Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Auto Emissions/Fuel Standards: Historic, in that a national standard has been set- one which matches California’s trail-blazing action- and for the fact that everybody’s on board with this, not surprising since the Government owns the car companies. Some term it a potential ‘game-changer’ with global warming, reduce oil consumption by 5%. A step that got us to this point was the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that said the EPA had violated the Clean Air Act by failing to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.
Not to be a downer amidst this development, but it’s hard not to think about how immediate savings would result from raising the gasoline tax. But too many in Government remain tax-avoidant, part of our national mythology about unfair taxation. Typically, Massachusetts legislators fled from the proposed 19 cents a gallon gas tax.
The agreement that the Obama administration will announce today forcing dramatic reductions in vehicle greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in auto mileage marks a potentially pivotal shift in the battle over global warming -- and a vindication of California's long battle to toughen standards.
After decades of political sparring, legal challenges and scientific arguments over climate change, three of the central players -- the federal government, major U.S. automakers and California -- have found that the time has come to suspend hostilities and make a deal.
For cars and trucks, the agreement would establish a single nationwide standard that would require a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide and other emissions from vehicles sold in the United States by 2016.
The new limits are projected to reduce U.S. oil consumption by about 5% a year. The nation currently uses about 7.1 billion barrels a year.
For its part, California will essentially accept the national standard as a substitute for the state's own tough emission requirements. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-emissions19-2009may19,0,1578831,print.story
Yet: Coal and Electric Industries Score in Climate Pact
Even as House Democrats are celebrating their deal with conservative-leaning colleagues on climate change legislation, the real winners under the compromise have been the coal, electric and auto industries, who are largely the source of the nation’s carbon emissions to begin with. Details of the compromise are still emerging, but already the chief sponsors of the measure - Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) - have been forced to lower carbon-reduction targets, cut renewable fuel standards and dole out billions of dollars in benefits to the nation’s largest polluting industries."
Many environmentalists say the compromise comes at the too-high cost of undermining the bill’s very purpose, which is to slash emissions dramatically enough to prevent a warming planet from heating further. Some are asking Democrats either to bolster the environmental protections or to scrap the proposal altogether.
“We are not prepared to ‘give away the farm’ just so that we can say that we helped to get legislation passed,” Janet Keating, executive director of the West Virginia-based Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said in a statement Friday. “There are some costs that are too high to pay when it comes to the environment, clean air and clean water. We urge Congress to either fix the Waxman-Markey bill or dump it and start over.”
The saga highlights the thorny congressional climate change debate, where partisan politics takes a backseat to regional interests, and the influence of the energy lobby is king. Indeed, the concessions from Waxman and Markey to this point have been made to satisfy Democrats representing regions heavy with coal, oil and automaker interests. http://washingtonindependent.com/43264/coal-electric-industries-big-winners-in-climate-bill-deal
Credit Card Companies: In the face of legislation moving through Congress, the companies look to their good dubie customers. Predictions are that annual fees will return along with the curtailing or ending cash-back / frequent-flier miles programs.
Credit cards have long been a very good deal for people who pay their bills on time and in full. Even as card companies imposed punitive fees and penalties on those late with their payments, the best customers racked up cash-back rewards, frequent-flier miles and other perks in recent years.
Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.
Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.
“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”
As they thin their ranks of risky cardholders to deal with an economic downturn, major banks including American Express, Citigroup, Bank of America and a long list of others have already begun to raise interest rates, and some have set their sights on consumers who pay their bills on time. The legislation scheduled for a Senate vote on Tuesday does not cap interest rates, so banks can continue to lift them, albeit at a slower pace and with greater disclosure.
“There will be one-size-fits-all pricing, and as a result, you’ll see the industry will be more egalitarian in terms of its revenue base,” said David Robertson, publisher of the Nilson Report, which tracks the credit card business.
People who routinely pay off their credit card balances have been enjoying the equivalent of a free ride, he said, because many have not had to pay an annual fee even as they collect points for air travel and other perks. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/business/19credit.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
CIA, Pelosi and EIT: So, those CIA notes of the 2002 meeting where Pelosi was supposedly briefed about EIT- Enhanced Interrogation Techniques… well, the term was brought into the lexicon in 2006, i.e no one used the term in 2002. Still another hole in the CIA story that supposedly has damaged Pelosi.
Here's yet another reason (as if more were needed) to doubt that that CIA briefings document perfectly reflects what lawmakers were told about torture back in the early days of the war on terror.
Almost every briefing described in the document -- including the September 2002 Pelosi briefing that's directly at issue -- refers to "EITs," or enhanced interrogation techniques, as a subject that was discussed. But according to a former intelligence professional who has participated in such briefings, that term wasn't used until at least 2006.
That's not just an issue of semantics. The former intel professional said that by using the term in the recently compiled document, the CIA was being "disingenuous," trying to make it appear that the use of such techniques was part of a "formal and mechanical program." In fact, said the former intel pro, it wasn't until 2006 that -- amid growing concerns about the program among some in the Bush administration -- the EIT program was formalized, and the "enhanced interrogation techniques" were properly defined and given a name.
The former intel professional, no partisan defender of Democrats, faulted Nancy Pelosi for not pressing harder in the briefing to determine exactly which techniques had and hadn't been used. "The extent to which members ask questions should drive what's going on," said the former intel pro. "It's your job to ask."
Still, the impression created by the CIA, and by Republicans looking to use the document to damage Pelosi, is that as early as 2002 there was a universally agreed upon definition of enhanced interrogation techniques (the document, remember, doesn't say that waterboarding was mentioned during the Pelosi briefing). In reality, it appears, the term, and the techniques it encompassed, occupied a far murkier realm. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/source_eit_term_wasnt_in_use_when_pelosi_was_brief.php
Cheney and that phony Iraq-Al-Qaeda tie Jonathan Landay adds to the growing evidence that Cheney was the main actor in trying to invent the connection
Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true.
Cheney's 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein -- despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/68315.html
Supremes: Can’t Sue Ashcroft / Mueller et al The usual conservatives won a 5-4 decision to prevent a Pakistani seized after 9/11 and “harshly” treated from making the AG and FBI heads responsible for discriminatory actions of their subordinates, still another protection of the higher-ups.
FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft cannot be sued by a former Sept. 11 detainee who claimed he was abused because of his religion and ethnicity, a sharply divided Supreme Court said Monday in a decision that could make it harder to sue top officials for the actions of low-level operatives.
The court overturned a lower court decision that let Javaid Iqbal's (Ick-ball) lawsuit against the high-ranking officials proceed.
Iqbal is a Pakistani Muslim who spent nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York in 2002. He had argued that while Ashcroft and Mueller did not single him out for mistreatment, they were responsible for a policy of confining detainees in highly restrictive conditions because of their religious beliefs or race.
But the government argued that there was nothing linking Mueller and Ashcroft to the abuses that happened to Iqbal at a Brooklyn, N.Y., prison's Administrative Maximum Special Housing Unit, and the court agreed.
"The complaint does not show or even intimate, that petitioners purposefully housed detainees in the ADMAX SHU due to their race, religion or national origin," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion. "All it plausibly suggests is that the nation's top law enforcement officers, in the aftermath of a devastating attack, sought to keep suspected terrorists in the most secure conditions available until the suspects could be cleared of terrorist activity."
The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had said the lawsuit could proceed.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/18/supreme-court-top-us-offi_n_204600.html
Health Care: Stopping the Public Option Insurers are working overtime to prevent the inclusion of a public plan. One example comes from North Carolina’s Blue Cross, Blue Shield which follows the Republican script that drums up the usual stories about rationing and long-wait lines in Canada.
One week after the nation's health insurance lobby pledged to President Obama to do what it can to constrain rising health costs, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina is putting the finishing touches on a public message campaign aimed at killing a key plank in Obama's reform platform.
As part of what it calls an "informational website," the company has hired an outside PR company to make a series of videos sounding the alarm about a government-sponsored health insurance option, known as the public plan. Obama has consistently maintained that a government-run plan, absent high-paid executives and the need for profits, could be a more affordable option for Americans who have trouble purchasing private insurance. The industry argues that creating a public insurance program will undermine the marketplace and eventually lead to a single-payer style system.
In three 30-second videos, the insurer paints a picture of a future system in which patients wait months for appointments and can't choose their own doctors, according to storyboards of the videos obtained by the Washington Post. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/health-care-reform/2009/05/by_ceci_connolly_one_week.html?hpid=news-col-blog
Robert Reich on the fate of the public option:
Not surprisingly, insurance and drug companies have been dead-set against a single payer for years. And they've so frightened the public into thinking that "single payer" means loss of choice of doctor (that's wrong -- many single payer plans in other nations allow choices of medical deliverers) that politicians no longer even mention it.
On the campaign trail, Barack Obama pushed a compromise -- a universal health plan that would include a "public insurance option" resembling Medicare, which individual members of the public and their families could choose if they wished. This Medicare-like option would at least be able to negotiate low rates and impose some discipline on private insurers.
But now the Medicare-like option is being taken off the table. Insurance and drug companies have thrown their weight around the Senate. And, sadly, the White House -- eager to get a bill enacted in 2009 rather than risk it during the mid-term election year of 2010 -- is signaling it's open to other approaches. What other approaches? One would create a public insurance plan run by multiple regional third-party administrators. In other words, the putative "public plan" would be broken into little pieces, none of which could exert much bargaining leverage on Big Pharma and Big Insurance. These pieces would also be so decentralized that the drug companies and private insurers could easily bully (or bribe) regional third-party administrators.
Another approach now being considered in the Senate would have states create their own insurance plans. That's even worse: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are used to buying off state legislators and officials. They'd just continue their current practices.
A third option is to create a public plan that pays for itself and, according to the office of Senator Charles Schumer, who came up with it, "adheres to private-insurance rules." But adhering to private insurance rules is exactly what the public plan is not supposed to do. http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/robert_reich/2009/05/the-health-care-cave-in.php?ref=fpblg
Middle East Peace Activity? The plan is said to involve several “moderate Arab states” as well as the Palestinians and Israelis.
US President Barack Obama informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he intends to promote a new regional peace initiative for the Middle East. Speaking to reporters following his meeting with Obama earlier on Monday, the prime minister said that his understanding the regional component will be the key focal point of the new initiative. It will likely be presented in Obama's planned June 4th speech in Cairo.
The US president will be in Egypt as a conclusion to a series of meetings with local leaders – namely Jordan's King Abdullah II, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Netanyahu, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3717929,00.html
-R
