Climate Bills and a Green Economy

Climate Change Showdown

June 9, 2010

The Hill - Democratic leaders are scrambling to prevent the Senate from delivering a stinging slap to President Barack Obama on climate change.

They have offered a vote on a bill they dislike in the hopes of avoiding a loss on legislation Obama hates.

The president is threatening to veto a resolution from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would ban the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating carbon emissions.

But if the president were forced to use his veto to prevent legislation emerging from a Congress in which his own party enjoys substantial majorities, it would be a humiliation for him and for Democrats on Capitol Hill.

So Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and other Democratic leaders are doing what they can to stop it.

They are floating the possibility of voting on an alternative measure from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from the coal state of West Virginia, which they previously refused to grant floor time, Senate sources say.

A spokeswoman for Reid declined to comment on the offer. But Democrats on Wednesday thought it was good enough to win a crucial vote on the Republican resolution.

Murkowski, ranking member on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is using the Congressional Review Act, an element of the Contract With America, which allows Congress to overturn executive branch regulations with simple majority votes in both chambers. The Review Act expedites a floor vote.

Republicans don’t have the two-thirds majority they would need in both chambers to overturn an Obama veto. But Republicans say passing the resolution through one chamber would be a big win.

“Anything close to half the Senate says this is a congressional responsibility and not the administration’s, that’s a strong message from the country to the president,” said Senate GOP conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), referring to the EPA plan to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Democrats suffered a serious setback Tuesday when Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Commerce panel, announced he would vote for Murkowski’s resolution. He joined Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (La.), who are co-sponsors of the measure.

If Republicans keep their conference unified, that would give them 45 votes for Murkowski’s proposal, with a handful Democrats, such as Sens. Mark Pryor (Ark.), Evan Bayh (Ind.) and Jim Webb (Va.), in play as potential allies.

Rockefeller said EPA regulation of carbon could have a “devastating” impact on West Virginia. He threw his support to Murkowski after his leaders denied him a vote on his alternative bill resolution, which would prevent the EPA curbing carbon emissions for two years from stationary sources, such as power plants and factories.

Murkowski’s resolution is broader, blocking EPA regulation of cars and trucks, not just industrial plants.

A Murkowski aide said the senator would prefer to focus on exempting stationary sources but Democratic leaders refused to allow a vote on a narrow plan, such as Rockefeller’s.

“The Congressional Review Act is like going nuclear, but you have to go nuclear— otherwise you can’t get around the opposition of the Democratic leadership,” said Robert Dillon, Murkowski’s spokesman.

Murkowski initially offered a one-year “time out” on EPA restricting emissions from stationary industrial sources, but Democratic leaders did not give it floor time, Dillon said.

Rockefeller now says a vote on his proposal is a distinct possibility, even though it would present a major obstacle to Obama’s plan to restrict emissions via EPA regulation.

“There well could be” a vote on his resolution, Rockefeller said.

Unlike Murkowski’s measure, Rockefeller’s bill will need 60 votes to overcome procedural obstacles. Several pivotal Democratic senators are now leaning against Murkowski’s resolution. They are Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Byron Dorgan (N.D.) and Kent Conrad (N.D.).

Environmental group lobbyists expressed confidence Wednesday that Murkowski’s resolution would not garner 51 votes.

“I think we’re looking pretty good on this,” said David Hamilton, director of global warming and energy programs at the Sierra Club. “It’s not really about preserving the right of Congress, it’s about killing climate legislation.”

Passage of the resolution would have dealt a severe blow to Obama’s plan to pass climate change legislation this year, he said.

Reid could hold a floor vote on Rockefeller’s resolution in the fall, after the fate of comprehensive energy and climate legislation is decided this summer.

If Murkowski’s resolution passes, it faces an uphill struggle in the House.

Democratic and Republican leadership aides say Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would not be required to schedule a vote on the resolution.

House Republicans would need a discharge petition to force action. A resolution sponsored by Rep. Joe Barton (Texas), ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, has 120 Republican cosponsors. A second resolution sponsored by Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.) has 50 cosponsors, including a significant number of Democrats.

Flashback: Rolling Stone Exposes Goldman Sachs and the Carbon Credit Scam

July 1, 2009

Daniel Indiviglio, Examiner.com - This post has one purpose and one only — to convince you to follow the link below and read a powerful, eye-opening expose. Even Michael Savage spent an hour on it this week. No, the artitcle not in a conservative journal like the National Review. It’s from the left-leaning, anti-establishment “Rolling Stone Magazine.”

The Stone article is the story about Goldman Sachs and how they have been smack in the middle of every billion and trillion dollar bubble burst in recent memory.... And how Goldman Sachs is about to engineer the next great bubble — the potential trillion dollar carbon cap and credit market (which doesn’t even exist, yet.)

The piece is titled, “The Great American Bubble Machine” with a subtitle of “From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression.”

Here’s a link to a compact summary and critique of the Stone article from "the Atlantic" (see story below).

The author is Matt Taibbi who is a “Rolling Stone” contributing editor. His writing style is not in the mode of business chatter. Taibbi writes in rough street talk as he strips Goldman Sachs veneer. Sample of his writing:

The opening paragraph, “the first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it is everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

On the housing bubble (No. 3 of six covered by the author):

“...[A]t the dawn of a new millennium, they [mortgage dealers] ...started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar. None of that would be possible without investment bankers like Goldman Sachs who created vehicles to package those shitty mortgages and sell them en masse to unsuspecting insurance companies and pension funds.”

And he leaves the best for last. The global warming scam passed by Congress last week. Goldman Sachs is in the middle of it, as usual — a potential trillion dollar sure thing. He also whacks Former Vice President Al Gore who will profit from the cap-and-trade plan through his company, Generation Investment Management, — Gore is joined by three former Goldman Sachs heads in their carbon offsets business.

Strongly recommended. Sit back and get ready for a great read (if you buy the print version now, or view later online.)

Is Goldman Sachs the Root of All Evil?

June 26, 2009

Daniel Indiviglio, The Atlantic - The July issue of Rolling Stone has an article about a different type of rock star: the Goldman Sachs investment banker. The article, called "The Great American Bubble Machine," was written by Matt Taibbi. In it, he viciously attacks Goldman Sachs through a series of arguments, blaming the bank for engineering virtually every bubble, and pseudo-bubble, that has plagued the economy over the past hundred or so years.

...It's an amusing read, so you might want to pick up a copy. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was pretty nonpartisan and well-researched. I found myself agreeing with a fair amount of the article as well, but I think it ventures a little too far out into conspiracy theory land.

The article essentially has seven sections. Here's my interpretation of the general idea of each:

Intro
- Goldman's bankers, past and present, are pervasive in every aspect of leadership and power in the nation, if not world.

Bubble #1: The Great Depression
- Goldman was one of the banks running a sort of Ponzi scheme during the Great Depression that helped cause it.

Bubble #2: Tech Stocks
- Goldman was the biggest underwriter to push eventually worthless technology stocks into the market through initial public offerings.

Bubble #3: The Housing Craze
- Goldman was involved in creating and selling collateralized debt obligations, one of the securities that helped create the financial crisis.

Bubble #4: $4 A Gallon
- Goldman helped to ignite commodity prices, which led to oil prices going way up.

Bubble #5: Rigging the Bailout
- Goldman had alumni in place throughout the government to make sure it benefited from the bailout.

Bubble #6: Global Warming
- Goldman is pushing cap and trade because it stands to make money hand over fist once carbon trading begins ...