Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Blogs: Right Wing Cap and Trade Nonsense

I received a note from a reader about a post picked up by right wing bloggers claiming that proposed Cap and Trade legislation would require the owner of a home to get a federal license before they could sell their home.

...Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the “Cap & Trade” bill passed by the House of Representatives, if also passed by the Senate, will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced..

The author of this fraudulent right wing screed, knowing the gullibility of these readers goes so far as to say:

...we encourage you to read the provisons of the Cap and Trade Bill that has passed the House of representatives and being considered by the Senate...

99.99% of the perpetually susceptible will not bother to read the bill.

Think about it. If there was a provision as described in any piece of legislation,we would have been flooded with advertisements, news release and the like from everyone starting with the real estate industry, the banks and the title insurance companies.

In order to to deprive all of these right wing wing nuts from driving up their readership, I am not providing a link but am providing a copy for the curious:

We encourage you to read the provisions of the Cap and Trade Bill that has passed the House of Representatives and being considered by the Senate. We are ready to join the next march on Washington!

This Congress and whoever on their staffs that write this junk are truly out to destroy the middle class of the USA….

A License Required for your house

Thinking about selling your house – A look at H.R. 2454 (Cap and trade bill) This is unbelievable!

Only the beginning from this administration! Home owners take note & tell your friends and relatives who are home owners!

Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the “Cap & Trade” bill passed by the House of Representatives, if also passed by the Senate, will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced.

The Congressional Budget Office (supposedly non-partisan) estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year.
No one is excluded.

However, once the lower classes feel the pinch in their wallets, you can be sure these voters get a tax refund (even if they pay no taxes at all) to offset this new cost. Thus, you Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class America will have to pay even more since additional tax dollars will be needed to bail out everyone else.

But wait. This awful bill (that no one in Congress has actually read) has many more surprises in it. Probably the worst one is this:

• A year from now you won’t be able to sell your house. Yes, you read that right.

The caveat is (there always is a caveat) that if you have enough money to make required major upgrades to your home, then you can sell it. But, if not, then forget it. Even pre-fabricated homes (”mobile homes”) are included.

• In effect, this bill prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator.
• To get this permission, you will have to have the energy efficiency of your home measured.
• Then the government will tell you what your new energy efficiency requirement is and you will be forced to make modifications to your home under the retrofit provisions of this Act to comply with the new energy and water efficiency requirements.
• Then you will have to get your home measured again and get a license (called a “label” in the Act) that must be posted on your property to show what your efficiency rating is; sort of like the Energy Star efficiency rating label on your refrigerator or air conditioner.
• If you don’t get a high enough rating, you can’t sell. And, the EPA administrator is authorized to raise the standards every year, even above the automatic energy efficiency increases built into the Act.

The EPA administrator, appointed by the President, will run the Cap & Trade program (AKA the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009″) and is authorized to make any future changes to the regulations and standards he alone determines to be in the government’s best interest. Requirements are set low initially so the bill will pass Congress; then the Administrator can set much tougher new standards every year.

• The Act itself contains annual required increases in energy efficiency for private and commercial residences and buildings.
• However, the EPA administrator can set higher standards at any time.

Sect. 202:

Building Retrofit Program mandates a national retrofit program to increase the energy efficiency of all existing homes across America .

Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Act, you won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act.

You had better sell soon, because the standards will be raised each year and will be really hard (i.e., ex$pen$ive) to meet in a few years. Oh, goody! The Act allows the government to give you a grant of several thousand dollars to comply with the retrofit program requirements if you meet certain energy efficiency levels. But, wait, the State can set additional requirements on who qualifies to receive the grants.

You should expect requirements such as “can’t have an income of more than $50K per year”, “home selling price can’t be more than $125K”, or anything else to target the upper middle class (and that’s YOU) and prevent them from qualifying for the grants.
Most of us won’t get a dime and will have to pay the entire cost of the retrofit out of our own pockets. More transfer of wealth, more “change you can believe in.”

Sect. 204:
Building Energy Performance Labeling Program establishes a labeling program that for each individual residence will identify the achieved energy efficiency performance for “at least 90 percent of the residential market within 5 years after the date of the enactment of this Act.”

This means that within 5 years 90% of all residential homes in the U.S. must be measured and labeled. The EPA administrator will get $50M each year to enforce the labeling program. The Secretary of the Department of Energy will get an additional $20M each year to help enforce the labeling program. Some of this money will, of course, be spent on coming up with tougher standards each year.

Oh, the label will be like a license for your car. You will be required to post the label in a conspicuous location in your home and will not be allowed to sell your home without having this label.

And, just like your car license, you will probably be required to get a new label every so often – maybe every year.

But, the government estimates the cost of measuring the energy efficiency of your home should only cost about $200 each time.

Remember what they said about the auto smog inspections when they first started: that in California it would only cost $15. That was when the program started. Now the cost is about $50 for the inspection and certificate; a 333% increase. Expect the same from the home labeling program.

Sect. 304:
Greater Energy Efficiency in Building Codes establishes new energy efficiency guidelines for the National Building Code and mandates at 304(d), Application of National Code to State and Local Jurisdictions, that 1 year after enactment of this Act, all state and local jurisdictions must adopt the National Building Code energy efficiency provisions or must obtain a certification from the federal government that their state and/or local codes have been brought into full compliance with the National Building Code energy efficiency standards.

Here is the response of one person who knows about this:

1. As passed, the bill does not create a federal energy audit requirement for real-estate property. It exempts existing homes and buildings from any federal guidelines for new-construction energy labeling. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be prohibited from regulating carbon emissions from residential and commercial buildings under the Clean Air Act.

2. The bill would create a national building code with a goal of improving energy efficiency for *new* construction. States would have a year to bring their codes in compliance with the federal code….

Paul Ryan: When Will You Look At the Facts About the Deficit?

In his crusade to reach the White House, Paul Ryan published another piece of phony history and econoomics last week. The Wisconsin Republican authored Why No One Expects a Strong Recovery:

He and his ultra-conservative cohort, Representative Jeb Hensarling (R - Texas) explain that we have to get back to Reagan's economics and that the Democrats are a disaster for the economy:

Why all the pessimism? The source appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern...

...Anyone who believes the Democratic Party's recently expressed concern over the deficit should look at the relentless growth of spending on its watch. Total nondefense spending set an all-time record this year—20.2% of GDP—double federal spending as a percentage of GDP during the height of the New Deal in 1934

The problem, Mr. Ryan, is the facts.

As any fifth grader can tell you, the greatest federal budget deficit as a percentage of the GNP since World War II was the Reagan deficit. It was erased by Bill Clinton and then eclipsed by George W. Bush. It usually takes 2-3 years for a President's economic policies to take hold.

Republicans start these problems and Democrats get us out of them. Unfortunately, sometimes the Democrats need more than a year or two to fix a problem the Republicans created in eight years.

Notice that dip before 1980? That was Jimmy Carter's third year. The peak before was the height of Nixon's second term.  

Notice the surplus before and through the year 2000? Yup. That was Bill Clinton.

Veterans Day

As I spent the day in Madison, I saw numerous veterans. Some served in wars, some did not.

I wondered when will those who send them to war make sure that the veterans' medical needs -physical and emotional - are respected when they return.

More Rep. Paul Ryan Skullduggery

In his neverending quest to place himself on the national scene as a voice of confused conservatives, Paul Ryan (Republican-WI) penned another piece of silliness, this time in the Washington Times, Strengthening the budget: Establishing limits with an enforceable law.

With the basement taking on water and the foundation crumbling, Ryan like the misguided amateur that he is, decides to paint the house, figuring that a bad cosmetic solution is the answer. To make matters worse, if he ever does figure out the source of the problem, his ideological tools will prevent him from performing the proper repairs.

Wasting 600 words, Ryan and his partner in crime, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, miss the most elementary foundations of a budget. There is no mention of the need:

• to produce a separate operating and capital budget
• to make sure that the operating budget is funded from accurately projected revenues and not one time revenue sources
• to limit debt service (borrowing) to a reasonable portion of the operating budget
• to segregate revenues from enterprise funds and not use them to 'balance the budget'
• to responsibly show inter-agency charges
• to establish an undesignated fund with reserves to get us through years when recessions lower income tax payments.

Representative Ryan: 900 Words of Silence

Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan (WI-Janesville) on the pages of TheJournalTimes.com tells us about Inflation's Looming Shadow.

In this profoundly vapid, scholarly appearing article, Ryan uses charts and references to ominous sources to warn about looming inflation:

 One of my key concerns is on the inflation front...If inflation gets out of hand, the Fed will be forced to hike interest rates and we could end up with the worst possible combination: rising prices, high interest rates, high unemployment and weak growth, or stagflation.

So what else is new? Every economist and first year business major warned us of the specter of inflation when the first solutions to the Bush-Ryan depression loomed 18 months ago. 

Curiously Ryan's article is more noticeable for what he does not say:

• War contributes to inflation. As with Vietnam, when you spend hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq for a military conflict, when those dollars are not used to produce values, housing, roads, educated children, hospital, inflation grows. Given the Bush-Ryan War in Iraq, we might as well tax the public and burn the money.
• Ryan was a principal leader in the effort to deregulate the financial services industry, an action that led to this economic crisis and the outrageous bonuses paid to Wall Street for no productive work, another source of inflation.
• Ryan was a principal leader in spending hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out companies run into the ground by his political contributors. He tells us that this bailout fuels inflation. He is silent as to his own role.
• Jobs were lost all right. They were lost to unregulated, rampant subsidies for American businesses to cease production and import products manufactured overseas by slave labor and under devastating environmental conditions at the expense of Ryan's union constituents. All orchestrated and paid for by Ryan's buddies.
• Ryan said nothing in 2008 when his buddies, the speculators, manipulated the price of oil, sending it from $65 a barrel to over $150 in three short months. Now that is inflationary.

Phooey.

Ryan is only interested in setting up a straw man so that when the inflation creeps into the economy he can say "I told you so," rationalize more cuts to government services, and deflect criticism of his own role in ruining the nation's economy.
 

Working the Federal Spending for Wisconsin's Benefit

Marc Eisen made an invaluable contribution to the current discussion about Wisconsin's economic climate with his Isthmus article,  State of Chumps:

...I think the late Sen. Bill Proxmire — not genetics — is mostly to blame. But however you apportion responsibility, the legacy is the same: Wisconsin does wretchedly as a recipient of federal spending...

Insiders offer a matter-of-fact explanation for Wisconsin's dearth of federal spending. The state doesn't have any big military bases, so we don't get all those military salaries and big defense contracts. And those big federal regional offices wind up in Chicago and not in Milwaukee. So, of course, we don't get a lot of bucks from Uncle Sam. End of story...

Eisen is right. This story was written forty years ago; it was written thirty years ago. The insiders however, do not have to be right.

The lack of military bases does hurt our opportunities - but Bill Proxmire is dead and there are alternative sources of revenues.

For one thing we need to play to our strengths and do so aggressively. In areas of research with the entire University of Wisconsin system especially related to agriculture and genetics there are opportunities. Coordination and political as well as academic and business resources must be utilized.

In addition, the urban communities need to refocus. Despite his strong advocacy for cities, former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist rejected federal aid and even mocked cities that pursued it. That lead to his leaving the U.S. Conference of Mayors.  Fortunately, present Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett brought his city back into that organization.

Other key Wisconsin cities like Madison and Green Bay are no longer members. That is unfortunate. During both of of my tenures as mayor (1973-79, 1989-1997), Madison played an active and vigorous role.

It benefited the city greatly, and some will recall the praise we often received for the significant federal dollars that came to Madison.

First, the US Conference of Mayors gets involved in the drafting of legislation - legislation with critical formulas that determine funding. Cities like Madison were critical to getting legislative support and adoption of the block grant, transit and other programs. The larger cities knew they needed Congressional support from areas like Madison, Wisconsin. Since we were equitably treated in the funding formulas, we worked vigorously for adoption.

Secondly, our contacts with the Conference were invaluable when we were looking for discretionary funding. The experience of the staff along with our own resources led to numerous successes.

I know Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewiz has reservations about some of the corporate funding sources for the organization, but I would suggest he reconsider and consult with Mayor Barrett.

Meantime, Eisen is correct about past failures, but futility in procuring federal dollars is not inevitable.

 

With Tea Baggers in Control, Can Moderate Wisconsin Republicans Survive?

The election of President Barack Obama last fall and the accompanying reaction from the extreme right wing worsens the condition of moderate Republicans. Here in Wisconsin, especially around metropolitan Milwaukee, where right-wing talk radio with Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling sways listeners, moderate Republicans continue to come under siege.

Now we see that on a national level the problem is worsening.

Tea partiers turn on GOP leadership

Whether it’s the loose confederation of Washington-oriented groups that have played an organizational role or the state-level activists who are channeling grass-roots anger into action back home, tea party forces are confronting the Republican establishment by backing insurgent conservatives and generating their own candidates — even if it means taking on GOP incumbents.

As we noted last August, Democrats, Libertarians, and No Republicans, Oh My

 ...(they) are not Populists in any sense of the word, they are libertarians...

...The Tea Baggers and the town hall protesters are really about reshaping the fundamental premise of our government. That is a challenge for the Republican Party. They will not quit until they either control the GOP or bolt to the Libertarian Party lead by Sarah Palin.

The real challenges for progressives and moderate republicans is finding their common ground. It will require positional shifts for both, which they need to accomplish anyway.

The left must realize there is a role for capital and that profits are not evil.

For moderate Republicans, it means accepting reasonable regulation in areas like financial services, consumer protection, and safety. It means putting distance between them and the far right.

The left and the moderate Republicans must recognize (this list is far from comprehensive):

• the existence of global warming and that we must do something about it.
• the need to integrate every American into the workforce.
• the value in education and training and the value of investment in infrastructure.
• the critical importance of the quality of the environment.
• the role of the government in protecting heath and safety.
• the need for limits to international trade until all markets are subject to the same labor and environmental standards.
• the need to welcome development that is compact and that makes transit systems more efficient.

Bailout Showing Signs of Success

The banking bailout last fall was designed to prevent another great depression. The idea of saving financial institutions, who through greed and right - wing deregulation of the banking industry brought the nation and the world to the verge of the greatest economic meltdown in history, was not a pleasant one for those of us who supported the bailout.   Solving the Financial Crisis. A Modest Proposal September 23, 2008

Now we get word that As Big Banks Repay Bailout Money, U.S. Sees a Profit The New York Times reports:

Nearly a year after the federal rescue of the nation’s biggest banks, taxpayers have begun seeing profits from the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid that many critics thought might never be seen again.

That is not to say we are out of the woods:

But all the profits taxpayers have won could still be wiped out by two deeply troubled institutions. Both Citigroup and Bank of America are still holding mortgages and other loans that were once worth billions of dollars but whose revised values are uncertain. If they prove “toxic” because they cannot attract buyers, they could leave large holes in the banks’ balance sheets.

It was a difficult call. Let the banks go under and watch millions of innocent people financially destroyed, homes lost, businesses in ruin, bills piling up. Or bail out institutions run by the culprits, set rules that control their behavior and profitability, and reinstate reasonable regulations for the financial services industry that minimize the chance that this will never happen again.

The critics were loud and shrill, and downright nasty. They wanted failure. It may still come but for now credit goes to the Democrats, a few Republicans, and President-elect Obama dragging President Bush along for the ride who were willing to make tough decisions. 

Remember the anti Pelosi hissy-fit?

Republicans Blaming Pelosi: They Sure Showed Her and Millions of Americans

Down in the  twenty-fourth paragraph, long after the carnage and mayhem were reported came this:

Republicans blamed Pelosi's scathing speech near the close of the debate — which assailed Bush's economic policies and a "right-wing ideology of anything goes, no supervision, no discipline, no regulation" of financial markets — for the defeat. It was not much different from her usual tough words against the president and his party.

Democrats, Libertarians, and No Republicans, Oh My

When I posted It Is Not About Health Care, Stupid yesterday, democurmudgeon,  Town Hall Psychos Using Health Care as Cover to Tear Down Government who posted on the same matter Tuesday, wrote in:

It's even more extreme than the Republican Party's position on small government. It's a move toward libertarianism.

He is correct. These people are not Populists in any sense of the word, they are libertarians.

The more I reflect on his comment the more I realize that all of this adds up to destroying the social compact, the basis of our government that goes back to the Magna Carta and replacing it with a new 'system' based on a system that provides for no social organization other than militarism.

That social compact recognizes the basic freedoms we all enjoy - speech, right to a trial by jury, privacy, no search and seizure without a warrant, and not to incriminate one's self.

That social compact also recognized the necessity to organize a government that provided for the health, safety and well being of the people:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (emphasis added)

The Tea Baggers and the town hall protesters are really about reshaping the fundamental premise of our government. That is a challenge for the Republican Party. They will not quit until they either control the GOP or bolt to the Libertarian Party lead by Sarah Palin.

I do not like using Wikipedia as a reference, but the post on the U.S. Constitution includes a section on related documents which makes it convenient to connect the dots:

Related documents

• Magna Carta (1215)
• Mayflower Compact (1620)
• Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639)
• Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641)
• English Bill of Rights (1689)
• United States Declaration of Independence (1776)
• Articles of Confederation (1777)
• Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779)
• United States Bill of Rights (1791)

"Manufactured Anger" At Kagen's Town Hall Meeting?

It looks like the TeaBaggers and the astroturf groups that created them are at it again in Wisconsin.  Taking a cue from the events in Texas and elsewhere, a big crowd disrupted Rep. Steve Kagen's town meeting in Green Bay last night, and will no doubt turn out again in big numbers in Appleton tonight to shout down any semblance of civilized discourse. Fox Valley blogger Jeremy Shown has a useful three part eyewitness post on the Green Bay event here.

Regardless of what the questions were, almost every one was greeted with shouts of derision. If the question itself was particularly negative, cheering would often begin before Kagen had finished reading it, drowning out his voice.

I could closely survey at least one quarter of the auditorium and from what I could see there were only two people in that area that were willing to clap or shout in support of Kagen. The rest were clearly against anything that Kagen had to say. Many of these felt no reluctance to shout during both the questions and answers. Sometimes the outbursts included pleas to leave health care alone or to read the bill, sometimes they would accuse Kagen of lying outright.

While Shown's account portrays the anger as spontaneous, there are signs that point to national organizations connected to the insurance industry and the Republican Party. Greg Sargent tracks the efforts to the astroturf group Conservatives for Patients' Rights:

CPR is the group headed by controversial former hospitals exec Rick Scott that’s spending millions on ads attacking reform in all sorts of lurid ways, a campaign that’s being handled by the same P.R. mavens behind the Swift Boat Vets.

In response to my questions, a spokesman for the group confirmed that it has undertaken a concerted effort to get people out to the town hall meetings to protest reform. The spokesperson, Brian Burgess, confirmed that CPR is emailing out “town hall alert” flyers, and schedules of town hall meetings, to its mailing list.

These efforts — combined with CPR’s effort to enlist Tea Party-ers, as reported yesterday by TPM — provide a glimpse into the ways anti-reform groups are trying to create a sense of public momentum in their favor.

CPR spokesman Burgess confirmed that the group had set up a list serv designed to reach out to “third party groups” involved in the health care fight, including the Tea Party activists. And in a statement emailed to me, Scott, who was ousted as a health-care exec amid a 1990s fraud probe, took credit for the town hall showings.

“We have invested a lot of time, energy and resources into educating Americans over the past several months about the dangers of government-run health care and I think we’re seeing some of the fruits of that campaign,” Scott said, though he claimed outrage was spontaneous.

Talking Points Memo also has a note from a "Republican pal under deep cover:

I'm surprised that it's your Republican pal that has to make this point: The precedent on the anti-health care protests isn't Bush's Social Security town hall meetings. The real precedent is the "Brooks Brothers riot" during the 2000 recount. The point is to create disorder, but get the media to cast blame on the underlying issue and NOT the protesters. (emphasis Waxing America)

That's what happened during Florida: The "blame" was on the "chaos" created by the "unfair" counting methods brought on by Al Gore's call for "selective" counting. No blame was focused on the young GOP activists upsetting the process.

THAT seems to me to be the comparison that Obama supporters should be on the lookout for this summer.

You can say this came from a Republican friend -- but not by name. ;-)

The White House got the memo also.  From this morning's presser:

Q: Are you concerned at what appears to be well-orchestrated protesting of health care reform at town halls as derailing your message?
GIBBS: NO, I get asked every day about the myriad of things that could be derailing our message. I would point out that I don't know what all those guys were doing, what were they called, the Brooks Brothers Brigade in Florida in 2000, appear to have rented a similar bus and are appearing together at town hall meetings throughout the country...

Well, you know, look, I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the Astro Turf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying ...
Q: The grassroots what?
GIBBS: The Astro Turf nature of grassroots lobbying, which is largely the term for, you know, this is manufactured anger.

- Barry Orton