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Showing posts with label Sen Maria Cantwell D WA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sen Maria Cantwell D WA. Show all posts

15 July 2010

THE CLEAR ACT, Double Dividend: Make Money by Saving Nature 15JUL10

EVERYBODY NEEDS TO GET ON THIS BANDWAGON, IT IS A WIN-WIN FOR AMERICA! Tell your Representatives and Senators to support passage of this bill. Info for e mailing or calling your members of Congress can be found here

http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/Legislative.shtml 

The Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR) Act

Saving nature is the central issue. Carbon fuels destroy nature. The Gulf Death Gusher is the most visible sign. But signs are everywhere. Overall global warming increases hurricanes and floods, destroys habitats for plants, fish, birds, and ground animals, spreads deserts, causes deadly waves, and destroys glaciers and our polar ice caps. The use of carbon fuels has been destroying nature. Our job now is to save it.
Interestingly, there is a short, 39-page bill before the Senate that would allow us to save nature and get paid substantially for doing it. It is the CLEAR bill, first suggested by Peter Barnes, and introduced by Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME). It is simple, it works, and it pays you!
The principle behind it is this: We US citizens own the air over the US equally. Carbon-fuel sellers are dumping pollution in our air, not just poisoning the air, but destroying nature. At least they should pay for permits to dump, poison, and destroy, and should be forced year-by-year to stop. Who should the sellers pay for permits? All of us, the citizens who live here, should be paid handsomely. And there should be predictably fewer permits every year, till the practice ends or reaches tolerable levels.
Here's how cap-and-cash works. Carbon-fuel profiteers introduce polluting fuels at only 2,000 distribution points in the US. The EPA already monitors how much polluting fuel each seller distributes. The CLEAR Act requires sellers to compete at auction each year to buy pollution-permits to sell their poisonous fuel, with a minimum and maximum price per permit set each year. Every year, for 40 years, the number of permits is reduced, until the 80% of the carbon pollution has been eliminated.
Who gets the permit money? You do. The money goes into a trust. Twenty-five percent goes to developing nonpolluting fuels and mitigating existing environmental disasters. Most of it -- seventy-five percent -- is distributed equally to all citizen-residents every month via electronic bank transfers. A family of four, the first year would get between $1,000 and $1,500, and the amount would go up each year. Why? The law of supply and demand. As there are fewer permits to sell fuel, and as the air gets cleaner, the price rises and you get more cash.
We all get a double dividend: cleaner air while saving nature and a significant cash dividend for owning the air. The hundreds of billions of dollars going to citizens will be spent all over the country and will create jobs. Everyone wins except the polluting fuels companies -- the BP's of the world.

The Criteria for Success

Administratively Simple: It eliminates bureaucracy, and it brings credibility and transparency. It just requires computer programs. It can be publicly checked to see if it is working. There are no hidden deals or details.
Market-driven without government: The trust will be outside of government. Market mechanisms will determine the value of the permits and, hence, the money paid to citizens.

Gradual Transition: There would be no short-term market disruption. The transition would be gradual.
Market-driven and convenient: Businesses that use carbon fuels will not have to monitor their pollution. They will have a market-based incentive to switch gradually to non-polluting fuels.
Predictable: Business leaders will be able to plan for the future with no huge rush.
Encourages Entrepreneurship: It will create incentives for innovation and new energy industries.
Job-Creating: The cash going into new energy industries and being spent all over the country will create jobs.

The Opposite of Taxation
Anti-tax: The CLEAR bill puts money into the pockets of most citizens instead of taking money out.

Saves money: The cost of polluting fuels will rise temporarily, while you get cash. Who gets more, you or the oil and coal companies that raise their prices?
You will, unless you're rich and can afford it! The richer you are, the more energy you use. If you are among the seventy percent of citizens in the lower and middle income brackets, you will get more in payments from the CLEAR bill than you will pay for increases in fuel prices.

Why will carbon fuel prices eventually fall? The prices depend on demand. Two factors will reduce demand over time.
First, the availability of non-carbon fuels. The CLEAR bill's 25% will help develop non-carbon alternatives, which will reduce demand.
Second, investment in not-needing-carbon-fuels through, say, insulation and energy-efficiency, will reduce demand cumulatively. A barrel of oil or ton of coal saved the first year through insulation or energy efficiency will also be saved year-after-year. This will cumulatively reduce demand for carbon fuels.

Double job-creation: Eliminating the need, and hence the demand for carbon-polluting fuels will create jobs in two ways. First, new energy and energy-efficiency industries will need employees. Second, money saved on energy can be invested in, or spent on, enterprises that will create jobs. Both are market mechanisms. The jobs will mostly be in the private sector.

Politically Achievable: Putting money in the pockets of people who will spend it will be politically popular, as will job creation.

Who Loses?
Any legislation that greatly reduces the use of carbon fuels -- whether the CLEAR bill or the current cap-and-trade bills -- will create "losers."
The carbon-polluting industries -- the BP's of the world -- will lose, unless they invest their vast profits in non-polluting energy and in energy-efficiency: in industries that lower or eliminate the need for energy use. Those industries that are committed to the continued destruction of nature should lose, unless they change their commitment to saving nature.
The pollution dumping industries (e.g., electric power companies) will no longer be able to save money by not cleaning up their pollution and dumping it in our air instead. Having to switch to nonpolluting energy or pay more for polluting energy will count as a "loss," since they will make less short-term profit. In the long run, if they make the switch to nonpolluting energy and energy efficiency, those profits will be made up. But the short-term "losses" are what will count to investors.
Right-wing politicians, supported by those industries, will also lose if they cannot deliver to their nature-destroying supporters a defeat of any nature-saving legislation. Those politicians will also lose because their anti-environmental ideology, which says that nature is to be indefinitely exploited for profit, will be defeated.

The Lies
Not surprisingly, those who stand to lose are spreading lies about carbon-cutting legislation.

The Tax Lie: Suppose there was a direct tax on carbon. At the gas pump, the gas companies would list this as a tax and add it to the price of gas at the pump. Now suppose that nature-saving legislation results in a sort-term rise in gas prices because oil companies want to preserve their previously astronomical level of profits. In both cases, the price of gas would rise. So, the argument goes, nature-saving legislation has the same result as a tax, and therefore it is a tax.
In the case of the CLEAR bill, the lie would be clear: Seventy percent of the population would be making more than enough extra money to offset the rise in prices. But what is not said, is that the prices at the pump would not rise if the oil companies made ordinary profits rather than excessive profits. The rise at the pump would, to a large extent, come from making sure that wealthy oil executives and investors insisting on outrageously high profits.
Also not figured in is the cost of continuing to destroy nature indefinitely into the future: the costs of more oil spills; more mountain tops blown into streams; of more glacial sources of water as glaciers and snowcaps melt; of more and more hurricanes, floods, and fires; of the loss of arable land to the spread of deserts; of the loss of fish and forests -- and most of all, the cost of the quality of life on earth.
At the heart of the Tax Lie is the failure to figure in systemic costs, the real costs -- both financial costs, life costs, and quality of life costs -- and the failure to count greed.
The Job Lie: As we have seen the CLEAR bill would create jobs, as would any legislation seriously reducing or ending the use of polluting fuels. A certain number of jobs would indeed be lost gradually in the nature-destroying industries as demand for polluting fuels declined, but those would more than be made up for as nature-saving fuels and nature-saving energy efficiencies more than made up for the jobs lost.
The Simple Truths
We need to save nature, not destroy it. We can start to do so while making money, stimulating the economy, and creating jobs.
Tell everyone you know about the Clear Act. 

The Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR) Act



To see Senator Cantwell introduce the CLEAR Act, click here.
 

Legislation

Documents

Relevant Reports

Key Congressional Testimony

Press

See more here.
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13 July 2010

Question for the Tea Party: Why the Free Ride for Republicans Protecting Bankers? 11&12JUL10

WHY are the republicans and tea-baggers giving the wall street bankers a free ride? For republican politicians it is greed, pure and simple. And for the tea-baggers it is bind stupidity, and they will learn to late they are being used by the wealthy and then will be tossed aside like filthy, bloody rags when the gop doesn't need them anymore. See my earlier post for sen jon kyl's defense of the rich over the middle class and the working class and the poor and unemployed.

Jon Kyl: Extend Bush Tax Cuts For Wealthy Even If They Add To Deficit 12JUL10


 
The financial reform bill that passed both houses of Congress was far less than we needed. But it was a start -- enough of a start that the bankers have spent tens of millions trying to kill it. And now, with the House-Senate conference version of the bill coming back to Senate for final approval, the reform is in jeopardy yet again.
On May 29, the bill passed the Senate, 59-39, just enough to block a filibuster. Four Republicans voted in support and two progressive Democrats voted no to protest its weaknesses. But the banking lobby has used the Congressional recess to work the four Senate Republicans.
And, sure enough, three of the four Republican supporters have gone wobbly. Olympia Snowe of Maine voted for the Senate bill, but is now making equivocal noises about whether she'll support the conference bill (which is weaker in some respects than the Senate's version.) Likewise Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
The always wily Scott Brown of Massachusetts threatened to withhold his vote until the House and Senate leaders agreed to scrap a $19 billion tax on large banks. He voted for the senate bill, but now Brown is warning that he may vote against the final bill anyway. Apparently there is no honor among thieves. The financial industry was the largest donor to Brown's Senate campaign.
Among Republicans, only Susan Collins of Maine is standing firm in her support. The fewer Republicans who are still officially committed to the bill, the easier it is for the banking lobby and the GOP leadership to intimidate or seduce others.
Among the Democrats, Wisconsin's Russ Feingold, suddenly in a tight re-election race against a self-financed Tea Party millionaire, has vowed to vote against the bill because it's not tough enough. It's not clear how that will persuade the Tea Party crowd, who don't much like Wall Street either.
In an anti-incumbent year it seems a little perverse to vote down the only piece of legislation that partly leashes banks. (If you think the bill is not a step forward, ask the bankers' lobby why they are working so hard to kill it. C'mon, Russ, if it's good enough for Bernie Sanders, it should be good enough for you.)
Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington State, even more than Feingold, was a true hero in the fight to get the strongest possible bill. She cast a protest no vote when the bill was before the Senate, but with the bill hanging in the balance, unlike Feingold she will vote for final passage.
Two weeks ago, Democratic head counters thought they had maybe one vote to spare. But Robert Byrd's death June 28th deprived supporters of that extra margin.
Passage may depend on the vagaries of West Virginia politics. West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin has delayed making an interim appointment for Byrd's seat, pending a final decision on whether the vote to fill the seat is to be held as a special election in 2010 or in 2012 when Byrd's term expires. Manchin wants to run for the seat, but has ruled out appointing himself to fill the vacancy. The White House has been urging Manchin to stop dithering and name Byrd's interim replacement as soon as possible.
At this writing, Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid has put off calling up the conference bill for a vote pending a better head count. That's how razor thin the margin is.
But with every passing day, the risk increases that Wall Street and the Republicans will kill more than a year's legislative work. A defeat of this bill would mean that all of the carefully negotiated compromises are up for grabs. With Democrats expected to lose seats in November, anything that managed to pass would be even weaker.
This nail-biting finale is like the end-game of the health reform bill all over again, but with one key difference. In that fight, President Obama belatedly got personally engaged, working the phones and twisting arms, LBJ-style -- far from his usual hands-off approach. This time, there are no arms to twist. The undecided votes are all Republicans, with whom Obama has no leverage. And with Russ Feingold in the posture of distancing himself from Washington, D.C., the White House has little influence with him either.
But Obama could be taking his case to the country. In the past few days, Obama has sounded more like a partisan and has gotten off some good one-liners, but has mentioned the stakes of financial reform only in passing. That's a pity, especially with Republicans using the October 2008 vote in favor of the bank bailout (TARP) to whack Democratic incumbents.
This reform bill may be a day late and a dollar short. But starting the process of reining in the banks is the antidote to the bailout and to future bailouts -- both politically and in terms of better policy. And it's Republicans and Wall Streeters who are trying to kill it. That's not so hard to explain. The president should be using his bully pulpit to shame the banking lobby and its Republican toadies, and to associate himself and the Democrats with stronger housecleaning.
If the final bill does manage to squeak through, this is only the beginning of reform. Several key provisions, such as the Volcker Rule separating commercial banking from trading and investment banking and the rules on derivatives, were seriously weakened by amendments. Others, such as the rules on capital requirements, too-big-to-fail, and consumer protection, leave a lot to agency discretion. So the same agencies that are far too close to the bankers, the ones that let this disaster happen, will be in charge of the details of reform.
As the bill has been weakened, bank stocks have been going up. The lead front page story in Sunday's New York Times reported that Wall Street is hiring again. The sector that crashed the economy, and that needs to be drastically reined in, is back in metastatic growth mode. And evidently the bankers have confidence that their chums at the Treasury and the Fed are not going to rain on their parade, reform bill or no.
So we need this bill, but only as a first step. Even more importantly, we need a citizens' campaign to monitor how it is carried out and where the holes are.
The bankers' lobby is at work, night and day, to weaken this reform legislatively and in its implementation, orchestrating grassroots lobbying by local banks and coordinating it with campaign contributions. The counterweights on the progressive side are no match.
One of the few effective official watchdogs, the Congressional Oversight Panel chaired by Elizabeth Warren, may be shut down early as the TARP ends. Americans for Financial Reform, which did heroic work as a coalition of more than 200 consumer and labor groups in pressing for the strongest possible legislation, will close up shop at the end of the summer for lack of funding. If anything, AFR needs to be expanded, so that it can continue to be a citizens' watchdog.
Two years and counting into the most severe financial collapse in nearly a century, bankers still rule. Republicans protect bankers from reform, yet amazingly masquerade as the party of populist backlash. If Democrats let the right play this double game, shame on them. It's only possible because too many Democrats are too cozy with the same bankers.
UPDATE: Late Monday, the offices of Republican senators Scott Brown and Olympia Snowe issued statements indicating that they will vote for the financial reform bill, bringing the number of supporters to 60, just enough to break a Republican filibuster
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