CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N ( No. 08-205 )

This case, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that corporations share the same rights as citizens, is such a monumental boondoggle of judicial activism on the part of the Court's morally and ethically corrupt conservative majority that I thought Justice Stevens' passionate dissent deserved additional airing. For its brazen disregard of legal precedents to achieve a desired outcome, this decision is only matched for its depraved indifference to morality by one other infamous case: "GEORGE W. BUSH, et al., PETITIONERS v.ALBERT GORE, Jr., et al." -- the case in which George W. Bush stole the 2000 election from Al Gore with the help of the eagerly compliant and easily corrupted conservative Supremes.

You can read Justice Stevens' entire dissent here:
Opinion of STEVENS, J. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, No. 08–205, CITIZENS UNITED, APPELLANT v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION

(Click "more..." [below] to read a bit of Justice Stevens' dissent...)

JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG,
JUSTICE BREYER, and JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR join, concurring
in part and dissenting in part.
The real issue in this case concerns how, not if, the
appellant may finance its electioneering. Citizens United
is a wealthy nonprofit corporation that runs a political
action committee (PAC) with millions of dollars in assets.
Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002
(BCRA), it could have used those assets to televise and
promote Hillary: The Movie wherever and whenever it
wanted to. It also could have spent unrestricted sums to
broadcast Hillary at any time other than the 30 days
before the last primary election. Neither Citizens United’s
nor any other corporation’s speech has been “banned,”
ante, at 1. All that the parties dispute is whether Citizens
United had a right to use the funds in its general treasury
to pay for broadcasts during the 30-day period. The notion
that the First Amendment dictates an affirmative answer
to that question is, in my judgment, profoundly misguided.
Even more misguided is the notion that the Court must
rewrite the law relating to campaign expenditures by forprofit
corporations and unions to decide this case.
The basic premise underlying the Court’s ruling is its
iteration, and constant reiteration, of the proposition that
the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based
on a speaker’s identity, including its “identity” as a corporation.
While that glittering generality has rhetorical
appeal, it is not a correct statement of the law. Nor does it
tell us when a corporation may engage in electioneering
that some of its shareholders oppose. It does not even
resolve the specific question whether Citizens United may
be required to finance some of its messages with the
money in its PAC. The conceit that corporations must be
treated identically to natural persons in the political
sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify
the Court’s disposition of this case.
In the context of election to public office, the distinction
between corporate and human speakers is significant.
Although they make enormous contributions to our society,
corporations are not actually members of it. They
cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed
and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may
conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of
eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure,
and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate
concerns about their role in the electoral process.
Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if
not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to
guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate
spending in local and national races.
The majority’s approach to corporate electioneering
marks a dramatic break from our past. Congress has
placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations
ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907,
ch. 420, 34 Stat. 864. We have unanimously concluded
that this “reflects a permissible assessment of the dangers
posed by those entities to the electoral process,” FEC v.
National Right to Work Comm., 459 U. S. 197, 209 (1982)
(NRWC), and have accepted the “legislative judgment that
the special characteristics of the corporate structure require
particularly careful regulation,” id., at 209–210. The
Court today rejects a century of history when it treats the
distinction between corporate and individual campaign
spending as an invidious novelty born of Austin v. Michigan
Chamber of Commerce, 494 U. S. 652 (1990). Relying
largely on individual dissenting opinions, the majority
blazes through our precedents, overruling or disavowing a
body of case law including FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life,
Inc., 551 U. S. 449 (2007) (WRTL), McConnell v. FEC, 540
U. S. 93 (2003), FEC v. Beaumont, 539 U. S. 146 (2003),
FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U. S. 238
(1986) (MCFL), NRWC, 459 U. S. 197, and California
Medical Assn. v. FEC, 453 U. S. 182 (1981).
In his landmark concurrence in Ashwander v. TVA, 297
U. S. 288, 346 (1936), Justice Brandeis stressed the importance
of adhering to rules the Court has “developed . . . for
its own governance” when deciding constitutional questions.
Because departures from those rules always enhance
the risk of error, I shall review the background of
this case in some detail before explaining why the Court’s
analysis rests on a faulty understanding of Austin and
McConnell and of our campaign finance jurisprudence
more generally .1 I regret the length of what follows, but
the importance and novelty of the Court’s opinion require
a full response. Although I concur in the Court’s decision
to sustain BCRA’s disclosure provisions and join Part IV
of its opinion, I emphatically dissent from its principal
holding.

Now, you should read the whole thing, if for no other reason than to reaffirm your conviction that someone out there still gives a shit about trivial things like the integrity of the Constitution, and the institutions it establishes, not to mention simple morality and ethics, of which the Supreme Court's conservative majority are acutely devoid. more...

Mountaintop removal continues...

So it ends.

The tree sitters, Nick Stocks and Laura Steepleton, (with Climate Ground Zero) at Pettry Bottom, West Virginia were chased away by mine security staff who saw fit to torment the protesters with lights, noise, and finally buzzing chainsaws. So the tree sitters descended. But not before six days passed and the two protesters delivered a little more attention to the plight of these verdant hills and hardwood forests which the Massey Mining Corp. is destroying for a few bucks profit. And don't think that Massey employs loads of local residents in their calamitous endeavor. They don't. In fact, with groundwater cleanups, road construction, etc. it would be cheaper for the states where mountaintop removal is conducted to pay the miners to stay home. But that's not where the real money is. The real money goes into executive's pockets. And then around election time, a bit of those ill-gotten gains are used to buy the compliance and silence of key politicians.

Meanwhile, local residents get screwed: their groundwater is poisoned, their air is fouled with dust, the silence is punctuated with earthshaking dynamite blasts, their villages and homes are threatened by rickety sludge impoundments, and their long cherished hunting, fishing, berry & mushroom picking, and hiking grounds are lost forever. Instead of rippling hills and valleys with sun-dappled glades and sparkling streams, they are left with flat, gray, infertile plains of wasteland. And so are the rest of us. Forever.
more...

Mountaintop Removal, To Our Shame, Continues

Right now, there are two people, Nick Stocks and Laura Steepleton, from climategroundzero.net sitting on postage stamp platforms in two different trees. They've been up there for days and they've got buckets for privies to prove it. Sun, fog, rain, wind -- they've stayed because they're disgusted with the inertia of a political system that allows the travesty of mountaintop removal to continue. Coal companies will destroy gorgeous Appalachia -- hard-working Appalachia -- for no good reason whatsoever. That is, they'll destroy it for money. And they'll do it surrounded by the people who's lives they've ruined, who've gotten very little of that money at all. Surely not enough to send out a fleet of lawyers and lobbyists to stop the destruction of their ancestral lands.

And the coal they get from 500,000 acres of flattened, poisoned hills and valleys; 2,000 miles of ruined streams? It provides 7% of the nation's electricity. You could cut your consumption 7% overnight: turn off a few unnecessary lights, or shut off the TV when you're not in the room, or unplug a few vampire power packs sticking out of the wall (or plug them in to a power strip with an old-fashioned on/off switch).

Here's a damn good explication of the facts from a fine writer who lives in Kentucky, Silas House: Devastating View from the Mountaintop Read it, then go here to tell your elected representatives to get off their asses and do something. Now. more...

United States Domestic Manufacturing vs. Free Trade

Domestic Manufacturing vs. Free Trade
This post is prompted by comments posted here and here, so if you haven't read those, two references might elude you: "Darwinian Capitalism" and "obsession with manufacturing." Not to worry, you'll get the point.

I have never witnessed “Darwinian Capitalism,” nor has anyone else that I’m aware of, so I can’t comment on it. What I can comment on is the variant I live under, and the variants that I witness, directly or indirectly, around the world. All of these flavors of capitalism are manipulated to the advantage of the most powerful participants -- the capitalized (those who derive incomes from investments), as opposed to wage earners. Such manipulation takes the form of favorably lax regulation and regressive income taxes, and these tend to stratify society by concentrating wealth at the top. Rather than thinking about “safety nets” for the poor, we should think about “restraining nets” for the rich to minimize the corrupting influence of wealth.

One way to do this is through progressive taxation, which provides government with the resources to monitor (regulate) the creation of wealth, compensate (educate) victims of exploitation, and clean up the environmental disasters visited on us all by the heedless behavior of amoral business ventures. Another way to minimize the corrupting influence of wealth on an industrialized economy is through trade unions. Through collective bargaining, trade unions counter the leverage exerted by management and give wage earners some of the same insurance against boom/bust cycles that the capitalized enjoy, i.e. a cushion of resources: unemployment and health insurance for workers, investments for the capitalized.

As far as an “obsession with manufacturing,” I can’t comment on the views of others, but for myself, manufacturing is not an obsession. In fact, I’m not that fond of the idea of a “consumerist” society inundated by cheap, throwaway crap. But manufacturing is a means to an end: survival. So are agriculture and hunting-gathering. None of which, by the way, are mutually exclusive, so I don’t really see them as a linear, evolutionary progression with one replacing the other as some describe it. We still have plenty of agriculture, though now on a much larger, unsustainable scale. And we still have hunter-gatherers. OK, hunter-gatherers are fewer in number, but they exist, even in industrialized countries -- witness various forms of squatting, trash sorting, and scrap metal recycling.

And as a means to an end slightly more desirable than mere survival -- broad prosperity -- manufacturing has done reasonably well, provided we have strong trade unions, muscular regulation, protective tariffs, and progressive taxation. When those constraints on capitalism are in place, our society has flourished, and by flourished I mean nearly everyone benefited, not just a miniscule subsection at the pinnacle of the food chain. Think of the constraints as a sturdy fuselage to hang the wings of capitalism on. Without one, the other is useless. (Except to wing builders who profit from the mess created by flimsy aircraft falling out of the sky.)

In a balanced economy, with some hunter-gatherers, some agriculture, some manufacturing, some service and finance every reasonably industrious member could find a niche. Sure, productivity and efficiency gains fostered by improved technology would eliminate some jobs in every sector, but improved technology would create new jobs in other sectors, notably manufacturing. Technology continuously obsoletes one manufactured device in favor of another, whether it’s a consumer toy like a DVD player, or a machine used in a plant that manufactures DVD players. Thus, manufacturing plants are continuously re-tooling to manufacture the latest product at the least cost (provided there is fair competition to insure the necessity of such investment).

Since the 1970’s the middle class and poor have been the victim of diminished domestic manufacturing and exports replaced by foreign manufacturing and imports. Since the 1980’s, most of the new wealth in the U.S. has been generated in the finance sector, where salaries are disproportionately -- insanely -- high at the top, and poverty-line low at the bottom (and not that numerous, and not unionized). This does not represent a natural economic evolution of society. It is a trend induced by an affluent minority who depend on investments for their income.

Since this affluent minority traditionally invested in American manufacturing, and with tariffs on foreign imports low, and with manufacturing capacity restored in post WWII Japan (followed by Hong Kong, S. Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and finally China), investors pressured management to increase short-term profits. The best way -- the only way -- to yield these short term profits was to eliminate expensive, well-paid, unionized, pensioned, health-insured, worker-safety protected, environmentally responsible jobs in favor of cheap, underpaid, non-unionized, un-pensioned, un-health-insured, workers with unsafe jobs in environmentally catastrophic overseas plants. That is, a return to the conditions that existed in the United States and Europe at the turn of the 19th century before trade unions and environmentalists fought long hard battles to improve our lot. How come off shoring didn’t happen sooner? Because, throughout the industrial revolution, up until about WWI, the U.S. maintained tariffs that protected U.S. manufacturers against a flood of overseas products. Then we had WWI, followed by the Great Depression, followed by WWII, all of which discourage imports, and, or decimated manufacturing capacity everywhere but in the United States. So, it wasn’t until the 1970’s that imports began to nibble away at our manufacturing primacy.

So, yes, as a whole, the United States has grown wealthier as manufacturing declined, but that wealth is now nearly as concentrated at the top as it was before the industrial revolution -- the middle-class is dying on the vine. So we have cheaper consumer products, but steadily flat or declining middle-class incomes and standards of living, and more two-income households that barely survive.

And, we’ve sold off our creative prowess. Sure, we still have the movie industry. We can export a few movies. And sure, we still have Boeing (barely); and Caterpillar (barely); and a bunch of pharmaceuticals and banks and niche manufacturers. But those are a drop in the bucket compared to all the stuff we need to survive -- manufactured stuff. Stuff manufactured overseas. Hence, our huge and economically menacing trade deficit. On the “free trade” governed world market, we buy tons of stuff, but we don’t sell much. So, it’s not so much free trade that we participate in, it’s free shopping. And if you keep shopping without any income, you’re gonna go broke -- which we are.

Imagine now, instead, that we manufacture our own shoes and shirts and dresses; and electronic components and cell phones, and TV’s and cars (preferably trains and buses); and electricity generator components; and cables and wires to connect all this high-tech stuff; and... you get the idea -- we manufacture stuff here, our income stays here. And we continue to invest in broad prosperity -- elevating the middle class, and poor. And we preserve our intellectual capacity to design the manufacturing plants and products of the future. Skills that now, to our collective shame, we are allowing to atrophy (skills, such as machine tooling, I assure you, most bankers can not even conceive of).

And yes, if we manufacture stuff here, and pay people reasonable wages, and insure them against old age and health catastrophe, and protect our shared environment, we will pay more for stuff. But, we will have a constant supply of well-paid jobs for everyone, not just essayists with PhD’s who promote free trade, and creative financiers who sell hedge funds to insulate the wealthy against tanking domestic markets. Besides, if free-trade worked as advertised, that stuff we buy overseas should cost a lot more soon enough as foreign manufacturers...wait for it... pay people reasonable wages, and insure them against old age and health catastrophe, and protect our shared environment... or will they? Not likely, considering the state of governance in most of the countries we buy from. Anyway, it hasn’t happened in the thirty years since off shoring got so popular.

Make whatever predictions you want about the rosy future under free trade, but we do not yet have the much touted and oft-promised highly educated workforce of the future. We have a partially highly educated workforce, a partially moderately educated workforce, and a partially not that well educated workforce. A large fraction of those folks will always be content to clock-in at an assembly line, and bang out their eight-hour day in return for a reasonable living standard and reasonable protections against bankruptcy induced by the vagaries of human health. What’s wrong with that? Every immigrant wave that came here and built this country started there? Why pull the rug out now, when all we get in return is a really rich upper crust with big houses for the rest of us to admire from outside the gates?

My preceding free trade post is here: Free Traders: Friends or Foes?

Here's a bracing rundown of NAFTA's caustic effects from Robert E. Scott at the Economic Policy Institute (www.epi.org): The high price of ‘free’ trade

Former Senator Fritz Hollings seems to concur:
We Are in Real Trouble
Politics Like Cancer

Here's a nice roundup of NY Times articles on NAFTA: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/north_american_free_trade_agreement/index.html

And here's a nice little Wiki history of tariffs in the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_in_American_history
more...

What if the "The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009" isn't enacted?

Your electric bill (and the price of everything else that requires electricity to manufacture) will still go up. Probably more than if it does pass.

Why? Because instead of investing in efficiency -- which could create lots of jobs for wage-earners -- investment will be in new capacity: coal and nuclear power plants and grid expansion. New capacity from big, central plants costs more than efficiency improvements or distributed renewable sources so your bill will go up. In fact, electricity gained by through efficiency improvements cost around $0.04 a KW/hr, as opposed to at least $0.18 for nukes (not including security or waste disposal) and around $0.10 for coal.

If we care about global warming and foolishly choose nukes over renewables, we will also discover that we can't build nukes fast enough to mitigate global warming -- they're just too complicated. And if we build nukes, it will be with taxpayer dollars to guarantee construction loans for projects notorious for cost overruns and delays. Otherwise banks won’t finance them.

Renewables, on the other hand, can be constructed faster and cheaper, and with far less resistance from neighbors (no one wants a nuke in their backyard).

Also, building coal and nuke plants won’t create as many jobs, nor will they last as long. Big coal and nuke plants are capital intensive -- they require fewer, but much more expensive components than distributed, renewable power sources or efficiency improvements like better appliances, construction materials, manufactured homes, etc. which can be produced by American workers for years.

On the other hand, we can make efficiency improvements and build wind, photovoltaic, biogas, geothermal and micropower (cogeneration) sources fast enough (using American products and labor if we’re smart). And, remember: distributed power sources for efficient loads are cheaper and more reliable than big nukes and coal -- not even taking into account the waste disposal and security costs for nuclear, or the environmental cleanup and health costs associated with all that mercury, radioactive isotopes, and particulates rained down by coal plants.

You want some dollar numbers?

Here's some from this blog: "Cap & Trade: Doing Well While Doing Good"

Here are some from the Union of Concerned Scientists, "Clean Energy, Green Jobs (2009)"
Read the following from an unimpeachable source, the Rocky Mountain Institute:

Does a Big Economy Need Big Power Plants? A Guest Post

Mighty Mice (funny title, concise, enlightening information)

The Nuclear Illusion (longish, but convincing)

Rocky Mountain Institute: Top Federal Energy Policy Goals
(what we would do if we were really smart...includes some job creation numbers)

And, here's a good explanation of how Carbon Cap & Trade will work (from Greenwire):
Carbon allowances -- the glue in House energy package more...

Renewable Electricity Standard (RES)(S.433 & H.R.890):
A Modest Proposal
To Join The Rest of the Planet In The 21st Century

The members of Congress who found the courage to introduce landmark energy bills such as The Renewable Electricity Standard (RES)(S.433 in the Senate and H.R.890 in the House) should be cheered. These are honorable initiatives to move this country into the realm of 21st century electricity generation technology, and away from toxic coal, of which we burn about 2.85 million short tons per day. (If you don't think that's a lot, watch the Frontline program "Heat.")

This bill would bring U.S. electricity generation from renewable sources (primarily wind and biomass gas) up to 25% of consumption by 2025. Given the state of technology, and plentiful wind resources, this isn't much of challenge. And it will only reduce coal consumption by 8 to 11 percent (depending on whether or not states get various exemptions). Further, additional costs to power plant operators imposed by this bill are minimized when combined with the effects of greenhouse gas cap & trade provisions of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) and a proposed energy efficiency resource standard.

What this bill will do is reduce growth of coal consumption, and the toxic side effects of it: mercury and radioactive isotopes in the air, leaching fly ash on the ground, and decapitated mountains in our verdant Appalachians. It will create solid, unionized manufacturing, installation and maintenance jobs that can't be outsourced. And, it will slow global warming -- not enough -- but it's a start.

And, it won't cost ratepayers much: somewhere between 2.7 and 2.9 percent tacked on to their monthly bills. (Yes, it's true, new power lines may need to be constructed from windy places to the consumers, but new coal plants, and the added power line capacity that goes with them will cost money, too. So, upgrading the grid is not an excuse for not doing this.)

Tell your representatives to support this bill (along with the American Clean Energy and Security Act), and tell your neighbors it's a good thing that won't cost 'em a bundle.

I got my numbers from the Energy Information Administration, in the Executive Summary of the report: Impacts of a 25-Percent Renewable Electricity Standard as Proposed in the American Clean Energy and Security Act Discussion Draft

Incidentally, you can search for any Congressional bill at the Thomas Library of Congress more...

Cap & Trade: Doing Well While Doing Good
Cap & Trade is good for the U.S. economy, good for U.S. wage earners, and good for the planet.

Phasing out dirty, expensive, energy sources will cost some people money in the short term, but the costs to consumers can be mitigated through efficiency improvements (which are part of "The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009") and rebates to low-income households.

The EPA estimates the following
"Average Household Energy Expenditures
(excluding gasoline)":

2015: $1,950
2020: $2,020
2030: $2,200
2040: $2,200
2050: $2,150

and,

"Change in Average Household Energy Expenditures
(excluding gasoline)":

2020: 6.0%
2030: 8.5%
2040: 11.5%
2050: 15.0%

• In 2030 electricity prices increase by 22% in “scenario 2 – WM-Draft” and natural gas prices increase by 17%. In “scenario 3 – WM-Draft Energy Efficiency” electricity prices increase by 20% and natural gas prices (including allowance costs) increase by 13%.
• Actual household energy expenditures increase by a lesser amount due to reduced demand for energy. In 2030 the average household’s energy expenditures (excluding motor gasoline) increase by 9% in scenario 2 – WM-Draft” and by 8% in “scenario 3 – WM-Draft Energy Efficiency.”
• In ADAGE, energy expenditures represent approximately 2% of total consumption in 2020 falling to 1% by 2050 in all scenarios.
• The energy expenditures presented here do not include any potential increase in capital or maintenance cost associated with more energy efficient technologies.

These increased energy costs are not nothing, but they're not wildly unreasonable considering historical fuel price trends.(see: Household Energy Expenditures (pg. 31) section of the EPA's "EPA Preliminary Analysis of the Waxman-Markey Discussion Draft")

Delusional, socialist, redistribution of wealth? No, not really. We'll just be asking polluters to pay for the right to pollute. Something we've been asking other polluters to do for a long time, but usually after the fact through fines, which cost everyone a lot more when you factor in legal fees and reclamation costs, which also don't help consumers or create jobs. And remember, coal (and coal is primarily what we're talking about) dumps a lot more than C02 into the atmosphere -- there's mercury and radioactive isotopes, too. Not to mention all those heaps of fly ash leaching into our groundwater, and mountaintop-removal wiping out vast tracts of cherished Appalachian hill country and the wildlife and people that live there.

Incidentally, we've been through this sort of thing before: pack mules gave way to the Erie Canal and riverboats, the Erie Canal gave way to railroads, clipper ships gave way to steamships, coal locomotives gave way to diesel, the horse and buggy gave way to the automobile and the train, the telegraph (and shouting) gave way to the telephone. All of these transitions hurt someone. And cap & trade will hurt someone, too. But there is a big upside with the potential for good union-protected manufacturing jobs -- the kind of jobs that created the middle class after the last depression.

Other countries recognize this, and they are profiting from being getting in early. They will be technology development and export leaders. These leaders include China, as well as the EU. Currently, the U.S. is lagging, even though we were the first to develop and adopt many "green" technologies on a small scale. We just haven't kept up with the investment, and that's sad because since the start of the industrial revolution, we have been technological leaders in energy distribution, manufacturing, transportation and health care.

Now we are slipping behind in all these categories. Something our grandparents, who worked and fought so hard for middle-class prosperity, would be dismayed by. Getting on board with this next industrial revolution will be a great opportunity for this country to restore itself to world-class status not only in technological terms, but in terms of new employment opportunities -- many of which can't be outsourced and don't require a college degree, which I think at least a few among us would be grateful for.

May 22, 2009:
The House Energy and Commerce Committe passed the The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, by a vote of 33 to 25. Well, the Dems gave away 85% of the emissions allowances, and that's a lot revenue squandered, but the bill still puts a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, strongly encourages the implementation of renewable energy sources, and will increase the energy efficiency of commercial and residential structures, and that's good. All these things will lead to new, well-paid (unionized, I hope) jobs manufacturing, installing and maintaining the components of a new economic sector of our economy.

A Washington Post article mentions the following:

The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the overall impact would be too small to significantly dampen economic growth. But the conservative Heritage Foundation has said it might cost a family $4,300 per year in a few decades.

"The actual paperwork isn't done at the retail level," said David Kreutzer, a climate policy specialist at the Heritage Foundation. "But it's going to jack the cost up, and they will have to pass the costs on to consumers."

Mr. Kreutzer appears to be backing down from that wildly inflated $4,300/year assertion. Probably because it was based on an inflated estimate of costs for future emission allowances -- inflated by a factor of about ten.

Here's a good explanation of how Carbon Cap & Trade will work:
Carbon allowances -- the glue in House energy package more...

Freedom's Just Another Word For: Car-Free
I must be nuts, but I think car-free living is a great idea. I'm tired of maintaining, feeding, and insuring my beast of burden so I can hop in and race off to sit in the fetid, poisonous atmosphere of a traffic jam.

I remember living in a city where transportation was a shared endeavor: I just walked down the block, waited a few minutes, and climbed on a bus or subway. On board, I could open a book, daydream, chat with strangers (not so often, but occasionally), and presto, I would arrive at my destination un-stressed and with my wallet not much lighter than when I started. And the collective energy on the bus or train always jazzed me up to get done whatever I needed to do.

Well, "car-free" is catching on. Here's a story from the venerable NY Times about a couple of towns in Germany that are going for it: "In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars"

If you think this sounds good, ignore the haters that cry that public transport impedes their freedom. Baloney! Public transport expands your freedom -- those narrow-minders have obviously never tried it. No traffic worries (for trains and busses with dedicated lanes at least), no parking worries, no breakdown worries, and best of all: no DWI worries. Ignore the haters and tell your congressional representatives to replace highway funding (currently 80%) with more funding for public transportation (currently 20%) in the 2009 Transportation Reauthorization Bill. This bill is reauthorized every six years, and this is the year, so as they say on TV: Act now!

You can find your representatives here: congress.org

And here's a website devoted to car-free living: CarFree City USA more...

Free Traders: Friends or Foes?

I'm astonished that otherwise reputable economists continue to promote free trade dogma.

Free-trader enthusiasts consistently decry the horrors of tariffs, yet throughout U.S. industrialization (early 1800's to WWII), in fact, until Ronald Reagan's administration in 1980, we had broad protective tariffs on manufactured products as high as 48% and frequently averaging in the 30% range. And during this stretch of 150 years or so we saw consistent, profitable expansion of U.S. manufacturing, despite depressions, recessions, and a civil war intermittently impeding growth.

Since Reagan's income tax and tariff cuts, we've liquidated our industrial base for quick profits, dismantled the middle class and the unions that fostered it, eroded wages for wage-earners, and cemented in place an uber-wealthy, capitalized oligarchy. Our post-manufacturing banker class continues to sell out un-capitalized, wage-earners for a quick buck importing cheap junk from overseas and outsourcing design, manufacturing and service jobs. (John Jacob Astor would have been proud.) What's left? Retail, tourism (hawking Chinese t-shirts, hotel hospitality, rental desk clerks, etc.), health care, food service, and...wait for it...landscaping and gardening at the expansive homes of affluent bankers.

If free trade were such a godsend, would we not be seeing some real benefits, aside from cheap imported junk and profitable job outsourcing, by now? Benefits such as sustained and broad prosperity? Appealing employment opportunities? Health care for everyone? Education for everyone? Something besides cheap junk and a proliferation of rich bankers propped up by tax dollars?

Here's a revealing and contradictory take on free trade:
Thom Hartmann's review of Ha-Joon Chang's 'Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism'

Here's a Senator from South Carolina who recognizes the flaws in free trade: The Failures of Free Trade

The sooner wage-earning Americans wise up to the baloney we're being fed by our caviar-nipping, banking brethren, the better.

Here's a bit longer thing I wrote in response to comments on this and another post: Domestic Manufacturing vs. Free Trade

Here's a bracing rundown of NAFTA's caustic effects from Robert E. Scott at the Economic Policy Institute (www.epi.org): The high price of ‘free’ trade

Former Senator Fritz Hollings seems to concur:
We Are in Real Trouble
Politics Like Cancer

Here's a nice roundup of NY Times articles on NAFTA: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/north_american_free_trade_agreement/index.html

If you don't read all of the above, read this at least:
Free Trade Accord at Age 10: The Growing Pains Are Clear

And here's a nice little Wiki history of tariffs in the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_in_American_history
more...

Conservatives & Liberals

It seems that most who call themselves conservatives have been co-opted by rich white men who require pliable dupes to do their bidding. Conservative "ideologues" appeal to the basest, most simplistic, atavistic instincts of voters who are too uncertain in their knowledge or too lazy to pursue a thorough understanding of the issues that imperil them. These citizens rally behind demagogues who devolve every debate into the personal "us vs. them" dichotomy; demagogues who show no shame when they use half-truths and outright lies to demonize those who threaten their privileged status quo; demagogues whose mesmerized followers seem to crave the tribal oneness that such witch hunts provide.

Liberals recognize that "us vs. them" is not productive; that some of "us" are bad, and some of "them" are good; that most of society's problems are complex, and that to solve them society must take risks and accept failure as part of the problem solving process. The ultimate durability of society rests in the hands of the majority, and if that majority is well informed and gainfully employed, everyone benefits.

In every society, there are those who seek to exploit economic inequalities to their advantage, and in so doing perpetuate and amplify those inequalities. Economic predators extol the virtues of a free market while enjoying the benefits of market imbalances: oil companies who enjoy cheap oil leases and captive customers; media vendors who enjoy free broadcast spectrum; coal mine operators who enjoy lax environmental protection. Such citizens are not free-market capitalists. They are lazy, morally corrupt, cowardly parasites that we would do well to banish to the backwaters of civilization. Yet, Conservatives uniformly praise such “rugged individualists” as the most productive members of American society.

Liberals recognize that bureaucracy occasionally breeds corruption, that progressive taxes might stifle some investment, that unions marginally impede profits. But, such costs will be borne easily by a society where every honest, hard-working member can expect long-term, stable prosperity that will never be obliterated by venal demagogues who profit from illicit trade in fear mongering and pandering. more...

Power grab...clean power

The U.S. needs passionate, courageous leadership in our pursuit of renewable energy or we'll end up as an also-ran in the race to secure market share in the manufacture of renewable energy generators such as windmills, photovoltaics, turbines for co-generation and geothermal, and components for creation and storage of biomass gases.

If that happens, we'll miss what appears to be our last opportunity to restore a bit of our greed-decimated, off-shored manufacturing base and our last hope for broad economic prosperity, i.e. broad as in not just the rich get richer, but everyone gets a piece of the pie. Remember the post WWII years (or, remember reading about them at least)? Unions grew strong, wages increased all-around, the upper tax bracket was around 90%, and we saw the largest, broadest expansion of wealth in our history. We created the middle-class.

We can do that again if we secure the lead, or at least a major share, of the market for renewable energy products...now (not next month, next quarter, next year...now). Then there's the market for high-efficiency appliances and mass transit that we could dig into as well. Proudly manufactured in the U.S. of A. But, it will take leadership and courage. And, based on historical evidence, Congress can't manage those qualities so well. They need help. Encouragement. Threats (not to vote for 'em, that's all). So contact your Representatives and demand action. Demand they keep renewables in the 2009 budget, and insist that they keep nukes and "clean" (dirty) coal out.

To find contact info for your Congressional Representatives, visit: congress.org

Contact them...now! Let's get 'er done.

Want to read about how China and Europe are all ready eating our lunch? Read: "We Must Seize the Energy Opportunity or Slip Further Behind" more...

The Modern Republican Party

The Modern Republican Party stands for nothing but self-interest:

-- Keep my income taxes to an absolute minimum, don't mess with my capital gains, and repeal the estate tax while we deny that the middle class withers, the poor drown in debt, our manufacturing engine of prosperity sputters, and wealth concentrates more noxiously at the top than ever before.

-- Insist that everyone who doesn't look and think like me is no patriot while we deny that the country's Anglo Saxon tint will inexorably diminish and leave a pale-skinned but well-heeled minority heir to an embattled and despised oligarchy.

-- The Constitution not withstanding, we will force kids to say prayers in school, put the Ten Commandments in courthouse lobbies and Christmas trees on courthouse lawns while we deny that to impose Christianity on constituents who practice other equally valid faiths, or none at all might be divisive or mean-spirited.

-- Pretend that teenagers who have sex or women who choose abortions are abhorrent and abnormal, while we deny or repress the sexual behavior of our own family members.

-- Insist that it's an indisputable right to own and carry combat weapons while cops and children are gunned down in the street like ducks in a shooting gallery and we deny that unfettered access to weapons might be the problem.

-- Rail against the non-existent leftist bias of the press while we applaud lying, dissembling, libelous talk-show demagogues and plead elitism when these charlatans are mocked, discredited, and dismissed by legitimate journalists who try to earn a living telling the truth.

The Republican Party stands for nothing laudable. It may have once, but no longer. Not efficient, fiscally responsible government; not opportunity and prosperity for wage-earning families; not law and order.

The Republican Party offers no vision of shared future prosperity at all.

The Republican Party is the party of self-interest, and if we continue to put self-interest before national interest, we won’t need to declare allegiance to the Republican or Democratic parties -- we’ll be tormented members of tribes who throw rocks and spears at our abundant and ever-multiplying adversaries.

Want a more authoritative view? Try Paul Krugman, "Tea Parties Forever" more...

Congress should support the President's budget...

For the first time that I can remember we have a budget proposal that prioritizes the health and prosperity of the majority of our population. It provides for the basic, long-term necessities of a viable nation instead of catering to the selfish, shortsighted demands of manipulative industry groups.

It emphasizes medical care at a reasonable cost that doesn't hold individuals hostage to jobs or locations they would be better off leaving because they are afflicted with a pre-existing condition, a cause for denial of coverage elsewhere. Nor will the President's budget extort businesses with ever escalating costs. It puts patients ahead of profits and removes the incentives for unnecessary diagnostics and drugs. It will control costs through bargaining leverage over hospitals, diagnostic labs, and pharmaceutical companies; and with the education and preventive care that for-profit private insurers dismiss because while such measures offer long-term return on investment, they cut into short-term profits. And it will cut costs through electronic recordkeeping, something that more cost conscious businesses, like airlines, car-rental agencies, and hotels, did a long time ago, but the medical industry lagged because they seem to prefer the resistance to scrutiny that muddled paper records provide.

It emphasizes energy policy that will foster a burgeoning industry to create clean electricity generating capacity without destroying our remaining pristine landscapes. If we are smart about it, we could put millions of people to work building the machines that will harness abundant solar energy and implementing energy efficiency retrofits to our homes and commercial buildings. Such retrofits will eliminate the shameful and expensive waste that we have tolerated for so long and eliminate the necessity to build coal-fired power plants. Many efficiency estimates indicate we could reduce energy consumption in our homes and commercial buildings by more than 60% at lower cost than building new power plants to meet demand that will otherwise grow. And the budget provides a long overdue cap-and-trade pricing mechanism for costly and destructive greenhouse gas emissions that will impose on energy providers the true cost of their negligence if they decline to invest in clean alternatives.

And it emphasizes education. Without a good, old-fashioned education -- my eighty year old mother can whip me on a geography or grammar quiz any day -- without the ability to perform basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills, our population will slip into a dark malaise of incompetence and declining productivity. We will witness a Dark Age in our own time. How about a Renaissance instead? How about an American Age of Enlightenment? It's within our grasp, but not if we don't avidly read history to avoid repeating our mistakes, appreciate the importance of science and admire its practitioners, and find inspiration in the legacy of fine art that our planet's civilizations have sacrificed so much to bequeath us. We don't all need PhD's, but we all can share the power of knowledge and enlightenment if we take the trouble and expense to educate our children and show them the potential that's only a book or two (or Internet click) away.

The President's opposition will tell you that this budget is a tax and spend boondoggle. That it will generate intolerable, crushing debt. But they didn't talk about debt when the prior administration passed Medicare Part D for prescription drugs, a debt inflating welfare program for pharmaceutical companies and boondoggle if ever there was one. And the opposition didn't worry about crushing debt when they inflated the defense budget with useless weapons systems that did nothing to protect our soldiers overseas but made the politicians' campaign contributors very happy. And they didn't tell you when they passed a tax cut that benefited an affluent minority that our national debt would skyrocket to unprecedented levels (along with their campaign coffers and revolving door job offers).

Well, there is a solution for the debt: we ask the affluent to acknowledge the sacrifices of our less prosperous citizens who provided the secure, fertile environment and the generous opportunities from which they have profited almost exclusively for the last twenty-five years. We ask them to give with the same enthusiasm as they take. We ask them to pay more taxes. Oliver Wendell Holmes said that taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. And the times of broadest prosperity in this country have been when our income taxes were highest:

"By 1936 the lowest tax rate had reached 4 percent and the top rate was up to 79 percent. ... Even before the United States entered the Second World War, increasing defense spending and the need for monies to support the opponents of Axis aggression led to the passage in 1940 of two tax laws that increased individual and corporate taxes, which were followed by another tax hike in 1941. By the end of the war the nature of the income tax had been fundamentally altered. Reductions in exemption levels meant that taxpayers with taxable incomes of only $500 faced a bottom tax rate of 23 percent, while taxpayers with incomes over $1 million faced a top rate of 94 percent. ... the maximum tax rate in 1954 remained at 87 percent of taxable income. ... The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, which enjoyed strong bi-partisan support in the Congress, represented a fundamental shift in the course of federal income tax policy. Championed in principle for many years by then-Congressman Jack Kemp (R-NY) and then-Senator Bill Roth (R- DE), it featured a 25 percent reduction in individual tax brackets, phased in over 3 years, and indexed for inflation thereafter. This brought the top tax bracket down to 50 percent. ... the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which brought the top statutory tax rate down from 50 percent to 28 percent while the corporate tax rate was reduced from 50 percent to 35 percent." (History of the U.S. Tax System)

So, contrary to what the President's shrill opposition would have you believe, the country can survive higher taxes. And it's notable that following Reagan's tax cuts we slipped into a deep recession which, to cover yawning budget gaps, he and his successor retreated from the "trickle down theory" with tax increases -- back up to around 40%. It's also notable that at about the same time as taxes were cut by Reagan, wealth became increasingly concentrated in the top few percentiles of the population while real wages of the middle class were flat or declining.
President Obama is offering vision and leadership that can and will put us right, but only if we find the faith and the courage to accept the bitter medicine that's required to cure our ills. In the end, the affluent may be humbled a bit, but the vast majority will be proud of what this nation can accomplish if we reject false promises and stand up to empty rhetoric. We (the people) can do this, but we all must speak up. Your congressmen will listen if you tell them in no uncertain terms what you expect. Contact your representative now: Congress.org
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Give the Big Three A Break

Give the Big Three A Break

I happen to have the good fortune of being a homeowner in the Detroit suburbs and former employee of an automotive supplier. I quit that job four years ago disgusted by the hyper-conservative (by conservative I mean eager to preserve the status quo, not necessarily politically conservative), hyper-cautious, cowardly decision-making practices that inevitably prevail (I managed a small electronics engineering group). Automakers always want to stick with whatever makes money today, and never want to take a chance on what might be profitable tomorrow. And they are relentlessly (mindlessly?) focused on cutting production costs at the expense of investing in innovation. I had smart, hard-working engineers in my group who were eager to attack tough problems. But they hardly ever got the chance because my bosses just wanted to wring every dollar they could out of the products we already had and offer nothing new even when our customers (Ford, GM, Chrysler, Audi, VW, etc.) specifically asked for it. We perpetually tried to re-sell the customer a product that wasn't up to the customer's demands by repackaging and "repositioning" it -- that is telling the customer the product was something it wasn't. So we spent a lot of time tweaking superficial details instead of getting in front of the real problem that confronted us: an aging product line.

A lot of smart talent was wasted because it was underutilized even when we had the money to act. Now the money is gone, and most of the talent that could leave did. What's left are those that couldn't get out (not necessarily because they're incompetent, though some are, but perhaps their families are settled here and they didn't want to bail on the devil they knew in exchange for one elsewhere they didn't know; or maybe their homes are "underwater" and moving is no longer an option).

I remember visits to the assembly lines where our products were used, and sometimes failed. I would accompany engineers on troubleshooting missions. The people I encountered on the assembly lines worked hard -- physically hard -- often in a noisy, rank environment. Many were older than I, and looked a lot more tired. But they were always eager to help us geek engineers get our product working, even if it meant added work and inconvenience for them. And they didn't do it because someone told them to. They smiled and offered to help, and they offered useful suggestions for how to make the product better and in turn improve the quality of their product. They care about what rolls off the line, I have no doubt about that. They earn their pay, and they earn the profits that pay much larger salaries to others, too. Standing next to a cacophonous testing bay where cars slid every thirty seconds onto rollers and were accelerated to 70 m.p.h., surrounded by eye-watering smoke from burning rubber, I realized pretty soon where the money came from for my cushy salary. The line workers always knew it, yet they never seemed to make that an issue, they just wanted to keep working. (And this wasn't considered a tough place to work, try slamming heavy, unwieldy dashboard assemblies into place all day.)

So, while my group spun its wheels making cosmetic changes on an outdated product, and assembly line workers busted their humps three shifts a day, management followed the quick buck doing the same thing my engineering group did: repackage and reposition. They produced the gas guzzling SUV's that indulgent consumers awash in credit demanded. There never seemed to be a plan for what to do if gas prices suddenly spiked and consumers decided they preferred something less profligate. And we all knew gas prices would spike.

And then gas prices did spike and I thought, "Hallelujah!" Detroit's finally going to start selling their little cars. And there was a brief blast of enthusiasm for them. Until the economic crisis kicked in and sales dropped 30%, 40%, 50% compared to just a year ago (WSJ: Auto Sales).

Well, the assembly line workers didn't induce the economic crisis; neither did the engineers. Sure, the Big Three would have been in trouble if gas prices remained high, but they would have bumbled their way along as they always have. They would have contracted, as they have been for years, but they wouldn't have gone over a cliff. It was not the Big Three that suddenly did themselves in (although executive incompetence was slowly dragging them down) it was a bunch of criminally greedy bankers and securities traders that sent us all over a cliff. But the criminally greedy bankers are not the ones crashing on the rocks. And to add further insult to injury, unions -- the only thing that ever moved working stiff living standards in a positive direction -- are being demonized. In the past, union wages might have gotten out of hand for some workers who could rack up a lot of overtime, but those are exceptions, and management -- hungry for for quick profits -- often made incremental wage concessions to unions while at the same time outsourcing thousands of their jobs (see UAW Timeline). Pensions got out of hand because management and politicians (bankrolled by management) wouldn't support Walter P. Reuther's plan to consolidate and nationalize pensions so younger workers would subsidize older ones. I agree union negotiators sometimes overreached, but it was while they watched executives overreach several orders of magnitude more severely. Still, unions are not, and never were the problem with American industry. It's greedy incompetent, lazy, parasitic executives that sold us out for a quick buck and brought American hope for future prosperity to its knees. more...

A Big, Fat Blast of Hot Air
In his article in the The Weekly Standard,
"A Big, Fat Failure: Obama's budget makes a bad situation worse." (04/06/2009, Volume 014, Issue 28), Several of Matthew Continetti's assertions ring especially hollow and unsupported:

The president's vast new commitments in the areas of health care, energy, and education have already spooked small-government Republicans and the foreign investors who help finance America's public debt.

Who are the "small-government Republicans?" I don't think a “small-government Republican” has been detected at-large in the last forty years. Government and the debt associated with irresponsible spending grew under the last four Republican administrations. What does “spooked” mean? Do well-heeled Republicans fear their tax burden might actually increase to a level sufficient to cover the cost of the defense spending, farm-subsidies, Medicare prescription drugs (welfare for the pharmaceutical industry), nuclear-power subsidies, and Wall Street write-offs that “small-government Republicans” consistently insist upon?

And who are the foreign investors who are spooked enough to actually flee American treasury bonds? And would they not be equally spooked if we did nothing to stimulate the economy, educate our children, provide medical care to more than a privileged minority, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, or take steps to curb the environmental impact of global warming?

Nor will Obama's resistance to free trade encourage economic recovery.

How so? I have yet to see a truly compelling argument for the un-regulated free trade that is so heartily endorsed by the business community. Free trade has done nothing for our economy but boost profits for corporations who, unable to competently manage their businesses on a level U.S. playing field, seek to exploit underpaid oversees workers in factories that offer little or no environmental protection; and little or no worker safety, healthcare and pension provisions. (Provisions hard fought by our unions who Republicans also find burdensome, and reliably seek to eviscerate.) Is that the “free trade” that is so beneficial to the average American? Still, to my disappointment, Mr. Obama’s administration is populated with supporters of “free trade” as we now know it, and Mr. Obama has shown little or no inclination to significantly impede “free trade” profiteers.

Absent the economic growth his budget will squelch, the only ways out of the fiscal hole Obama is digging are massive tax increases, defaults and devaluation, and inflation.

How will this budget impede economic growth? How does one define a “massive tax increase?” Reversion back to tax rates that prevailed during times of broad prosperity (the ‘90s? -- top tax rate 39.6%; the ‘60s -- top personal income tax rate: 91% (http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes/ustax.shtml)) that fostered the well-being of a middle class? What defaults? Devaluation of what? And what evidence is there to suggest that inflation will become excessive, and what is excessive?

Empty, fear-mongering rhetoric gets us nowhere, which is where the last Republican administration so handily got us. more...

Go Mass Transit

Let's upgrade our 20th century transportation system, clean up our air, shake off the shackles of foreign oil imports and create long-lasting, well-paid jobs building and maintaining an efficient, cheaper transportation network for people and freight.

"Transportation for America" is leading the charge to get this done:

Every six years, Congress sets the country's transportation and infrastructure priorities — allocating hundreds of billions of dollars for projects that shape our communities for generations. We need to raise our voices and make sure they use this moment to chart a new direction for our nation's transportation system.

Help us urge President Obama and Congress to create the world-leading, sustainable transportation system we so desperately need.

Join us in calling on Congress to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to create a 21st Century infrastructure and move our country in a bold new direction.

Learn more about our newly-released Campaign Platform for the Transportation Bill.

Related to the 2009 Transportaion Bill is the proposal to finance our overused roads and highways with a "Vehicle Miles Travelled" (VMT) tax which would replace the insufficient gasoline (18.4 cents/gallon) tax that now finances the Highway Trust Fund. Last year, the fund came up short, and Congress funneled in $8 billion to resuscitate it. As cars become more fuel efficient, revenues from this tax will continue to fall short. A better alternative, the VMT would tax drivers based on the number of miles driven (2 cents per mile). This tax would make drivers intimately conscious of the cost of driving, and disassociate highway funding from gasoline sales, and instead tie funding directly to road usage. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently suggested that such a tax might be necessary (along with a temporary gas tax increase) and he was shot down by the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

One issue with VMT proposals, though: it doesn't reward drivers of more fuel-efficient vehicles (at least not that I'm aware of). I would slam non-commercial SUV drivers with a vehicle registration tax based on weight. Those drivers should at least pay a little more to compensate for the extra damage they do to roads, and the additional hazard they impose on other drivers when they crash.

If you think we need a better plan for transportation in the U.S., sign the "Transportation for America" petition to let Congress know you're paying attention. more...

Renewables: Intermittency & Reliability

Whenever somebody favors nuclear power, the big advantage they mention is the reliability of nuclear compared to renewables such as wind and photovoltaics. "Sun’s not always shining," they’ll say. Or, "sometimes the wind just doesn’t blow. That’s when you need nuclear, for that constant base-load."

Well, aside from the fact that nuclear costs at least twice as much per delivered KWH as most renewable and cogeneration options, the problem of intermittency that nuclear proponents always ascribe to renewables is a myth.

It’s true that the sun doesn’t always shine (especially at night), and the wind doesn’t always blow, but the issue of intermittency is being overcome in the U.S. and Europe on a large, commercial scale every day (see below). When the sun’s not shining, the wind is often blowing. Peak loads are usually during the day, so when the sun is shining, and photovoltaics deliver, they match demand nicely. To be sure, renewables incur “firming and integration costs,” but so does any source (in case you're not sure, firming refers to filling in for a lost source of energy, like a becalmed windmill, and is also referred to as regulating reserve capacity). The point to remember, is that real world, large-scale applications have proven that renewables are not only cleaner, but cheaper than nuclear.

To any doubters, I suggest they read “The Nuclear Illusion” by Amory Lovins and Imran Sheikh of the Rocky Mountain Institute. It’s a convincing, credible, amply-footnoted argument against nuclear power from an economic, least-cost perspective. Yes, economic. Not a bleeding heart, tree-hugging, liberal perspective. Economic.

Another, much briefer, but helpful article, "Estimating the impacts of wind power on power systems—summary of IEA Wind collaboration," points out that with wind meeting 20% of electricity demand, firming and integration costs are about 10% of the wholesale value of wind-generated electricity, or in dollar terms, in a 2004 Minnesota study, "a total integration cost of $4.60/MWh was found, where $0.23/MWh was due to increased regulation." That's $0.0046/KWh added to the average delivered cost of wind generated electricity of under $0.07/KWh -- well under the "bus-bar" cost to consumers of nuclear power, which averages around $0.14/KWh with subsidies excluded.

OK, you say, but that's with wind providing only 20% of demand. What about providing the other 80%? Well, not long ago naysayers claimed we would never even hit 20% and in some areas we have. Some studies show that we could reduce our consumption by 60%. (Sounds mad, I know, but our power consumption is shamefully inefficient.) We can (and will) install more photovoltaics, geothermal, and biomass generators. On-site micropower and cogeneration will play larger roles -- economics will demand it. Lot's of new solutions will arise if we let a truly free market guide us, keep misguided subsidies out of the equation, and factor in all of the costs -- including environmental and security -- when we consider our energy options.

I’ll quote a bit here from "Nuclear Illusions" on reliability and intermittency of renewables (for readability, I took out the footnotes, but you can find them in the original linked source above.) So, without further ado:

How do the competitors’ (Renewables & Cogeneration) reliability compare with nuclear power’s?

The nuclear industry’s central stated reason for omitting renewables, such as windpower (which accounts for nearly half the recent growth in decentralized renewables’ global capacity), from its list of admissible competitors with nuclear power is that windpower isn’t “24/7” or “reliable.”

Unlike some important sources of distributed renewable power—such as small hydro, geothermal, biofueled, and even much solar-thermal-electric generation—that can be dispatched whenever desired, windpower (and smaller but even faster-growing photovoltaics) do produce varying output depending on the weather. Yet this variability, often assumed to pose a fatal obstacle, becomes far less important in a renewable energy supply system using diverse technologies, because weather that’s bad for one source is good for another: stormy weather is generally good for windpower and hydro but bad for solar, while fine weather does the opposite. Diversifying locations helps too, because weather varies over areas that are often smaller than power grids. Technical reliability of single generating units is not the issue: modern wind turbines are ~98–99% available, far better than any thermal plant. The issue is rather the aggregate effect of some renewables’ variability. As we’ll now see, that effect is small. The United Kingdom has 2.6% the land area, 7.7% the 2005 grid capacity, and 9.9% the 2005 electricity usage of the United States. A 34-year, >15-million-site-hour analysis of UK wind data found excellent properties for reliable windpower and even better ones for its contributions to diversified renewable power supply. A review of more than 180 European analyses through 2005 confirmed that windpower’s variability even at penetrations of at least 20% for Europe, ~14% for Germany, or 30% for West Denmark are manageable at modest cost if renewables are properly dispersed, diversified, forecasted, and integrated with the existing grid and with demand response. Not one of more than 200 international studies has found significant costs or technical barriers to reliably integrating large variable renewable supplies into the grid.

U.S. utilities increasingly agree: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL-58450) notes that 2014 resource plans include 20% wind for SDG&E and 15% for Nevada Power—neither near a limiting value. Nine recent U.S. studies found that integrating windpower providing up to 31% of regional peak demand on Western utilities’ grids would incur firming and integration costs of 0.04–0.5¢/kWh, or ~1–15% of U.S. windpower’s 3.7¢/kWh 1999–2006 average price — far too little to disturb windpower’s two- to threefold cost advantage over new nuclear. Some renewables’ variability does require attention and proper engineering, but it’s neither a serious issue nor unique to renewables: the grid is already designed for the sudden and unexpected loss of big blocks of capacity from transmission or central-plant outages. Whenever renewable penetration levels of supposed concern have been approached in practice, they’ve faded over the hazy theoretical horizon. For example, as the West Danish system operator gained experience with windpower, he became confidently able to manage nearly five times more windpower than he had thought possible 7–8 years earlier. This horizon also continues to recede as distributed intelligence gradually permeates the grid and as more diversified combinations of resources are simulated. Recent University of Kassel field experiments have confirmed that just integrated wind, photovoltaics, and biogas generation could reliably provide all German electricity.

Power grids inherently cope with highly variable supply and demand. Demand varies from moment to moment as customers turn loads on and off; sudden variations, e.g. during the ads in popular televised UK sporting events, can ramp demand so rapidly (due largely to large water pumps when millions of toilets flush simultaneously, but euphemistically blamed on electric kettles) that utilities are hard-pressed to maintain stable supplies. Demand often varies widely from day to night and from summer to winter. Utility planners understand all this and design for it. Yet there is no technical difference between variations in demand and in supply; they are entirely fungible, and indeed onsite generation can be usefully considered a negative load.

Calm winds or cloudy skies last up to a few days in decent sites, but can be offset by complementary renewables at the same sites or by any renewables at more distant sites. (The distance needed for very uncorrelated output depends on regional geography and weather patterns, but is typically many hundreds of km.) Yet whether a given solar roof, wind turbine, or wind farm is working at a given moment is about as irrelevant to the system operator as whether a particular big office building’s chillers are on or off.

Moreover, all sources of electricity are unreliable—to differing degrees, for differing reasons, with differing frequencies, durations, failure sizes, and predictabilities. Major grid failures occur during regional blackouts, ice storms, and other disruptions. Individual power plants also break down: the average U.S. fossil-fuel-fired plant is unexpectedly out of service ~8% of the time. Power systems are designed to cope with all this too. Yet size does matter. Even if all sizes of generators were equally reliable, a single one-million-kilowatt unit would not be as reliable as the sum of a thousand 1-MW units or a million 1-kW units. Rather, a portfolio of many smaller units is inherently more reliable than one large unit—both because it’s unlikely that many units will fail simultaneously, and because 98–99% of U.S. power failures originate in the grid, which distributed generation largely or wholly bypasses. Research is increasingly showing that if we properly diversify renewable energy supplies in type and location, forecast the weather (as hydropower and windpower operators now do), and integrate renewables with existing demand- and supply-side resources on the grid, then renewables’ electrical supplies will be more reliable than current arrangements. That is, such a renewable- based power system, even if solar and wind form a large fraction of supply, will generally need less storage and backup capacity than we’ve already installed and paid for to cope with the intermittency of large thermal stations—which fail unpredictably, for long periods, in billionwatt chunks.

Though micropower’s unreliability is an unfounded myth, nuclear power’s unreliability is all too real. Nuclear plants are capital-intensive and run best at constant power levels, so operators go to great pains to avoid technical failures. These nonetheless occur occasionally, due to physical causes that tend to increase with age due to corrosion, fatigue, and other wear and tear. Some nuclear power failures are major and persistent: of the 132 U.S. nuclear units that were built and licensed to operate (52% of the original 253 orders), 21% were permanently shut down because of intractable reliability or cost issues (or in one case a meltdown), while a further 27% have suffered one or more forced outages of at least a year. When the remaining units work well, their output is indeed commendably steady and dependable, lately averaging ~90% capacity factor in the United States. However, even these relatively successful nuclear plants also present four unique reliability issues:

• Routine refueling, usually coordinated with scheduled major maintenance, shuts down the typical U.S. nuclear plant for 37 days every 17 months.


• In both Europe and the United States, prolonged heat waves have shut down or derated multiple nuclear plants when their sources of cooling water got too hot.


• A major accident or terrorist attack at any nuclear plant could cause most or all others in the same country or even in the world to be shut down, much as all 17 of Tokyo Electric Company’s nuclear units were shut down for checks in 2002–04 for many months, and some units for several years after falsified safety data came to light. Natural disaster can also intervene: a 7-unit Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) nuclear complex, the largest in the world—outproduced only by the Itaipu and Three Gorges Dams, and supplying 6–7% of Japan’s power—was indefinitely shut down by 2006 damage from an earthquake stronger than its supposedly impossible design basis, and remains down in spring 2008. Its output is being replaced by recommissioned and hastily finished oil-, gas-, and coal-fired plants; the operator’s extra cost in FY2007 alone was ~$5.6 billion.


• Unlike scheduled outages, many nuclear units can also fail simultaneously and without warning in regional blackouts, which necessarily and instantly shut down nuclear plants for safety. But nuclear physics then makes restart slow and delicate: certain neutronabsorbing fission products must decay before there are enough surplus neutrons for stable operation. Thus at the start of the 14 August 2003 northeast North American blackout, nine U.S. nuclear units totaling 7,851 MW were running perfectly at 100% output, but after emergency shutdown, they took two weeks to restart fully. They achieved 0% output on the first day after the midafternoon blackout, 0.3% the second day, 5.7% the third, 38.4% the fourth, 55.2% the fifth, and 66.8% the sixth. The average capacity loss was 97.5% for three days, 62.5% for five days, 59.4% for 7 days, and 53.2% for 12 days — hardly a reliable resource no matter how exemplary its normal operation. Canada’s restart was even rougher, with Toronto teetering for days on the brink of complete grid failure despite desperate appeals to turn everything off. This nuclear-physics characteristic of nuclear plants makes them “anti-peakers”—guaranteed unavailable when they’re most needed. The grid is designed to cope, and does cope, with such massive and prolonged centralstation outages, albeit with difficulty and at considerable cost for reserve margin, spinning reserve (spare capacity—generally coal-fired—kept running and synchronized for instant use), and replacement energy. The investments needed to manage central-thermal-plant intermittence (nuclear or fossil-fueled) have already been made and paid for. It is therefore hard to understand why the occasional and predictable becalming of wind farms or clouding of solar cells over a much smaller time and space, offset by higher output from statistically complementary renewable resources of other kinds or in other locations, is a problem. All generators—not just variable renewables—need reserves, backups, or storage to achieve a given level of reliability. It’s wrong to count these as a cost for variable renewables but not for intermittent thermal plants. Every source’s economics should duly reflect the amount of support they require for the desired reliability of retail service. The economic comparisons offered above for windpower (Fig. 1) make generous provision for these storage and backup costs (Fig. 1). In contrast, some other comparisons (even, astonishingly, one by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering) assume that any variable renewable resource needs 100% backup. That’s clearly wrong. Reliability is a statistical attribute of a power system, not an absolute attribute of a single unit, so on a statistical basis, wind and solar power do merit substantial “capacity credits” whose size depends on regional conditions. Grid operators care about the overall delivered-service reliability of a portfolio of technologically and geographically diversified units, integrated into a grid with diverse power resources and demandresponse options, all appropriately forecasted (and optionally with storage, like the pumpedhydro- storage units sometimes associated with nuclear units but seldom attributed to them as a cost, or the overnight heat storage built into some modern solar-thermal-electric plants). Thus a forecasted temporary shortage of, say, windpower is of concern to the grid operator only if it occurs at a time of maximum load and if no other resource is available. Already today, in wind-rich regions of North Germany, Spain, and Denmark, variable renewable power production exceeds regional demand, and annually provides 20–39% of all electricity, with no integration problems nor significant integration costs. As the European Wind Energy Association’s integration report stated in 2005, “[L]arger-scale integration of wind [power] does face barriers; not because of its variability but because of a series of market barriers in electricity markets that are neither free [n]or fair, coupled with a classic case of new technologies threatening old paradigm thinking and practice.”

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Clean Up Your Act and Buy Green-e Certified Electricity
If you care at all about the environment, or about the future, for as little as $2.50 a month you can put your money where your mouth is. Most electric utilities offer customers the option of purchasing all or part of their electricity from renewable sources -- most commonly wind, small hydro (<5 MW), geothermal, and biomass -- for a modest cost premium added to your bill.

The utility must then use the extra money you pay them to purchase energy from certified renewable sources. This, in turn, drives up demand for renewables, which yields growth in the green energy industry and new, well-paid, long-term jobs. By the way, in the long run, renewables are cheaper to build and operate than either coal or nuclear, and that comparison does not even include the huge environmental and security costs of coal and nuclear that taxpayers get stuck with. The premium you pay is used to cover the cost of energy purchased from limited renewable sources other than the utility's "conventional," government-subsidized power stations (usually coal or nuclear, sometimes natural gas). Since renewable energy sources are limited, and the "renewable energy credits" (REC's) that your utility purchases are traded on the open market, they cost more. Hence the extra cost to you. But it's worth it because your money is used to directly displace energy from polluting, non-renewable sources.

How do you know your trusted utility will do the right thing with the extra money you give them? That's where Green-e comes in. According to their website:

Green-e is the nation's leading independent consumer protection program for the sale of renewable energy and greenhouse gas reductions in the retail market. Green-e offers certification and verification of renewable energy and greenhouse gas mitigation products. It is a program of the Center for Resource Solutions.

So, Green-e insures that the utility does the right thing and doesn't use your money to buy champagne and Lear jets for the execs.

Here's how a utility's plan typically works:

100 Percent Match

This option enables you to match 100 percent of your monthly electric consumption for 2 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). The monthly cost is based on the amount of kilowatt-hours used each month, and is in addition to your normal monthly electric charges.

Kilowatt-Hour Block Enrollment

This option enables you to choose a participation level that is right for you and your budget.

As a residential customer, you can purchase a "block' of 100 kilowatt-hours of renewable energy for $2.50 per month. You can purchase up to 10 individual blocks. This monthly cost is in addition to your normal monthly electric charges.

Contact your utility to find out if you can purchase green juice, and get on the right side of the energy issue right now (they usually slip promo ads in with their bills, and you can sign up for Green-e programs on their websites).

I went for the 100% Match option, and it costs me about $5 a month. But, if you can't afford the extra 2 cents/KWH, maybe you can buy a single block each month for $2.50. Every little bit helps. And if you use a lot of electricity, you might be able to conserve a bit and make up for the extra 2 cents/KWH:

• Turn the AC up a couple of degrees in the summer. Turn it off at night and open the windows. You'll sleep better, feel better, and be healthier breathing fresh air instead of that dust and mold infused air that spills out of most AC ducts.


• Turn your water heater down a couple of degrees. Whether it's gas or electric, you'll save a few cents each day just by keeping the water a little cooler.


• Replace your porch light bulb with a compact fluorescent. You don't have to get up on a ladder to change them so often, and they cut your electricity consumption by 75%. While you're at it, replace all the bulbs in your house (or the high-use ones if you are short of cash at the moment) with compact fluorescent -- they pay for themselves in the long run.


• Sounds obvious, but most people forget: turn off the lights when you leave a room. You can save a lot of juice this way and it requires almost no effort. Same goes for the TV, stereo, and computer -- except these use way more than a light bulb.


• Unplug wall adapters when they are not being used. If they are required for accessories on a desktop computer, plug them into a power strip, and turn the whole strip off when you shut the computer down (which is whenever you're not sitting in front of it, right?). "Wall warts" use about 10% of the electricity consumed in this country, probably a larger percentage on a household (vs. commercial) basis, which is where most of them are. Shutting them down will save plenty.

Go for it, you can do it. Your conscience will be clearer, and the air will be cleaner -- you and the planet will live a healthier and happier life. more...

Auto Industry Bailouts

A letter that I sent to the New York Times and my representatives in Congress:

Re: New York Times
”Back on Capitol Hill, Auto Executives Still Find Skeptics “
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and BILL VLASIC
Published: December 4, 2008

It is unfortunate that Congress and, according to polls, the rest of the nation are willing to let the auto industry wither and die. Of course, the execs have mismanaged the business. That’s what American business has done for the last forty years in the pursuit of unrealistic short-term profits. The tragedy is that the execs will, as always, walk away with piles of cash to sustain them while they search for new prey to bleed dry. It’s the assembly line crews I worry about. I live in Detroit (well, one mile north) and I worked in the automotive industry (engineering & management) long enough to understand the hyper-conservative, me-first attitude of management that prevents the great ideas of engineering peons from becoming great products. But if you visit an assembly plant, you will meet men and women who work hard every day -- I mean with their arms, legs, and backs -- and know the manufacturing process as well as anyone and are eager to help wayward engineers find answers.

When I visited plants, the thought I always came away with is that my cushy salary was carried on the backs of these folks. Assembly line workers procured union benefits through long and violent battles with management. Perhaps union leaders overreached, but to let the auto industry wither and further undercut unions would roll American labor relations back to the brutal first days of the industrial revolution.

There are lots of ways the engineers and assembly line workers could be productive, Congress just needs to be imaginative. Detroit is a vast repository of industrial know-how, a national asset we can not afford to lose. Save the auto industry today, and if they still can’t sell cars tomorrow, put these smart people to work building the windmills, photovoltaics, and public transportation of the future. We put a man on the moon; we can put men and women to work building a sustainable and proud future for this country.
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