Zoë Carpenter at The Nation writes—Behind Oregon’s GOP Walkout Is a Sordid Story of Corporate Cash:
For a brief moment, the standoff in Oregon over climate change legislation seemed like an amusing bit of Wild West political theater. Last week, rather than stomach a losing vote on the bill, Republicans in the state Senate escaped—scattering to Idaho, according to rumors, maybe Montana—to deny Democrats a quorum, which is required to pass any legislation. When the governor threatened to send state troopers to bring them back to work, one of the “Absent Eleven” threatened violent resistance: “Send bachelors and come heavily armed,” blustered Brian Boquist.
It’s clear now that the situation in Oregon is a deeply unfunny story about the power of corporate interests and a small group of ideologues to squash legislation more than a decade in the making. On Tuesday morning, with the Republican members still in hiding, Democratic Senate President Peter Courtney announced that the bill was as good as dead. “House Bill 2020 does not have the votes on the Senate floor. That will not change,” he said.
How did this happen? Let’s start with the legislation, which shares a foundational principle with the Green New Deal: that corporate polluters should help pay for the transition to a clean economy. Referred to as a “cap and invest” policy, the measure would have put a statewide limit on carbon emissions, forcing Oregon’s largest polluters to pay for emissions allowances. As the statewide ceiling gradually lowers, corporations would have to cut their own emissions or buy more credits on a regional carbon market known as the Western Climate Initiative, which includes California and Quebec. The revenue raised from this pricing scheme would be directed to clean-energy infrastructure and jobs programs. Advocates hoped Oregon would set an example for other smaller states—that it would prove the viability of cap-and-trade outside California, which has the advantage of having the world’s fifth-largest economy.
It’s not surprising that Big Business would fight this proposal. Corporations are used to being able to pollute for free, and they’d like to keep doing so (though it’s worth noting that many of the state’s businesses, including Nike and Adidas, do support the legislation, as do some of the state’s largest timber owners). Fossil fuel interests in particular view state-level climate initiatives as a serious threat; last fall they spent a record $30 million to defeat a carbon tax in Washington state.
In Oregon, these corporate interests have a cozy relationship with lawmakers. The state has some of the weakest campaign-finance laws in the country, imposing no limits on what corporations and individuals can contribute to candidates. (Only four other states are so permissive.) [...]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“The most important tactic in an argument next to being right is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without an embarrassing loss of face.”
~~ Stephen Jay Gould
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2004—An Act on Paper:
It was a glorious day for the administration of Dubyanocchio nearly 14 months ago when the president stood before the cameras on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce to the world with his patented smirk: “Mission Accomplished.” It was one of those cleverly crafted propaganda moments that the shapers of the public mind hope can be transformed into indelible images as politically powerful as, say, JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech four decades ago.
Bush's premature triumphalism was certainly a far cry from the paper-shuffling “transfer of power” in Baghdad. Today's ceremony might as well have taken place in Saddam Hussein’s spider hole.
As Kosopolitan thirdparty points out, Viceroy L. Paul Bremer took his leave from Iraq today with a little less fanfare than the PR doyens might have liked
Despite the obvious nature of this sham, The New York Times played along with the Administration’s liars in its very first paragraph, though it made clear several paragraphs later what the reality was:
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 28 — In a surprise ceremony here that was hastily convened in secret to decrease the chances of more violence, United States officials handed over sovereignty to Iraqi leaders today, formally ending the American occupation of Iraq two days earlier than scheduled. …
Earlier in the day, responding to the handover announcement, security forces locked down sections of the capital. Several hotels refused to let guests in or out, thousands of police took to the streets and American fighter jets cut arcs in the sky over Baghdad. [...]
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Record-setting emoluments, many people are saying! Suppose Trump just won't leave? UN all but says MBS did the Khashoggi murder. A segment pricing out Trump's immigration plans—recorded in 2015—predicts more of the horrors than we knew.