I’m sure I’ll have plenty to write about this legislation as it continues to make its way through Congress and as its effects become more clear.  Quite frankly, I get the feeling that there is more I don’t like about it right now that there is I do like about it.  Supposedly, that’s the process that must take place for progress to be made … someday.  But this is today and the American people did not get out of the House what they voted to get out of the House.  Smart people will assess the landscape that developed this year as Democrats sold out issue after issue to appease their corporate masters and desperately trying to avoid mean-sounding ads in the media next year.  As to that latter point, does any sane person really expect future Republican challengers to go easy on Democrats because they voted against this bill?

The main point I wanted to highlight in this post is the truly disgusting and immoral Stupak Amendment – the one that was written to prevent private insurance plans from covering abortions.  Somehow, something like this still has the ability to stun me.  As written, a woman’s private insurance would be prevented from covering a procedure that she and a doctor came to a decision about.  This issue must be resolved – and so-called advocacy groups are failing time and time again to do anything about it.

I’m going to copy and paste a list from another blog.  It is the list of the 64 Democrats who voted with the Cons to pass this foul intrusion into women’s lives.  Not so surprisingly, only 2 of the Democrats voting for it were women.  So 62 male Democratic Representatives voted to make a procedure for women even harder to perform.  I’m keeping an eye on their 2010 races.  If some look close, I’m donating to their opponents’ campaigns.  If NARAL and Planned Parenthood won’t hold these trolls accountable, I hope the people will.  Emphasis below is mine.

For future reference, here is the list of Democrats who voted “Aye” on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment.

AL-2 Bright, Bobby; AL- 5 Griffith, Parker; AL-7 Davis, Artur; AR-1 Berry, Robert; AR-2 Snyder, Victor; AR-4 AR-4 Ross, Mike; CA-18 Cardoza, Dennis; CA-20 Costa, Jim; CA-43 Baca, Joe; CO-3 Salazar, John.

GA-2 Bishop, Sanford; GA-8 Marshall, James; GA-12 Barrow, John; KY-6 Chandler, Ben; IL-3 Lipinski, Daniel; IL-12 Costello, Jerry; IN-2 Donnelly, Joe; IN-8 Ellsworth, Brad; IN-9 Hill, Baron; LA-3 Melancon, Charles; ME-2 Michaud, Michael.

MA-2 Neal, Richard; MA-9 Lynch, Stephen; MI-5 Kildee, Dale; MI-1 Stupak, Bart; MN-7 Peterson, Collin; MN-8 Oberstar, James; MS-1 Childers, Travis; MS-4 Taylor, Gene; MO-4 Skelton, Ike; NM-2 Teague, Harry

NC-2 Etheridge, Bob; NC-7 McIntyre, Mike; NC-11 Shuler, Heath; ND Pomeroy, Earl; OH-1 Driehaus, Steve; OH-6 Wilson, Charles;  OH-9 Kaptur, Marcy; OH-16 Boccieri, John; OH-17 Ryan, Timothy; OH-18 Space, Zachary.

OK-2 Boren, Dan; PA-3 Dahlkemper, Kathleen; PA-4 Altmire, Jason; PA-10 Carney, Christopher; PA-11 Kanjorski, Paul; PA-12 Murtha, John; PA-14 Doyle, Michael; PA-17 Holden, Tim; RI-2 Langevin, James

SC-5 Spratt, John; TN-4 Davis, Lincoln; TN-5 Cooper, Jim; TN-6 Gordon, Barton; TN-8 Tanner, John; TX-16 Reyes, Silvestre; TX-23 Rodriguez, Ciro; TX-27 Ortiz, Solomon; TX-28 Cuellar, Henry.

UT-2 Matheson, Jim; VA-5 Perriello, Thomas; WV-1 Mollohan, Alan; WV-3 Rahall, Nick; WI-7 Obey, David.

Here is the list of 26 Democrats who voted “Aye” on Stupak (to discriminate against women) but “Nay” on the final bill (H.R. 3962; to deny Americans health care choice):

Altmire, Barrow, Boccieri, Boren, Bright, Chandler, Childers, Davis (AL), Davis (TN), Gordon (TN), Griffith, Holden, Marshall, Matheson, McIntyre, Melancon, Peterson, Ross, Shuler, Skelton, Tanner, Taylor, Teague

Wouldn’t it be nice to hear about the Catholic church requiring Congresspersons to amend legislation so that people that were already born weren’t killed by U.S. military action?  They keep saying they’re against wars, invasions and occupations – on the pretense of preferring people stay alive.  But there was no strong-arming Representatives to hold up legislation to invade Afghanistan or Iraq.

This particular exercise was futile for additional reasons: private insurers are already barred from using federal funds to pay for abortions.  That’s been the law for years.  This amendment is simply political grand-standing by a group of people who love to proclaim how victimized they are.  The amendment would prevent women who buy private insurance from being able to us that insurance to pay for an abortion in the unlikely event they need one.

This is encouraging:

Female Democrats on the Rules Committee, including Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter, left the room during consideration of the Stupak amendment and didn’t cast a vote.

They should do more than this.  They should vote against the bill in its entirety if the amendment hangs on to the end.  Why?

“This amendment would violate the spirit of health care reform, which is meant to guarantee quality, affordable health care coverage for all, by creating a two-tiered system that would punish women, particularly those with low and modest incomes,” said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America in a late-night release.

What procedures do Catholics object to men having?  None?  Gee, I wonder why that is.  The Catholic church wants to set up a health care system where women continue to be treated as second-class persons.  In the 21st century.  That’s immoral.

[Update]: As another blogger reminded me, this is why I don’t donate to NARAL or Planned Parenthood anymore.  They know this amendment was likely to be introduced and they chose to do nothing to prevent that.  They both have millions of dollars at their disposal that they could use to pressure Democrats with, but they choose not to.  The people donating to these organizations and using their services are the ones who will suffer the most because of the political decisions the groups have made.  Hope that works out well for them.

It looks increasingly likely that they will be able to, according to this Guardian article.  Plans to install renewable energy infrastructure across Europe and Northern Africa continue to mature.  By 2050, the plan is to have 15% of Europe’s power being delivered across the Mediterranean Sea.

Meanwhile, the Cons and ConservaDems in the U.S. continue to lavish billions of dollars in tax breaks on dirty energy corporations and are fighting legislation to make renewables be more competitive, reduce harm on the climate and improve national security.  What patriots they are.  Europe is going to continue to dominate more of the renewable energy industry than the U.S. in the 21st century.

[h/t Climate Progress]

In contrast to this diarist, words don’t fail.  It’s the same thing over and over again.  The $12Trillion bailout with taxpayer money wasn’t enough.  Despite vaccine shortages across the country, someone at the CDC made an immoral decision: staff at Wall St. firms were somehow cleared to receive some of the sought-after vaccine doses.

159 million shots are needed to cover every at-risk person in America.  To date, only 32.3 million have been manufactured.  The diarist was correct about this: Someone should be fired.  Immediately.

Oh, these same firms are planning on issuing Billions more in bonuses to executives who created the Great Recession, the worst economy since the Great Depression.  I supported Obama with some reservations.  This is why I had reservations.  Where is the change?

For the first time that I am personally aware of, a large corporate media outlet has finally reported on the under-reported U-6 unemployment number (which measures total unemployed plus workers whose employers make them work less than full-time but want to work full-time).  In watching CNN this morning, a reporter did start with the U-3 number, newly reported at 10.2%, the highest in 26 years.  In addition, however, the reporter made sure to mention the U-6 number of 17.5%.  To be clear, they spent much more time on the 10.2% number, simply out of convenience and inertia.

I do have a question, though.  Why now?  Is it because a growing number of people outside of the corporate media are pointing toward the U-6 number?  Or could it be perhaps that the 17.5% number sounds really bad for a country with a black President?  CNN hasn’t exactly been the paragon on ethical journalistic practices.  Over the years, they’ve slid toward covering what Fox Propaganda reports on.  Fox’s carrying of the Con’s water has extended and intensified since a year ago when President Obama won the 2008 election.

Whatever their motivation, the U-3 number jumped 0.4% since last month, far more than science-lacking economists were predicting.  Worse, the U-6 number jumped 0.5% since last month.  That clearly shows us that this economy is still very weak.

American corporations have out-sourced millions of jobs in the past 20 years – they’re not coming back unless forced to do so.  The bank bailouts of 2008-09 came with too few strings, so the banks are sitting on trillions of American taxpayer dollars instead of using them to loan money to worthy Americans, ensuring the recovery will take longer than it should.  And instead of helping out the American middle class, the largest driver of our economy, ConservaDems continue to want to give tax breaks to the wealthiest, spend our children’s money on occupying two foreign nations and are working to derail critical health care reform.  If you’re mad about any of this, contact your Congresspersons and tell them to stop holding back what we know is needed.

[Update]: Here is a graph of the percent in job losses in every recession since WWII and the length of time it takes to recover back to pre-recession job numbers.  The 0-line is the peak employment prior to the recession.  This is an excellent way to visualize how devastating the Great Recession has really been for average Americans.  We’ve lost more jobs than were lost in the 1948 and 1958 recessions.  The only worse conditions existed in the Great Depression.  It will take years to recover from this, especially with the Cons shutting down every effort to do something positive.  It took 2.5 and 4 years to recover from the last two recessions by this metric.  Will it take 8 or 10 years to recover from this one?

On Halloween, I wrote a post detailing Sen. Inhofe’s (R-Denier) attempt to stop the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee from doing their jobs and voting on a piece of legislation.  Why boycott the energy and climate legislation committee markup?  Because then it may not get out of that committee, dying before an up-or-down vote could be made in the whole Senate.  That up-or-down concept received a lot of attention when the Cons were in charge and Democrats were trying to debate the Cons’ bills and offer amendments.  Now?  Not so much.  Hypocrites.

In response to Sen. Inhofe’s childish tantrum to not play with others, Sen. Boxer laid out a potential work-around: using an interpretation of the rules to move the bill out of committee without having any minority party members present.  The committee met today to vote on the bill.  Sen. Inhofe and his car of clowns didn’t bother to show up.  Sen. Boxer had the committee vote – and they passed the bill out.

Sen. Inhofe, predictably, ran to the press, crying that things were so unfair and Sen. Boxer was a big meanie who didn’t want to listen to them.

Who the frack cares?  Seriously.  The Cons made the decision to not participate.  They know what’s at stake, which is why they’re trying to prevent any reasonable consideration of energy and climate legislation.  They have dirty energy corporations to appease with their votes.  As to Inhofe’s complaint that how often the procedure has been used?  More nonsense.  Either come to the table with an intent to do some work or shut the hell up.

This leads to 2 conclusions.  1: Do your damn job, Cons!  2: More of this, please.  If the Cons don’t want to participate in good faith, Dems shouldn’t let that hold them back from moving bills through Congress.

[Update 11/6/09]: Oh, Max Baucus (Bought-ND) was the only person to vote against the bill.  10-1 was the final number and all of them were Democrats.  I don’t care that the bill passed as it relates to Baucus.  He tried to destroy the health care bill and voted against this bill.  I’m supporting whoever his next opponent is – in a potential primary but for sure the general election.  Votes have consequences, Max.  You’re done.

[Update 2 11/8/09]: The more you read, the more you know.  It turns out that the Cons wanted the EPA to redo a lengthy analysis on the legislation, something the EPA justifiably rejected on the grounds that the differences between a new analysis and an analysis already done would be undetectable by their models.  Further, I read this at Climate Progress:

Since 2001, the Senate has debated at least eight energy or global warming bills where there was no analysis by EPA, Congressional Budget Office or the Energy Information Administration completed in advance of Committee deliberations.

Isn’t that interesting?  Senate Cons have no valid reason to demand another analysis be done, not when they didn’t allow, request or demand such studies be performed during their mishandling of the Senate in the recent past.

The 2009 election is now behind us. The 2010 election is moving toward us quickly. What have I picked up from this year’s election results? That Democrats, especially those which I label CorporateDems, who run away from the Democratic base will lose, and deservedly so.

If CorporateDems want to chase down Con votes, I say go for it. The Cons won’t vote for them and there’s now proof that progressives won’t turn out to help them. Having a (D) after their name isn’t enough.

So when I read crap like this article, it reinforces that assessment.

Vulnerable House and Senate Democrats want their leaders to skip the party’s controversial legislative agenda for next year to help save their seats in Congress.

Say what?! The wishy-washy controversiality of the agenda doesn’t matter. They just want cover for their lack of vision and courage. I have no doubt that if the Democratic leadership backs off the agenda they were re-elected to implement, the Democratic base will stay home in 2010 and plenty of these “vulnerable” pols will be soundly defeated.

In the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections, they don’t want to be forced to vote on climate change, immigration reform and gays in the military, which they say should be set aside so Congress can focus on jobs and the economy. [Emphasis mine.]

My #1 issue is being threatened to be thrown under the bus to make sure a group of weak-kneed cowards can get re-elected next year. I have a question for them: when will they ever work on the most critical issue in our history? They’re never going to feel safe enough to actually get something done about climate change. So why should I or any other Progressive help them? They already got something out of us: hard work and votes to elect them. It’s time for them to do what they were elected to do: solidify and implement the people’s agenda. If they refuse to do that, they should be fired, not rehired.

So in response to their purposeful misreading of the 2009 election results, I challenge them to throw more wrenches in the works. Disable the agenda, CorporateDems. You’re the ones whose jobs will suffer. Especially people like Sen. Lincoln:

Lincoln said that lawmakers should focus on passing healthcare reform and wait until next year to effect financial regulatory reform and reduce unemployment.

“That’s an awful lot to bite off and chew for right now,” said Lincoln, who described herself as “not in a hurry” to tackle climate change, an issue she has some jurisdiction over as chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Lincoln is more interested in health insurance non-reform, so the rest of her cute talking point means nothing. But does Lincoln want to do something about the economy or doesn’t she? The economy will not recover if regulatory reform and unemployment reduction efforts are pushed off to next year, especially since you and I know she’ll want to put it off until 2011 so they’re not election-day issues.

She wants the perks of being in power without having to actually do her job. If Lincoln can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, I’m happy to help elect her replacement next year. Most importantly, the climate can’t wait for Lincoln or any other CorporateDem to finally get around to a second task. We can’t wait until Missouri gets 18F warmer and farms, even the largest Corporate versions, fail across the state. Something must be done now. If Lincoln won’t do it, someone else will.

Cross-posted at SquareState.

[Update 11/5/09]: Congressional Democrats met to discuss future directions yesterday.  I have a strong piece of advice for them: ask what the two Representatives who won their districts won on.  They won on health care and other topics that Obama won on.  The Governors of Virginia and New Jersey won’t make national policy in Congress.  They won on far more local issues – issues Congress shouldn’t be concerning themselves with.

A quote for Sen. Rockefeller:

“The question is, do people think we’re tending to the things they care about?” said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) as he left a meeting of Senate leaders. He said there was palpable concern among his colleagues Wednesday that the main agenda items Democrats are pursuing — health care and climate change — resonate very little with voters focused on finding or keeping jobs.

Sen. Rockefeller knows good and well that health care is inextricably linked to the economy.  To suggest otherwise indicates that he isn’t interested in reforming the status of health care in this country.  Moreover, Sen. Rockefeller had the opportunity last year and earlier this year to do something about the economy.  He voted to spend 1/3 of the stimulus money on tax breaks that he knew wouldn’t feed back into growing the economy.  He voted to bail out the largest banks in the country without demanding oversight of what they did with taxpayer money.  Sen. Rockefeller has to purposefully ignore the actual responses of voters in Virginia and New Jersey, a majority of whom stated that the President’s agenda had nothing to do with their vote for Governor, in order to push his b.s. talking point.  No, they’re not tending to things people care about, but they’re not tending to them in exactly the opposite manner in which Sen. Rockefeller implies .

It’s obvious that this Corporate-Dem is one of the ones listening to his corporate masters, and not the people of West Virginia.  This becomes even more obvious when he says the following:

“Don’t think people in my state are going to stand up and start cheering about Copenhagen,” Rockefeller said, referring to the European city that will host a summit on global warming next month. Critics of the climate-change legislation before Congress say it would be a job-killer in states dependent on manufacturing and natural resources.

The only ones that won’t be cheering in his state are the coal corporations who expect Sen. Rockefeller to keep regulations out of their industry while they destroy mountains and clean drinking water for West Virginians.  What do the citizens of his state think?  As is typical, you’d never know from his disingenuous quote.  Has anybody asked West Virginia what they think about the Copenhagen conference after they explain how climate change will alter their state?  When dengue fever, malaria, decades-long droughts and 16F warmer temperatures fall over the state, what will they think of the coal corporations and Copenhagen?  When China and Europe dominates the world market in renewable energy infrastructure; when they’re selling us all the goods and making the profits instead of the other way around, what will West Virginians think of Copenhagen then?

Sen. Rockefeller is another severely outdated politician who has accepted millions of dollars in bribes from corporations over the years in return for votes.  As a consequence, the people of West Virginia have had their lifestyles artificially held down.  They’ve had their state’s ecosystem march toward ruin.  This Corporate-Dem doesn’t deserve to be in the Senate any longer.

Some folks get it:

“It’s a matter of tangibles being delivered,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “Victory breeds victory.”

The country of Yemen is experiencing a drought, which has lasted long enough to be causing societal problems.  This isn’t terribly surprising, but neither is it covered by the American media very well.  What will happen as the drought continues and the country’s population continues to destabilize?  Al-Qaeda has already made significant inroads in the country, being just about the only group who has shown a willingness to do something for the people.

Yemen provides another good example of what we face as human forced climate change continues to take hold.  Fresh, clean water is the most important commodity we have at this early stage of the 21st century.  It will only become more so.  As water tables drop, farmers’ crops fail and drought conditions spread and worsen across the globe, additional crises will foment and erupt.

We can continue to allow ideologically-driven conspiracy-addicts to dumb down the discussion, or we can take a reality-based look around us and decide to act now while our world is relatively stable and solutions are easier and cheaper to come by.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said Thursday that she is planning to hold a markup Tuesday on S. 1733 (pdf), the Senate version of the Energy and Climate legislation President Obama and a majority of Americans are searching for.  In usual fashion, the Cons in the Senate are trying to figure out ways they can continue to stall movement of the bill.  In much the same way that they convinced all-too-willing Democrats to push health care legislation further and further back on the legislative calendar, climate legislation has been bottled up in committee for months now.  If Sen. Inhofe (R-Denier) and his Con colleagues get their way, the energy and climate legislation will either never move out of committee or will be so terribly weakened that there might as well not be any legislation at all.

Sen. Inhofe and six other Cons on the Environment and Public Works Committee are planning a boycott of the markup come Tuesday, which would mean Sen. Boxer couldn’t hold a vote to move it out of committee.  She unfortunately needs 2 Cons to show up to move the legislation further along.  Those same Cons are more interested in trying to show how ineffectual government can possibly be by slowing everything down to no movement (thereby fulfilling their own sick predictions), especially when it comes to energy and climate legislation.  By doing so, they prove they are pleased with recent news that China and other nations are taking over industries the U.S. invented in the 20th century, industries that will determine which country dominates the 21st century.  Enslaved to their failed ideologies, the Cons work tirelessly to ensure it is not the U.S. that continues dominance in these fields and in 21st century geopolitics.

Despite ever-growing proof that our climate forcing is causing changes in Earth’s climate much faster than recently thought; despite ever-growing proof that switching our economy to more efficient and renewable-energy-driven technologies will save us billions every year (costing no jobs, wrecking no economies) and stop our climate forcing, the Cons cannot break away from their dirty energy corporate benefactors and do something positive for this country and the planet.

Instead, the Cons are whining about how Boxer runs her Committee meetings, planning senseless obstructionist tactics and demanding that the EPA undertake study after study after study, none of which will ever get one single Con to vote for the bill anyway.

Sen. Boxer opened the door to alternative approaches for moving the bill, including the use of Senate Rule 14 that allows the majority to discharge legislation out of a committee and bring it directly to the floor.  I hope she does it.  When Cons were trying to force their extremist political nominees and destructive legislation down Americans’ throats, they couldn’t talk enough about “Up or down votes” and how Democrats were holding them up.  Why won’t Cons support “Up or down votes” now?  Because their fringe party is now in the minority.  They’re truly being obstructionists, needlessly so on every issue.  Sen. Boxer and the Democrats should do whatever they can to push the people’s business forward – rolling over the Cons if need be.

Did you hear all the talk about President Obama’s announcement that $3.4 Billion in energy grid modernization investment? It hasn’t exactly dominated the top-of-the-hour news reports, but made some small ripples on Tuesday.

While Congress remains bogged down on health care, to say nothing of energy and climate, legislation, the executive branch has been very busy this year starting initiatives and issuing new rules and threatening regulations. This is the latest in that series of actions.

Two projects in Colorado are receiving investment money. More on them below…

According to this Denver Post story:

Fort Collins and Pueblo received $24.2 million in federal grants Tuesday to install smart-grid electric meters — enabling homes and power companies to communicate with each other — in almost 120,000 homes.

If you remember, Xcel Energy and Boulder have been working to deploy smart grid technologies to 25,000 homes. Additionally, Ft. Collins already was announced to participate in one of 8 projects nationwide – a smart grid demonstration. This new announcement builds on that first one.

Smart grid projects to date have demonstrated that people substantially reduce their energy demands. The energy grid could benefit from large-scale demand reduction, which projects like these build toward.

Four smart grid projects in Colorado through Oct. 2009, three of which are because President Obama’s administration understands the seriousness of our over-burdened and antiquated domestic energy system. This is one arena in which I think Obama is making a difference.

A list of all 100 projects, listed by state, can be found here.

[Update]: No sooner did I post this than I realize I received an email (press release) about geothermal recovery act funding for Colorado, to the tune of $18 Million. 11 projects, including $4.78 Million to Flint Geothermal LLC to identify resources in Colorado and $2.61 Million to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to demonstrate the use of municipal wastewater as the heat exchange medium for a heating/cooling system. The complete list of projects can be found at this DoE site.

Cross-posted at SquareState.