Tag Archives: Republican

POLITICS: Government shutdown looms as Republicans refuse to compromise on conservative policy riders

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Political cartoon via Clay Bennett

Despite a looming government shutdown, Republicans are still using the budget bill process to impose right-wing policies on all Americans by inserting policy riders that have no place in a budget bill. These policy riders have included riders to defund healthcare reform, defund NPR, defund PBS, cut spending for Planned Parenthood, and cut spending to the Environmental Protection Agency, thereby attacking healthcare reform, women’s health, clean air, and clean water. Furthermore, these policy riders attack domestic discretionary spending that has nothing to do with avoiding a government shutdown or reducing the national deficit or the national debt and could actually result in more debt and put Americans at risk. Republican shenanigans to force a government shutdown could also hurt economic recovery. Undoubtedly, the spending cuts are more ideological in nature and have nothing to do with passing a budget or keeping the U.S. government running. Most recently, Tea Party members actually cheered for a government shutdown (and it appears that a majority of Republicans actually favor a government shutdown over a budget compromise), but a government shutdown would actually cost taxpayers money. According to U.S. Senator Jack Reed, “The Gingrich-led government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996 lasted 26 days and cost taxpayers over $1.4 billion.”

On the Net:

  1. Tea Partiers Cheer ‘Shut It Down,’ But Bachmann Says They Don’t Want A Shutdown
  2. Government shutdown in budget battle may hinge on clean air, abortion

NONRENEWABLE RESOURCES: Energy analyst predicts that oil could reach $300 in ten years. Can the GOP’s energy policy meet our future energy needs?

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Images via Grant Neufeld and pshab on Flickr.

How will the future economy of the United States respond to rising oil prices or to $300-a-barrel oil? Under the Obama Administration and a Democratic majority, we’ve seen the federal government attempt to stimulate renewable energy by investing into it, by contributing to energy-storage technology, and by recognizing the utility of alternative-fuel vehicles.

Despite fossil fuels contributing to climate change, national security concerns, and the pollution of the human environment, the GOP embraces an economy dependent on dirty, nonrenewable fossil fuels. Fossil fuels may seem cheap, but they’re not. The cheap cost of fossil fuels, paid at the pump for example, doesn’t reflect the true cost of fossil fuels, because the price at the pump doesn’t include costs that are a consequence of the negative externalities associated with burning fossil fuels. For example, it has been estimated by numerous studies that the negative externalities associated with burning fossil fuels cost governments and the public billions of dollars each year. This means that while fossil-fuel companies receive record profits, they’re not responsible for the consequences of doing dirty business or for the billions of dollars that governments and the public are forced to pick up. Additionally, the fossil-fuel industry receives government subsidies to pollute the human environment. These fossil-fuel subsidies must be eliminated to “enhance energy security, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollution, and bring economic benefits.”

Given the facts and consequences associated with a fossil fuel-based economy, it would seem that a prudent and progressive energy policy shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but the Republican Party isn’t exactly known for pushing clean, sustainable, or rational energy policy reforms. For example, the Republican Party’s energy policy focuses on “lifting restrictions on ANWR, the Outer Continental Shelf, and oil shale in the Mountain West.” Also, the Republican Party claims that “revenue generated by the sale of leases will be invested in renewable and alternative sources of energy.” However, what will the United States utilize after these nonrenewable resources are exhausted? Why drill here, drill now when these minerals are sold on an international market, so why is it necessary to invade protected wilderness areas to extract minerals, which aren’t necessarily consumed domestically. Also, considering greenhouse gases, global warming, and climate change, why is it necessary to add even more trapped carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere? Basically, the short-term benefits of extracting and using these minerals are outweighed by the long-term damage caused by climate change and a failure to implement a prudent or sustainable energy policy.

Furthermore, the Republican Party believes that “the best way for utility companies to reduce carbon emissions is to increase their supply of nuclear energy.” However, nuclear power isn’t cheap, and the costs associated with constructing new nuclear power plants have skyrocketed. There are also substantial costs associated with decommissioning nuclear power plants (“it may cost $300 million or more to shut down and decommission a plant“). Other negatives associated with nuclear power production include the fact that the nuclear power industry depends solely on a nonrenewable energy source, and there’s the well-known problem of storing nuclear waste. Also, “the process of thermoelectric generation from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power, is water intensive. In fact, each kWh generated requires on average approximately 25 gallons of water to produce.” Therefore, drought could force nuclear power plants to shut down. What’s more, there are past and present safety concerns with nuclear power production. Recently, the nuclear power industry has been plagued by safety problems at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Certainly, if the costs associated with decommissioning nuclear power plants, with the management of nuclear power plants, and with the disposal of nuclear waste are considered, then both solar and wind power are substantially cheaper than nuclear power.

The GOP’s talking points on energy also claim that Democrats tax energy, but the GOP makes no mention of the tax incentives and tax credits spurred under the Democratic majority and under the Obama Administration. Consequently, the Republican Party merely politicizes and trivializes the issue of energy. Why can’t the Republican Party aggressively pursue the development of renewables? Portugal is doing it. Denmark is doing it. Iceland is doing it. Even China understands the utility of developing its renewable energy sources.

Additionally, being a conservative political party, there are energy conservation strategies that the Republican Party should show open and strong support for but don’t. For example, there are the ideas of retrofitting buildings to conserve energy, adopting greener building standards to conserve energy, or even promoting the smart grid revolution to conserve energy. Also, instead of attacking it, the Republican Party should show strong support for science in order to spur innovation and technological development to meet our energy needs.

Given the Party’s energy policy positions, the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives threatens to stifle the progress made by the Democratic majority by resurrecting an energy policy focused too much on fossil fuels. For example, Representative Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas and BP apologist, is supposedly a contender for the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Another contender for the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee is John Shimkus, a Republican from Illinois. Shimkus is a climate-change denier, and once declared that “global warming isn’t something to worry about because God said he wouldn’t destroy the Earth after Noah’s flood.”

To summarize, the Republican energy policy lacks innovation and forward-thinking, and their energy policy merely utilizes old ideas, which don’t promote energy security. To put it another way, the Republican Party’s answer to our current energy crisis is to stick their heads in the sand. Also, the failure of the Republican Party to embrace prudent energy policies is the failure to recognize the connection between population growth, rising energy demand, natural resource unavailability, and rising energy and mineral prices. More on the future price of oil via Peak Oil News and Message Boards:

Ludwig: What is your oil price outlook as this whole new world order begins to take shape?

Maxwell: The supply and demand of oil in the world today are pretty close to each other, and there shouldn’t be too much deviation in 2010 and 2011. We think prices will stay within a band roughly between $67-$87 a barrel. When it gets up toward $87, it seems to retreat, and when it gets down toward $67, it seems to take off again. That’s because supply and demand are in rough balance.

But as the economic recovery continues, as more people use oil because there are more people in the world, and China and India continue to progress with rapid expansion of cars and the roads they are offering their people, demand for oil will continue to climb between 1 and 1.5 percent per year. That, combined with the depletion of these mature oil fields we’ve talked about, will bring us to a plateau by 2015-2017, where the rising production of newer oil fields will equal the falling production of old fields.

At that stage, prices will break through this $87 boundary—in about 2013, I’m thinking. And by 2015 we’ll be up to around $130-$150 a barrel. And then by 2020, when we have 1.5 percent increases in demand each year and 0.5 percent declines on the downside, then we’ll really be in a fix. At that time, I’m looking at $300 a barrel in money of the day. But remember, by then we will have the full effects of inflation over the prior 10 years, so it would probably be something like $200 a barrel in today’s terms, but it will have a nominal price of about $300 a barrel.

POLITICS: The myth of Republican fiscal conservatism

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The Republicans regularly claim that the deficits and the national debt are the handiwork of the Democrats and Democratic policies. However, the Republicans have been and still are the architects behind our fiscal situation. They’re also a major barrier to resolving the country’s current fiscal situation. It’s amazing that Republicans can keep up this fiction. Via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:

Federal Budget Reality Check

New York Times: “The parties share blame for the current fiscal situation, but federal budget statistics show that Republican policies over the last decade, and the cost of the two wars, added far more to the deficit than initiatives approved by the Democratic Congress since 2006, giving voters reason to be skeptical of campaign promises.”

“Calculations by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other independent fiscal experts show that the $1.1 trillion cost over the next 10 years of the Medicare prescription drug program, which the Republican-controlled Congress adopted in 2003, by itself would add more to the deficit than the combined costs of the bailout, the stimulus and the health care law.”

What about the bank bailout? It earned “an 8.2 percent return over two years.” Via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:

Bank Bailout Earned 8.2% Profit

The federal government’s bailout of financial firms “provided taxpayers with higher returns than they could have made buying 30-year Treasury bonds — enough money to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission for the next two decades,” Bloomberg reports.

“The government has earned $25.2 billion on its investment of $309 billion in banks and insurance companies, an 8.2 percent return over two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That beat U.S. Treasuries, high-yield savings accounts, money-market funds and certificates of deposit. Investing in the stock market or gold would have paid off better.”

Also, Republicans who were opposed to the $787 billion stimulus bill requested funds from it. Via CBS News:

A rallying cry for many Republican candidates this fall is their fierce opposition to the $787 billion stimulus bill.

Texas Rep. Pete Sessions has been ripping the spending package, using such campaign lines as “no to budget-busting stimulus bills.”

Then there is this boast served up by Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann in an advertisement: “I fought against the Bush Wall Street bailout, the failed Pelosi trillion dollar stimulus.”

But it turns out no sooner was the ink dry on the stimulus bill than these lawmakers – and dozens of others from both parties – were reaching out behind the scenes for money to fund millions of dollars in local projects.

“When it came time to get a piece of the pie afterwards, people were writing letters by the dozens,” said John Solomon of the Center for Public Integrity.

That group says it collected nearly 2,000 letters from “scores” of Republicans and conservative Democrats requesting funds from a bill they originally opposed and many still criticize.

But that didn’t stop Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown from asking for $45.4 million in funds or stop Sessions from requesting $81 million in stimulus money for a Texas rail project, a grant he did not win.

CBS News video:

Stimulus Hypocrisy – The Center for Public Integrity says that many Republican and Democratic politicians who were outspoken in their opposition against last year’s stimulus package actually requested funds from that very same project. Armen Keteyian reports.

On the Net:

  1. The Tea Party Timeline …
  2. Critics Still Wrong on What’s Driving Deficits in Coming Years: Economic Downturn, Financial Rescues, and Bush-Era Policies Drive the Numbers
  3. POLITICS: Tea Party hypocrisy and the myth of Republican fiscal conservatism

POLITICS: Christine O’Donnell channels Sarah Palin

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“What opinions, of late, that have come from our high court, do you most object to?”

“What other Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?”

Image via the Associated Press

Tea Party-backed candidates and anti-intellectuals Christine O’Donnell, who wants to serve in the U.S. Senate, and Sarah Palin, who wants to be President of the United States, do not have the intellectual curiosity needed to be a successful U.S. politician. A lack of intellectual curiosity is a real problem for the entire Republican Party.
The United States is a very complex country that faces very complex problems. Personally, I don’t believe that the Republican Party and their inadequate tools of governance — to deregulate, to promote a small government, and to lower taxes — can solve the complex problems that our country must some how tackle. If the Republican Party is to remain relevant, then they must expand the type of remedies they use to solve the country’s problems. Furthermore, the Republican Party must acknowledge complex global problems that impact the United States such as climate change, natural resource depletion, peak oil, and domestic issues such as economic recovery and large-scale job loss. More on the Delaware Senate debate via the Telegraph.co.uk:

Miss O’Donnell, 41, who is running for the senate in Delaware, invited the question when she said she opposed activist judges, citing the recent court decision ordering an immediate halt to military discharges of gays who revealed their sexuality.

But when the moderators asked her to name a recent Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed, the Tea Party favourite was unable to name a single one. Her opponent, Chris Coons, a senior official in the state, immediately answered that he disagreed with the court’s Citizens United earlier this year which loosened controls on campaign financing.

POLITICS: Republicans only defend certain portions of the U.S. Constitution

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Image by Damien Donck

When it comes to politics, science, and social issues (e.g., the U.S. Constitution, evolution, and healthcare reform), it’s impossible to argue with people that blatantly espouse contradictions, maintain hypocritical double standards, and are content to wallow in their own willful ignorance. First, consider the issues of constitutional rights, poverty, race, and the views maintained by some Republicans and the Tea Party via the New York Times:

In the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights, critics say they hear an echo of slavery, Jim Crow and George Wallace. Tea Party activists call that ridiculous: they do not want to take the country back to the discrimination of the past, they say, they just want the states to be able to block the federal mandate on health insurance.

Still, the government programs that many Tea Party supporters call unconstitutional are the ones that have helped many black people emerge from poverty and discrimination. It is not just that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for Senate in Kentucky, said that he disagreed on principle with the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that required business owners to serve blacks. It is that many Tea Party activists believe that laws establishing a minimum wage or the federal safety net are an improper expansion of federal power.

Critics rightly note that Dr. King spoke over and over of the need for this country to acknowledge its “debt to the poor,” calling for an “economic bill of rights” that would “guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work.” In Mr. Beck’s taxonomy, this would make him a Marxist.

Also, some Republicans and Tea Party members blatantly cherry-pick the portions of the U.S. Constitution that reflects their world view. However, despite the intent of the framers of the U.S. Constitution or even the plain language of some portions within the Constitution, there’s a lot in the Constitution that some Republicans and Tea Party members would like to change. Via the Associated Press:

Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia won his seat in Congress campaigning as a strict defender of the Constitution. He carries a copy in his pocket and is particularly fond of invoking the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

But it turns out there are parts of the document he doesn’t care for — lots of them. He wants to get rid of the language about birthright citizenship, federal income taxes and direct election of senators, among others. He would add plenty of stuff, including explicitly authorizing castration as punishment for child rapists.

This hot-and-cold take on the Constitution is surprisingly common within the GOP, particularly among those like Broun who portray themselves as strict Constitutionalists and who frequently accuse Democrats of twisting the document to serve political aims.

.       .       .

Sessions, who routinely accuses Democrats of trying to subvert the Constitution and calls for respecting the document’s “plain language,” is taking a different approach with the 14th Amendment. “I’m not sure exactly what the drafters of the amendment had in mind,” he said, “but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen.”

Other widely supported Republican amendments would prohibit government ownership of private companies, bar same-sex marriage, require a two-thirds vote in Congress to raise taxes, and — an old favorite — prohibit desecration of the American flag.

.       .       .

Holding up the 2nd Amendment as sacrosanct, for example, while dismissing other parts of the Constitution is “cherry picking,” said Kende, director of Drake University’s Constitutional Law Center.

Virginia Sloan, an attorney who directs the nonpartisan Constitution Project, agreed.

“There are a lot of people who obviously don’t like income taxes. That’s a political position,” she said of criticism of the 16th Amendment, which authorized the modern federal income tax more than a century ago. “But it’s in the Constitution … and I don’t think you can go around saying something is unconstitutional just because you don’t like it.”

Sloan said that while some proposals to alter the Constitution have merit, most are little more than posturing by politicians trying to connect with voters.

“People are responding to the politics of the day, and that’s not what the framers intended,” she said. “They intended exactly the opposite — that the Constitution not be used as a political tool.”

The good news, Sloan and Kende said, is that such proposals rarely go anywhere.