Polis’ Progressive Stances; Salazar Progressive on a Lot Less

After I heard two national, supposedly progressive, media shows try to take Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO-02) to task over his vote and press releases about H.R. 3200 in committee; after receiving e-mails from various groups encouraging me to tell Rep. Polis to stand up for “true” health care reform (what the heck is that, exactly?!), after I’ve seen cheap shot after cheap shot from national bloggers, I decided to push back in my very small way.  While the vote may not be the most defendable from a progressive standpoint (I’m actually having some difficulty fully understanding what the issue really is), I think the situation has gotten completely blown out of proportion.  I think there are plenty of other folks who say they’re Democrats but who have a much longer and much less impressive voting record on final bills.  So I’m writing this to try to put things into better perspective.

Polis voted against the bill in the Education and Labor Committee.  Okay, I get that.  He wrote a letter to Speaker Pelosi and included it on his website.  So at least he’s being up front and honest about his reasoning and is trying to engage the rest of us.  That reason may chafe at some folks, but there’s something positive to be said for his actions.

In contrast, Rep. John Salazar (D-CO-03) voted against the climate bill (which I’ve argued is a much more critical issue than health care) on the House floor, the final vote until a House/Senate compromise bill is put back before everybody.  Not only did Rep. Salazar vote to condemn Americans (actually the entire world) to multiple feet of sea level raise, Dust Bowl-drought conditions from Kansas to California and more extreme weather events, not only all of that, but after his vote, he snuck out of the House chamber so he wouldn’t be confronted by his leadership to change his vote before the time to do so closed.  He voted against his Party’s bill and was too cowardly to face them afterward.  Billions of people will be negatively affected if people like Rep. Salazar has his way.  Now I ask you: which case is worse?

Gov. Ritter ran on a platform that included health care reform at the state level.  After a year’s worth of state-wide hearings, he kicked the can up to Congress, saying it was too big a problem for Colorado to address alone.  How many Colorado-centric or nationwide blogs took Ritter to task for going back on his promise?  How many progressive national media shows even mentioned this travesty?  Let’s look at it a little differently: How many Coloradans have lost health insurance or died due to lack of care because the issue got kicked to the curb by Ritter?  Crickets from the national progressive media.

As I’ve said before, Rep. Polis has engaged the netroots and greater progressive infrastructure to a far larger degree than Rep. Salazar or Gov. Ritter (who is constantly on right-wing extremist talk-shows and not progressive talk-shows, by the way).  How many solidly progressive pieces of legislation has Rep. Polis not only voted for in his short time in the House, but co-sponsored, including H.R. 676 (single-payer, not just a public option) and the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, to name just two?

A lot of unfounded condemnation has centered around Rep. Polis “voting for the rich, people just like himself”.  Well, let’s examine another voting record from that standpoint, shall we?  Rep. Salazar: voted to extend the Bush tax cuts (in 2006), an awfully fiscally responsible vote, since the Bush tax cuts didn’t pay for themselves – talk about voting for the rich! and voted for tax breaks and incentives to oil and gas corporations (another fiscally responsible and pro-rich vote – look at Salazar rack them up!).  Where were the leading progressive blogs on those votes?  When did the progressive media shows call Rep. Salazar out?  Where were the issue groups’ condemnation of Rep. Salazar’s votes of bills that actually became law, which the health care bill hasn’t?  Oh – both those bills were the final House bills, not a committee bill that will soon be changed anyway.

On top of those two, Rep. Salazar voted against the American Clean Energy and Security Act (2009) (Polis voted for it, by the way – no kudos were issued by the hateful mobs); voted for the FISA amendment which gave retroactive immunity to telecoms’ illegal wiretapping of Americans without warrants (2007); voted to continue funding the Iraq occupation with no withdrawal date (2007), (that’s awfully fiscally responsible too, isn’t it?!); voted for the Military Commissions Act (2006); voted against a withdrawal timetable from the Iraq occupation (2006); ; voted for the undocumented worker clampdown bill with no path toward attaining legal status (2005); voted against the endangered species protection bill (2005); ; and voted for a Constitutional amendment making flag burning illegal (2005).

Get a freaking grip on reality, folks.  At this point, it’s obvious that Polis’ critics have some mysterious bone to pick with him.  This kind of day-after-day-after-day attack style is indicative of an obsession with the subject.  Rep. Salazar is by no means hurting for money.  He may not be as rich as Polis happens to be, but Polis has demonstrated stronger progressive values to this point than Salazar has.  This is all pretty revolting.

Some People Never Learn

For some, ideology trumps everything.  Such is the case for thecons who backed George Bush’s abstinence-only sex education programs.  Funding for programs that included more than abstinence-only information, like how to have safe sex if you decide to have sex, was slashed.  Well, actions have consequences.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) monitors statistics like birth rates and sexually transmitted diseases for teenagers.  Take a wild guess at what happened to the statistics after Bush’s programs were funded and pushed onto the American public.  Birth rates and STDs were in decline from 1991 through the early 2000′s.  Those declines were halted and reversed by 2005.

Pregnancies among teenagers 15 years or older are up sharply.  The number of teenage girls with syphilis has risen by half.  Two decades of progress in gonorrhea infection rates has been reversed.  The number of adolescent boys with AIDS has doubled.

Oh, and 16,000 pregnancies were reported among 10- to 14-year old girls in 2004.  That’s a tragic statistic.  Nearly 16,000 10- to 14-years olds reported having an STD (which is an undercount, obviously).  That’s also tragic.

Earlier this year, a report was issued that demonstrated that children who signed up for abstinence programs had sex at the same rate as those who didn’t sign up for the programs.  A major difference between the two groups was the incidence of pregnancies and STDs.  The abstinence group had a much higher rate.  The implementation of a fringe ideology on a larger population has had very tragic consequences.  So how do abstinence-only supporters respond?

By saying there is still too little abstinence-only education.  I’m not kidding, though given the gravity of the situation, I wish I were.

“It is ridiculous to say that a programme we nominally invest in has failed when it fails to overcome the most sexualised culture in world history, said Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for American Values, which describes itself as a supporter of traditional marriage and “against liberal education and cultural forces”.

Apparently, being the spokeswoman requires the ability to refuse to take part in reality.  Reality, Kristi, is recognizing that if your argument that our culture is the most sexualized in world history, then pregnancy and STD rates should be quite similar across the country.  Or, if we were to really believe your worldview, then places like the West and East coast should have the highest rates of pregnancies and STDs, correct?  I mean, after all, which portion of the country does liberal education supposed take place?  Not your portion, I bet.

So why, Kristi, are pregnancy and STD rates higher for southern states, those bastions of “family values” and “morality”?  Why, Kristi, are pregnancy and STD rates lower for other countries, such as European countries, than they are in the U.S.?  Because the CDC is part of your imaginary liberal conspiracy?  Because Coasters flock to the south and impregnate and infect your neighbors?  Because those evil liberals from Europe make sure to stop by the U.S. and knock our kids up and infect them with STDs as part of their liberal lifestyle?  No, Kristi, it’s because abstinence-only programs are taught more widely in southern states than the rest of the country (and world).  It’s actually quite easy to figure out what’s going on.  Children in southern states are being purposefully exposed to potentially harmful life situations to satisfy your sick desire to impose your ideology on them.  Ignoring reality and adhering to your ideology is harming real children, Kristi.  That’s not tragic, that’s disgusting.

G-8 Agrees To Temperature Cap – Am I Missing Something?

I’ve read a couple of articles and listened to some news stories on the radio and TV about yesterday’s G-8 agreement to cap worldwide temperatures by 3.6°F (2°C) above the pre-industrial value.  What they didn’t agree on was to cut greenhouse gas emissions by any amount by any date.  Non-binding agreements like these are a miniscule step – and I’m not sure it’s even in the correct direction.

The biggest problem I have with this announcement, and maybe there’s something missing from the report or I just don’t understand the whole deal, is how the temperature cap will ever happen without a binding agreement to cut emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050.  The temperature cap might be the only thing they could agree on at this point, but it’s the emissions that are causing the temperature rise in the first place.

The second biggest problem I have, and again this could be easily explained by my lack of understanding what the agreement really is, is we’re darn close to 2°C warming already.  The last I checked, global temperatures were already 1.5°C anomalously warm from pre-industrial levels.  That would only give the world 0.5°C of additional warming.  Even with an abnormally weak solar cycle and a long-lived, moderate-strength La Nina, 2008 was the 8th warmest year on record.  La Nina conditions have eased to a neutral state, though I doubt that will last much longer, and the solar cycle can’t be at a minimum for much longer either.  Since those were the only two phenomena holding record temperatures at bay for a couple of years, I think the warmest year on record will be met within the next few years.  Put another way, that 0.5°C warming could quite possibly be met well before 2020.  I’m thinking it will happen prior to 2015.  If that happens, what is the next step for these agreements?  Once that 2°C warming is reached, a great deal of research indicates that stronger feedback loops can begin to kick in – making all of our efforts do less and final mitigation cost more.

The third problem I have is I thought the UK had already internally set a goal of 34% below 1990 emissions by 2022.  Other countries beside the U.S. shouldn’t be that much further behind.  Some complications I came up with include lack of inclusion of all industries, less progress on Kyoto Protocol goals than is necessary to achieve an 80% reduction of 1990 emissions by 2050.  The U.S. and Australia were the only two industrialized nations that hadn’t ratified Kyoto as of a couple of years ago.  Australia has, in light of the climate change effects they’ve encountered.  So the U.S. should be the only remaining industrialized nation without a binding emissions goal.  As written, ACESA only calls for a 17% reduction of 2005 levels by 2020.  Perhaps the rest of the world doesn’t believe an 80% reduction of 1990 levels by 2050 can be achieved with more substantial U.S. action and since we’re the world’s largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

So I might be looking for something in this news report that shouldn’t be there.  Or I might not understand the agreement fully.  I’d like to have both of those questions answered so I know how to view the news.

Urban Areas Lose Stimulus Funds To Rural Areas

In a continuation of a trend that has been around for too long already, metropolitan areas around the country are being short-changed funds from the first stimulus bill passed just a few months ago.  Despite providing more than three-quarters of the nation’s economic activity (read: providing more than three-quarters of the tax dollars going to the federal government), and despite the fact that two-thirds of Americans live in urban areas, those same areas have received less than half of the stimulus funds from the largest stimulus source of funds.

I have the same opinion on this as I do the unfair tax and funding mechanisms that are regularly in place: it needs to stop.  It makes no sense to send more tax dollars to areas that didn’t provide the money.  Federal spending needs to go to areas that provided the funds in the first place.  If rural areas want infrastructure and projects, they need to come up with ways to fund them themselves.  It amazes me that urban-dwellers are constantly lectured about not having “values” like rural-dwellers do.  I don’t think greed is a value worth having.  I don’t think you should steal from your neighbor then complain they’re doing nothing to help you, don’t care about you and have no values.

Immediacy & Framing: Climate Change vs. Health Care

Two issues that are being addressed by the 111th Congress and President Obama provide an interesting example of the importance of immediacy and framing.  As this post’s title suggests, I’m talking about legislation to deal with our breaking climate and our broken health care system.  The way potential solutions are being proposed and discussed provide an interesting contrast.

On the one hand, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454) was passed by the House of Representatives a couple of weeks ago.  There was plenty of talk about how the bill didn’t go far enough by climate activists.  Some activists, including myself, wondered if the bill should have been voted on in the form it took.  As I quickly detailed yesterday, other countries are taking more aggressive steps to ramp down their carbon emissions and ramp up their renewable energy capabilities.  I don’t think the ACESA bill, as currently written, will do enough to cut carbon emissions from history’s biggest polluter: the U.S, in time to prevent 2°C or more warming globally.  Yet most of what I read and heard after the House vote revolved around something like this: “This bill isn’t perfect, but it’s better than nothing”;  “It’s a step in the right direction” and so on.  What I didn’t hear, especially from progressive House members, was a refusal to vote for a bill that didn’t get done what science demands to be done.  What I didn’t hear was a refusal to vote for a bill that didn’t do what a majority of Americans wanted it to do.  Does anyone seriously think Americans wanted the House to give billions in corporate welfare to the nuclear, oil, natural gas and coal industries?  Because that’s what had to be stuck into the bill while at the same time reducing emissions and renewable energy targets.

Recent Climate Change Milestones & Goals From Around The World

The UK is expected to exceed their Kyoto targets.  Their goal was a 12.5% below 1990 levels by 2010.  The expected number is 23% below 1990 levels.  Another goal is a 34% reduction of 1990 emissions by 2022.  There is, of course, some questions as to which industries are included in those numbers.  Even if some sectors are left out, the UK is clearly making progress – and their economy isn’t being destroyed because of it.

China is talking about a 15% renewable energy standard by 2020 as an official goal.  Having set that goal, there is also talk that 20% would be necessary and attainable – a sentiment with which I agree.

India wants 20,000MW of solar capacity by 2020, 100,000MW by 2030 and 200,000MW by 2050.  It’s a little confusing to see capacity increase by 80,000MW in 10 years (2020 to 2030), but then only an additional 100,000MW in 20 years.  In any event, barring major economic or physical disasters, these goals are laudable and will almost certainly be raised once the price of deployment for PV drops.

Scotland has passed legislation that sets a more ambitious goal than the UK: 42% below 1990 levels by 2020!  Thus, Scotland has passed, to date, the most ambitious climate pollution bill in the world.  Given the fact the Scotland, the UK and the European Union are at a minimum near to achieving their Kyoto Protocol targets, the 2020 and 2050 targets should be within reach.

So how about the U.S., supposedly the most technologically advanced and entrepreneurial country in the world?  As passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, our climate bill (still a long way from full Congressional approval) is setting a carbon emissions goal of 17% reduction of 2005 levels by 2020!  This would be equivalent to a 4% reduction of 1990 levels – a big deficit to the UK’s ~34% or Scotland’s 42% by the same date.  That’s one important reason to pay attention to the baseline year!!!  ACESA also includes a renewable electricity standard (not a renewable energy standard – another important difference) of 20% by 2020.  China’s 15% renewable energy standard goes further – a goal that I already mentioned the Chinese will likely surpass.

How do the policy numbers compare to the science numbers?  The IPCC says that in order to keep global average temperature rise below 2°C we need to make emission reductions from 1990 levels of 25-40% by 2020.  If ACESA passes Congress with the weak targets currently in place, I hope we cut our emissions more than what the legislation demands.  The state of our planet depends upon it.

Universal Health Coverage Costs Less Than Bush Tax Cuts

Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman makes the best argument about the cost of the health bill currently in Congress up as such:

Something like 97 percent coverage for people legally here, at a total cost somewhere in the $1 trillion range. Bear in mind that the Bush tax cuts cost around $1.8 trillion over a decade. We can do this — and have no excuse for not doing it.

Well, isn’t that interesting.  This CBO estimate includes the public option this time.  Cons are wasting their time screaming about how much universal health coverage would cost this nation and how we just can’t afford it.  The Bush tax cuts cost two to three times as much as they wated their time screaming about how we couldn’t afford not to enact them.

Obvious questions arise.

How much more are you taking home today thanks to the Bush tax cuts?  I ended up paying more, as did most lower- and middle-class Americans.

How good for the economy were the Bush tax cuts?  Well, they helped precipitate the 2nd Great Republican Depression.  Remember, this economy is losing over 600,000 jobs per week, real wages still haven’t increased in a generation and Bush doubled the nation’s debt in just 8 short years – the same debt that took over 200 to accumulate.

The Cons need better talking points.  Instead, they’ll continue to excel at being the party of no.  No ideas, no solutions.  Just no to everything Americans want.  Including universal health coverage.

Denver Post Writer Perpetrates Right-Wing Talking Point

It should come as no shock to most people that one reason the print version of the corporate media is failing so spectacularly is that journalistic integrity has been sorely lacking for the better part of a generation.  I make it a point to write about the corporate media a couple of times a week to point out the most blatant examples of the sorry state of “professional journalism”.

Once you know what to look for, it’s easy to pick out examples of when writers had someone do their job for them.  Today’s case in point: Michael Riley of the Denver Post in an article this past Thursday about Colorado Representative Betsy Markey’s vote for the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.  Despite the foreknowledge that if she voted for the bill, some of the right-wing’s craziest crazies would do their darndest to smear her for the next year and a half, Rep. Markey voted for the bill.

Riley does a fairly decent job of describing the right-wing’s plans to target Rep. Markey, based on an NRCC spokeswoman’s quote.  What followed is a sickening example of journalistic stenography.

The telephone ads blast the so-called cap-and-trade provision of the bill as “the largest tax in American history” because of some studies that suggest it could cost the average family several thousand dollars a year.

Because of “some studies”, Riley?!?!  Are you freaking serious?  What studies would those be?  Does he even know what they were?  I seriously doubt he does, because if he read the studies, or even knew about their general findings, he wouldn’t have included this thoroughly debunked right-wing talking point from his “news article”.

In reality, the study that Riley’s dictators are referring to was done by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change back in 2007.  It examined a number of different cap-and-trade proposals.  Cons, being the duplicitous, immoral actors they are, intentionally misrepresented one of the results of the study – fitting the study’s findings around their talking points, as they often do.

One of the authors spoke with a representative of a senior Con legislators, John Boehner, on March 20 of this year.  He did so to make clear that they were misrepresenting MIT’s work and to stop doing so immediately.  Needless to say, this has not happened.  The Cons were claiming that the cap-and-trade proposal would cost families up to $3,100 per year in additional energy costs.  The MIT study actually found that MIT’s correct estimate was closer to $340 per year.  It seems the Cons tacked on an extra zero to prop up their talking point.  More than that, however, the author – John Reilly – publicly made the point that lower- and middle-income households could almost certainly have those costs completely offset by returing allowance revenue to those households.  In other words, most American families have the potential to pay nothing more for energy as a result of implementing a cap-and-trade proposal than they do without it today.

The role of the media is to inform the American citizenry of pertinent information they need to help make decisions.  By acting as a stenographer instead of a journalist, that role has been compromised.  The best thing to have done was to not include this ridiculous talking point in the article.  The next best thing would have been to inform the public that the NRCC’s use of this figure was incorrect, as the study’s author has vehemently argued for months.

Indeed, the article presents the reader in the very next paragraph a figure from the CBO – a nonpartisan group – of costs being less than $200 per year, less than what the MIT study estimated.  Oh, that $200 per year wouldn’t kick in until after 2020 – a far cry from the Con’s claim.  The NRCC’s political motivation of using several thousand dollars per year is directly contradicted by the unmotivated CBO’s figure, yet both are presented to the reader as being equal.  That is immoral.

I don’t wonder why the print media is failing.  The evidence pointing to that failure is in front of us every day.

Corporate Media Mocks the Jobless

Pretty much any article written in the corporate media that has to do with the economy is written for the richest among us.  If you earn less than a couple hundred G’s per year, you’re not in the “in crowd”.  A perfect example can be found in this article titled, Jobless consumers will hold back recovery.  The scorn derived from classism of that lede is frustrating in its immorality.  It tries to somehow imply that Americans who have lost their jobs are at fault for holding the rest of ‘us’ back – the ‘us’ being the upper-class, of course.  After all, it certainly wasn’t the upper-class who consistently amend economic programs and policies to boost their wealth, often at the expense of the classes below them.  Of far more worry is how those jobless consumers will be able to put food on their families tables.  These and other real concerns should be reported on – but you won’t find it on the pages of America’s largest media outlets.

Adding to the irritation, mis-labeled economic “experts” derive indices and figures they can watch from the comfort of their lavish perches to determine the “true” state of the economy.  It would be uncouth for them to actually go out into the streets where the rest of us live and work and see what the economy really looks like.  How did the “experts” get this month’s jobless claims forecast so wrong?  We just h witnessed the largest corporation in the history of the world declare bankruptcy.  Plant and dealership closures were well covered by the same media that scratches its head over the newest numbers that were worse than the “experts” expected.  By ensuring their lives were sufficiently displaced from the riff-raff, the “experts” and the stenographers following them around like groupies also ensured that they would keep reality far away from their windows.

There are 30 years’ worth of failed Con-servative economic policies to unravel – and this Democratic-controlled Congress and this Democratic President aren’t exactly knocking those policies on their ends the way they should.  This recession depression was easily seen by those who refused to wear rose-tinted glasses.  This recovery will take years to play out – and even then, without a fundamental shift in economic policy, it will be weaker than most Americans would like to see.  The wealthiest among us will be able to recover quicker and more fully – even if the fundamentals continue to be weak, they’ll exploit every method they can get their hands on, and make up a few new ones when those aren’t getting it done, in order to continue to grow their wealth at unsustainable levels.  The rest of us will continue to hold that recovery back because there aren’t enough rules in place to help us grow our wealth.

When real wages for the median American increase, a real recovery will begin.  When America manufactures more than it imports, a real recovery will begin.  The more corporations continue to move operations off-shore, the weaker and more unsustainable the recovery will be.  The answers are clear.  It’s up to non-wealthy Americans to hold those controlling the strings to be held accountable to implement them.

Climate Change = More Dust; More Dust = Earlier Snowmelt

Dust darkens the surface of winter snows, warming it by absorbing sunlight that the white surface would have reflected (difference in albedos).  That causes the snow to melt earlier than it otherwise would.  According to a new study, overall dust levels in the mountains are about five times greater than they were prior to the mid-19th century, due in large part to increased human activity in the deserts.  The study went on to quantify some of the effects dust has on snowmelt in Colorado.

Researchers set up test plots in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.  Some plots were left alone to collect snow and dust naturally, others had extra dust added and a third group had naturally arriving dust removed.  It’s pretty easy to guess what happened.  On average, according to the study, cleaning away the naturally arriving dust delayed snowmelt by 11 days compared to the plots that were left alone. Adding dust sped up the melt by 7 to 13 days.  So there is an average of 18-24 days difference in the time which “clean” snow melts and when dusty snow melts.

What possible effect could this have?  Well, due to the long-term established behaviors of plants, those plants are missing the water that results from the snowmelt during the most important phase of their growth: early spring.  This is likely another reason why plant growth is starting earlier – the other being warmer temperatures earlier.  Unfortunately for the plants, the dust on the snow is causing the snow to melt earlier than warmer temperatures arrive, which helps to trigger spring plant growth.  As conditions continue to warm across the southwest U.S. and dust triggers earlier and earlier snowmelt, mountain ecosystems will be forced to respond.  That response will have to take place over incredible short time scales, which means quite a few plant species likely won’t survive through the end of this century.

Each new climate-related study that comes out shows that the effects of climate change are happening faster and to a greater degree than even experts recognized just a few short years ago.  That might make the job of policy-makers more difficult than it otherwise would be, but it’s the reality we’re all facing.  I want to again commend the Congressional Representatives from Colorado that voted to pass H.R. 2454 last week.  The threats of climate change obviously made more of an impact than did the threats of the extremist Cons in charge of Colorado’s Republican party.  Thankfully, the Congressmembers who fell sway to the Cons’ fear-mongering and lies ended up in the minority.  It is of critical importance that our U.S. Senators also recognize the very real threats that climate change poses to all of us and our planet.  They need to listen to the majority of Coloradans and Amerians that demand something be done about greenhouse forcing today.  The name-calling and polarization the Cons continue to perpetrate aren’t resonating with most of us.