Category: Legislation

Worst………Speaker………Ever

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The Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by John Boehner, decided to pass appropriations bills based on the Paul Ryan budget.

The problem is that, unlike a budget, which is general, the appropriations bills have to contain specific spending levels, and the Republicans in the House are terrified of having to pass the actual cuts required by Ryan’s smoke and mirrors numbers:

Republicans have dealt with some embarrassing moments on the House floor over the past year, but none so revealing or damning as today’s snafu, when they yanked a bill to fund the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Even the recent farm bill fiasco wasn’t as significant an indictment of the GOP’s governing potential.

It might look like a minor hiccup, or a symbolic error. But it spells doom for the party’s near-term budget strategy and underscores just how bogus the party’s broader agenda really is and has been for the last four years.

In normal times, the House and Senate would each pass a budget, the differences between those budgets would be resolved, and appropriators in both chambers would have binding limits both on how much money to spend, and on which large executive agencies to spend it.

But these aren’t normal times. Republicans have refused to negotiate away their budget differences with Democrats, and have instead instructed their appropriators to use the House GOP budget as a blueprint for funding the government beyond September.

………

But many close Congress watchers — and indeed many Congressional Democrats — have long suspected that their votes for Ryan’s budgets were a form of cheap talk. That Republicans would chicken out if it ever came time to fill in the blanks. Particularly the calls for deep but unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts.

Today’s Transportation/HUD failure confirms that suspicion. Republicans don’t control government. But ahead of the deadline for funding it, their plan was to proceed as if the Ryan budget was binding, and pass spending bills to actualize it — to stake out a bargaining position with the Senate at the right-most end of the possible.

But they can’t do it. It turns out that when you draft bills enumerating all the specific cuts required to comply with the budget’s parameters, they don’t come anywhere close to having enough political support to pass. Even in the GOP House. Slash community development block grants by 50 percent, and you don’t just lose the Democrats, you lose a lot of Republicans who care about their districts. Combine that with nihilist defectors who won’t vote for any appropriations unless they force the President to sign an Obamacare repeal bill at a bonfire ceremony on the House floor, and suddenly you’re nowhere near 218.

John Boehner decided to follow the lead of Paul Ryan, a preening Ayn Rand inspired peacock with a limited grasp of what mathematics really mean in the real world, and now he is unable to make it work.

Heh.

More Adventures of the New Party of Jefferson Davis

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Paul Krugman notes that the current attempts by Congressional Republicans to use the threat of a government shutdown to roll back Obanmacare mirrors the actions of the South when they tried to destroy the United States.

You see, Marco Rubio is now claiming that Obama wants to shut down government because he will not end his health care plan.

As Krugman notes, Lincoln nailed this at his Cooper Union speech over 150 years ago:

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me – my money – was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

The party of Lincoln has become the party of Jefferson Davis.

We Lose

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The House has narrowly rejected an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill to restrict NSA spying on Americans:

U.S. lawmakers angry about domestic telephone record-collection lost an effort to curtail funding for the intelligence-gathering tools revealed by fugitive U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden.

On a vote of 205-217, the House rejected an amendment that would have limited the National Security Agency’s ability to collect communications records.

Implementation of the amendment could have created a new burden on telephone and Internet companies to retain bulk data, in addition to ending the NSA’s blanket collection of phone records. Those possibilities led the White House, Republicans leaders and many congressional Democrats to oppose the proposals, pitting them against lawmakers from both parties who champion civil liberties and privacy.

The by-party tally is Democrats  (111-83), and Republicans (94-134), a 5 vote margin, and it is almost certainly only because Obama started seriously twisting arms on the Dem side of the aisle in the past 48 hours or so.  (My rep, John Sarbanes, voted yes).

Hopefully, this is only the start of the fight, and the next time, the good guys will pick up a few more votes, and win.

I Hope That This is Sincere

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It might also just be a realization that it’s political poison to piss off minorities even more.

But in either case, the fact that Eric Cantor is calling for speedy legislation to fix the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Voting Rights Act is a positive development:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) reacted late Tuesday afternoon to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that overturned a centerpiece of the Voting Rights Act.

 “My experience with John Lewis in Selma earlier this year was a profound experience that demonstrated the fortitude it took to advance civil rights and ensure equal protection for all,” Cantor said in a statement provided to TPM. “I’m hopeful Congress will put politics aside, as we did on that trip, and find a responsible path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected.”

It should be noted that the proverbial devil is in the details here. 

If the teabagger caucus is allowed to get its teeth into this, whatever come out of the house will be deeply ugly.

6 Democrats to Punish

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They voted for the Republican bill outlawing abortion after 20 weeks:

Six Democrats and six Republicans broke with their respective parties late Tuesday on House GOP legislation to ban nearly all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, written by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), creates narrow exemptions to protect the life of the mother, and in cases of rape and incest as long as the crimes have been reported. It passed 228-196 but won’t become law because Democrats control the Senate and White House.

The six Democrats who voted for the act were Reps. Nick Rahall (WV), Collin Peterson (MN), Jim Matheson (UT), Mike McIntyre (NC), Dan Lipinski (IL) and Henry Cuellar (TX).

I would particularly note that Lipinski’s vote is particularly egregious, because he is in a solidly Democratic district.

6 Republicans also voted against the bill, but some of them did because they thought that the exceptions for rape and incest meant that the bill did not go far enough, and in any case, I’m not going to endorse a ‘Phant.

Call Your Congress Critter

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The SHIELD act has been proposed to to rein in patent trolls:

Shell companies that threaten legal action over patent infringement without actually producing anything themselves could be driven out of business if the newly proposed and risibly backronymed Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act becomes law.

In an all-too-rare display of US congressional bipartisanship, representatives Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) announced the legislation, which would make the infringement accuser liable for both sides’ legal fees should they lose. Universities and companies that actually produce an end-product to sue about are exempt.

“These trolls are hampering innovation, slowing companies down and locking them up in lawsuits,” said Chaffetz at a press conference.

Basically, it requires the trolls to cover the other side’s court costs unless they can show that their suit had a reasonable chance of success, which means that fighting the trolls becomes a lot cheaper.

BTW, much like the banking system, much of the dysfunction in the banking system goes back to the Clinton administration”

In 1994, Bill Clinton broke the long-standing and utterly sensible tradition that an actual patent lawyer should be Commissioner of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and instead appointed Bruce Lehman, who was at the time the chief lobbyist for the Software Publishing Industry.

Under Lehman’s leadership, the USPTO changed the rules to allow much broader patents to be issued, often spanning completely different technological areas. These types of patents are the troll’s weapon of choice, with some so broad they could cover pretty much anything on the internet, for example. At the same time the amount of patents issued by the office began to increase.

Lehman was also one of the main authors of the widely reviled Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and helped negotiate the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights trade agreement. In 2006, he was inducted into the first International IP Hall of Fame by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) magazine.

One of the distressing characteristics of the Clinton administration was its embrace of rent seeking as an economic model, whether it be banksters or patent trolls.

The Stoopid!!!! It Burns Us!!!!!

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This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him.*

In response to the collapse of I-5 bridge north of Seattle, Washington State Representative Ed Orcutt,(a Republican, of course) thought that the concerns were overblown, because, “11 of the 12 Sections of the Bridge Are Still Standing“:

In the wake of the I-5 bridge collapse, the progressive activist group Fuse put together an online petition, urging state legislators to “Fix our crumbling roads and bridges!”

 ………

 Hard to read that as a controversial request, unless, of course, you are state Representative “Angry Ed” Orcutt (R-Kalama), the ranking Republican on the house transportation committee. Via email, Orcutt responds defensively to petitioners, objecting to any effort to “leverage more tax dollars” in response to the Skagit River bridge collapse:

[I]t is clear that the reason for the collapse was due to a collision with the super structure of the bridge — not a lack of structural integrity of the bridge. The bridge would indeed be standing today had the truck’s load NOT rammed the super structure of the bridge. In fact, 11 of the 12 sections of the bridge are still standing.

Dude, it’s not a bridge any more, it is a f%$#ing pier!!!!

Or, to quote yet another movie:

Garry: The generator’s gone.

 MacReady: Any way we can we fix it?

 Garry: It’s “gone”, MacReady.

*What, you’ve never seen Ruthless People? Great movie.

Full letter after the jump:

From: “Orcutt, Rep. Ed”
Date: May 28, 2013, 12:23:47 PM PDT
To: XXXX
Subject: RE: Fix our crumbling roads and bridges!

 XXXX,

 Many people have misunderstood terminology used in the aftermath of the I-5/Skagit River Bridge collapse.

 This bridge is deemed functionally obsolete — not structurally deficient. Functionally obsolete basically means that the width of the lanes do not meet current design widths. In other words, if it were to be built today, it would need to be wider.

 Since the incident, I have been on a conference call with the Governor (which included WSDOT and WSP officials); two briefing calls with National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials; and have met with NTSB officials on the deck of the bridge. From NTSB to WSDOT, it is clear that the reason for the collapse was due to a collision with the super structure of the bridge — not a lack of structural integrity of the bridge. The bridge would indeed be standing today had the truck’s load NOT rammed the super structure of the bridge. In fact, 11 of the 12 sections of the bridge are still standing.

 It is important to note also, that DOT has specifically stated that if a bridge were deemed unsafe, it would be taken out of service. So, when you approach a bridge and see that it is open, please know that DOT has deemed it safe enough for the traffic using it.

 I agree with you that we must maintain our infrastructure to assure it remains safe, but let’s not confuse this incident or try to use it to leverage more tax dollars when the cause of this collapse had nothing to do with the availability of tax dollars.

 Ed

 Representative Ed Orcutt
20th Legislative District

 Olympia Office:
408 John L. O’Brien Building
PO Box 40600
Olympia, WA 98504

 * ed.orcutt@leg.wa.gov
( 360.786.7990

Why Would a Race Baiting Republican Go to the Wall Over Medicaid Expansion?

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Yes, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is following through on her threat to veto all legislation until Medicaid expansion is passed:

Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) has a message for her party: expand Medicaid — or else.

The combative GOP governor is sticking by a threat she made to veto all legislation until lawmakers resolve the 2014 state budget and pass Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. On Thursday, Brewer proved that wasn’t just talk, vetoing five bills sent to her desk in quick succession.

“I warned that I would not sign additional measures into law until we see resolution of the two most pressing issues facing us: adoption of a fiscal 2014 state budget and plan for Medicaid,” wrote Brewer in her veto message. “It is disappointing I must demonstrate the moratorium was not an idle threat.”

Arizona officials only have five weeks before reaching the constitutional deadline for passing a budget. Last Thursday, six Republican state senators joined a unified Democratic caucus to pass a Medicaid expansion bill — but efforts have been gummed up in the state House since then.

Brewer isn’t letting the issue slide. She has been touring the Grand Canyon State to shore up support for the expansion and put pressure on reticent lawmakers in her own party.

Seriously, I do not know where this is coming from.

This is the politician who continuously repeated false claims about beheaded bodies in the desert, and blamed “Mexicans,” and she is going to the mat for Obamacare?

I really cannot figure out her angle on this. 

From a budget and economic standpoint, it makes sense, it makes the state more attractive to employers, and the Feds cover almost all the costs for the next few years, but budgetary reality is not something that typically drives movement conservatives.

Just When You Thought that Democrats Could Not Get Any More Craven………

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David Vitter proposes a lifelong ban from food stamps for felons, and Democrats blithely included it in the Ag bill:

In today’s Senate debate on the farm bill, Senator David Vitter offered — and Senate Democrats accepted — an amendment that would increase hardship and will likely have strongly racially discriminatory effects.

The amendment would bar from SNAP (food stamps), for life, anyone who was ever convicted of one of a specified list of violent crimes at any time — even if they committed the crime decades ago in their youth and have served their sentence, paid their debt to society, and been a good citizen ever since. In addition, the amendment would mean lower SNAP benefits for their children and other family members.

So, a young man who was convicted of a single crime at age 19 who then reforms and is now elderly, poor, and raising grandchildren would be thrown off SNAP, and his grandchildren’s benefits would be cut.

Given incarceration patterns in the United States, the amendment would have a skewed racial impact. Poor elderly African Americans convicted of a single crime decades ago by segregated Southern juries would be among those hit.

Robert Greenstein, the author of this post, is an optimist. He notes the disparate racial impact, but does not draw the proper conclusion: Disparate racial impact is a goal of Vitter, not an incidental effect of the proposal.

I’m not surprised that David Vitter proposed this.  He’s just another evil Republican with a diaper fetish who procures prostitutes.

I am depressed that Democrats allowed this amendment to pass.

Illinois is not the Place where I Expect an Outbreak of Sanity………

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But the vote banning abstinence only sex education in public schools can only be called an outbreak of sanity:

Illinois public schools will be required to include medically accurate information about birth control in their sex ed classes under a measure that the state legislature passed this week. HB 2675, which Gov. Pat Quinn (D) is expected to sign into law, will prohibit health classes from teaching abstinence-only curricula.

 Illinois’ current law requires sex ed classes to emphasize abstinence as “the expected norm,” and stipulates that “course material and instruction shall stress that pupils should abstain from sexual intercourse until they are ready for marriage.” Public schools can choose between teaching abstinence-only education, using a mix of stressing abstinence while providing comprehensive information about birth control and condoms, or simply declining to provide any sex ed instruction. Under HB 2675, schools won’t be able to choose the abstinence-only option anymore — they’ll need to either offer comprehensive information about prevention methods, or decide not to offer any sex ed courses whatsoever.

 State Sen. Linda Holmes (D) spearheaded the measure because she doesn’t believe that abstinence-only curricula adequately equips teens with the resources they need to safeguard their sexual health. “In fantasy land, we teach our kids abstinence — and they listen. But we know they don’t necessarily follow that advice,” Holmes explained. “They are going to be confronted with the issue of sex before they’re 21 years old, or 25, or whenever they decide to get married.”

Abstinence-only education is a toxic mix of lying and slut shaming.

Kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart noted that her abstinence only education made her feel worthless, and that it kept her from trying to escape.

Abstinence only education is a gift to potential rapists and child abusers, because it creates even more shame and hopelessness in victims.

So, Now That We Have a Week of “Scandals”………

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The Obama administration has come out in favor of a media shield law that they had previously tried to delay and kill:

Under fire over the Justice Department’s use of a broad subpoena to obtain calling records of Associated Press reporters in connection with a leak investigation, the Obama administration sought on Wednesday to revive legislation that would provide greater protections to reporters in keeping their sources and communications confidential.

President Obama’s Senate liaison, Ed Pagano, on Wednesday morning called the office of Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and asked him to reintroduce a version of a bill that he had pushed in 2009 called the Free Flow of Information Act, a White House official said.

The bill would create a federal media shield law, akin to ones most states already have, giving journalists some protections from penalties for refusing to identify confidential sources in federal law enforcement proceedings, and generally enabling journalists to ask a federal judge to quash subpoenas for their phone records.

………

The top Democrat on the committee, Representative John Conyers of Michigan, noted that he had sponsored a version of the Free Flow of Information Act that passed the House twice when it was under Democratic control. He said he would reintroduce his version, too, and he said he hoped that Republicans — who until recently had called for more aggressive investigations of leaks — would support it.

The version the Obama administration is seeking to revive, however, is the one that was chiefly sponsored by Mr. Schumer, which was negotiated between the newspaper industry and the White House. It was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan 15-to-4 vote in December 2009. But while it was awaiting a floor vote in 2010, a furor over leaking arose after WikiLeaks began publishing archives of secret government documents, and the bill never received a vote.

In a statement confirming that he would reintroduce the legislation, Mr. Schumer referred to the controversy over the subpoena of A.P. calling records, saying: “This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public’s right to the free flow of information. At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case.”

So, they are supporting the fake bill that they and Chuck Schumer drew up a while ago in an attempt to kill Conyer’s real reform.

Same sh%$, different day.

I’m Matthew Saroff, and I Approve of this Grandstanding

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Elizabeth Warren has proposed a bill that would set student loan rates at the same percentage as what the Federal Reserve offers to the too big to fail banks:

Students taking out government loans to help pay for college should pay the same rock-bottom interest rate that the Federal Reserve charges big banks, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed Wednesday.

With the interest rate on federal student loans set to double to 6.8% this summer, Warren said it’s unfair that big banks can borrow money at 0.75% from the central bank’s discount window.

“In other words, the federal government’s going to charge interest rates nine times higher than the rates they charge the biggest banks — the same banks that destroyed millions of jobs and nearly broke the economy,” Warren said in introducing her first stand-alone bill since taking office in January.

“That isn’t right,” she said.

………

Warren acknowledged that the Fed’s policy, which also includes a near-0% federal funds rate, is designed to help boost the economy by providing cheap credit.

But, she said, “our students are just as important to the economic recovery as our banks.”

“Let’s face it: Banks get a great deal when they borrow money from the Fed,” she said. “In effect, the American taxpayer is investing in those banks. “

“We should make the same kind of investment in our young people who are trying to get an education,” Warren said.

This is cheap pandering.

Even worse, it’s never gonna see the floor of the Senate.

That being said, someone needed to ask the question why the rest of us do not get the deal the banksters do.

Nearly half of all new IT jobs will go to guestworkers

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Surprise, surprise. When you look at the immigration bill proposed by the “Gang of 8”, it allocates half of all new IT jobs to guest workers:

S. 744, the comprehensive immigration bill introduced by the Senate “Gang of Eight,” dramatically increases the number of skilled guestworker visas available to employers in information technology (IT) and other sectors. The principal IT guestworker visa is the H-1B (49 percent of H-1B holders work in IT), which under current law is capped for private-sector employers at 65,000 per year plus an additional 20,000 for foreign graduates of U.S. universities. With certain exceptions, S. 744 will raise the cap initially to 115,000 and if strong demand continues, to 180,000 per year, with an additional 25,000 reserved for foreign graduates. Thus, under the likely high-demand scenario, we would have 120,000 more H-1Bs annually than we do now, and 58,800 of them would be in IT.

 We can reasonably predict, therefore, that guestworkers will fill nearly half of all IT job openings for which a college degree is required each year. In a new report, Guestworkers in the High-Skill U.S. Labor Market, Hal Salzman, Daniel Kuehn, and B. Lindsay Lowell calculate that in 2011 there were approximately 483,000 IT job openings for college grads filled in the last year (including those with advanced degrees), a third of which were filled by newly arriving guestworkers in three different guestworker programs. As the figure shows, if S.744 is enacted and the maximum number of H-1B workers were allowed to enter and work in the United States, nearly 220,000 new job openings in IT would be filled by guestworkers—almost half the annual total as of 2011.

I guess that skilled IT positions are yet another “Job that Americans won’t do”.

Seriously, if we want things like H1B and  guest workers not to completely f%$# everyone outside of the 1%, we need to make sure that they are limited to truly essential and unique skill set.

The easiest way that you do this by making it more expensive than hiring an American.  You can jack up the application fees, possibly by using an auction system and a limited supply.

H/t PP at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Contemptible Ratf%$# Decides Not to Run for Reelection

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Senator, and Glenn Quagmire impersonator, Max Baucus

I am referring, of course, to  short timer Senator Max Baucus, who has announced that he will not be running for reelection:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the most influential congressional figures of his era, announced his intention Tuesday to retire, a move that could produce sweeping changes in the political and legislative landscape over the next two years.

 The announcement could mark the beginning of one of the most consequential periods in Baucus’s long public career, because he pledged to devote the rest of his time in Washington to pursuing a comprehensive rewrite of the federal tax code, an effort that many see as key to breaking the fiscal gridlock that has paralyzed Washington in recent years.

BTW, if thie following paragraph does not fill you with dread, you have no soul:

That paralysis of taxes and spending has been a central feature of Obama’s presidency, and Baucus said that when the president called him Tuesday about his retirement, the talk quickly turned to tax reform. “They’re going to get tired of me,” Baucus said in an interview, adding that White House officials do not “know themselves where they are” on a strategy for ending the stalemate.

Because Baucus has been a cancer on the Senate in general, and Democratic Party in particular, and unencumbered by the potential for reelection, I think that he will try to f%$# the Democratic Party, and the country in any way he can.

After all, he has to be angling to get a cushy, and highly remunerative, gif from corporate America after he retires

As TPM reporter Brian Beutler pithily observes, it’s not just that he comes from a conservative state, and so has to hew right.   It is that he hews right except when the politics make it absolutely impossible for him to do so:

Some pols are more or less faithful party-men who stray on occasion during challenging electoral cycles. Baucus, by contrast, has amassed a remarkably consistent record of working at cross-purposes with the rest of his party whether politics in Montana have demanded it or not.

 He voted for the Bush Tax Cuts in 2001; then after securing re-election, and against the will of Democratic leadership, supported a Medicare prescription drug benefit that routed tax payer money through private insurers. He spent months and months behind closed doors with GOP lawmakers in 2009 in a futile search for bipartisan support for what became the Affordable Care Act. That quixotic effort dragged on well past the point at which party leaders believed it might pay off, and it delayed legislative action for so long that the bill nearly died when Democrats lost Ted Kennedy’s seat to Scott Brown in early 2010.

 ………

 A key exception to this track record is his long history of bucking GOP attempts to slash and privatize popular social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security. But viewed through the prism of his broader approach to politics, this seems more an idiosyncratic instance of liberal priorities lining up with Baucus’ venal decision making, than an expression of genuine commitment to the legacy of the New Deal and Great Society.

 By contrast, his recent votes against gun legislation and the Democratic budget are vintage Baucus. One can argue that this sort of “independent streak” might protect Montana Democratic candidates in the abstract. But polling on the specifics doesn’t really back up the view that Baucus needed to buck his party on these measures to remain viable. Which helps explain why Baucus’ fellow Montanan Jon Tester (whom, I should note as a caveat won’t be in cycle again until 2018) voted ‘yes’ on both occasions.

(Read the whole thing)

I would also note that he, and his staff leave a trail of slime all the way to K Street:

Restaurant chains like McDonald’s want to keep their lucrative tax credit for hiring veterans. Altria, the tobacco giant, wants to cut the corporate tax rate. And Sapphire Energy, a small alternative energy company, is determined to protect a tax incentive it believes could turn algae into a popular motor fuel.

 To make their case as Congress prepares to debate a rewrite of the nation’s tax code, this diverse set of businesses has at least one strategy in common: they have retained firms that employ lobbyists who are former aides to Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which will have a crucial role in shaping any legislation.

 No other lawmaker on Capitol Hill has such a sizable constellation of former aides working as tax lobbyists, representing blue-chip clients that include telecommunications businesses, oil companies, retailers and financial firms, according to an analysis by LegiStorm, an online database that tracks Congressional staff members and lobbying. At least 28 aides who have worked for Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, since he became the committee chairman in 2001 have lobbied on tax issues during the Obama administration — more than any other current member of Congress, according to the analysis of lobbying filings performed for The New York Times.

 “K Street is literally littered with former Baucus staffers,” said Jade West, an executive at a wholesalers’ trade association that relies on a former finance panel aide, Mary Burke Baker. “It opens doors that allow you to make the case.”

(emphasis mine)

Hopefully, former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who is popular and rather liberal by the standards of Montana politics.

Why a Carbon Tax is Better than a Carbon Market, Part 3.1415926

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The EU which has the largest and most ambitious carbon market world, has effectively shut it down by refusing to subsidize it:

The European Parliament this week voted 334-315 (with 60 abstentions) against a controversial “back-loading” plan that aimed to boost the flagging price of carbon, which since 2008 has fallen from about 31 euros per tonne to about 4 euros (about $5.20). Since the vote, the price has fallen even farther, to 2.80 euros. The collapsing market is hardly the kind of firm foundation needed for building a clean-energy economy.

“Now, the market is dead, as far as I can see,” said Steffen Böhm, director of the Essex Sustainability Institute at Britain’s Essex Business School.

What will be the aftermath of the ETS collapse? Here’s a quick primer on what happened, and what it could mean elsewhere, particularly in California, which inaugurated a new carbon market at the start of this year. (Related: “California Tackles Climate Change, But Will Others Follow?”

The “backloading” is an indirect subsidy which would pull carbon credits off of the market to raise prices.

Cap and trade does not work without extensive government intervention, it costs more to administer, and it requires extensive and ongoing government subsidies.

Tell me again why cap and trade is better than a carbon tax again?

The only thing that I can figure out is tribalism:  It allows politicians to create yet another mechanism for them to throw profits toward their classmates from their “elite” schools who are working at Wall Street or the City of London.

I Do Not Care That Their Votes did Not Matter, Primary Them

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The 4 Democrats who voted for the filibuster on the (already largely ineffectual) background checks on guns need to have their political careers ended:

As the Senate began voting Wednesday on nine proposed changes to a gun control bill, the centerpiece proposal on background checks quickly failed to win enough support, despite broad public backing.

The vote on the so-called Manchin-Toomey amendment was 54 in favor, 46 against — failing to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to move ahead. Four Republicans supported it, and four Democrats voted no.

………

In addition to McCain and Toomey, the amendment was supported by Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Mark Kirk (Ill.) The Democrats who opposed the measure were Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.) The four Democrats face difficult reelections in rural states with strong gun cultures.

And their votes will not make a difference.

The NRA will still run ads against them, and the 10% of the electorate who oppose a sane background check policy would never vote for them.

It is more important to enforce meaningful party loyalty than it is to allow these ratf%$#s to hold their seats.