Good Morning!









VAN MORRISON - Saint Dominic's Preview
News and Opinion
Keystone for climate: Could Obama craft a horse trade?
President Barack Obama’s pledge to combat climate change — even as his administration weighs a verdict on the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline — has some analysts buzzing about a possible horse trade.
The possible deal could go down like this:
- First, Obama’s EPA proposes greenhouse gas emission standards for existing power plants, to the delight of environmentalists who note that the largest single stationary source of pollution is from coal-fired facilities already in use.
- Then, the administration approves the Keystone XL pipeline, over the objections of environmentalists who say the $7 billion project would expand the marketplace for bitumen harvested from Canada’s oil sands using especially energy-intensive techniques.
Oil sands future hangs in the balance as thousands prepare to rally against Keystone XL this weekend in Washington
Organizers hope the gathering will be large enough to create a movement
In what some Canadian environmentalists are saying could be a turning point for North American oil sands policy, thousands will converge on the lawn of the White House this Sunday. Canadians will be there, too: people like Melina Laboucan-Massimo, of Peace River Alberta, who -- like her American counterparts -- hope to convince Barack Obama to say no to the Keystone XL pipeline and follow through on his promise of proactive responses to climate change.
Just the facts: Climate Impacts from the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
A key issue in the debate over the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is about the impact it would have on climate. The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is a fundamental element in the oil industry’s plan to triple production of tar sands oil from 2 million barrels per day (bpd) to 6 million bpd by 2030, and in the longer term to hike production to more than 9 million bpd. A backgrounder on the climate impacts from Keystone XL released by the Natural Resources Defense Council details how the U.S. decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline will have a direct bearing on whether the tar sands industry can attain those goals, with their attendant increases in carbon pollution. Keystone XL would lock the U.S. into a long-term commitment to an energy infrastructure that relies on dirty oil.
[...]
And new research by Oil Change International shows carbon emissions associated with tar sands are higher than currently estimated. Tar sands refining produces significant volumes of petroleum coke (petcoke), a high-carbon refining byproduct that is increasingly being used as a cheaper, more carbon-intensive substitute to coal. According to Oil Change International, Keystone XL will produce enough petcoke to fuel 5 U.S. coal plants. These carbon emissions from this petcoke have not been previously factored into a climate analysis of the pipeline and will raise total emissions of the pipeline by 13 percent.
Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and its operation would have an impact on tar sands production (and emissions) far beyond the specific amount of oil the pipeline would carry.
Tar Sands Oil Imports Should Be Taxed Like Crude, Dems Say
Law360, New York (February 15, 2013, 6:00 PM ET) -- House Democrats on Friday reintroduced a bill that would subject imports of tar sands oil to the same tax applied to traditional crude shipped into the country, calling it a commonsense move to shore up federal funding for oil spill response.
But she's cool with Simpson-Bowles and cutting Social Security. The dignity of elderly women who will be affected the most and everybody else who depends on it? Meh!
Pelosi: Congressional pay cut undermines dignity of the job
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she opposes a cut in congressional pay because it would diminish the dignity of lawmakers' jobs.
"I don't think we should do it; I think we should respect the work we do," Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. "I think it's necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded."
I'd like to know what bright lines are being drawn. The idea of standing their ground is welcome and whytf did it take so long? But what things are they willing to stand their ground on. I'd take Clinton's advice on tactics but not on the his ideas of specific things to fight for.
Despite Talk Of Cooperation, Democrats Sharpen Political Knives
Freed of the burden of Obama's reelection and facing a hobbled GOP, Nancy Pelosi is drawing bright lines. A change from 2008 and 2010.
Former President Bill Clinton outlined what appears to be their strategy at their annual retreat here last week: stake out a clear position, own it, and make sure the public sees you fighting for it.
"We Democrats own the health reform issue now … if certain problems come up that need changing, you need to get caught trying to change it even if you can't pass it," Clinton said, a comment that could also apply to gun control, the economy, and immigration reform.
"We are fired up," said Democratic Caucus vice-chairman Joe Crowley. And indeed, at least for now, Democrats are staking out a far more aggressive stance than following the 2008 election when they deferred on policy and politics to President Obama or in 2010, when the House Democratic minority struggled to find relevance.
From Dorner to Waco to MOVE Bombing, A Look at Growing Militarization of Domestic Policing
DemocracyNow.org - The fire that killed former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner on Tuesday has drawn comparisons to the deadly 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, and the 1985 police bombing of the MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia. In Waco, federal agents denied for years they had used incendiary tear gas after a fire killed 76 people inside the compound. The MOVE bombing left six adults and five children dead. We speak to former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper and Radley Balko, author of the forthcoming book, "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces."
'America Doesn't Torture'—It Kills
Whatever happened to arresting people, extraditing them, giving them lawyers, putting them on trial—all that? Even in the hottest days of the Cold War, when millions believed communism threatened our very existence as a nation, Americans accused of spying for the Soviets had their day in court. No one suggested that President Eisenhower should skip the tiresome procedural stuff and just bomb the Rosenbergs’ apartment.
[...]
How did we end up here? Surely one fatal turning point was Obama’s decision not to prosecute anyone connected with the Bush administration’s brutal policies, especially torture. Not only did this breed cynicism and callousness; it tacitly allowed that maybe Abu Ghraib and black sites and Baghram and Guantánamo were justifiable, given the fiendish and shape-shifting nature of terrorism.
That’s certainly the message I took from Zero Dark Thirty, and, frankly, I don’t understand how anyone can see this much-praised movie as ambiguous on the torture question. The movie says torture works: “In the end, everybody breaks,” Dan (Jason Clarke) tells the prisoner he is beating, waterboarding, walking like a dog and forcing into a tiny box. “It’s biology.” And sure enough, the man gives up the clue that eventually leads to Osama’s front door. If, in real life, this information was actually obtained by other methods, as Senators Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin attested in a public letter about the film, there’s no suggestion of it onscreen. But the movie does something even worse: it not only makes torture look necessary; it makes the torturers cool. Dan is handsome, smart, humorous and unconventional—his own person in a crowd of company men. When not stringing people from the ceiling, he’s caring—a good friend to Maya, an animal lover. He doesn’t let his job turn him into a brute or a sadist—he knows when he’s reached his emotional limits and gets out. As for Maya, the lonely avenger of 9/11, what can one say? She’s not only smart, dedicated, selfless, brave and tireless—she’s Jessica
Chastain! The most beautiful woman in the world, with flowing locks of red-gold hair that light up every scene she’s in, including the one where she fetches a pail of water for the waterboarding.
We've been sold on the fact that Obama is one of the most brilliant presidents we've ever elected. For a long time I thought that was probably true. But I'm just not seeing the brilliance anymore... at all. Brilliant deception maybe.
Obama Appoints a Controversial GOP Lawyer to His Voting Commission
Unfortunately, Obama’s solution was less than inspiring. Another election commission is a pretty tepid response to the magnitude of the voting problems we face. And Romney campaign lawyer Ben Ginsberg is a puzzling choice to be its co-chair.
For over two decades, Ginsberg has been a top lawyer for the Republican Party—the same party, you may recall, that has led the effort to restrict voting rights of late. Ginsberg helped lead the 2000 recount effort for George W. Bush. He was forced to resign from the Bush campaign in 2004 after it was revealed that he was also advising the vile Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In 2006, Ginsberg said, “Just like really with the Voting Rights Act, Republicans have some fundamental philosophical difficulties with the whole notion of Equal Protection.” And in 2012, he was counsel to the Romney campaign when it absurdly claimed that the Obama campaign was trying to suppress military voters by pushing for early voting for all Ohioans. Does that sound like the kind of guy you want leading a “non-partisan” voting commission?
The Senate Intelligence committee holds a hearing and there are many discussions about the drone program, the memos that the White House lawyers have written to justify targeted assassinations, a possible FISA drone court, etc. Months ago, there dozen Obama admin. officials gave interviews to the NYT for the big, infamous article about the kill list, complete with very serious rhetoric about how seriously Obama and Brennan take this very serious responsibility. But the Obama administration still will not even acknowledge the existence of such a program. Judges should shut this kind of behavior down as best they can. But it's the responsibility of the people and the Congress to do that too. This is blatant abuse of power and abuse of secrecy privileges.
Obama DOJ again refuses to tell a court whether CIA drone program even exists
As the nation spent the week debating the CIA assassination program, Obama lawyers exploit secrecy to shield it from all review
It is not news that the US government systematically abuses its secrecy powers to shield its actions from public scrutiny, democratic accountability, and judicial review. But sometimes that abuse is so extreme, so glaring, that it is worth taking note of, as it reveals its purported concern over national security to be a complete sham.
Such is the case with the Obama DOJ's behavior in the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the CIA to compel a response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about Obama's CIA assassination program. That FOIA request seeks nothing sensitive, but rather only the most basic and benign information about the "targeted killing" program: such as "the putative legal basis for carrying out targeted killings; any restrictions on those who may be targeted; any civilian casualties; any geographic limits on the program; the number of targeted killings that the agency has carried out."
[...]
Despite all that, the Obama DOJ from the start has refused not only to provide the requested documents about the CIA drone program, but they refuse to say whether such documents even exist. They do so by insisting that whether there even exists such a thing as a "CIA drone program" is itself classified, and therefore, they can neither admit nor deny whether they possess any of the documents sought by the FOIA request: "the very fact of the existence or nonexistence of such documents is itself classified," repeats the Obama DOJ over and over like some hypnotic Kafkaesque mantra.
Pope will have security, immunity by remaining in the Vatican
(Reuters) - Pope Benedict's decision to live in the Vatican after he resigns will provide him with security and privacy. It will also offer legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world, Church sources and legal experts say.
Blackstone isn't worried, apparently.
(Reuters) - Hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen is feeling the pinch from the federal government's insider trading probe as outside investors in his SAC Capital Advisors submitted requests to withdraw a total of $1.68 billion from the firm by year's end.
[...]
SAC's biggest outside investor, Blackstone Group, is keeping most of its $550 million with the firm. The asset management arm of the private equity firm decided to stay with Cohen's firm after negotiating more flexible redemption terms on behalf of all of the firm's investors.
[...]
One reason investors have stuck with Cohen is because he has delivered annualized average returns of about 25 percent since his firm was launched in 1992. SAC Capital's flagship fund gained 13 percent last year, when hedge funds on average only returned 6 percent.
[...]
But following last November's arrest of former SAC portfolio manager Mathew Martoma, in what is alleged to be one of the most lucrative insider trading schemes on record, some investors are losing patience. Citi's private bank, for example, is withdrawing $187 million from SAC this quarter.
That said, many investors, which include high net worth individuals and firms that manage money for small groups of wealthy families, will not say what they are doing.
Britain’s strength is its weakness
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the weakest of them all? As G20 finance ministers warn of the threat of a “global currency war” at their meeting in Moscow this weekend, two odd features of this looming financial conflict tend to be overlooked.
The first is that every country’s objective in this war is to “lose” by making its currency weaker. This is because a weak currency tends to support exports, employment and economic growth (if all other things are equal, which they never quite are). The second oddity is that the clear winner in this global currency war has not been Japan, Switzerland, China or any of the other usual suspects, but a country rarely accused of financial aggression: Britain.
[...]
Recent events in the foreign exchange market suggest a possible answer. Since the end of last year the pound has weakened dramatically against all other major currencies, apart from the yen. The British and Japanese currencies seem to be falling for similar reasons. Those countries’ economies have experienced almost no growth since 2009, and their governments are becoming increasingly desperate to end this long-term stagnation.
As a result, both the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are undergoing radical management changes. Previously unthinkable concepts in monetary and fiscal policy are suddenly open for debate, as demonstrated by Shinzo Abe’s suggestions that the Bank of Japan’s monetary expansion should directly finance record-breaking new public investment programs, and by the speech on “helicopter money” delivered by Adair Turner, chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority last week. All these political and monetary upheavals are occurring in Britain and Japan just when political uncertainties are subsiding in the U.S., China and the euro zone.
[Emphasis added]
Just for some background: On helicopter drops, helicopter money, by Duncan Black (Atrios of Eschaton) writing for USA Today, back in September.
Column: Why not drop money out of a helicopter?
This probably sounds like a crazy idea, but it isn't. People are a bit uncomfortable with the notion that the Fed can simply create money, but that is what the Fed does. Currently, under a program dubbed "QEIII" (Quantitative Easing III), the Fed is creating money and, instead of simply giving it to people, is using that money to purchase mortgage backed securities in order keep mortgage rates low and increase the supply of money in the economy. This also boosts the prices of these financial assets, providing a windfall to those who own them.
[...]
This was an amusing metaphor, not meant to be taken literally, but conceptually the Fed is able to create money out of thin air and give it to people. Bernanke's version of the "helicopter drop" involved paying for tax cuts with free money from the Fed. Alternatively, the Fed could finance increased government spending on such things as infrastructure and education, leading to more construction workers and teachers being hired without any need to increase borrowing or taxes.
[...]
The Great Recession, with its long period of extended high unemployment rates, has caused unnecessary economic hardship for millions. Remarkably, there's a simple way to help people and improve the economy. Even more remarkably, we aren't doing it.
Background.
Definition of 'Quantitative Easing'
A government monetary policy occasionally used to increase the money supply by buying government securities or other securities from the market. Quantitative easing increases the money supply by flooding financial institutions with capital, in an effort to promote increased lending and liquidity.
Quantitative easing
A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying financial assets from commercial banks and other private institutions, thus creating money and injecting a pre-determined quantity of money into the economy. This is distinguished from the more usual policy of buying or selling government bonds to change money supply, in order to keep market interest rates at a specified target value.[3][4][5][6] Quantitative easing increases the excess reserves of the banks, and raises the prices of the financial assets bought, which lowers their yield.[7]
[...]
If the nominal interest rate is at or very near zero, the central bank cannot lower it further. Such a situation, called a liquidity trap,[18] can occur, for example, during deflation or when inflation is very low.[19] In such a situation, the central bank may perform quantitative easing by purchasing a pre-determined amount of bonds or other assets from financial institutions without reference to the interest rate.[5][20] The goal of this policy is to increase the money supply rather than to decrease the interest rate, which cannot be decreased further.[21] This is often considered a "last resort" to stimulate the economy.[22][23]
[...]
More recently, similar policies have been used by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Eurozone during the Financial crisis of 2007–2012. Quantitative easing was used by these countries as their risk-free short-term nominal interest rates are either at, or close to, zero. In the US, this interest rate is the federal funds rate. In the UK, it is the official bank rate.
[...]
The new money could be used by the banks to invest in emerging markets, commodity-based economies, commodities themselves and non-local opportunities rather than to lend to local businesses that are having difficulty getting loans.
Dr Doom says quantitative easing will create zombie banks, firms and borrowers
Nouriel Roubini said at Davos that central bankers risked saddling the economy with debt-burdened QE addicts
Nouriel Roubini, the economist dubbed "Dr Doom" for predicting the credit crunch, has sounded a stark warning about the long-term effects of relying on quantitative easing to keep crisis-hit western economies afloat.
[...]
"Over time, you get zombie banking, zombie corporates, zombie households, which is damaging in the long term," he said. The phrase "zombie banks" was coined in Japan, to describe insolvent lenders propped up by cheap cash.
[...]
However, Roubini argued that even if the policy was beneficial today, there could be unintended consequences if central bankers misjudged their "exit strategy". He was critical of the Federal Reserve's recent promise to keep buying bonds until unemployment sinks to 6.5%, for example, saying that policymakers may have misjudged how far the jobless rate can fall without sparking inflation.
[...]
"You've got QE2, QE3, soon you'll have QE infinity: what's going to happen to the regime of monetary policy? Most countries had inflation targeting; now the UK is talking about throwing it away: what's going to be the new anchor? How are we going to anchor people's expectations of inflation over time?"
Hmm. There are charts and examples in this article that are worth taking a look at.
Seniors lean Republican, young people more Democratic, right? Not so much
The stereotype of aged conservatives and liberal youth is wrong. It's the president you grow up with who affects your voting for life
Most people part of the Eisenhower/Truman-generation, who vote more Republican than the nation at large, are likely to be around through the next three elections; estimates suggest life expectancies of about 9-16 years for people aged 80 to 70. Voters of the very Democratic Roosevelt-generation have life expectancies of less than eight years, being at least 85. Thus, the generations most likely to expire next are those who have historically been more Democratic.
Two generations of activists working together. We see this all the time in the Occupy movement and in the other movements of like minded people that intersect with the Occupy movement. They both say that they are hopeful.
Daniel Ellsberg "We Are A Part of A Death Squad Country"
Action
At 12 Noon on Sunday, February 17, thousands of Americans will head to Washington, D.C. to make Forward on Climate the largest climate rally in history. Join this historic event to make your voice heard and help the president start his second term with strong climate action.
What: The largest climate rally in U.S. history.
When: February 17, 2013, Noon - 4:00 p.m. (please arrive by 11:30 a.m.)
Where: The National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Gather at the northeast corner of the Washington Monument
(Closest Metro subway stations: Federal Triangle and Smithsonian)
For more details about the rally -- including information about coordinating and riding buses to Washington -- please read our FAQ. Also check out the nearly 100 organizations leading and supporting this rally!
|
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
Evening Blues
Forward on Climate: The Tar Sands Ecocide NEEDS the Keystone
Forward on Climate: Doing the Impossible
Forward on Climate: Canada's reckless environmental policies
Heavy Sigh
Is This a Benghazi Question?
Don't miss this cartoon/video by Mark Fiore.
State of My Union
VAN MORRISON ~ Jackie Wilson Said