitzgerald says. The bank profits from the spread between the interest it earns from the Fed and what it pays depositors—lately about a quarter of a percentage point.
To diversify its portfolio, the bank has in recent years made a concerted effort to expand its mortgage lending business. It also serves medical businesses in and around McLean. But Fitzgerald’s commitment to serving his campaign business well has made Chain Bridge the preferred destination for compliance specialists whose job is to refer new candidates to banks. “They made my life easier,” says Red Curve’s Crate, who estimates he’s opened hundreds of campaign accounts at the bank. “They understood what my end goal was, and they were happy to help me get to that goal.”
Republican presidential candidates love to park their campaign money at a Virginia bank with one branch.
By Phil_Mattingly
Chain Bridge Bank’s single location is next to a wine store and a café on the ground floor of a luxury condo building in suburban McLean, Va., about a half-hour outside downtown Washington. It looks like any small-town bank. Tellers keep bowls of candy at their windows, and staff members talk to customers about no-fee checking accounts. But right now, Chain Bridge, which has about 40 employees, is responsible for more of the hundreds of millions of dollars flooding into the 2016 presidential race than any other bank in the country.
According to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Chain Bridge is the sole bank serving Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, which reported raising $11.4 million as of June 30, and his allied super-PAC, Right to Rise, which says it’s raised $103 million so far. Donald Trump’s campaign banks at Chain Bridge, and it’s listed as the primary financial institution for the campaigns of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and former Texas Governor Rick Perry. It’s also the only bank used by super-PACs supporting neurosurgeon and author Ben Carson, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, former technology executive Carly Fiorina, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, all Republicans.
Founded in 2007, Chain Bridge served John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008 and Mitt Romney’s in 2012. House Speaker John Boehner keeps fundraising accounts there; so does the Republican National Committee. It’s also served political action committees for Altria Group, the National Association of Convenience Stores, and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. “The largest issue that we would always have with people is that they’d be like, ‘Why would we use this Podunk little bank in McLean, Virginia?’ ” says Bradley Crate, Romney’s 2012 chief financial officer. He routinely refers clients of his consulting firm Red Curve Solutions to the bank, including both Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Trump. Chain Bridge offers services tailored to the idiosyncrasies of campaigns, which deposit and then spend enormous sums quickly, with no credit history to lean on. “I know I can call my contacts at Chain Bridge Bank and have an account open in like 15 minutes,” Crate says. “If you go to a much larger bank, you have a bureaucracy you have to deal with.”
The bank requires employees to list cell phone numbers on their business cards so clients can reach them after hours. It will greenlight credit cards immediately for campaign staffers scattered across the country without waiting for credit checks, and it will let campaigns make large wire transfers as soon as their accounts are open. It will also send and receive wire transfers until the Federal Reserve window closes, usually around 5 p.m.—more than two hours later than most banks. That extra time can make a difference. “If you’re a presidential campaign and you need to be up on the air in Iowa tonight, then you need your wire to go to television stations in Des Moines this afternoon,” says Peter Fitzgerald, the bank’s founder and chairman. “That’s a big deal for campaigns.”
Fitzgerald knows that from experience. A Republican, he was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1992 and to the U.S. Senate in 1998. He declined to run for a second term, and in 2004 his seat was won by Barack Obama. Fitzgerald, the scion of an Illinois banking family, remained in northern Virginia and opened Chain Bridge—named for a nearby Potomac River crossing—with $18.2 million in capital, about half of it from outside investors and half from his family wealth.
Chain Bridge initially focused on plain-vanilla customers, building deposits and making safe loans. Its shift to serving campaigns was an accidental byproduct of that cautious strategy. As the financial crisis developed in the summer of 2008, and larger banks showed signs of distress, compliance consultants working for McCain began looking for a haven for his campaign cash. The cash was then with Wachovia, which was having trouble borrowing enough money to fund daily operations—a problem for the campaign, which had to be able to withdraw millions on short notice to buy ads or pay canvassers.
McCain had been friendly with Fitzgerald in the Senate, and his team looked at Chain Bridge as an alternative. The bank was small, with just $62 million in deposits, but solid: It had no subprime mortgages on its books and didn’t rely on borrowing to fund its operations. The campaign made the switch. By October, Chain Bridge’s deposits had doubled to $123 million, according to FDIC filings. “It really is by happenstance that it all started,” Fitzgerald says.
Other banks have made inroads into the campaign market. BB&T, a Southeastern regional bank with headquarters in Winston-Salem, N.C., holds campaign accounts for Republicans Ted Cruz, George Pataki, Carson, Fiorina, Graham, and Rubio. (Its former president, John Allison, became president of the libertarian Cato Institute.) Some Democratic candidates also favor small banks—Bernie Sanders is at the People’s United Bank in Burlington, Vt.; both Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley have accounts at Amalgamated Bank, founded in 1923 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in New York. The largest majority union-owned bank in the U.S., it also does business with the Democratic National Committee and other partisan groups.
None are as dependent on their political business as Chain Bridge. Its deposits tend to swell in election years and dissipate as soon as ballots are cast. Its 2013 annual report made reference to the phenomenon to explain one reason its earnings fell 3 percent that year: “Average earning assets in 2012 were inflated due to seasonal deposit balances.” The bank’s recovery comes earlier and earlier with each campaign cycle. In the fourth quarter of 2014, deposits fell 13 percent. By March the bank had more deposits and had grown larger by assets than at any point in its history. “It’s the rise of the super-PACs,” says Fitzgerald, who was one of only a dozen Senate Republicans to vote in favor of McCain’s 2002 campaign finance reform. Co-authored with former Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, the legislation barred corporations and wealthy individuals from making large contributions to party committees.
The Supreme Court upended the McCain-Feingold law with its 2010 Citizens United ruling, which allowed unlimited donations to super PACs, as long as they don’t coordinate with candidates. “It’s not even a presidential year yet, and they’re out there raising furiously,” Fitzgerald says. Republican candidates and outside groups raised more than $293 million in the first half of 2015. That doesn’t include figures for all super-PACs, which have until the end of July to report their fundraising totals, or most nonprofit issue-advocacy entities, which don’t have to reveal fundraising at all.
Chain Bridge reported $369 million in deposits at the end of the first quarter of 2015. That includes the proceeds of Bush’s whirlwind fundraising tour in the early months of the year for Right to Rise but doesn’t reflect money raised by the official Bush campaign or recent fundraising by other candidates and super-PACs. (Fitzgerald is a Bush supporter, a fact he says he’s made clear to his other clients.)
The bank puts most of the money it receives from campaigns into its excess reserves account at the Fed, where it earns interest. “Knowing that campaigns might need to take money out at any time, we more or less have to keep the deposits in cash,” Fitzgerald says. The bank profits from the spread between the interest it earns from the Fed and what it pays depositors—lately about a quarter of a percentage point.
To diversify its portfolio, the bank has in recent years made a concerted effort to expand its mortgage lending business. It also serves medical businesses in and around McLean. But Fitzgerald’s commitment to serving his campaign business well has made Chain Bridge the preferred destination for compliance specialists whose job is to refer new candidates to banks. “They made my life easier,” says Red Curve’s Crate, who estimates he’s opened hundreds of campaign accounts at the bank. “They understood what my end goal was, and they were happy to help me get to that goal.”
How ALEC wants to fuck your life....
Hot Topics at ALEC's 2015 Meeting in San Diego
by Brendan Fischer
This week, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or "ALEC," will bring together hundreds of corporate lobbyists with state and local politicians at a posh hotel in San Diego for the group's annual meeting.
ALEC alum Scott Walker, who has signed over 20 ALEC bills into law, will address this month's meeting, as well as Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, who participated in ALEC meetings before he joined the U.S. Senate. Community groups are planning on bringing a little transparency to the proceedings, by welcoming the candidates and ALEC participants on July 22.
ALEC has had a mixed year. Over a dozen companies, including tech giants Google and Facebook, stopped funding the group over its role in promoting climate change denial, yet after the 2014 elections gave Republicans control of 68 out of 98 state legislative bodies, some states have had few impediments to the corporate-friendly legislation that ALEC peddles. For example, in just the first half of 2015, Wisconsin became a "right to work" state and repealed the prevailing wage; Michigan blocked local control over minimum wage and paid sick days; and Texas banned cities from regulating fracking.
A look at the San Diego ALEC agenda tells us more about what ALEC has planned for 2015 and beyond.
Attacking Federal Efforts to Rein in Carbon Pollution
Even though California is suffering from a historic drought, the climate change deniers on the Environment and Agriculture Task Force will be working on new ways to stymie action addressing carbon emissions.
In recent years, ALEC has targeted the Environmental Protection Agency's "Clean Power Plan," which is a set of rules limiting carbon dioxide pollution from coal plants. At the behest of its funders like Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and American Electric Power, ALEC has been organizing a state-level campaign against the rules: the group organized legislators to press their state attorneys general into joining litigation backed by the energy industry that challenges the regulations, adopted a model resolution attacking the plan, and last December adopted a model bill that would create new hurdles for the Plan's implementation.
At this month's meeting, the Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force--which is chaired by American Electric Power-- will consider a "State Power Accountability and Reliability Charter (SPARC)," which seeks to undermine the Clean Power Plan by declaring that state agencies cannot implement it. And, the task force's "Energy Subcommittee" will hold a discussion on "State Responses to EPA’s Proposed Clean Power Plan."
Another model bill on the ALEC agenda is the "Environmental Impact Litigation Act," which effectively allows corporate interests to hire a state's Department of Justice as their own private attorneys. The bill creates a corporate-backed fund for states to sue over federal environmental laws--such as the EPA's Clean Power Plan--guided by an "environmental impact litigation advisory committee" made up of political appointees and representatives of "individuals representing agriculture and energy trade commissions."
Undermining Renewable Energy
ALEC will also double-down on its attacks on rooftop solar and renewable energy.
For the last few years, ALEC and funders like Edison Electric Energy have promoted bills to repeal state Renewable Portfolio Standards, which require utilities to provide some power from renewable sources. Despite support from the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity, ALEC has had limited success in pushing these bills into law, so the group is looking for new ways to undermine renewable standards.
The latest effort is called an "Act Providing Incentives for Carbon Reduction Investments." The industry-friendly bill would free utilities from the requirement that they produce more energy from renewable sources, as long as they claim to make "carbon reduction investments"--which includes controversial programs like carbon sequestration, or campaigns to encourage consumers to reduce energy use. This would undermine the purpose of the renewable standards, which is to promote a shift to renewable energy.
Thwarting Rooftop Solar
Solar will also be on the agenda. ALEC has tried in a variety of ways to reduce incentives for individuals and businesses to build rooftop solar panels by raising the costs. Over the last few years, ALEC and its utility industry funders have promoted bills to eliminate "net metering," which gives solar users a credit for excess energy they feed back into the grid, and have been behind efforts to impose a surcharge on rooftop solar users. With few exceptions, these efforts have failed, thanks to strong support for solar from conservatives who like the self-sufficiency that rooftop solar provides, and the fact that in many states the solar industry is creating manufacturing and construction jobs.
In San Diego, ALEC will consider a proposal called a "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" that aims to prop-up the monopolies enjoyed by traditional utilities and oppose direct-to-consumer solar sales. It will be coupled with a presentation called "Consumer Protection Concerns Surround Rooftop Solar Model Policy." In many states, solar developers are allowed to install panels on a customer's home or business for free, then sell the power directly to the consumer, rather than through a monopoly utility provider like Peabody Energy.
Direct-to-consumer energy sales that bypass heavily-regulated monopoly utilities might be viewed as the sort of "market disruption" that free market adherents claim to support. After all, ALEC has celebrated the emergence of ride-sharing companies like Uber because they disrupt taxi monopolies and allow direct-to-consumer ride sales.
The key difference is that ALEC is bankrolled by utility companies. ALEC funders like Peabody Energy, Duke Energy, and Murray Energy are not pleased about the threat to profits posed by direct-to-consumer solar, so therefore it must be crushed, free market principles be damned. Incredibly, the "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" declares that direct-to-consumer solar is "antithetical to free markets."
The proposal appears to come from the climate change deniers at the Heartland Institute.
"Beepocalypse Not"
At this meeting, ALEC is denying more than climate change. It also is apparently denying the mass die-off of bees, which threatens food supplies--two-thirds of crops require bee pollination--and which scientists have linked to type of insecticide produced by ALEC member Bayer and other companies. Until recently, Bayer had a representative on ALEC's corporate board and has been listed as the ALEC corporate co-chair in states like Massachusetts, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Texas.
Bayer has been actively pushing back on the notion that its products contribute to a bee colony collapse. According to a report from Friends of the Earth, Bayer recently launched a "Bee Care Tour” as well as a children’s book "in which a friendly neighborhood beekeeper tells young Toby that the bees are getting sick, but 'not to worry' it's just a problem with mites, and there is special medicine to make bees healthy"--medicine that Bayer produces, of course.
At this month's ALEC meeting, bee die-off denialists took a clumsy stab at being clever: in an apparent reference to "Apocalypse Now" (or perhaps Wayne's World), they titled their presentation, "'Beepocalypse Not."
Preemption Hypocrisy
ALEC's new offshoot focused on local government, the American City County Exchange (ACCE), will also meet in San Diego.
Local democracy has led to some significant policy wins in recent years, with cities like Philadelphia guaranteeing workers paid sick days, and places like Denton, Texas banning fracking. ALEC's response to cities and counties acting as laboratories of democracy has traditionally been to crush it, through state "preemption" laws that prohibit local governments from raising the minimum wage, or regulating GMOs, or building municipal broadband.
With ACCE, ALEC and its corporate backers are taking the fight directly to the local level, urging city and county officials on the one hand to give up their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents, and on the other to push policy measures to advance corporate interests.
The biggest proactive ACCE initiative is a push for local right to work laws. In the months following a local right to work workshop at ACCE’s meeting last December, twelve Kentucky counties have enacted the anti-union measures, and similar proposals have been floated in states like Illinois and Pennsylvania. But enacting right to work on the local level likely violates federal law, so groups like the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the state Chamber of Commerce are bankrolling the legal defense of counties that get sued.
Local right to work is again on the ACCE agenda for this month's meeting, with the group expected to officially adopt a Local Right to Work model bill.
It will also hold a workshop aimed a propping up another ACCE funder, the payday loan industry: the presentation is titled "Payday Loans; 'Local Free Market Solutions for a Difficult Policy Problem.'”
Besides pushing policy measures that advance the interests of ACCE's funders, ACCE is also urging local electeds to accept state preemption laws.
In a workshop titled “Understanding State Preemption Laws," ALEC and ACCE will pitch local officials on why they should let state legislatures steamroll their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents. The workshop will be moderated by Libby Szabo, a former Colorado state legislator and ALEC state chair who is now a local official: she resigned from the state legislature just two months after winning reelection to take a county commissioner appointment, leading to charges from the editorial board of the conservative Denver Post that she was "thumbing her nose at voters."
The lesson here is that ALEC supports local control when it advances the interests of its funders, yet actively works to undermine local democracy when it threatens corporate profits.
ALEC's hypocrisy around the idea "government that is closest to the people governs best" isn't just limited to city-state relations. Even though ALEC has fought federal policies like healthcare reform and the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon emissions under the guise of “state’s rights,” at this month's meeting it will push policies that run contrary even to that notion. Here again, corporate profits trump anything resembling principles.
ALEC will hold a workshop telling state legislators that they should embrace federal preemption of state chemical regulation, which happens to benefit ALEC funders like the American Chemistry Council. The "Environmental Health and Regulation Subcommittee" will hold a presentation titled "Supporting Chemical Regulation Preemption Supports Manufacturing," where legislators will apparently be told it is just swell that the federal Toxic Substances Control Act will prohibit states from enacting tougher chemical regulations.
And, the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will consider a proposed "Resolution Urging Congress to Eliminate Discriminatory State and Local Taxes on Automobile Renters," which calls on Congress to preempt discriminatory state and local taxes on car rentals. It is hard to imagine a more blatant piece of corporate-friendly legislation, yet ALEC continues to insist that only legislators can propose model bills at its meetings.
Amending the Constitution
In recent years, one of ALEC's top priorities has been to add a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And it will be a major focus of this month's meeting.
A balanced budget amendment is an idea that has been bouncing around for decades--even though it would cripple the federal government's ability to spend on earned benefit programs like Social Security, and block Congress from responding to economic downturns or natural disasters--but what is unique about ALEC's push is that they are trying to do it via an Article V Constitutional Convention.
Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths). Although this seems like a tall order, in the past year over a dozen states have passed resolutions calling for an Article V convention, adding to at least twelve other states that enacted resolutions years ago. The proposal has been supported by Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).
Key to the Article V push has been the "Jeffersonian Project," the 501(c)(4) group that ALEC formed in 2013 amidst complaints from Common Cause and CMD that ALEC was violating its 501(c)(3) charitable status by engaging in excessive lobbying. In order to deflect allegations of lobbying, the "Jeffersonian Project" is now used to urge legislators to pass ALEC model legislation, an activity that ALEC used to do directly.
This year, the Article V strategy dominates the agenda of ALEC's Task Force on Federalism and International Relations, with five presentations and two pieces of draft legislation. The task force's private sector chair is a representative of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group founded by Grover Norquist. And, there will be two separate ALEC-wide policy workshops on the Article V effort, as well as a reception and dinner titled "States Constitutionally Saving 'The American Dream' Summit Via Balanced Budget Amendment Convention."
Throughout U.S. history, the Constitution has only been amended through a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress on a specific amendment, which is then ratified by two-thirds of state legislatures. In contrast, the Article V strategy triggers a full constitutional convention, and it is unclear whether the delegates could be confined to only passing one amendment. This fear of a "runaway convention" has led critics on both the right and left to oppose the Article V strategy.
ALEC has tried to quell these fears through a companion bill declaring that delegates to a convention may not vote on other issues besides a balanced budget amendment. Yet, at least some amendment supporters want to open up the Article V process and amend the constitution to address an array of issues, like limiting the Commerce Clause, banning international law in the U.S., and placing term limits on the Supreme Court, among other items from a right-wing wishlist.
The key driver of the broader Article V amendment effort is Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), a group led by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler, and whose board includes Wisconsinite Eric O'Keefe. CSG, which receives most of its funding through foundations such as DonorsTrust that cloak their donors' identities, has also backed multiple lawsuits related to the "John Doe" investigation into coordination between Governor Walker's campaign and Wisconsin Club for Growth, where O'Keefe is a director.
CSG's Convention of States effort has been endorsed by Mike Huckabee (who will be addressing the ALEC conference) and also attracted support from the likes of Glenn Beck. CSG's "Compact for America" appears on the ALEC agenda with both a presentation and a model bill, and Meckler will also address the conference on July 24.
Another group pushing an Article V amendment is Compact for America, a Texas-based group advised by Nick Dranias, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, and chaired by former Goldwater chair Thomas C. Patterson. This group also is promoting a model bill at the ALEC meeting, and will hold a full breakout session on July 23.
Wisconsin State Rep. Chris Taylor attended a session on ALEC's Article V plans at the group's 2013 conference. When she expressed hesitation that the public would support the effort, she was told, "You really don’t need people to do this. You just need control over the legislature and you need money, and we have both."
Continuing to Fight "Obamacare"
ALEC has long tried to undermine the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act. It produced the "State Legislators' Guide to Repealing Obamacare," and has promoted bills to try blocking the individual mandate in states, and to prohibit insurers from providing subsidies to low-income residents, and to reject the insurance “exchanges” where individuals can buy insurance (which would have had serious repercussions if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled differently in King v. Burwell).
Despite repeated failures to overturn the Affordable Care Act through Congress and the courts, ALEC is continuing to fight the law through the states.
At this month's meeting, the Health and Human Services Task Force will consider a bill to limit expansion of Medicaid benefits within the state, and the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will have a resolution on the purported negative impact of Medicaid expansion under the healthcare law. The task force will also consider a resolution opposing federal "maintenance of effort" requirements, like those in Obamacare and also with education funding.
Fighting to Protect Dark Money
After spending hundreds of millions of undisclosed funds on state and federal elections, ALEC's corporate members will also demand that state legislators preserve their "right" to anonymously spend money on politics and buy influence in state legislatures.
A July 23 workshop titled "Dark Money Debate: What Lawmakers Need to Know about the First Amendment and Anonymous Political Speech" will promote the idea that transparency in elections is a bad thing. David Keating of the Center for Competitive Politics and Jon Riches of the Goldwater Institute are listed as presenters.
It is little surprise that corporate interests would peddle secrecy to the hundreds of Republican state legislators at ALEC.
ALEC's funders, like the billionaire Koch brothers, have spent millions in "dark money"--electoral spending that evades donor disclosure laws--in recent years, secret spending which has increased exponentially since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision.
Disclosure of electoral spending has widespread support among the public, and it still has support among many Republican state lawmakers. ALEC, it seems, is trying to change that.
This isn't ALEC's first foray into this issue. Its 2010 "Resolution in Support of Citizens United" opposes both the disclosure and shareholder participation endorsed by the majority in Citizens United. In 2011, ALEC lobbied legislators in states like New York urging them to reject a proposal requiring corporations get shareholder approval for political spending. And at ALEC's meeting last December, ALEC held a similarly themed workshop called "Playing the Shame Game: A Campaign that Threatens Corporate Free Speech."
by Brendan Fischer
This week, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or "ALEC," will bring together hundreds of corporate lobbyists with state and local politicians at a posh hotel in San Diego for the group's annual meeting.
ALEC alum Scott Walker, who has signed over 20 ALEC bills into law, will address this month's meeting, as well as Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, who participated in ALEC meetings before he joined the U.S. Senate. Community groups are planning on bringing a little transparency to the proceedings, by welcoming the candidates and ALEC participants on July 22.
ALEC has had a mixed year. Over a dozen companies, including tech giants Google and Facebook, stopped funding the group over its role in promoting climate change denial, yet after the 2014 elections gave Republicans control of 68 out of 98 state legislative bodies, some states have had few impediments to the corporate-friendly legislation that ALEC peddles. For example, in just the first half of 2015, Wisconsin became a "right to work" state and repealed the prevailing wage; Michigan blocked local control over minimum wage and paid sick days; and Texas banned cities from regulating fracking.
A look at the San Diego ALEC agenda tells us more about what ALEC has planned for 2015 and beyond.
Attacking Federal Efforts to Rein in Carbon Pollution
Even though California is suffering from a historic drought, the climate change deniers on the Environment and Agriculture Task Force will be working on new ways to stymie action addressing carbon emissions.
In recent years, ALEC has targeted the Environmental Protection Agency's "Clean Power Plan," which is a set of rules limiting carbon dioxide pollution from coal plants. At the behest of its funders like Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and American Electric Power, ALEC has been organizing a state-level campaign against the rules: the group organized legislators to press their state attorneys general into joining litigation backed by the energy industry that challenges the regulations, adopted a model resolution attacking the plan, and last December adopted a model bill that would create new hurdles for the Plan's implementation.
At this month's meeting, the Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force--which is chaired by American Electric Power-- will consider a "State Power Accountability and Reliability Charter (SPARC)," which seeks to undermine the Clean Power Plan by declaring that state agencies cannot implement it. And, the task force's "Energy Subcommittee" will hold a discussion on "State Responses to EPA’s Proposed Clean Power Plan."
Another model bill on the ALEC agenda is the "Environmental Impact Litigation Act," which effectively allows corporate interests to hire a state's Department of Justice as their own private attorneys. The bill creates a corporate-backed fund for states to sue over federal environmental laws--such as the EPA's Clean Power Plan--guided by an "environmental impact litigation advisory committee" made up of political appointees and representatives of "individuals representing agriculture and energy trade commissions."
Undermining Renewable Energy
ALEC will also double-down on its attacks on rooftop solar and renewable energy.
For the last few years, ALEC and funders like Edison Electric Energy have promoted bills to repeal state Renewable Portfolio Standards, which require utilities to provide some power from renewable sources. Despite support from the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity, ALEC has had limited success in pushing these bills into law, so the group is looking for new ways to undermine renewable standards.
The latest effort is called an "Act Providing Incentives for Carbon Reduction Investments." The industry-friendly bill would free utilities from the requirement that they produce more energy from renewable sources, as long as they claim to make "carbon reduction investments"--which includes controversial programs like carbon sequestration, or campaigns to encourage consumers to reduce energy use. This would undermine the purpose of the renewable standards, which is to promote a shift to renewable energy.
Thwarting Rooftop Solar
Solar will also be on the agenda. ALEC has tried in a variety of ways to reduce incentives for individuals and businesses to build rooftop solar panels by raising the costs. Over the last few years, ALEC and its utility industry funders have promoted bills to eliminate "net metering," which gives solar users a credit for excess energy they feed back into the grid, and have been behind efforts to impose a surcharge on rooftop solar users. With few exceptions, these efforts have failed, thanks to strong support for solar from conservatives who like the self-sufficiency that rooftop solar provides, and the fact that in many states the solar industry is creating manufacturing and construction jobs.
In San Diego, ALEC will consider a proposal called a "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" that aims to prop-up the monopolies enjoyed by traditional utilities and oppose direct-to-consumer solar sales. It will be coupled with a presentation called "Consumer Protection Concerns Surround Rooftop Solar Model Policy." In many states, solar developers are allowed to install panels on a customer's home or business for free, then sell the power directly to the consumer, rather than through a monopoly utility provider like Peabody Energy.
Direct-to-consumer energy sales that bypass heavily-regulated monopoly utilities might be viewed as the sort of "market disruption" that free market adherents claim to support. After all, ALEC has celebrated the emergence of ride-sharing companies like Uber because they disrupt taxi monopolies and allow direct-to-consumer ride sales.
The key difference is that ALEC is bankrolled by utility companies. ALEC funders like Peabody Energy, Duke Energy, and Murray Energy are not pleased about the threat to profits posed by direct-to-consumer solar, so therefore it must be crushed, free market principles be damned. Incredibly, the "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" declares that direct-to-consumer solar is "antithetical to free markets."
The proposal appears to come from the climate change deniers at the Heartland Institute.
"Beepocalypse Not"
At this meeting, ALEC is denying more than climate change. It also is apparently denying the mass die-off of bees, which threatens food supplies--two-thirds of crops require bee pollination--and which scientists have linked to type of insecticide produced by ALEC member Bayer and other companies. Until recently, Bayer had a representative on ALEC's corporate board and has been listed as the ALEC corporate co-chair in states like Massachusetts, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Texas.
Bayer has been actively pushing back on the notion that its products contribute to a bee colony collapse. According to a report from Friends of the Earth, Bayer recently launched a "Bee Care Tour” as well as a children’s book "in which a friendly neighborhood beekeeper tells young Toby that the bees are getting sick, but 'not to worry' it's just a problem with mites, and there is special medicine to make bees healthy"--medicine that Bayer produces, of course.
At this month's ALEC meeting, bee die-off denialists took a clumsy stab at being clever: in an apparent reference to "Apocalypse Now" (or perhaps Wayne's World), they titled their presentation, "'Beepocalypse Not."
Preemption Hypocrisy
ALEC's new offshoot focused on local government, the American City County Exchange (ACCE), will also meet in San Diego.
Local democracy has led to some significant policy wins in recent years, with cities like Philadelphia guaranteeing workers paid sick days, and places like Denton, Texas banning fracking. ALEC's response to cities and counties acting as laboratories of democracy has traditionally been to crush it, through state "preemption" laws that prohibit local governments from raising the minimum wage, or regulating GMOs, or building municipal broadband.
With ACCE, ALEC and its corporate backers are taking the fight directly to the local level, urging city and county officials on the one hand to give up their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents, and on the other to push policy measures to advance corporate interests.
The biggest proactive ACCE initiative is a push for local right to work laws. In the months following a local right to work workshop at ACCE’s meeting last December, twelve Kentucky counties have enacted the anti-union measures, and similar proposals have been floated in states like Illinois and Pennsylvania. But enacting right to work on the local level likely violates federal law, so groups like the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the state Chamber of Commerce are bankrolling the legal defense of counties that get sued.
Local right to work is again on the ACCE agenda for this month's meeting, with the group expected to officially adopt a Local Right to Work model bill.
It will also hold a workshop aimed a propping up another ACCE funder, the payday loan industry: the presentation is titled "Payday Loans; 'Local Free Market Solutions for a Difficult Policy Problem.'”
Besides pushing policy measures that advance the interests of ACCE's funders, ACCE is also urging local electeds to accept state preemption laws.
In a workshop titled “Understanding State Preemption Laws," ALEC and ACCE will pitch local officials on why they should let state legislatures steamroll their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents. The workshop will be moderated by Libby Szabo, a former Colorado state legislator and ALEC state chair who is now a local official: she resigned from the state legislature just two months after winning reelection to take a county commissioner appointment, leading to charges from the editorial board of the conservative Denver Post that she was "thumbing her nose at voters."
The lesson here is that ALEC supports local control when it advances the interests of its funders, yet actively works to undermine local democracy when it threatens corporate profits.
ALEC's hypocrisy around the idea "government that is closest to the people governs best" isn't just limited to city-state relations. Even though ALEC has fought federal policies like healthcare reform and the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon emissions under the guise of “state’s rights,” at this month's meeting it will push policies that run contrary even to that notion. Here again, corporate profits trump anything resembling principles.
ALEC will hold a workshop telling state legislators that they should embrace federal preemption of state chemical regulation, which happens to benefit ALEC funders like the American Chemistry Council. The "Environmental Health and Regulation Subcommittee" will hold a presentation titled "Supporting Chemical Regulation Preemption Supports Manufacturing," where legislators will apparently be told it is just swell that the federal Toxic Substances Control Act will prohibit states from enacting tougher chemical regulations.
And, the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will consider a proposed "Resolution Urging Congress to Eliminate Discriminatory State and Local Taxes on Automobile Renters," which calls on Congress to preempt discriminatory state and local taxes on car rentals. It is hard to imagine a more blatant piece of corporate-friendly legislation, yet ALEC continues to insist that only legislators can propose model bills at its meetings.
Amending the Constitution
In recent years, one of ALEC's top priorities has been to add a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And it will be a major focus of this month's meeting.
A balanced budget amendment is an idea that has been bouncing around for decades--even though it would cripple the federal government's ability to spend on earned benefit programs like Social Security, and block Congress from responding to economic downturns or natural disasters--but what is unique about ALEC's push is that they are trying to do it via an Article V Constitutional Convention.
Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths). Although this seems like a tall order, in the past year over a dozen states have passed resolutions calling for an Article V convention, adding to at least twelve other states that enacted resolutions years ago. The proposal has been supported by Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).
Key to the Article V push has been the "Jeffersonian Project," the 501(c)(4) group that ALEC formed in 2013 amidst complaints from Common Cause and CMD that ALEC was violating its 501(c)(3) charitable status by engaging in excessive lobbying. In order to deflect allegations of lobbying, the "Jeffersonian Project" is now used to urge legislators to pass ALEC model legislation, an activity that ALEC used to do directly.
This year, the Article V strategy dominates the agenda of ALEC's Task Force on Federalism and International Relations, with five presentations and two pieces of draft legislation. The task force's private sector chair is a representative of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group founded by Grover Norquist. And, there will be two separate ALEC-wide policy workshops on the Article V effort, as well as a reception and dinner titled "States Constitutionally Saving 'The American Dream' Summit Via Balanced Budget Amendment Convention."
Throughout U.S. history, the Constitution has only been amended through a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress on a specific amendment, which is then ratified by two-thirds of state legislatures. In contrast, the Article V strategy triggers a full constitutional convention, and it is unclear whether the delegates could be confined to only passing one amendment. This fear of a "runaway convention" has led critics on both the right and left to oppose the Article V strategy.
ALEC has tried to quell these fears through a companion bill declaring that delegates to a convention may not vote on other issues besides a balanced budget amendment. Yet, at least some amendment supporters want to open up the Article V process and amend the constitution to address an array of issues, like limiting the Commerce Clause, banning international law in the U.S., and placing term limits on the Supreme Court, among other items from a right-wing wishlist.
The key driver of the broader Article V amendment effort is Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), a group led by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler, and whose board includes Wisconsinite Eric O'Keefe. CSG, which receives most of its funding through foundations such as DonorsTrust that cloak their donors' identities, has also backed multiple lawsuits related to the "John Doe" investigation into coordination between Governor Walker's campaign and Wisconsin Club for Growth, where O'Keefe is a director.
CSG's Convention of States effort has been endorsed by Mike Huckabee (who will be addressing the ALEC conference) and also attracted support from the likes of Glenn Beck. CSG's "Compact for America" appears on the ALEC agenda with both a presentation and a model bill, and Meckler will also address the conference on July 24.
Another group pushing an Article V amendment is Compact for America, a Texas-based group advised by Nick Dranias, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, and chaired by former Goldwater chair Thomas C. Patterson. This group also is promoting a model bill at the ALEC meeting, and will hold a full breakout session on July 23.
Wisconsin State Rep. Chris Taylor attended a session on ALEC's Article V plans at the group's 2013 conference. When she expressed hesitation that the public would support the effort, she was told, "You really don’t need people to do this. You just need control over the legislature and you need money, and we have both."
Continuing to Fight "Obamacare"
ALEC has long tried to undermine the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act. It produced the "State Legislators' Guide to Repealing Obamacare," and has promoted bills to try blocking the individual mandate in states, and to prohibit insurers from providing subsidies to low-income residents, and to reject the insurance “exchanges” where individuals can buy insurance (which would have had serious repercussions if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled differently in King v. Burwell).
Despite repeated failures to overturn the Affordable Care Act through Congress and the courts, ALEC is continuing to fight the law through the states.
At this month's meeting, the Health and Human Services Task Force will consider a bill to limit expansion of Medicaid benefits within the state, and the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will have a resolution on the purported negative impact of Medicaid expansion under the healthcare law. The task force will also consider a resolution opposing federal "maintenance of effort" requirements, like those in Obamacare and also with education funding.
Fighting to Protect Dark Money
After spending hundreds of millions of undisclosed funds on state and federal elections, ALEC's corporate members will also demand that state legislators preserve their "right" to anonymously spend money on politics and buy influence in state legislatures.
A July 23 workshop titled "Dark Money Debate: What Lawmakers Need to Know about the First Amendment and Anonymous Political Speech" will promote the idea that transparency in elections is a bad thing. David Keating of the Center for Competitive Politics and Jon Riches of the Goldwater Institute are listed as presenters.
It is little surprise that corporate interests would peddle secrecy to the hundreds of Republican state legislators at ALEC.
ALEC's funders, like the billionaire Koch brothers, have spent millions in "dark money"--electoral spending that evades donor disclosure laws--in recent years, secret spending which has increased exponentially since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision.
Disclosure of electoral spending has widespread support among the public, and it still has support among many Republican state lawmakers. ALEC, it seems, is trying to change that.
This isn't ALEC's first foray into this issue. Its 2010 "Resolution in Support of Citizens United" opposes both the disclosure and shareholder participation endorsed by the majority in Citizens United. In 2011, ALEC lobbied legislators in states like New York urging them to reject a proposal requiring corporations get shareholder approval for political spending. And at ALEC's meeting last December, ALEC held a similarly themed workshop called "Playing the Shame Game: A Campaign that Threatens Corporate Free Speech."
What's Wrong...
ALEC Meeting Opens Window to What's Wrong With American Politics
From Common Cause
Most of what’s wrong with American politics today is on display from now through the weekend in a hotel in downtown San Diego, Common Cause said today.
“The annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), opening today, is a festival of closed-door deal-making by politicians, corporate executives and lobbyists,” said Common Cause President Miles Rapoport. “They gather to do the public’s business in private, fashioning legislation that undercuts the public interest in things like clean air and water, quality public schools, economic fairness and participatory democracy.
“And they do it all on the taxpayers’ dime. Every penny spent by corporations to cover the cost of legislator travel to the meeting, accommodations at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and entertainment will be tax-deductible because ALEC is classified as a “charity” for tax purposes. That’s wrong and it has to stop,” he said.
The ALEC meeting features appearances by Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker. Their speeches and some policy workshops will be open to media coverage but ALEC will continue to do its real work in private, Rapoport noted.
In ALEC’s task forces, lobbyists and elected officials sit side-by-side, out of public view, to discuss and then vote on ‘model’ legislation drafted by ALEC’s corporate members. ALEC’s legislative members take the approved bills back to their respective statehouses, in most cases hiding its ALEC roots and the drafting done with corporate lobbyists.
ALEC is the force behind the reckless drive by lawmakers in many states for a constitutional convention to pass an amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. It’s also largely responsible for the passage of hundreds of state laws that have weakened clean air and clean water protections, promoted privately-run and for-profit public schools and prisons, made it more difficult for citizens to vote, and eroded the bargaining rights of public workers.
Common Cause is among a number of organizations that have been involved for several years in highlighting ALEC’s activities. Public attention to the group has sparked an exodus by more than 100 of its corporate sponsors, including Walmart, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Google, and Facebook.
Common Cause partnered in assembling and submitting the original documents that first exposed ALEC and has filed a “whistleblower complaint” challenging ALEC’s tax-exempt status to the Internal Revenue Service. The complaint seeks damages and the payment of back taxes.
During the ALEC conference, Common Cause will sponsor a panel discussion on ALEC and the power of corporate money in politics at 6 p.m. PST on Thursday, July 23 at the Hilton San Diego Airport/Harbor Island, 1960 Harbor Island Drive in San Diego.
The panel will be moderated by Jay Riestenberg, a Common Cause research analyst who has done extensive work on ALEC’s activities. Speakers include State Representative Chris Taylor, D-WI; Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy; Diallo Brooks, director of Outreach and Partner Engagement at People For the American Way; Jane Carter, Labor Economist at AFSCME; Brant Olson, Campaign Manager at ClimateTruth.org, and Rey Lopez-Calderon, Executive Director of Common Cause Illinois.
From Common Cause
Most of what’s wrong with American politics today is on display from now through the weekend in a hotel in downtown San Diego, Common Cause said today.
“The annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), opening today, is a festival of closed-door deal-making by politicians, corporate executives and lobbyists,” said Common Cause President Miles Rapoport. “They gather to do the public’s business in private, fashioning legislation that undercuts the public interest in things like clean air and water, quality public schools, economic fairness and participatory democracy.
“And they do it all on the taxpayers’ dime. Every penny spent by corporations to cover the cost of legislator travel to the meeting, accommodations at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and entertainment will be tax-deductible because ALEC is classified as a “charity” for tax purposes. That’s wrong and it has to stop,” he said.
The ALEC meeting features appearances by Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker. Their speeches and some policy workshops will be open to media coverage but ALEC will continue to do its real work in private, Rapoport noted.
In ALEC’s task forces, lobbyists and elected officials sit side-by-side, out of public view, to discuss and then vote on ‘model’ legislation drafted by ALEC’s corporate members. ALEC’s legislative members take the approved bills back to their respective statehouses, in most cases hiding its ALEC roots and the drafting done with corporate lobbyists.
ALEC is the force behind the reckless drive by lawmakers in many states for a constitutional convention to pass an amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. It’s also largely responsible for the passage of hundreds of state laws that have weakened clean air and clean water protections, promoted privately-run and for-profit public schools and prisons, made it more difficult for citizens to vote, and eroded the bargaining rights of public workers.
Common Cause is among a number of organizations that have been involved for several years in highlighting ALEC’s activities. Public attention to the group has sparked an exodus by more than 100 of its corporate sponsors, including Walmart, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Google, and Facebook.
Common Cause partnered in assembling and submitting the original documents that first exposed ALEC and has filed a “whistleblower complaint” challenging ALEC’s tax-exempt status to the Internal Revenue Service. The complaint seeks damages and the payment of back taxes.
During the ALEC conference, Common Cause will sponsor a panel discussion on ALEC and the power of corporate money in politics at 6 p.m. PST on Thursday, July 23 at the Hilton San Diego Airport/Harbor Island, 1960 Harbor Island Drive in San Diego.
The panel will be moderated by Jay Riestenberg, a Common Cause research analyst who has done extensive work on ALEC’s activities. Speakers include State Representative Chris Taylor, D-WI; Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy; Diallo Brooks, director of Outreach and Partner Engagement at People For the American Way; Jane Carter, Labor Economist at AFSCME; Brant Olson, Campaign Manager at ClimateTruth.org, and Rey Lopez-Calderon, Executive Director of Common Cause Illinois.
Embarrassing....
Road Hazard: How the ‘Embarrassing’ Gas Tax Impasse Explains Washington
The main federal fund for roads and bridges runs at a deep deficit. If even red states can raise the gas tax, why can’t Congress?
by Alec MacGillis
In 1993, the Dow Jones industrial average was still well under 4,000, the best-selling car in the country was the Ford Taurus, and the average cost of a Major League Baseball ticket was under $10.
That was also the year that Congress last raised the federal tax on gasoline.
The gas tax pays most of the tab for America’s federal highway program; it’s what we rely on for new highways and for the bridge repairs that keep us safe. Those costs go up every year, but the tax remains stuck at 18.4 cents per gallon. In fact, it’s effectively going down: since it was last raised, those 18.4 cents have lost more than a third of their value to inflation, and at the same time drivers with fuel-efficient vehicles have been buying less gasoline, further reducing the federal take.
As a result, the main U.S. spending account for infrastructure has fallen deep in the red, and the gap gets worse every year. The government, through a series of funding tricks, keeps the Highway Trust Fund on life support with short-term emergency patches. The latest infusion expires at the end of the month, and the argument about how to fix it is coming to a head this week.
The uncertainty has frozen major projects around the country, from the widening of Route 1 in Delaware to the Kalispell bypass in Montana, while maintenance and repairs are long overdue on thousands of roads and bridges dangerously near the end of their expected life spans.
That Congress can’t fulfill such a basic purpose of government stands out as a signal example of Washington dysfunction. Unlike some other stalemates, though, this one can’t be blamed on special interests at loggerheads. Nearly all the lobbies that take an interest are in favor of simply increasing the tax — big business, the road builders, the unions, even the truckers. Lobbies that might oppose an increase, notably the oil industry, have invested relatively little in the debate.
Instead, it’s an example of those big decisions that get trapped in a kind of ideological crevasse. Because it’s a tax, raising it has been decreed out of bounds by a combination of anti-tax orthodoxy among conservative Republicans and a fear of political backlash that spans both parties.
Still, there may be a way out of the trap. A slew of states around the country — including some led by conservative Republicans — have managed to raise their state gas taxes to address the transportation burden without triggering the fury of taxpayers. The contrast is an unflattering one, says former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, a Democrat and a leading proselytizer for infrastructure spending.
“If the gas tax could be voted up or down on a secret ballot, it would get 285 yes votes in the House and 85 or 90 in the Senate,” says Rendell. “Everyone knows we need new revenue, everyone knows we can’t let the trust fund go broke … Everyone knows this is one of the most embarrassing chapters in the history of the U.S. Congress.”
What’s gone so wrong?
It sounds strange now, but the gas tax was born and built up under Republican presidents. The U.S. government has been picking up a part of the highway tab for nearly a century — since 1916, when, in an era of Model T’s bumping over rutted country lanes, the bluntly named Good Roads Movement gave rise to a law providing federal money for any rural routes used for U.S. mail. Fuel taxes started around the same time, but only at the state level.
When the federal government adopted its own penny-per-gallon one in 1932, under President Hoover, it was intended for deficit reduction, not roads. It was only when the tax was raised to 3 cents under President Eisenhower in 1956 — with an additional cent added on in 1959 — that it was targeted for the new interstate highway system and the Highway Trust Fund that would finance it.
In a country that loves big cars and views cheap energy as a national birthright, the gas tax was never going to be beloved. After several failed attempts to raise the tax in the 1970s as a means to spur fuel conservation and fight inflation, it was left to Ronald Reagan, of all people, to push through the next increase, in late 1982.
With the economy still sluggish after Reagan’s steep income tax cuts in 1981, “they were facing $200 billion deficits as far as the eye could see … and the administration was desperate to find some way to close that gap,” recalls Kenneth Schwartz, a career employee in the Office of Management and Budget.
Just before the 1982 midterm election, Reagan had ruled out a gas tax increase “unless there’s a palace coup and I’m overtaken or overthrown.” But shortly after the election, he and his budget director, David Stockman, settled on a five-cent increase in the gas tax (or “user fee,” as Reagan preferred to call it) proposed by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, the Illinois Democrat. The increase, Reagan said, would be “less than the cost of a couple of shock absorbers.”
The proposal had bipartisan backing from Hill leadership. In the House, well over half of Republicans voted for it. The Senate passed it 54-33.
That political landscape was already shifting when Washington took up the tax again less than a decade later. As part of George H.W. Bush’s big deficit-reduction package of 1990 — in which he violated his “read my lips” pledge — the gas tax was raised by another nickel. This time, it didn’t win over a majority of House Republicans: just over a quarter of them voted for the increase. The partisan divide ratcheted several notches further three years later when President Clinton, after initially proposing a broad-based “BTU tax” on all forms of energy, included a 4.3 cent gas tax increase in his 1993 deficit-reduction package. It passed without a single Republican vote.
The following year brought the electoral earthquake of 1994 that made Newt Gingrich House Speaker. Two years earlier he’d been the only Republican in Georgia’s 10-member House delegation. Now he was one of eight. Among the lessons drawn by Clinton and other Democrats from this wipeout was a deep wariness about fuel taxes.
The lesson was no less clear to Clinton’s successor, whose father had been pilloried among Republicans for the 1990 increase. Schwartz says that it was impressed on him and his OMB colleagues under President George W. Bush that a gas tax increase was not to be discussed.
While the flow of money from the gas tax was flat-lined, spending wasn’t. Congress kept pressing for bigger highway bills. “They weren’t raising the revenues,” says Schwartz, “but they were raising the authorizations.” After 2000, lawmakers turned to one-time budget gimmicks and spending from general revenues to plug the gap, thereby driving up the deficit.
Liberals have a handy culprit to explain why the gas tax hasn’t budged since 1993: Grover won’t allow it. Republicans, the story goes, have developed such fealty to the anti-tax pledge rolled out by Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform in 1986 that raising the rate has become a matter of heresy.
Making this explanation all the more appealing to the left is the hypocrisy it points to: The signers of the Norquist pledge predominate in the states most dependent on federal highway funding. (On average, Washington contributes about a quarter of all transportation funding but about half of major capital projects.) A ProPublica analysis finds that the rate of pledge signers is twice as high in the delegations from the dozen states that are most dependent on federal highway aid as it is in the 11 states that are least dependent on it. In Georgia, which is among the most highly dependent states, all but one of the 12 Republicans it now sends to Washington has signed it.
But it’s oversimplifying to give Norquist all the credit. For one thing, his pledge focuses on income tax rates, and while he has done his best over the years to apply it to taxes more broadly, there have also been plenty of times when its signatories have voted to raise revenues without being vilified by Norquist: raising some industry taxes in the 2007 energy law, raising cigarette taxes to pay for children’s health insurance that same year, raising taxes on the wealthy in the 2012 fiscal cliff showdown. While Norquist has sent mixed signals, it’s not unreasonable to think that a gas tax increase that managed to draw support from Republican leaders would get a pass as well.
Resistance to the tax hike goes well beyond the Norquist army. There were a couple years recently where the pledge signers were in the distinct minority on the Hill, and the gas tax still didn’t budge. On the campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama opposed Hillary Clinton and John McCain’s call for cutting the gas tax amid high oil prices. But Obama made his own pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. And even if that pledge could be reconciled with a gas tax increase, when he became president with huge majorities in Congress, there was little appetite in his administration for a higher tax amid a steep recession.
“Obama is more open-minded on this than the people around him, but in the conversations I had with him he was not particularly receptive to raising the gas tax,” says Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat and leading infrastructure booster. “When we were in charge, we didn’t push it.”
The fact is, the gas tax has never been deeply embraced even by many Democrats. It’s a regressive tax, hitting Americans at the same level regardless of income. Partly for this reason, some liberals have started flirting with alternatives to the gas tax — like a far-reaching carbon tax or a tax on vehicle miles traveled. So far, though, these ideas are far from executable and have only distracted some likely supporters from the push for a simple increase.
So the rate stayed stuck in Washington, even as oil prices plunged, an ideal window for raising the tax since the increase wouldn’t be as hard on a driver’s wallet. The tax now provides only $34 billion of the $50 billion spent annually out of the trust fund. Since by law the fund can’t operate at a deficit, short-term infusions from the Treasury — $62 billion since 2008 alone — have kept it solvent. What’s supposed to be a self-supporting trust fund has turned into just another scramble for taxpayer money.
In the face of the stalemate, the states have crafted their own solutions, often in a rebuke to the political assumptions that have stymied Washington.
In early 2013, just a few months after it voted for Mitt Romney by 41 percentage points, Wyoming passed a 10-cent increase in its gas tax, to 24 cents. Members of the Republican-dominated legislature say there has been no discernible blowback, in the form of primary challenges or otherwise. “There are those folks that will always be upset, but the average person looks at the conditions of the highways and understands there is a need,” says state senate President Phil Nicholas.
As it turned out, Wyoming Republicans were hardly going out on a limb. Instead, they were setting a trend. Other states with Republican leadership that have approved increases in the tax (or in a few cases have hiked other taxes directed toward road spending) are Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah and Virginia.
In Iowa, state Sen. Michael Breitbach, a Republican, says his reason for voting for a 10-cent increase was pretty straightforward: it had been 25 years since Iowa raised it, and trucks that used to get four miles per gallon now get almost seven, reducing revenue. He hasn’t seen much backlash, but said he wouldn’t care much if he did. “When I ran for office, I ran on a platform that we needed to improve our road system and we won on that platform, so I’m not too worried about that,” he says. “If I don’t get reelected, I can live with that.”
In Georgia, former Republican state representative Edward Lindsey, who served on a state commission that proposed an increase, says the seven-cent hike passed in April “was not an easy sell” but the backlash has been relatively minimal. “When you go back and tell folks, look guys, this is a core government function — if we can’t do roads and schools and public safety, what’s the purpose of government?”
These legislators’ equanimity about their votes is backed up by the numbers. A survey released in May by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association found that raising the gas tax didn’t hurt Republicans politically, and if anything helped them slightly. Ninety-five percent of Republican state legislators who voted to increase their state gas tax in the past two years and ran for re-election won their races—one point higher than the rate for Republicans who voted against increases. The survey identified 25 legislators who voted for higher gas taxes despite having signed the Norquist anti-tax pledge — and of those, all but one won re-election.
In Pennsylvania, which raised its tax by as much as 28 cents over five years, making it the most expensive in the country (50 cents) while providing $2.3 billion per year for transportation, not a single Republican who voted for the increase was booted from office. The notion that voting to raise the gas tax is a political third rail is being undermined in some of the most conservative swaths of the country.
It’s true that most states must, by law, balance their budgets, and can’t just load highway costs onto the deficit as Washington can. The major anti-tax groups were noticeably subdued in the state debates — some groups, like Club for Growth and Heritage Action, steered clear entirely, while Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity made only token efforts in some states, like Iowa. As some of these groups see it, transportation spending should be left to the states entirely — “devolution” — and if they want to raise their gas tax, so be it. “There are 50 departments of transportation that know their priorities far better than bureaucrats do,” says Andy Roth, vice president of government affairs at the Club for Growth.
Most of all, state legislators voting for gas tax increases benefit from one key dynamic that hurts all federal tax-collection efforts: voters know the money would stay right at home, without the strings that come with federal money, such as having to spend some of it on public transit, a requirement that dates back to the Reagan tax increase. “The problem I have with the federal gas tax is … you never know if you’re going to get back what you put in,” says Breitbach, in Iowa.
In fact, all states are now getting back more than they put in, because the federal gas tax is being supplemented by so much additional spending in the trust fund. But Breitbach put his finger on the biggest obstacle to raising the federal gas tax: voters simply don’t trust what happens to their money once they send it to Washington. “I don’t think anyone at the national level will be able to articulate a gas tax as the way to go forward,” says Dan Holler of Heritage Action. “It’s gotten progressively harder because there’s less and less trust in Washington.”
The latest short-term extension for the Highway Trust Fund — the 33rd passed by Congress — expires at the end of next week. House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan and Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster last week pushed through the House yet another short-term fix, with about $8 billion, enough to get the fund through mid-December.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has cobbled together a somewhat longer-term fix, enough to get the fund through the 2016 election, when many of his Republican colleagues are up for reelection. Among the revenue sources in the three-year proposal he presented yesterday, and which the Senate may vote on today, is selling off part of the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve for $9 billion — that is, instead of updating a tax on gasoline, Congress may end up selling off part of its emergency supply of it.
The extensions, their proponents say, will give Congress more time to come up with a truly long-term solution to transportation funding — the same thing congressional leaders have been saying for years now. There is talk of using a one-time influx of repatriated corporate revenues from overseas for infrastructure, but that has gotten caught up in the larger debate over tax reform. The conservative dream of devolution to the states has a long way to go to win acceptance, not least amongst the states themselves. Some Republicans, including Ryan, say they are open to new forms of “user fees” to pay for roads, such as electronic tolling, but this remain nebulous.
What Ryan, McConnell and Speaker John Boehner have all ruled out is an increase in the gas tax. At a Ways and Means hearing last month to discuss long-term solutions for the shortfall, Ryan announced at the outset that “We are not going to raise gas taxes, plain and simple.” The tax, he said, had outlived its time. “We just can’t chase fuel efficiency with much higher taxes,” he said, deftly painting the decision as technocratic rather than ideological and political. Top Democrats like Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, have made precious little attempt to rally support for an increase, citing a lack of support in both parties.
Even as congressional leaders look for another short-term fix, though, more of their Republican colleagues are starting to contemplate the long-term one adopted by so many red states. Early this year, several Senate Republicans, including the conservative Oklahoman James Inhofe, spoke up for an increase before Ryan quashed the notion. In the House, Rep. Jim Renacci, an Ohio Republican, reached out to colleagues as fed up as he was with funding patches, including Rep. Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat. In April, they released the Bridge to Sustainable Infrastructure Act.
The bill would keep the gas tax, raise it by half a cent in the first year, and then index it to inflation moving forward, so it could grow roughly in line with costs. The plan would provide enough revenue over 10 years, $27.5 billion, to plug the shortfall in the next couple years. Meanwhile, the bill would order a congressional task force to come up with an alternate long-term solution, and if it failed to do so, the gas tax would be increased to whatever level was necessary to fill the trust fund.
This indirect, incremental approach may make the proposal more palatable than a straightforward proposal by Earl Blumenauer to increase the tax 15 cents over three years, or about as much as it would have gone up if it had been tied to inflation way back to 1993.
“When people say, ‘That’s an increase in the user fee,’ I say, no, that’s an opportunity for Congress to work its will,” Renacci says. “And if it won’t work its will, then the user fee goes up.” As painfully gradual as this approach is, it’s a big step further than anything else Hill leaders have proposed, its proponents say. “Mr. Ryan hasn’t done a damn thing yet that we can buy into,” Pascrell says.
The bill has more than 30 co-sponsors, a quarter of them Republicans. (Another Republican, Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina, just introduced his own bill, to increase the tax by 10 cents, offset with a $133-per-driver income-tax credit.) So far, aside from a Wall Street Journal op-ed from Americans for Prosperity, the anti-tax groups have held off on it, saying its prospects are so dim that it’s not even worth warning Republicans against it. “We don’t view it as a credible threat from a legislative standpoint,” says Holler, of Heritage Action. But that could change quickly, says Club for Growth’s Roth: “If this Renacci nonsense gains traction, I’m pretty certain we’re going to weigh in on it.” To prepare for that moment, the transportation lobby has given the bill’s sponsors some back-up advertising at home, says Michael O’Brien of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.
The prospects for any long-term fix may turn on whether enough Washington Republicans are willing to relinquish the anti-tax flag and join their state legislative counterparts who voted for gas-tax hikes and lived to tell of it.
Some of the Renacci bill’s Republican backers, including Renacci himself, have signed the Norquist pledge — but are adamant that it does not apply to the gas tax. Others, such as Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia and Rep. Richard Hanna of New York, have formally rejected the pledge.
“You can’t run a country on ideology, you have to run it on ideas, and they have to be forward-thinking and allow us to be competitive,” says Hanna. “These are public benefits. They’re not about bigger government. They’re about running the country.”
The main federal fund for roads and bridges runs at a deep deficit. If even red states can raise the gas tax, why can’t Congress?
by Alec MacGillis
In 1993, the Dow Jones industrial average was still well under 4,000, the best-selling car in the country was the Ford Taurus, and the average cost of a Major League Baseball ticket was under $10.
That was also the year that Congress last raised the federal tax on gasoline.
The gas tax pays most of the tab for America’s federal highway program; it’s what we rely on for new highways and for the bridge repairs that keep us safe. Those costs go up every year, but the tax remains stuck at 18.4 cents per gallon. In fact, it’s effectively going down: since it was last raised, those 18.4 cents have lost more than a third of their value to inflation, and at the same time drivers with fuel-efficient vehicles have been buying less gasoline, further reducing the federal take.
As a result, the main U.S. spending account for infrastructure has fallen deep in the red, and the gap gets worse every year. The government, through a series of funding tricks, keeps the Highway Trust Fund on life support with short-term emergency patches. The latest infusion expires at the end of the month, and the argument about how to fix it is coming to a head this week.
The uncertainty has frozen major projects around the country, from the widening of Route 1 in Delaware to the Kalispell bypass in Montana, while maintenance and repairs are long overdue on thousands of roads and bridges dangerously near the end of their expected life spans.
That Congress can’t fulfill such a basic purpose of government stands out as a signal example of Washington dysfunction. Unlike some other stalemates, though, this one can’t be blamed on special interests at loggerheads. Nearly all the lobbies that take an interest are in favor of simply increasing the tax — big business, the road builders, the unions, even the truckers. Lobbies that might oppose an increase, notably the oil industry, have invested relatively little in the debate.
Instead, it’s an example of those big decisions that get trapped in a kind of ideological crevasse. Because it’s a tax, raising it has been decreed out of bounds by a combination of anti-tax orthodoxy among conservative Republicans and a fear of political backlash that spans both parties.
Still, there may be a way out of the trap. A slew of states around the country — including some led by conservative Republicans — have managed to raise their state gas taxes to address the transportation burden without triggering the fury of taxpayers. The contrast is an unflattering one, says former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, a Democrat and a leading proselytizer for infrastructure spending.
“If the gas tax could be voted up or down on a secret ballot, it would get 285 yes votes in the House and 85 or 90 in the Senate,” says Rendell. “Everyone knows we need new revenue, everyone knows we can’t let the trust fund go broke … Everyone knows this is one of the most embarrassing chapters in the history of the U.S. Congress.”
What’s gone so wrong?
It sounds strange now, but the gas tax was born and built up under Republican presidents. The U.S. government has been picking up a part of the highway tab for nearly a century — since 1916, when, in an era of Model T’s bumping over rutted country lanes, the bluntly named Good Roads Movement gave rise to a law providing federal money for any rural routes used for U.S. mail. Fuel taxes started around the same time, but only at the state level.
When the federal government adopted its own penny-per-gallon one in 1932, under President Hoover, it was intended for deficit reduction, not roads. It was only when the tax was raised to 3 cents under President Eisenhower in 1956 — with an additional cent added on in 1959 — that it was targeted for the new interstate highway system and the Highway Trust Fund that would finance it.
In a country that loves big cars and views cheap energy as a national birthright, the gas tax was never going to be beloved. After several failed attempts to raise the tax in the 1970s as a means to spur fuel conservation and fight inflation, it was left to Ronald Reagan, of all people, to push through the next increase, in late 1982.
With the economy still sluggish after Reagan’s steep income tax cuts in 1981, “they were facing $200 billion deficits as far as the eye could see … and the administration was desperate to find some way to close that gap,” recalls Kenneth Schwartz, a career employee in the Office of Management and Budget.
Just before the 1982 midterm election, Reagan had ruled out a gas tax increase “unless there’s a palace coup and I’m overtaken or overthrown.” But shortly after the election, he and his budget director, David Stockman, settled on a five-cent increase in the gas tax (or “user fee,” as Reagan preferred to call it) proposed by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, the Illinois Democrat. The increase, Reagan said, would be “less than the cost of a couple of shock absorbers.”
The proposal had bipartisan backing from Hill leadership. In the House, well over half of Republicans voted for it. The Senate passed it 54-33.
That political landscape was already shifting when Washington took up the tax again less than a decade later. As part of George H.W. Bush’s big deficit-reduction package of 1990 — in which he violated his “read my lips” pledge — the gas tax was raised by another nickel. This time, it didn’t win over a majority of House Republicans: just over a quarter of them voted for the increase. The partisan divide ratcheted several notches further three years later when President Clinton, after initially proposing a broad-based “BTU tax” on all forms of energy, included a 4.3 cent gas tax increase in his 1993 deficit-reduction package. It passed without a single Republican vote.
The following year brought the electoral earthquake of 1994 that made Newt Gingrich House Speaker. Two years earlier he’d been the only Republican in Georgia’s 10-member House delegation. Now he was one of eight. Among the lessons drawn by Clinton and other Democrats from this wipeout was a deep wariness about fuel taxes.
The lesson was no less clear to Clinton’s successor, whose father had been pilloried among Republicans for the 1990 increase. Schwartz says that it was impressed on him and his OMB colleagues under President George W. Bush that a gas tax increase was not to be discussed.
While the flow of money from the gas tax was flat-lined, spending wasn’t. Congress kept pressing for bigger highway bills. “They weren’t raising the revenues,” says Schwartz, “but they were raising the authorizations.” After 2000, lawmakers turned to one-time budget gimmicks and spending from general revenues to plug the gap, thereby driving up the deficit.
Liberals have a handy culprit to explain why the gas tax hasn’t budged since 1993: Grover won’t allow it. Republicans, the story goes, have developed such fealty to the anti-tax pledge rolled out by Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform in 1986 that raising the rate has become a matter of heresy.
Making this explanation all the more appealing to the left is the hypocrisy it points to: The signers of the Norquist pledge predominate in the states most dependent on federal highway funding. (On average, Washington contributes about a quarter of all transportation funding but about half of major capital projects.) A ProPublica analysis finds that the rate of pledge signers is twice as high in the delegations from the dozen states that are most dependent on federal highway aid as it is in the 11 states that are least dependent on it. In Georgia, which is among the most highly dependent states, all but one of the 12 Republicans it now sends to Washington has signed it.
But it’s oversimplifying to give Norquist all the credit. For one thing, his pledge focuses on income tax rates, and while he has done his best over the years to apply it to taxes more broadly, there have also been plenty of times when its signatories have voted to raise revenues without being vilified by Norquist: raising some industry taxes in the 2007 energy law, raising cigarette taxes to pay for children’s health insurance that same year, raising taxes on the wealthy in the 2012 fiscal cliff showdown. While Norquist has sent mixed signals, it’s not unreasonable to think that a gas tax increase that managed to draw support from Republican leaders would get a pass as well.
Resistance to the tax hike goes well beyond the Norquist army. There were a couple years recently where the pledge signers were in the distinct minority on the Hill, and the gas tax still didn’t budge. On the campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama opposed Hillary Clinton and John McCain’s call for cutting the gas tax amid high oil prices. But Obama made his own pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. And even if that pledge could be reconciled with a gas tax increase, when he became president with huge majorities in Congress, there was little appetite in his administration for a higher tax amid a steep recession.
“Obama is more open-minded on this than the people around him, but in the conversations I had with him he was not particularly receptive to raising the gas tax,” says Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat and leading infrastructure booster. “When we were in charge, we didn’t push it.”
The fact is, the gas tax has never been deeply embraced even by many Democrats. It’s a regressive tax, hitting Americans at the same level regardless of income. Partly for this reason, some liberals have started flirting with alternatives to the gas tax — like a far-reaching carbon tax or a tax on vehicle miles traveled. So far, though, these ideas are far from executable and have only distracted some likely supporters from the push for a simple increase.
So the rate stayed stuck in Washington, even as oil prices plunged, an ideal window for raising the tax since the increase wouldn’t be as hard on a driver’s wallet. The tax now provides only $34 billion of the $50 billion spent annually out of the trust fund. Since by law the fund can’t operate at a deficit, short-term infusions from the Treasury — $62 billion since 2008 alone — have kept it solvent. What’s supposed to be a self-supporting trust fund has turned into just another scramble for taxpayer money.
In the face of the stalemate, the states have crafted their own solutions, often in a rebuke to the political assumptions that have stymied Washington.
In early 2013, just a few months after it voted for Mitt Romney by 41 percentage points, Wyoming passed a 10-cent increase in its gas tax, to 24 cents. Members of the Republican-dominated legislature say there has been no discernible blowback, in the form of primary challenges or otherwise. “There are those folks that will always be upset, but the average person looks at the conditions of the highways and understands there is a need,” says state senate President Phil Nicholas.
As it turned out, Wyoming Republicans were hardly going out on a limb. Instead, they were setting a trend. Other states with Republican leadership that have approved increases in the tax (or in a few cases have hiked other taxes directed toward road spending) are Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah and Virginia.
In Iowa, state Sen. Michael Breitbach, a Republican, says his reason for voting for a 10-cent increase was pretty straightforward: it had been 25 years since Iowa raised it, and trucks that used to get four miles per gallon now get almost seven, reducing revenue. He hasn’t seen much backlash, but said he wouldn’t care much if he did. “When I ran for office, I ran on a platform that we needed to improve our road system and we won on that platform, so I’m not too worried about that,” he says. “If I don’t get reelected, I can live with that.”
In Georgia, former Republican state representative Edward Lindsey, who served on a state commission that proposed an increase, says the seven-cent hike passed in April “was not an easy sell” but the backlash has been relatively minimal. “When you go back and tell folks, look guys, this is a core government function — if we can’t do roads and schools and public safety, what’s the purpose of government?”
These legislators’ equanimity about their votes is backed up by the numbers. A survey released in May by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association found that raising the gas tax didn’t hurt Republicans politically, and if anything helped them slightly. Ninety-five percent of Republican state legislators who voted to increase their state gas tax in the past two years and ran for re-election won their races—one point higher than the rate for Republicans who voted against increases. The survey identified 25 legislators who voted for higher gas taxes despite having signed the Norquist anti-tax pledge — and of those, all but one won re-election.
In Pennsylvania, which raised its tax by as much as 28 cents over five years, making it the most expensive in the country (50 cents) while providing $2.3 billion per year for transportation, not a single Republican who voted for the increase was booted from office. The notion that voting to raise the gas tax is a political third rail is being undermined in some of the most conservative swaths of the country.
It’s true that most states must, by law, balance their budgets, and can’t just load highway costs onto the deficit as Washington can. The major anti-tax groups were noticeably subdued in the state debates — some groups, like Club for Growth and Heritage Action, steered clear entirely, while Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity made only token efforts in some states, like Iowa. As some of these groups see it, transportation spending should be left to the states entirely — “devolution” — and if they want to raise their gas tax, so be it. “There are 50 departments of transportation that know their priorities far better than bureaucrats do,” says Andy Roth, vice president of government affairs at the Club for Growth.
Most of all, state legislators voting for gas tax increases benefit from one key dynamic that hurts all federal tax-collection efforts: voters know the money would stay right at home, without the strings that come with federal money, such as having to spend some of it on public transit, a requirement that dates back to the Reagan tax increase. “The problem I have with the federal gas tax is … you never know if you’re going to get back what you put in,” says Breitbach, in Iowa.
In fact, all states are now getting back more than they put in, because the federal gas tax is being supplemented by so much additional spending in the trust fund. But Breitbach put his finger on the biggest obstacle to raising the federal gas tax: voters simply don’t trust what happens to their money once they send it to Washington. “I don’t think anyone at the national level will be able to articulate a gas tax as the way to go forward,” says Dan Holler of Heritage Action. “It’s gotten progressively harder because there’s less and less trust in Washington.”
The latest short-term extension for the Highway Trust Fund — the 33rd passed by Congress — expires at the end of next week. House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan and Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster last week pushed through the House yet another short-term fix, with about $8 billion, enough to get the fund through mid-December.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has cobbled together a somewhat longer-term fix, enough to get the fund through the 2016 election, when many of his Republican colleagues are up for reelection. Among the revenue sources in the three-year proposal he presented yesterday, and which the Senate may vote on today, is selling off part of the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve for $9 billion — that is, instead of updating a tax on gasoline, Congress may end up selling off part of its emergency supply of it.
The extensions, their proponents say, will give Congress more time to come up with a truly long-term solution to transportation funding — the same thing congressional leaders have been saying for years now. There is talk of using a one-time influx of repatriated corporate revenues from overseas for infrastructure, but that has gotten caught up in the larger debate over tax reform. The conservative dream of devolution to the states has a long way to go to win acceptance, not least amongst the states themselves. Some Republicans, including Ryan, say they are open to new forms of “user fees” to pay for roads, such as electronic tolling, but this remain nebulous.
What Ryan, McConnell and Speaker John Boehner have all ruled out is an increase in the gas tax. At a Ways and Means hearing last month to discuss long-term solutions for the shortfall, Ryan announced at the outset that “We are not going to raise gas taxes, plain and simple.” The tax, he said, had outlived its time. “We just can’t chase fuel efficiency with much higher taxes,” he said, deftly painting the decision as technocratic rather than ideological and political. Top Democrats like Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, have made precious little attempt to rally support for an increase, citing a lack of support in both parties.
Even as congressional leaders look for another short-term fix, though, more of their Republican colleagues are starting to contemplate the long-term one adopted by so many red states. Early this year, several Senate Republicans, including the conservative Oklahoman James Inhofe, spoke up for an increase before Ryan quashed the notion. In the House, Rep. Jim Renacci, an Ohio Republican, reached out to colleagues as fed up as he was with funding patches, including Rep. Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat. In April, they released the Bridge to Sustainable Infrastructure Act.
The bill would keep the gas tax, raise it by half a cent in the first year, and then index it to inflation moving forward, so it could grow roughly in line with costs. The plan would provide enough revenue over 10 years, $27.5 billion, to plug the shortfall in the next couple years. Meanwhile, the bill would order a congressional task force to come up with an alternate long-term solution, and if it failed to do so, the gas tax would be increased to whatever level was necessary to fill the trust fund.
This indirect, incremental approach may make the proposal more palatable than a straightforward proposal by Earl Blumenauer to increase the tax 15 cents over three years, or about as much as it would have gone up if it had been tied to inflation way back to 1993.
“When people say, ‘That’s an increase in the user fee,’ I say, no, that’s an opportunity for Congress to work its will,” Renacci says. “And if it won’t work its will, then the user fee goes up.” As painfully gradual as this approach is, it’s a big step further than anything else Hill leaders have proposed, its proponents say. “Mr. Ryan hasn’t done a damn thing yet that we can buy into,” Pascrell says.
The bill has more than 30 co-sponsors, a quarter of them Republicans. (Another Republican, Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina, just introduced his own bill, to increase the tax by 10 cents, offset with a $133-per-driver income-tax credit.) So far, aside from a Wall Street Journal op-ed from Americans for Prosperity, the anti-tax groups have held off on it, saying its prospects are so dim that it’s not even worth warning Republicans against it. “We don’t view it as a credible threat from a legislative standpoint,” says Holler, of Heritage Action. But that could change quickly, says Club for Growth’s Roth: “If this Renacci nonsense gains traction, I’m pretty certain we’re going to weigh in on it.” To prepare for that moment, the transportation lobby has given the bill’s sponsors some back-up advertising at home, says Michael O’Brien of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.
The prospects for any long-term fix may turn on whether enough Washington Republicans are willing to relinquish the anti-tax flag and join their state legislative counterparts who voted for gas-tax hikes and lived to tell of it.
Some of the Renacci bill’s Republican backers, including Renacci himself, have signed the Norquist pledge — but are adamant that it does not apply to the gas tax. Others, such as Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia and Rep. Richard Hanna of New York, have formally rejected the pledge.
“You can’t run a country on ideology, you have to run it on ideas, and they have to be forward-thinking and allow us to be competitive,” says Hanna. “These are public benefits. They’re not about bigger government. They’re about running the country.”
Congress still must act
Social Security trustees: Program is healthier, Congress still must act
By Michael Hiltzik
The Social Security trustees delivered a harsh blow Wednesday to those who claim the system is structurally unsound, requiring major cutbacks. In their annual report for 2015, they declared that the program's fiscal health has improved over the last year, for predictable reasons: The economy is improving, and workers' wages are rising. .
The trustees moved the projected exhaustion date for the combined trust funds of the program's old-age and disability segments one year further out, to 2034, from the 2033 date in last year's report. But this masks the dire condition of the disability program: Its trust fund, taken on its own, will run out of money at the end of next year.
If Congress doesn't shore up the fund by then, disability benefits would have to be cut 19%, reducing the average monthly disability check from a princely $1,016 to $823. The trustees urged Congress at least to take the short-term action of reallocating payroll tax income from the old-age program to disability to keep it fully funded; that would keep both trust funds solvent through 2033.
Conservatives in Congress have been resisting this obvious fix, last done in 1994, in favor of concocting some broader Social Security reform--which, given the tenor of the current Congress, undoubtedly would involve benefit cuts to retirees and the disabled.
But the new report underscores that no comprehensive change to Social Security is necessary. What's needed is for the economy to keep improving, and for a higher share of profits to show up in working Americans' paychecks.
That's good news, coming only about three weeks before the program's 80th birthday: Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on Aug. 14, 1935. The report also documents that Social Security is not "broke." It's not "bankrupt." It's not "failing." Any politician that makes these claims is blowing smoke. (I'm looking at you, Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisc.)
Last year, the overall system's surplus (payroll taxes, income taxes on Social Security benefits, and interest on trust fund investments, minus benefits and administrative costs) came to $25 billion, which got added to trust funds holding $2.8 trillion in Treasury bonds. The surplus is projected to continue until 2020, when the old-age trust fund starts to be drawn down. The trustees' chart showing recent and projected income and outflows can be found here.
Let's break down the findings.
There are several major factors in the improvement. One is higher taxable wages for workers. This is reflected in a higher "real wage differential," in Social Security jargon--the rise in wages minus consumer inflation. Put simply, wages have been rising modestly faster than inflation. This is a sign of an improving economy, and also a reminder that much of what looked like a structural flaw in Social Security during recent years was really an artifact of the long recession, in which unemployment rose sharply and the pay of workers who kept their jobs remained stagnant.
The trustees point to another intriguing factor that has gotten almost no attention recently: Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance have been rising more slowly. Because health insurance premiums are exempt from the payroll tax, the trustees observe, their slower growth means that a higher share of employee pay comes in wages, which are subject to the tax.
At this point, it's impossible to say how much of this slowdown, if any, can be attributed to the Affordable Care Act. What is known is that numerous ACA provisions have combined to put a brake on rising healthcare costs; this trend sooner or later should show up in employer plan premiums.
The trustees also point to President Obama's 2014 executive order on immigration, which aimed to encourage undocumented workers to come out of the employment shadows and into employment covered by Social Security without fear of deportation. The order has been blocked by a federal appeals court in New Orleans, but the trustees assume that the stay will be temporary and the presidential order will go into effect by the end of this year, yielding higher revenue for the program.
What's imperative is that these trends be sustained. As economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research observed Wednesday, the suppression of wages for workers in recent years has increased the portion of national wage income exempt from payroll tax, which this year is levied only on the first $118,500 of wage income. "Wage growth is the key to the program's solvency," he writes.
Baker points out that the last major revision of payroll tax rates in 1983 was designed to cover about 90% of all wages earned in the U.S. Income inequality has since reduced that share to only 82%, contributing to a huge erosion in the program's fiscal health. Had the tax continued to cover 90% of wages, the trust fund today would be larger by more than $1.2 trillion--or roughly 45% larger than it is today, pushing the exhaustion date out by a decade at least.
By Michael Hiltzik
The Social Security trustees delivered a harsh blow Wednesday to those who claim the system is structurally unsound, requiring major cutbacks. In their annual report for 2015, they declared that the program's fiscal health has improved over the last year, for predictable reasons: The economy is improving, and workers' wages are rising. .
The trustees moved the projected exhaustion date for the combined trust funds of the program's old-age and disability segments one year further out, to 2034, from the 2033 date in last year's report. But this masks the dire condition of the disability program: Its trust fund, taken on its own, will run out of money at the end of next year.
If Congress doesn't shore up the fund by then, disability benefits would have to be cut 19%, reducing the average monthly disability check from a princely $1,016 to $823. The trustees urged Congress at least to take the short-term action of reallocating payroll tax income from the old-age program to disability to keep it fully funded; that would keep both trust funds solvent through 2033.
Conservatives in Congress have been resisting this obvious fix, last done in 1994, in favor of concocting some broader Social Security reform--which, given the tenor of the current Congress, undoubtedly would involve benefit cuts to retirees and the disabled.
But the new report underscores that no comprehensive change to Social Security is necessary. What's needed is for the economy to keep improving, and for a higher share of profits to show up in working Americans' paychecks.
That's good news, coming only about three weeks before the program's 80th birthday: Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on Aug. 14, 1935. The report also documents that Social Security is not "broke." It's not "bankrupt." It's not "failing." Any politician that makes these claims is blowing smoke. (I'm looking at you, Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisc.)
Last year, the overall system's surplus (payroll taxes, income taxes on Social Security benefits, and interest on trust fund investments, minus benefits and administrative costs) came to $25 billion, which got added to trust funds holding $2.8 trillion in Treasury bonds. The surplus is projected to continue until 2020, when the old-age trust fund starts to be drawn down. The trustees' chart showing recent and projected income and outflows can be found here.
Let's break down the findings.
There are several major factors in the improvement. One is higher taxable wages for workers. This is reflected in a higher "real wage differential," in Social Security jargon--the rise in wages minus consumer inflation. Put simply, wages have been rising modestly faster than inflation. This is a sign of an improving economy, and also a reminder that much of what looked like a structural flaw in Social Security during recent years was really an artifact of the long recession, in which unemployment rose sharply and the pay of workers who kept their jobs remained stagnant.
The trustees point to another intriguing factor that has gotten almost no attention recently: Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance have been rising more slowly. Because health insurance premiums are exempt from the payroll tax, the trustees observe, their slower growth means that a higher share of employee pay comes in wages, which are subject to the tax.
At this point, it's impossible to say how much of this slowdown, if any, can be attributed to the Affordable Care Act. What is known is that numerous ACA provisions have combined to put a brake on rising healthcare costs; this trend sooner or later should show up in employer plan premiums.
The trustees also point to President Obama's 2014 executive order on immigration, which aimed to encourage undocumented workers to come out of the employment shadows and into employment covered by Social Security without fear of deportation. The order has been blocked by a federal appeals court in New Orleans, but the trustees assume that the stay will be temporary and the presidential order will go into effect by the end of this year, yielding higher revenue for the program.
What's imperative is that these trends be sustained. As economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research observed Wednesday, the suppression of wages for workers in recent years has increased the portion of national wage income exempt from payroll tax, which this year is levied only on the first $118,500 of wage income. "Wage growth is the key to the program's solvency," he writes.
Baker points out that the last major revision of payroll tax rates in 1983 was designed to cover about 90% of all wages earned in the U.S. Income inequality has since reduced that share to only 82%, contributing to a huge erosion in the program's fiscal health. Had the tax continued to cover 90% of wages, the trust fund today would be larger by more than $1.2 trillion--or roughly 45% larger than it is today, pushing the exhaustion date out by a decade at least.
Disability fund
Social Security disability fund now faces ‘urgent threat’ of 2016 shortfall: trustees
By Greg Robb
The Social Security disability-insurance program faces the “urgent threat” of reserve depletion in late 2016 unless Congress acts to replenish the fund, trustees of the program said Wednesday in their annual report.
Trustees said that Congress should take “prompt corrective action” to shore up the disability fund.
In the past, Congress has diverted tax revenue from Social Security’s main retirement program to allocate more revenue to disability benefits, said Kathy Ruffing, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said he was confident that Congress would come up with a fix.
If the disability fund is depleted, it will be able to pay only 81% of benefits.
Social Security’s combined funds will be solvent until 2034, one year later than estimated in the prior report.
The Medicare hospital-insurance trust fund will be able to continue paying full benefits without any changes in the law through 2030, the same as estimated last year, the trustees said.
Social Security and Medicare together accounted for 42% of federal spending in fiscal year 2014.
The programs face long-term challenges as millions of baby boomers reach retirement age.
Total Medicare costs will grow from about 3.5% of gross domestic product in 2014 to 5.4% of GDP by 2035.
Ruffing of the CBPP said the two programs “are not unaffordable or ‘bankrupt’.”
By Greg Robb
The Social Security disability-insurance program faces the “urgent threat” of reserve depletion in late 2016 unless Congress acts to replenish the fund, trustees of the program said Wednesday in their annual report.
Trustees said that Congress should take “prompt corrective action” to shore up the disability fund.
In the past, Congress has diverted tax revenue from Social Security’s main retirement program to allocate more revenue to disability benefits, said Kathy Ruffing, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said he was confident that Congress would come up with a fix.
If the disability fund is depleted, it will be able to pay only 81% of benefits.
Social Security’s combined funds will be solvent until 2034, one year later than estimated in the prior report.
The Medicare hospital-insurance trust fund will be able to continue paying full benefits without any changes in the law through 2030, the same as estimated last year, the trustees said.
Social Security and Medicare together accounted for 42% of federal spending in fiscal year 2014.
The programs face long-term challenges as millions of baby boomers reach retirement age.
Total Medicare costs will grow from about 3.5% of gross domestic product in 2014 to 5.4% of GDP by 2035.
Ruffing of the CBPP said the two programs “are not unaffordable or ‘bankrupt’.”
Crossing the lake...
Some more Transpac insight...
SC 70 OEX skipper John Sangmeister:
Seldom is the fleet divided across such a wide arc of latitude. We have fanned out some three hundred miles searching for the fastest path around an area of high pressure and little wind. Our weather team, including fellow Stars & Stripes alum Chris Bedford, have elected to follow the southern route in hopes that we’ll find the exhausted of a diminished Dolores.
“Well, we won’t be Third.” I’m reminded of Tom Whidden’s comments as we sailed away from the fleet at the start of the 1986 Molokai race onboard David Rosow’s Valecelli 50 “Springbok.” DC looked over in silence and conviction as we watched the sun set of the fleet beating up the face of Coco Head.
Every four hours, we download delayed position reports and then we gather in hushed silence as Jeff Thorpe recites – sometimes painfully slowly – our progress vis a vis our competitors. Traditionally, the northern boats all score better in the first few days. The northern routing is closer to Great Circle routing and calculates better progress to Hawaii. This morning a cagey Jeff Thorpe emerged from below with the morning report. The One AM report showed big gains against all the sled fleet. Holua is sailing 40 miles directly upwind. We made gains on Pyewacket, GI, Buono Serra and Maverick as well. At 40 miles upwind, Holua would have to sail 8 hours to catch us and at this stage of the race, we only owe them three.
Last night, CHef Pete Lehmar from Gladstone’s Long Beach prepared a decadent surf and turf meal of fillets and grilled lobster tails. In true caveman style, the crew devoured this Paleo dinner. Tonight will bring on Randy Smith’s favorite Mountain House freeze dried, Beef Stroganoff and raspberry crumble.
We are westing in 11 knots of true wind under a full main and 2A.
ALSO...
On the Rio 100:
Up until now, we have been sailing with our R1, as our routing wanted us to get west, but also stay north to get to the trades as quick as possible. I few hours ago we put up our full size A4. and went into VMG mode. We have 16 – 19 knots of wind cruising along at 18 knots. The girl really loves this stuff. We are managing to hang on to Oats; we actually reeled them in a couple of miles yesterday. That is probably due to two factors. Us being in a little better spot on the course wind-wise, and we think they are probably sailing some extra miles to put a lose cover on Rags (Ragamuffin 100 – ed).
Everything is going well her. My biggest concern is running into something and damaging the boat. We are very far north, and there is lots of debris. The fact that we have two rudders, and neither of them are protected by the keel, leaves us vulnerable Add to that the fact that there is very little moonlite makes me very nervous. I’ll gladly make a large withdrawal from my good karma account to come through unscathed.
That’s it for now, I’ll write again… – Keith Kilpatrick.
(If you dont know, the Transpac is a sailing race from LA to Hawaii, it is a big event that most never hear about.)
SC 70 OEX skipper John Sangmeister:
Seldom is the fleet divided across such a wide arc of latitude. We have fanned out some three hundred miles searching for the fastest path around an area of high pressure and little wind. Our weather team, including fellow Stars & Stripes alum Chris Bedford, have elected to follow the southern route in hopes that we’ll find the exhausted of a diminished Dolores.
“Well, we won’t be Third.” I’m reminded of Tom Whidden’s comments as we sailed away from the fleet at the start of the 1986 Molokai race onboard David Rosow’s Valecelli 50 “Springbok.” DC looked over in silence and conviction as we watched the sun set of the fleet beating up the face of Coco Head.
Every four hours, we download delayed position reports and then we gather in hushed silence as Jeff Thorpe recites – sometimes painfully slowly – our progress vis a vis our competitors. Traditionally, the northern boats all score better in the first few days. The northern routing is closer to Great Circle routing and calculates better progress to Hawaii. This morning a cagey Jeff Thorpe emerged from below with the morning report. The One AM report showed big gains against all the sled fleet. Holua is sailing 40 miles directly upwind. We made gains on Pyewacket, GI, Buono Serra and Maverick as well. At 40 miles upwind, Holua would have to sail 8 hours to catch us and at this stage of the race, we only owe them three.
Last night, CHef Pete Lehmar from Gladstone’s Long Beach prepared a decadent surf and turf meal of fillets and grilled lobster tails. In true caveman style, the crew devoured this Paleo dinner. Tonight will bring on Randy Smith’s favorite Mountain House freeze dried, Beef Stroganoff and raspberry crumble.
We are westing in 11 knots of true wind under a full main and 2A.
ALSO...
On the Rio 100:
Up until now, we have been sailing with our R1, as our routing wanted us to get west, but also stay north to get to the trades as quick as possible. I few hours ago we put up our full size A4. and went into VMG mode. We have 16 – 19 knots of wind cruising along at 18 knots. The girl really loves this stuff. We are managing to hang on to Oats; we actually reeled them in a couple of miles yesterday. That is probably due to two factors. Us being in a little better spot on the course wind-wise, and we think they are probably sailing some extra miles to put a lose cover on Rags (Ragamuffin 100 – ed).
Everything is going well her. My biggest concern is running into something and damaging the boat. We are very far north, and there is lots of debris. The fact that we have two rudders, and neither of them are protected by the keel, leaves us vulnerable Add to that the fact that there is very little moonlite makes me very nervous. I’ll gladly make a large withdrawal from my good karma account to come through unscathed.
That’s it for now, I’ll write again… – Keith Kilpatrick.
(If you dont know, the Transpac is a sailing race from LA to Hawaii, it is a big event that most never hear about.)
Ah yes....
Transpac...
With a light wind start, the multihull class is now moving along nicely, here are some words from Brian Thompson the co-skipper onboard Phaedo in anticipation of tonight’s watch:
Sun just setting here, all great on board, everything working perfectly and the crew in top shape..It’s another night ahead of intense concentration driving and trimming in the pitch black with the spinnaker up..It’s where driving from indoors is particularly tricky with less light and no apparent wind in the face. Just 3 20/20 B&G displays on the mast as a reference to steer by ..Looks like there may be a few more stars tonight, which will be a big help.
With a light wind start, the multihull class is now moving along nicely, here are some words from Brian Thompson the co-skipper onboard Phaedo in anticipation of tonight’s watch:
Sun just setting here, all great on board, everything working perfectly and the crew in top shape..It’s another night ahead of intense concentration driving and trimming in the pitch black with the spinnaker up..It’s where driving from indoors is particularly tricky with less light and no apparent wind in the face. Just 3 20/20 B&G displays on the mast as a reference to steer by ..Looks like there may be a few more stars tonight, which will be a big help.
Left in the cold...
Lindsey Graham on being left out of debates: 'It sucks'
By Nick Gass
It’s looking like Lindsey Graham will not make the cut for the first Republican debate on Aug. 6, and the South Carolina senator is clearly none too pleased with the qualification process based on national polling averages.
In fact, Graham remarked, he’s being excluded for “no good reason,” and “it sucks.”
“I think it sucks,” the South Carolina senator said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The Republican National Committee, which endorsed the rules of the separate debates on Fox News and CNN, is “not helpless” to stand by the rules, Graham said, ticking off a series of critical domestic and international policy issues, including the Iran nuclear deal, a potential increase of the federal minimum wage, securing the borders and reforming the immigration system, that are being neglected because of a certain real-estate mogul who recently gave out his cellphone number.
“If my numbers go up just because I call Donald Trump a jackass, that’s not why I want to rise in the polls,” said Graham, who is currently registering at 0 in Real Clear Politics’ national polling average. “The bottom line is, I think the criteria in July of 2015 makes no sense. You’re testing celebrity and name ID.”
Graham’s personal cellphone number became public knowledge on Tuesday after Trump shared it during a speech in South Carolina, telling supporters that their senator was an “idiot” and a “stiff.”
“The only way we’re going to lose this election is to continue to say things like Donald Trump is saying and having people like me respond endlessly,” Graham said. “Donald Trump is a great showman. That’s why all these companies hired him to sell their products. There’s a reason, Joe, that all these companies are firing him, because he’s become toxic as a presidential candidate, and I hope we all understand that on the Republican side.”
“At the end of the day, I hope we move on, because if we don’t, we’re going to blow the last best chance we’ll ever have to win the White House,” he added.
By Nick Gass
It’s looking like Lindsey Graham will not make the cut for the first Republican debate on Aug. 6, and the South Carolina senator is clearly none too pleased with the qualification process based on national polling averages.
In fact, Graham remarked, he’s being excluded for “no good reason,” and “it sucks.”
“I think it sucks,” the South Carolina senator said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The Republican National Committee, which endorsed the rules of the separate debates on Fox News and CNN, is “not helpless” to stand by the rules, Graham said, ticking off a series of critical domestic and international policy issues, including the Iran nuclear deal, a potential increase of the federal minimum wage, securing the borders and reforming the immigration system, that are being neglected because of a certain real-estate mogul who recently gave out his cellphone number.
“If my numbers go up just because I call Donald Trump a jackass, that’s not why I want to rise in the polls,” said Graham, who is currently registering at 0 in Real Clear Politics’ national polling average. “The bottom line is, I think the criteria in July of 2015 makes no sense. You’re testing celebrity and name ID.”
Graham’s personal cellphone number became public knowledge on Tuesday after Trump shared it during a speech in South Carolina, telling supporters that their senator was an “idiot” and a “stiff.”
“The only way we’re going to lose this election is to continue to say things like Donald Trump is saying and having people like me respond endlessly,” Graham said. “Donald Trump is a great showman. That’s why all these companies hired him to sell their products. There’s a reason, Joe, that all these companies are firing him, because he’s become toxic as a presidential candidate, and I hope we all understand that on the Republican side.”
“At the end of the day, I hope we move on, because if we don’t, we’re going to blow the last best chance we’ll ever have to win the White House,” he added.
Rattles the establishment...
Why Progressives Shouldn’t Support Bernie
Wishful thinking won’t win the White House.
By BARNEY FRANK
As skillful a controversialist as Bill Kristol is, he couldn’t help grinning. When we were discussing the 2016 campaign on “Morning Joe” last month, he expressed strong admiration for Bernie Sanders and pretended disbelief that I was not supporting him for president. But the strategically driven discipline he brought to the task of lavishly praising a man whose views he usually derides did not extend to control of his facial muscles.
If you weren’t watching the TV and only overheard our discussion, you might have wondered why one of the leading conservative strategists was speaking so approvingly of a tribune of the left. Viewers who saw the broad smile he was unable to suppress had a clue to the answer: Republicans fear that if Hillary Clinton is nominated fairly easily, while they are locked in a bitter, lengthy, ideologically charged series of primaries with a large cast of characters of varying degrees of plausibility, she gets a head start for the real fight.
Of course Republicans recognize that at its most vigorous, a debate between Clinton and Sanders on how — not whether — to toughen financial regulation or diminish income inequality will fall decibels short of the fundamental arguments between Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush on immigration, Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul on military intervention, Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee against many others on how sharply to press against same-sex marriage, and Donald Trump and all of the others on the role of rational discussion in politics. But they believe boosting Sanders’ candidacy is their only way to prevent Clinton emerging as the nominee with broad support early in the process, strengthening her position in November.
They are correct.
I know that there is a counter-argument made by some on the Democratic left that a closely contested nomination process will help our ultimate nominee — that Clinton will somehow benefit from having to spend most of her time and campaign funds between now and next summer proving her ideological purity in an intraparty fight, like Mitt Romney in 2012 — rather than focusing on her differences with the conservative she will face in the election. But neither an analysis of the current political situation nor the history of presidential races supports this.
I believe strongly that the most effective thing liberals and progressives can do to advance our public policy goals — on health care, immigration, financial regulation, reducing income inequality, completing the fight against anti-LGBT discrimination, protecting women’s autonomy in choices about reproduction and other critical matters on which the Democratic and Republican candidates for president will be sharply divided — is to help Clinton win our nomination early in the year. That way, she can focus on what we know will be a tough job: combating the flood of post-Citizens United right-wing money, in an atmosphere in which public skepticism about the effectiveness of public policy is high.
I realize that before explaining why I am convinced that a prolonged prenomination debate about the authenticity of Clinton’s support for progressive policy stances will do us more harm than good, that very point must be addressed. Without any substance, some argue that she has been insufficiently committed to economic and social reform — for example, that she is too close to Wall Street, and consequently soft on financial regulation, and unwilling to support higher taxation on the super-rich. This is wholly without basis. Well before the Sanders candidacy began to draw attention, she spoke out promptly in criticism of the appropriations rider that responded to the big banks’ wish list on derivative trading. She has spoken thoughtfully about further steps against abuses and in favor of taxing hedge funds at a fairer, i.e., higher, rate.
This is reflective of her role in the 1990s, when she was a consistent force for progressive policies in her husband’s administration. And as Paul Krugman documented throughout the 2008 nomination campaign, she was, on the whole, to Barack Obama’s left on domestic issues.
True, not on Iraq. Having myself voted against that terrible mistake, I agree that her position on the war is a legitimate concern for those of us on the left. The question then becomes whether this was a manifestation of a general tendency to support unwise military intervention, or the case of her joining every other Democratic senator who had serious presidential ambitions in voting for a war that the Bush-Cheney administration had successfully hyped as a necessary defense against terrorism. While I wish that she, Joe Biden and John Kerry had not been spooked into believing that no one who voted no would have the national security merit badge required to win the presidency, I regard liberal senators’ support for the Iraq War as a response to a given fraught political situation rather than an indication of their basic policy stance — like Obama’s off-again, on-again support for same-sex marriage. (Yes, I am saying that in deciding whether or not to support a candidate with whom I have disagreed on a fundamental issue, I am more at ease if it was a one-time political accommodation rather than a genuine conviction.) Most relevantly for this discussion, she will clearly be for less military spending and intervention than the Republican nominee. While I admire Paul’s skepticism about an expansive global policing role for America, even the more tempered version of this he now propounds is an absolute bar to his winning a Republican convention.
Of course it is not only possible to accept the legitimacy of Clinton’s liberal-progressive credentials and still prefer that Sanders be president, it makes sense for the most ideologically committed to hold that view. But wishful thinking is no way to win the presidency. There is not only no chance — perhaps regrettably — for Sanders to win a national election. A long primary campaign will only erode the benefit Democrats are now poised to reap from the Republicans’ free-for-all.
Decades ago, Sanders made a principled choice to play a valuable part in our politics — the outsider within the system. He defied the uniquely American aversion to the word “socialism.” We are, after all, the only Western democracy in which no self-identified socialist party has ever played a significant governmental role. While voting with the Democrats to organize first the House and then the Senate, he made clear he did so as a regrettable necessity, not a preference, and cited his nonmembership in the party as an indication of his political integrity. Substantively, he has consistently, forcefully and cogently made the case for a larger federal government role in improving both the fairness and the quality of life in our country, refusing to soft-pedal in the face of declining support for this view in public opinion.
His very unwillingness to be confined by existing voter attitudes, as part of a long-term strategy to change them, is both a very valuable contribution to the democratic dialogue and an obvious bar to winning support from the majority of these very voters in the near term.
Wishful thinking won’t win the White House.
By BARNEY FRANK
As skillful a controversialist as Bill Kristol is, he couldn’t help grinning. When we were discussing the 2016 campaign on “Morning Joe” last month, he expressed strong admiration for Bernie Sanders and pretended disbelief that I was not supporting him for president. But the strategically driven discipline he brought to the task of lavishly praising a man whose views he usually derides did not extend to control of his facial muscles.
If you weren’t watching the TV and only overheard our discussion, you might have wondered why one of the leading conservative strategists was speaking so approvingly of a tribune of the left. Viewers who saw the broad smile he was unable to suppress had a clue to the answer: Republicans fear that if Hillary Clinton is nominated fairly easily, while they are locked in a bitter, lengthy, ideologically charged series of primaries with a large cast of characters of varying degrees of plausibility, she gets a head start for the real fight.
Of course Republicans recognize that at its most vigorous, a debate between Clinton and Sanders on how — not whether — to toughen financial regulation or diminish income inequality will fall decibels short of the fundamental arguments between Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush on immigration, Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul on military intervention, Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee against many others on how sharply to press against same-sex marriage, and Donald Trump and all of the others on the role of rational discussion in politics. But they believe boosting Sanders’ candidacy is their only way to prevent Clinton emerging as the nominee with broad support early in the process, strengthening her position in November.
They are correct.
I know that there is a counter-argument made by some on the Democratic left that a closely contested nomination process will help our ultimate nominee — that Clinton will somehow benefit from having to spend most of her time and campaign funds between now and next summer proving her ideological purity in an intraparty fight, like Mitt Romney in 2012 — rather than focusing on her differences with the conservative she will face in the election. But neither an analysis of the current political situation nor the history of presidential races supports this.
I believe strongly that the most effective thing liberals and progressives can do to advance our public policy goals — on health care, immigration, financial regulation, reducing income inequality, completing the fight against anti-LGBT discrimination, protecting women’s autonomy in choices about reproduction and other critical matters on which the Democratic and Republican candidates for president will be sharply divided — is to help Clinton win our nomination early in the year. That way, she can focus on what we know will be a tough job: combating the flood of post-Citizens United right-wing money, in an atmosphere in which public skepticism about the effectiveness of public policy is high.
I realize that before explaining why I am convinced that a prolonged prenomination debate about the authenticity of Clinton’s support for progressive policy stances will do us more harm than good, that very point must be addressed. Without any substance, some argue that she has been insufficiently committed to economic and social reform — for example, that she is too close to Wall Street, and consequently soft on financial regulation, and unwilling to support higher taxation on the super-rich. This is wholly without basis. Well before the Sanders candidacy began to draw attention, she spoke out promptly in criticism of the appropriations rider that responded to the big banks’ wish list on derivative trading. She has spoken thoughtfully about further steps against abuses and in favor of taxing hedge funds at a fairer, i.e., higher, rate.
This is reflective of her role in the 1990s, when she was a consistent force for progressive policies in her husband’s administration. And as Paul Krugman documented throughout the 2008 nomination campaign, she was, on the whole, to Barack Obama’s left on domestic issues.
True, not on Iraq. Having myself voted against that terrible mistake, I agree that her position on the war is a legitimate concern for those of us on the left. The question then becomes whether this was a manifestation of a general tendency to support unwise military intervention, or the case of her joining every other Democratic senator who had serious presidential ambitions in voting for a war that the Bush-Cheney administration had successfully hyped as a necessary defense against terrorism. While I wish that she, Joe Biden and John Kerry had not been spooked into believing that no one who voted no would have the national security merit badge required to win the presidency, I regard liberal senators’ support for the Iraq War as a response to a given fraught political situation rather than an indication of their basic policy stance — like Obama’s off-again, on-again support for same-sex marriage. (Yes, I am saying that in deciding whether or not to support a candidate with whom I have disagreed on a fundamental issue, I am more at ease if it was a one-time political accommodation rather than a genuine conviction.) Most relevantly for this discussion, she will clearly be for less military spending and intervention than the Republican nominee. While I admire Paul’s skepticism about an expansive global policing role for America, even the more tempered version of this he now propounds is an absolute bar to his winning a Republican convention.
Of course it is not only possible to accept the legitimacy of Clinton’s liberal-progressive credentials and still prefer that Sanders be president, it makes sense for the most ideologically committed to hold that view. But wishful thinking is no way to win the presidency. There is not only no chance — perhaps regrettably — for Sanders to win a national election. A long primary campaign will only erode the benefit Democrats are now poised to reap from the Republicans’ free-for-all.
Decades ago, Sanders made a principled choice to play a valuable part in our politics — the outsider within the system. He defied the uniquely American aversion to the word “socialism.” We are, after all, the only Western democracy in which no self-identified socialist party has ever played a significant governmental role. While voting with the Democrats to organize first the House and then the Senate, he made clear he did so as a regrettable necessity, not a preference, and cited his nonmembership in the party as an indication of his political integrity. Substantively, he has consistently, forcefully and cogently made the case for a larger federal government role in improving both the fairness and the quality of life in our country, refusing to soft-pedal in the face of declining support for this view in public opinion.
His very unwillingness to be confined by existing voter attitudes, as part of a long-term strategy to change them, is both a very valuable contribution to the democratic dialogue and an obvious bar to winning support from the majority of these very voters in the near term.
Don't know whats more scary, Perry sounding smart or Trump....
Rick Perry: Donald Trump will destroy the Republican Party
By Katie Glueck
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has already emerged as one of the GOP presidential field’s most vocal critics of Donald Trump, ratcheted up his rhetoric again Wednesday as he slammed the real estate mogul’s presidential bid as a “cancer on conservatism” and warned that, left unchecked, Trump could be the demise of the Republican Party.
“He offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued,” Perry charged during an address at the Willard Hotel in downtown Washington. “Let no one be mistaken: Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded.”
Trump drew the ire of the bulk of the Republican field Saturday, when, during a social conservatives confab in Iowa, he questioned the heroism of Sen. John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. But Perry was lobbing harsh and persistent criticisms before that, bashing Trump last week over controversial comments the provocateur has made about immigrants who came to the United States illegally, a theme Perry returned to Wednesday.
“Donald Trump, the reality television star, is a great generator of ratings. But Donald Trump the candidate is a sower of division, wrongly demonizing Mexican-Americans for political sport,” Perry said. “He has piqued the interest of some Republican voters who have legitimate concerns about a porous border and broken immigration system. But instead of offering those voters leadership or solutions, he has offered fear and sound bites. This cannot stand.”
In 2011, during his disastrous first presidential run, Perry tussled with his Republican rivals over his defense of the Texas DREAM Act, which allows in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants, charging that those who disagreed “don’t have a heart.” The remark drew fury from conservatives, but with the GOP routed among Hispanic voters in 2012, Perry’s supporters again believe his more compassionate tone will resonate, though he remains a long shot.
(Eric Walker, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, however, said in an email that Perry also has used hot rhetoric about undocumented immigrants, though certainly not on par with Trump. He pointed to a 2014 statement in which Perry claimed there were “over 3,000 homicides by illegal aliens over the course of the last six years,” something PolitiFact concluded was wrong.)
In the meantime, some in the GOP field, including Scott Walker and Ted Cruz, have avoided criticizing Trump over his immigration remarks, though they took issue with his comments about McCain. (Cruz, however, has refrained from criticizing Trump directly.)
But Perry, who is on the bubble for qualifying for the first Republican debate next month, has found that fiery attacks on Trump are the easiest route to national media attention, and he dominated political Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.
He earned loud applause from the audience when he expressed outrage over Trump’s comments concerning McCain.
“He couldn’t have endured for five minutes what John McCain endured for five-and-a-half years,” jabbed Perry, noting his own military experience.
And he got in a dig at Trump over remarks made in Iowa that some considered unseemly for an event aimed at social conservatives.
“Most telling to me,” Perry said of Trump, is “his admission that there is not a single time in his life that he sought the forgiveness of God.”
In language that bordered on apocalyptic, Perry urged Republicans to “beware of false prophets” and warned that the Republican Party could go the way of the now-defunct Whig Party if Trump isn’t reined in, likening his views to those of the nativist Know-Nothing Party from the mid-1800s.
“I will not go quiet when this cancer on conservatism threatens to metastasize into a movement of mean-spirited politics that will send the Republican Party to the same place it sent the Whig Party in 1854: the graveyard,” he said.
By Katie Glueck
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has already emerged as one of the GOP presidential field’s most vocal critics of Donald Trump, ratcheted up his rhetoric again Wednesday as he slammed the real estate mogul’s presidential bid as a “cancer on conservatism” and warned that, left unchecked, Trump could be the demise of the Republican Party.
“He offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued,” Perry charged during an address at the Willard Hotel in downtown Washington. “Let no one be mistaken: Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded.”
Trump drew the ire of the bulk of the Republican field Saturday, when, during a social conservatives confab in Iowa, he questioned the heroism of Sen. John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. But Perry was lobbing harsh and persistent criticisms before that, bashing Trump last week over controversial comments the provocateur has made about immigrants who came to the United States illegally, a theme Perry returned to Wednesday.
“Donald Trump, the reality television star, is a great generator of ratings. But Donald Trump the candidate is a sower of division, wrongly demonizing Mexican-Americans for political sport,” Perry said. “He has piqued the interest of some Republican voters who have legitimate concerns about a porous border and broken immigration system. But instead of offering those voters leadership or solutions, he has offered fear and sound bites. This cannot stand.”
In 2011, during his disastrous first presidential run, Perry tussled with his Republican rivals over his defense of the Texas DREAM Act, which allows in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants, charging that those who disagreed “don’t have a heart.” The remark drew fury from conservatives, but with the GOP routed among Hispanic voters in 2012, Perry’s supporters again believe his more compassionate tone will resonate, though he remains a long shot.
(Eric Walker, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, however, said in an email that Perry also has used hot rhetoric about undocumented immigrants, though certainly not on par with Trump. He pointed to a 2014 statement in which Perry claimed there were “over 3,000 homicides by illegal aliens over the course of the last six years,” something PolitiFact concluded was wrong.)
In the meantime, some in the GOP field, including Scott Walker and Ted Cruz, have avoided criticizing Trump over his immigration remarks, though they took issue with his comments about McCain. (Cruz, however, has refrained from criticizing Trump directly.)
But Perry, who is on the bubble for qualifying for the first Republican debate next month, has found that fiery attacks on Trump are the easiest route to national media attention, and he dominated political Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.
He earned loud applause from the audience when he expressed outrage over Trump’s comments concerning McCain.
“He couldn’t have endured for five minutes what John McCain endured for five-and-a-half years,” jabbed Perry, noting his own military experience.
And he got in a dig at Trump over remarks made in Iowa that some considered unseemly for an event aimed at social conservatives.
“Most telling to me,” Perry said of Trump, is “his admission that there is not a single time in his life that he sought the forgiveness of God.”
In language that bordered on apocalyptic, Perry urged Republicans to “beware of false prophets” and warned that the Republican Party could go the way of the now-defunct Whig Party if Trump isn’t reined in, likening his views to those of the nativist Know-Nothing Party from the mid-1800s.
“I will not go quiet when this cancer on conservatism threatens to metastasize into a movement of mean-spirited politics that will send the Republican Party to the same place it sent the Whig Party in 1854: the graveyard,” he said.
Childish
We Asked a Kindergarten Teacher How to Deal With Donald Trump
"Childish behavior is my milieu."
By Tim Murphy
Between his juvenile name-calling, dubious boasts, short attention span, constant need for attention, and temper tantrums when things don't go his way, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump often resembles an oversized six-year-old. So far, that approach has helped him vault to the top of the field, and left his fellow contenders so desperate for attention they're literally destroying documents with chainsaws. As Trump prepares for the first Republican primary debate next month in Cleveland, he is presenting himself as the ultimate wild card, capable of saying anything to anyone with little thought for the consequences.
That can pose problems for candidates and debate moderators, who are used to dealing with fully grown adults and have struggled to respond to his campaign-trail antics. To understand how Jeb Bush et al. might best react to a Trump tantrum on the debate stage next month, I reached out to someone with expertise on dealing with six-year-olds: an actual public-school kindergarten teacher.
Our teacher is from New York, like Trump, and has (like everyone else, apparently) been granted anonymity to speak candidly without being called a "dopey clown" by Trump. Here's an abridged email transcript:
Mother Jones: Is it fair to say you’re used to dealing with childish behavior?
Public-school teacher: I teach kindergarten, but have also taught 2nd grade and Pre-K in the past. Childish behavior is my milieu.
MJ: What is an example of the childish behavior you deal with in a typical day?
PST: Extreme neediness would probably be the defining characteristic. It is a constant barrage of very small people constantly saying my name, pulling at my clothing, pulling on my body in general. If those efforts fail to get my attention, it escalates to yelling, interrupting others who have my attention at that particular moment, and sometimes a little bit of elbowing to the front of the line. They all want to be first, they all want to be in charge, and few of them understand that nobody gets to be "the best" all the time. This is how things are at the beginning of kindergarten; by the time a few weeks have passed, the children have learned that things don't work that way.
And nose-picking. Always the nose-picking.
MJ: What kinds of insults do students like to use at that age?
PST: I am extremely strict about how the students treat each other (always with kindness), so this issue doesn't arise very often. But the few times it has, they usually either make up something totally nonsensical, or repeat something that they have heard their parents say at home, or sometimes things they have heard on TV. I've heard everything from "poopyhead" to "motherfucker."
MJ: What are some tips you have for dealing with this kind of name-calling?
PST: Find out the motivation, teach empathy, provide time to think about the effects of name-calling, suggest (but not force) an apology if the student doesn't come up with this idea on his/her own. If it continues to be a problem, treat it not as a momentary lapse in self-control or poor judgement, but as a negative choice that deserves negative consequences. If improvement is seen in a chronic offender, positive consequences (praise, recognition of behavioral improvement) should be offered. Either type of consequence needs to be doled out swiftly.
MJ: So say I'm a student, and I call another student a "no-good rotten traitor." What happens then?
PST: It depends on how mature the students are, how far along in the year it is, etc. In most cases, I would probably watch to see how the insultee (is that even a word?) reacts. If he/she handled the situation adequately, I would probably let it go and keep an extra close eye on the insulter (again...a real word?). If I had to intervene, I would go through the steps listed above, and probably assign the student some thinking time during recess (during which the student is not allowed to play--the student has to think about what he/she did to land in thinking time, tell me why it was wrong, and how it should be handled in the future; anyone who doesn't come up with an adequate answer needs to think longer). If it was a chronic issue, I would also contact the parents to make them aware of the situation. In extreme cases, I would have the student speak with an administrator and would create a behavior modification plan.
MJ: Do kids generally grow out of this kind of thing?
PST: Not unless they are taught that it's inappropriate. Kids who are rude will continue to be rude until someone teaches them that's it's not okay, and takes the time to show them a different way. Fortunately, I have found that most kids are "reformed" very quickly when they take some time to consider how their unkind words make others feel.
MJ: If someone has been doing this kind of thing for 30 years, do you think that would be cause for alarm?
PST: Clearly. I see only four reasons why an adult would resort to name-calling on a regular basis:
1. Said person is a sociopath who has no ability to empathize
2. Nobody ever took the time to teach said person that there are better way to deal with conflict
3. Said person has been a victim for so long that he or she is constantly on the defensive and is actively trying to drive others away
4. Said person is an asshole
Reasons 1-3 make me feel sad for that person. Reason 4 does not.
"Childish behavior is my milieu."
By Tim Murphy
Between his juvenile name-calling, dubious boasts, short attention span, constant need for attention, and temper tantrums when things don't go his way, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump often resembles an oversized six-year-old. So far, that approach has helped him vault to the top of the field, and left his fellow contenders so desperate for attention they're literally destroying documents with chainsaws. As Trump prepares for the first Republican primary debate next month in Cleveland, he is presenting himself as the ultimate wild card, capable of saying anything to anyone with little thought for the consequences.
That can pose problems for candidates and debate moderators, who are used to dealing with fully grown adults and have struggled to respond to his campaign-trail antics. To understand how Jeb Bush et al. might best react to a Trump tantrum on the debate stage next month, I reached out to someone with expertise on dealing with six-year-olds: an actual public-school kindergarten teacher.
Our teacher is from New York, like Trump, and has (like everyone else, apparently) been granted anonymity to speak candidly without being called a "dopey clown" by Trump. Here's an abridged email transcript:
Mother Jones: Is it fair to say you’re used to dealing with childish behavior?
Public-school teacher: I teach kindergarten, but have also taught 2nd grade and Pre-K in the past. Childish behavior is my milieu.
MJ: What is an example of the childish behavior you deal with in a typical day?
PST: Extreme neediness would probably be the defining characteristic. It is a constant barrage of very small people constantly saying my name, pulling at my clothing, pulling on my body in general. If those efforts fail to get my attention, it escalates to yelling, interrupting others who have my attention at that particular moment, and sometimes a little bit of elbowing to the front of the line. They all want to be first, they all want to be in charge, and few of them understand that nobody gets to be "the best" all the time. This is how things are at the beginning of kindergarten; by the time a few weeks have passed, the children have learned that things don't work that way.
And nose-picking. Always the nose-picking.
MJ: What kinds of insults do students like to use at that age?
PST: I am extremely strict about how the students treat each other (always with kindness), so this issue doesn't arise very often. But the few times it has, they usually either make up something totally nonsensical, or repeat something that they have heard their parents say at home, or sometimes things they have heard on TV. I've heard everything from "poopyhead" to "motherfucker."
MJ: What are some tips you have for dealing with this kind of name-calling?
PST: Find out the motivation, teach empathy, provide time to think about the effects of name-calling, suggest (but not force) an apology if the student doesn't come up with this idea on his/her own. If it continues to be a problem, treat it not as a momentary lapse in self-control or poor judgement, but as a negative choice that deserves negative consequences. If improvement is seen in a chronic offender, positive consequences (praise, recognition of behavioral improvement) should be offered. Either type of consequence needs to be doled out swiftly.
MJ: So say I'm a student, and I call another student a "no-good rotten traitor." What happens then?
PST: It depends on how mature the students are, how far along in the year it is, etc. In most cases, I would probably watch to see how the insultee (is that even a word?) reacts. If he/she handled the situation adequately, I would probably let it go and keep an extra close eye on the insulter (again...a real word?). If I had to intervene, I would go through the steps listed above, and probably assign the student some thinking time during recess (during which the student is not allowed to play--the student has to think about what he/she did to land in thinking time, tell me why it was wrong, and how it should be handled in the future; anyone who doesn't come up with an adequate answer needs to think longer). If it was a chronic issue, I would also contact the parents to make them aware of the situation. In extreme cases, I would have the student speak with an administrator and would create a behavior modification plan.
MJ: Do kids generally grow out of this kind of thing?
PST: Not unless they are taught that it's inappropriate. Kids who are rude will continue to be rude until someone teaches them that's it's not okay, and takes the time to show them a different way. Fortunately, I have found that most kids are "reformed" very quickly when they take some time to consider how their unkind words make others feel.
MJ: If someone has been doing this kind of thing for 30 years, do you think that would be cause for alarm?
PST: Clearly. I see only four reasons why an adult would resort to name-calling on a regular basis:
1. Said person is a sociopath who has no ability to empathize
2. Nobody ever took the time to teach said person that there are better way to deal with conflict
3. Said person has been a victim for so long that he or she is constantly on the defensive and is actively trying to drive others away
4. Said person is an asshole
Reasons 1-3 make me feel sad for that person. Reason 4 does not.
July 22, 2015
Banks reopen
Greek banks reopen but cash limits remain and taxes soar
Derek Gatopoulos and Nicholas Paphitis
Greek banks reopened Monday for the first time in three weeks, but strict limits on cash withdrawals and higher taxes on everything from coffee to diapers meant the economic outlook for the recession-battered country was far from back to normal.
There were hopeful developments: The cash-strapped nation got a short-term loan from European creditors to pay more than 6 billion euros ($6.5 billion) owed to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. Non-payment of either would have derailed Greece's latest bailout request.
But for most Greeks, already buffeted by six years of recession, Monday was all about rising prices as tax hikes demanded by creditors took effect.
Dimitris Chronis, who has run a small kebab shop in central Athens for 20 years, said the higher tax rates could push his business over the edge.
"I can't put up my prices because I'll have no customers at all," lamented Chronis, who said sales have already slid by around 80 percent since banking restrictions were imposed on June 29.
"We used to deliver to offices nearby, but most of them have closed. People would order a lot and buy food for their colleagues on special occasions. That era is over."
There are few parts of the Greek economy left untouched by the steep increase in the sales tax from 13 to 23 percent. The new rates have been imposed on basic goods, from cooking oil to condoms, as well as to popular services, such as taxi rides, eating out at restaurants and ferry transport to the Greek islands.
The tax hikes are part of a package of austerity measures that also include pension cuts and other reforms that the Greek government had to introduce for negotiations to begin on a crucial third bailout.
In response to last week's parliamentary vote backing the austerity measures, the ECB raised the amount of liquidity assistance on offer to Greek banks, paving the way for them to reopen Monday. But strict controls on cash flows, including a ban on check-cashing and payments abroad as well as limits on cash withdrawals, remained in effect.
The European Union also sent a three-month loan to Athens, enabling the government to repay a 4.2 billion euro debt to the ECB on Monday and to clear its arrears of about 2 billion euros with the IMF.
Both institutions confirmed they had been repaid.
IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said the Fund "stands ready to continue assisting Greece in its efforts to return to financial stability and growth."
The IMF is not directly involved in Greece's request for a third bailout as its previous rescue runs until early next year. But it has expressed doubts over the austerity measures that Greece's European creditors are demanding unless they also include significant debt relief.
Greece has relied on bailout loans totaling 240 billion euros since 2010 after it was locked out of international money markets. In return for the cash, successive governments have had to enact harsh austerity measures to try to get public finances into shape.
Though the annual deficit has been reduced dramatically, the country's debt burden has actually risen to around 180 percent of Greece's annual GDP as the country's economy contracted around 25 percent.
The higher taxes formed a key plank of last week's bailout agreement between Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and European creditors. Following months of growing distrust, Greece's partners in the 19-country eurozone wanted to see measures enacted before bailout talks could begin.
The green light to the opening of discussions, which are expected to last around a month, was given Friday. They will include economic targets and other reforms deemed necessary in return for an anticipated 85 billion euros ($93 billion) over three years.
Though the potential bailout has eased fears of a Greek exit from the euro, capital controls are expected to remain in place for months if not years. The controls were introduced because negotiations with creditors had reached an impasse, fueling anxiety about a Greek exit from the euro and a bank run.
On Monday, the first easing saw banks open their doors for limited services that allowed customers to move money from one account to another, but barred them from opening new ones. The daily cash withdrawal limit stayed at 60 euros, or about $65, but new rules permitting the withdrawal of up to 420 euros a week meant that Greeks won't have to trudge to the ATM every day.
Since the Greek parliament passed the austerity measures, creditors have relieved the pressure on the country, though its acute difficulties were evident in the fact that the Athens Stock Exchange remains closed until further notice.
Further relief for Greece may come if lawmakers back another set of creditor-demanded measures on Wednesday. A repeat of last week's rebellion by lawmakers in Tsipras' left-wing Syriza party is unlikely given the non-controversial nature of the reforms: revamping the civil law code to streamline legal proceedings and adopting EU regulations on guaranteeing bank deposits and strengthening banks.
The thornier issues of scrapping early retirement and hiking taxation on farmers — opposed by both government and opposition lawmakers alike — are not among the reforms Greece has to approve this week and will be addressed later, government officials said.
Cabinet-level dissenters were replaced Friday, but even their replacements have denounced the austerity measures demanded by Greece's creditors.
"The government was obliged to make a tactical retreat to save the country," new Labor Minister Giorgos Katrougalos said Monday. "This was the result of a soft, post-modern financial coup."
Derek Gatopoulos and Nicholas Paphitis
Greek banks reopened Monday for the first time in three weeks, but strict limits on cash withdrawals and higher taxes on everything from coffee to diapers meant the economic outlook for the recession-battered country was far from back to normal.
There were hopeful developments: The cash-strapped nation got a short-term loan from European creditors to pay more than 6 billion euros ($6.5 billion) owed to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. Non-payment of either would have derailed Greece's latest bailout request.
But for most Greeks, already buffeted by six years of recession, Monday was all about rising prices as tax hikes demanded by creditors took effect.
Dimitris Chronis, who has run a small kebab shop in central Athens for 20 years, said the higher tax rates could push his business over the edge.
"I can't put up my prices because I'll have no customers at all," lamented Chronis, who said sales have already slid by around 80 percent since banking restrictions were imposed on June 29.
"We used to deliver to offices nearby, but most of them have closed. People would order a lot and buy food for their colleagues on special occasions. That era is over."
There are few parts of the Greek economy left untouched by the steep increase in the sales tax from 13 to 23 percent. The new rates have been imposed on basic goods, from cooking oil to condoms, as well as to popular services, such as taxi rides, eating out at restaurants and ferry transport to the Greek islands.
The tax hikes are part of a package of austerity measures that also include pension cuts and other reforms that the Greek government had to introduce for negotiations to begin on a crucial third bailout.
In response to last week's parliamentary vote backing the austerity measures, the ECB raised the amount of liquidity assistance on offer to Greek banks, paving the way for them to reopen Monday. But strict controls on cash flows, including a ban on check-cashing and payments abroad as well as limits on cash withdrawals, remained in effect.
The European Union also sent a three-month loan to Athens, enabling the government to repay a 4.2 billion euro debt to the ECB on Monday and to clear its arrears of about 2 billion euros with the IMF.
Both institutions confirmed they had been repaid.
IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said the Fund "stands ready to continue assisting Greece in its efforts to return to financial stability and growth."
The IMF is not directly involved in Greece's request for a third bailout as its previous rescue runs until early next year. But it has expressed doubts over the austerity measures that Greece's European creditors are demanding unless they also include significant debt relief.
Greece has relied on bailout loans totaling 240 billion euros since 2010 after it was locked out of international money markets. In return for the cash, successive governments have had to enact harsh austerity measures to try to get public finances into shape.
Though the annual deficit has been reduced dramatically, the country's debt burden has actually risen to around 180 percent of Greece's annual GDP as the country's economy contracted around 25 percent.
The higher taxes formed a key plank of last week's bailout agreement between Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and European creditors. Following months of growing distrust, Greece's partners in the 19-country eurozone wanted to see measures enacted before bailout talks could begin.
The green light to the opening of discussions, which are expected to last around a month, was given Friday. They will include economic targets and other reforms deemed necessary in return for an anticipated 85 billion euros ($93 billion) over three years.
Though the potential bailout has eased fears of a Greek exit from the euro, capital controls are expected to remain in place for months if not years. The controls were introduced because negotiations with creditors had reached an impasse, fueling anxiety about a Greek exit from the euro and a bank run.
On Monday, the first easing saw banks open their doors for limited services that allowed customers to move money from one account to another, but barred them from opening new ones. The daily cash withdrawal limit stayed at 60 euros, or about $65, but new rules permitting the withdrawal of up to 420 euros a week meant that Greeks won't have to trudge to the ATM every day.
Since the Greek parliament passed the austerity measures, creditors have relieved the pressure on the country, though its acute difficulties were evident in the fact that the Athens Stock Exchange remains closed until further notice.
Further relief for Greece may come if lawmakers back another set of creditor-demanded measures on Wednesday. A repeat of last week's rebellion by lawmakers in Tsipras' left-wing Syriza party is unlikely given the non-controversial nature of the reforms: revamping the civil law code to streamline legal proceedings and adopting EU regulations on guaranteeing bank deposits and strengthening banks.
The thornier issues of scrapping early retirement and hiking taxation on farmers — opposed by both government and opposition lawmakers alike — are not among the reforms Greece has to approve this week and will be addressed later, government officials said.
Cabinet-level dissenters were replaced Friday, but even their replacements have denounced the austerity measures demanded by Greece's creditors.
"The government was obliged to make a tactical retreat to save the country," new Labor Minister Giorgos Katrougalos said Monday. "This was the result of a soft, post-modern financial coup."
G299.2-2.9
Because the debris fields of exploded stars, known as supernova remnants, are very hot, energetic, and glow brightly in X-ray light, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has proven to be a valuable tool in studying them. The supernova remnant called G299.2-2.9 (or G299 for short) is located within our Milky Way galaxy, but Chandra’s new image of it is reminiscent of a beautiful flower here on Earth.
G299 was left over by a particular class of supernovas called Type Ia. Astronomers think that a Type Ia supernova is a thermonuclear explosion – involving the fusion of elements and release of vast amounts of energy − of a white dwarf star in a tight orbit with a companion star. If the white dwarf’s partner is a typical, Sun-like star, the white dwarf can become unstable and explode as it draws material from its companion. Alternatively, the white dwarf is in orbit with another white dwarf, the two may merge and can trigger an explosion.
Regardless of their triggering mechanism, Type Ia supernovas have long been known to be uniform in their extreme brightness, usually outshining the entire galaxy where they are found. This is important because scientists use these objects as cosmic mileposts, allowing them to accurately measure the distances of galaxies billions of light years away, and to determine the rate of expansion of the Universe.
Traditional theoretical models of Type Ia supernovas generally predict that these explosions would be symmetric, creating a near perfect sphere as they expand. These models have been supported by results showing that remnants of Type Ia supernovas are more symmetric than remnants of supernovas involving the collapse of massive stars.
However, astronomers are discovering that some Type Ia supernova explosions may not be as symmetric as previously thought. G299 could be an example of such an “unusual” Type Ia supernova. Using a long observation from Chandra, researchers discovered the shell of debris from the exploded star is expanding differently in various directions.
In this new Chandra image, red, green, and blue represent low, medium, and high-energy X-rays, respectively, detected by the telescope. The medium energy X-rays include emission from iron and the hard-energy X-rays include emission from silicon and sulfur. The X-ray data have been combined with infrared data from ground-based 2MASS survey that shows the stars in the field of view.
By performing a detailed analysis of the X-rays, researchers found several clear examples of asymmetry in G299. For example, the ratio between the amounts of iron and silicon in the part of the remnant just above the center is larger than in the part of the remnant just below the center. This difference can be seen in the greener color of the upper region compared to the bluer color of the lower region. Also, there is a strongly elongated portion of the remnant extending to the right. In this region, the relative amount of iron to silicon is similar to that found in the southern region of the remnant.
The patterns seen in the Chandra data suggest that a very lopsided explosion may have produced this Type Ia supernova. It might also be that the remnant has been expanding into an environment where the medium it encountered was uneven. Regardless of the ultimate explanation, observations of G299 and others like it are showing astronomers just how varied such beautiful cosmic flowers can be.
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