"Joseph Romm" - Why did environmentalists pursue cap-and-trade and was it a doomed strategy?

http://www.grist.org/climate-policy/2011-04-28-why-did-environmentalists-pursue-cap-and-trade-was-it-doomed

by Joseph Romm

28 Apr 2011

We're starting to see pieces of counterfactual history on the climate bill in The New Republic and elsewhere based in part on a widely debunked "false narrative." Since cap-and-trade has been so vilified by the entire right wing and even some on the left, I thought I would try to set the record straight on some key points.

I'm not here to say cap-and-trade was the "correct" strategy. And it may be that any strategy was extrinsically "doomed to fail" -- that the Senate's anti-democratic, super-majority 60-vote "requirement" meant that a dedicated minority could have killed any approach -- once the Republican Party decided to become the only major political party in the world dedicated to denying science and blocking any action.

I mainly want to show that cap-and-trade was not intrinsically doomed to fail, that it was not obviously or inherently a flawed idea in, say, 2008 -- or even 2009. Quite the reverse. Only someone who doesn't know history -- or who chooses to ignore it -- could believe that.

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Kate Sheppard" - BP’s still making bank

http://www.grist.org/oil/2011-04-28-bps-still-making-bank

by Kate Sheppard

28 Apr 2011

Looks like the past year hasn't been so bad after all for BP, which today reported a 16 percent increase in profits over the first quarter of 2010. The company reported $7.2 billion in net earnings -- compared to $6.2 billion for the first three months of last year.

The company sold off a bunch of assets in order to pay for the Gulf oil disaster, which is how they managed to keep the profits up. BP also hasn't been drilling in the deepwater since that whole giant oil catastrophe it unleashed last year. But to still report an increase in income is, well ... let's just say I have a hard time feeling too bad for them because their profits weren't as high as they could have been.

Never fear though, as the company says it expects to be back out drilling in the Gulf by the second quarter of this year.



"Tom Philpott" - Government-backed corn ethanol lurches on, paving a road to nowhere

by Tom Philpott

28 Apr 2011

During the Bush II administration, I used to groan that the closest thing we had to a concerted policy response to climate change was the federal government's slew of goodies for corn-based ethanol. It was a monumentally depressing situation, because propping up corn-derived fuel is expensive and (despite industry hype) doesn't actually do much, if anything at all, to mitigate climate change -- but contributes actively to ecological disasters like the Gulf of Mexico "dead zone."

Now, two years into the Obama administration, we still have no concerted policy response to climate change, and the corn ethanol program abides, sucking up resources that could be going to actual green technologies. Groan.

In 2009, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) put out an analysis showing that corn-based ethanol grabbed fully three-quarters of all federal "renewable energy" tax credits -- while wind and solar combined just got 19 percent of that multi-billion-dollar pie. According to a new EWG report [PDF], the ethanol tax breaks have cost taxpayers $23 billion since 2005. Corn ethanol enjoys its massive tax subsidies on top of aggressive mandates from the 2007 Energy Act that force gasoline blenders to mix huge and increasing amounts of the stuff into the car-fuel supply.

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"Louis Ruprecht" - The End (of Religion) Is Near, Scientists Say

By Louis Ruprecht, Religion Dispatches
Posted on April 27, 2011, Printed on April 29, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150765/the_end_%28of_religion%29_is_near%2C_scientists_say

Scientists often have a funny way of talking about religion.

A case in point concerns a new study that was discussed at the American Physical Society meetings in Dallas, Texas, in late March. Religion, it seems, is going extinct. You heard me: extinct. Dead and gone. Like the dinosaurs.

The data that a team of mathematicians used to reach this rather surprising conclusion were census reports of religious affiliation. Using a complicated means of mathematical analysis called “nonlinear dynamics”—complicated, ironically, because its purpose is to make complicated things simpler by reducing them to one variable—the team attempted to extrapolate from data on religious affiliation in nine countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

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"Jim Hightower" - How Tea Partiers in Congress Are Doing Their Corporate Masters' Bidding

By Jim Hightower, AlterNet
Posted on April 27, 2011, Printed on April 29, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150761/how_tea_partiers_in_congress_are_doing_their_corporate_masters%27_bidding

They came, they saw, they conquered. This line pretty well sums up a little-reported but important story about the new tea partiers in the U.S. House of Representatives.

No sooner had they arrived than the corporate lobbying corps came to visit, saw what these supposed rebels were made of and quickly conquered them without a fight. The forces of big business needed only to lay out some campaign cash -- and quicker than you can say, "Business as usual," the budding lawmakers snatched up the money and immediately began carrying the lobbyists' corporate agenda.

Check out the financial services subcommittee, which handles legislation affecting Wall Street bankers. Five tea partiers got coveted slots on this panel, and all five were suddenly showered with big donations from such financial lobbying interests as Goldman Sachs. Now, all five are sponsoring bills to undo parts of the recent reforms to reign in Wall Street excesses.

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"Mark Weisbrot" - 2016 -- When China Overtakes the US

Published on Thursday, April 28, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/27/china-imf-economy-2016

After more than a century as the world's largest economy, the US will need to adjust to its declining global hegemony

by Mark Weisbrot

Various observers have noted this week that China's economy will be bigger than that of the United States in 2016. This comes from the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) latest projections, which were made in its semi-annual April world economic outlook database. Since 2016 is just a few years away, and it will be the first time in more than a century that the United States will no longer be the world's largest economy, this development will be the object of some discussion – from various perspectives.

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"Simon Johnson" - Arrogance and Authority

Thursday 28 April 2011

by: Simon Johnson, Project Syndicate [3]

http://truthout.org/arrogance-and-authority/1304016615

Washington, DC - It is increasingly common to hear prominent American and European central bankers proclaim, with respect to the crisis of 2008-2010, the following verdict: “We did well.” Their view is that the various government actions to support the financial system helped to stabilize the situation. Indeed, what could be wrong when the United States Federal Reserve’s asset purchases may have actually made money (which is then turned over to the US Treasury)?

But to frame the issue in this way is, at best, to engage in delusion. At worst, however, it creates an image of arrogance that can only undermine the credibility on which central banks’ authority rests.

The real cost of the crisis is not measured by the profit and loss statement of any central bank – or by whether or not the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), run by the Treasury Department, made or lost money on its various activities.

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"Dr. Carolyn Dean" - The Medical Monopoly: It's not about who's right or wrong but who's in charge

by Dr. Carolyn Dean – April 29, 2011

http://www.naturalnews.com/032229_medical_monopoly_allopathic_medicine.html

(NaturalNews) The general public doesn't realize there is an ongoing war for the control of our bodies. Allopathic medicine and the pharmaceutical industry demand a monopoly on treating disease and will stop at nothing to achieve that end.

I know this to be true because I've been portrayed a so-called victim of their schemes. My story comes up periodically as the "haters" of natural medicine or the hired quackbusters try to discredit anyone involved with natural medicine. I don't consider myself a victim but simply a knowledgeable participant in the age-old struggle of power versus authority.

Back in 1979 when I set up my practice as a dedicated natural medicine doctor with a medical license and naturopathic degree, my mere existence threatened allopathic medicine. I further drove a nail in my own coffin by going on the media and talking about alternatives to drug-based medicine. I was a thorn in the side of the medical establishment.

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"Johann Hari" - Donald Trump's Lunacy Reveals Core Truth About the Republicans

Published on Friday, April 29, 2011 by The Independent/UK

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-donald-trumps-lunacy-reveals-core-truth-about-the-republicans-2276222.html

by Johann Hari

Since the election of Barack Obama, the Republican Party has proved that one of its central intellectual arguments was right all along. It has long claimed that evolution is a myth believed in only by whiny liberals – and it turns out it was on to something. Every six months, the party venerates a new hero, and each time it is somebody further back on the evolutionary scale.

Sarah Palin told cheering rallies that her message to the world was: "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way!" – but that wasn't enough. So the party found Michele Bachmann, who said darkly it was an "interesting coincidence" that swine flu only breaks out under Democratic presidents, claims the message of The Lion King is "I'm better at what I do because I'm gay", and argues "there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas."

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"Wendell Potter" - Insurers Getting Rich By Not Paying for Care

Published on Friday, April 29, 2011 by PR Watch

http://prwatch.org/news/2011/04/10665/insurers-getting-rich-not-paying-care

by Wendell Potter

If I had stayed in the insurance industry, my net worth would have spiked between 4 p.m. Wednesday and 4 p.m. Thursday last week -- and I wouldn't even have had to show up for work.

I'm betting that just about every executive of a for-profit health insurance company, whose total compensation ultimately depends on the value of their stock options, woke up on Good Friday considerably wealthier than they were 24 hours earlier. Why? Because of the spectacular profits that one of those companies reported Thursday morning.

Among those suddenly wealthier executives, by the way, are the corporate medical directors who decide whether or not patients will get coverage for treatments their doctors believe might save their lives.

UnitedHealth Group, the biggest health insurer in terms of revenue and market value, earned so much more during the first three months of this year than Wall Street expected that investors rushed to buy shares of every one of the seven health insurers that comprise the managed care sector. In my view, it would be more accurate to call it the managed care cartel.

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