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How Republicans Made Climate Change America’s Most Divisive Political Issue

GOP-led climate denial threatens the future of the entire world.

2015-09-15 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source: AlterNet

Author: Reynard Loki

Emphasis Mine

“Human kind …cannot bear very much reality.” —T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

It’s been over a year since polling data found that climate change has emerged as America’s most polarizing political issue. The survey, conducted by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, found that the divisiveness characterizing the climate debate is so strong it has eclipsed such longstanding hot-button issues as gun control, evolution, the death penalty and even abortion. And with President Obama recently making an historic visit to Alaska to speak about the urgency of acting on climate change just as Republicans strive to derail his climate agenda, there is little sign that the climate gap separating the nation’s two major parties will be bridged any time soon.

In 2009, the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans’ views about the state of science and its impact on society. They concluded that “the strongest correlate of opinion on climate change is partisan affiliation.” Two-thirds of Republicans (67 percent) believe that global warming isn’t actually happening — or if it is, it’s not from man-made causes. By contrast, most Democrats (64 percent) say the planet is heating up mainly due to humans.

Climate change should not be this polarizing: Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s climate arm, reported that scientists are more than 95 percent certain that the primary cause of global warming is human activity.

American Pipe Dream

When it comes to the general election, the climate issue poses an electoral problem for the Republicans: A majority of Americans say they are more likely to support political candidates who promise to tackle climate change, according to a recent poll. Conducted by the New York Times, Stanford University and Resources for the Future, the poll found that two-thirds of Americans say they would support candidates who promised to take action to combat climate change. Almost half of Republicans (48 percent) say the same thing. The poll also found that a solid majority of U.S. voters, 83 percent, believe global warming poses a serious threat to the world.

While there are climate deniers across the globe, this anti-science stance is a particularly American phenomenon. In the U.S., elected GOP climate deniers are commonplace; several of them are seeking the presidency. It’s a different story in other industrualized nations. “In Europe, climate change denial is seen as the preserve of the crackpot,” writes London-based finance and economics writer Imogen Reed. “Few political figures or members of the news media would dream of mentioning it, as doing so often receives the same contempt from the European public as denying the Holocaust.”

Even citizens of emerging countries are more attuned to the realities of global warming. The 2010 Pew Global Attitudes Project found that the majority of consumers in China (91 percent), India (73 percent) and South Korea (71 percent) are willing to pay higher prices to address climate change. Not so in America, where a mere 38 percent of consumers would do the same. “In this sentiment, people in the U.S. are out of step with the world,” the report’s authors write. “In most of the countries surveyed people are more likely than Americans to be willing to pay for efforts to slow global warming.”

“In this sentiment, people in the US are out of step with the world,” according to the Pew survey. “In most of the countries surveyed people are more likely than Americans to be willing to pay for efforts to slow global warming.”{4} – See more at: http://www.justmeans.com/blogs/if-you-had-to-choose-solve-the-climate-cr…

The GOP’s climate denial, buoyed by a massive social, financial and political machine oiled by conservative think-tanks and activist groups, has created a potentially disastrous situation in which climate change — arguably the most pressing global issue of our time — has also become the most polarizing topic in the nation whose leadership is absolutely critical to finding a solution. While Obama committed to an 83 percent reduction in carbon emissions on 2005 levels by 2050, that goal faces a massive hurdle: a rich and powerful Republican machine that seeks to dismantle the president’s climate agenda. With the two major parties locked in a seemingly intractable adversarial stance on the topic, truly meaningful action seems almost like a pipe dream.

If it is a dream, it’s because the GOP refuses to accept reality. The Carsey poll found that party-line gaps on science-related questions “equal or surpass those of historically divisive social issues.” The division is primarily driven by the Republicans, 70 percent of whom don’t believe in global warming. This position stands in stark contrast to the world’s scientists, 97 percent of whom agree that global warming has occurred in the last century. Lawrence Hamilton, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire who conducted the Carsey poll, wrote that the findings represent “a changing political landscape in which scientific ideas and information that are accepted by most scientists are, nevertheless, highly controversial.”

Media Misinformation

The controversy is fueled in part by misinformation coming from the media. Last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released its analysis of 2013 climate coverage by the three major American cable news networks. The researchers confirmed what most environmentalists had already guessed: Fox News leads the pack in climate misinformation. The right-wing mouthpiece presented misleading statements in almost three out of every four (72 percent) of its climate-related segments. Bucking that trend is Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, who has acknowledged anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change, though he is one of very few voices at the network to do so.

See: http://www.alternet.org/environment/climate-change-more-divisive-abortion-blame-republicans?akid=13476.123424._E9pRg&rd=1&src=newsletter1042399&t=2

‘This Is About Race’: What You Need to Know About the Latest Ferguson Report

2015-09-14 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source: takepart.com

Author:Rebecca McCray

Emphasis Mine

The shooting death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer was the flash point for a critical national discussion about race, policing, and the unequal and selective application of justice. Following the wave of grief, protests, and calls for change, St. Louis and the region were placed under the public microscope: Department of Justice reports on Ferguson, released in March and June 2015, found that the local municipal court targeted poor, black community members with its harsh fines and fees and that the local police department routinely violated citizens’ rights, and Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon ordered an independent commission to look into the “underlying root causes that led to the unrest” after Brown’s death.

On Monday, the Ferguson Commission released its report—the latest product of the ongoing national discussion. At 197 pages, Forward Through Ferguson: A Path Toward Racial Equity puts racial justice at the forefront of its recommendations for addressing systemic inequities in the realms of education, policing, the court system, and the broader community.

Unlike the two reports on Ferguson issued by the Department of Justice, this report is largely written in plain language to make it accessible to community members as well as policy makers and experts. While the authors indicate that their findings are intended to be “useful in directly impacting policy,” the report calls itself the “people’s report.”

Acknowledging that discussing race “makes a lot of people uncomfortable,” the report’s authors insist that its readers “make no mistake: This is about race.” To avoid talking about race, the report’s authors establish in the introduction, would be to avoid making “true, long-term, sustainable progress.”

From recommending that the minimum wage be raised to $15 an hour to calling for a better public transit system to consolidating the 81 municipal courts in the St. Louis area, the report is nothing if not ambitious. The primary focal points include citizen–law enforcement relations, child well-being and education equity, economic inequity and opportunity, and racial equity and reconciliation.

It is so broad-reaching in its recommendations—featuring 189 “calls to action”—that some in the community have questioned its practical impact. The recommendations seem more likely to be embraced in St. Louis County, which is 24 percent African American and mostly Democratic, than in the rest of the state, where Republicans hold six of the state’s other seven seats in Congress.

“What this group has done over the last year has just put into written form what so many people have already voiced for years about change that needs to happen in the St. Louis region, but identifying a problem and fixing it are different,” Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman, told The New York Times. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Missouri state senator, also told the Times, “The practicality of getting any of this done is close to null.”

See:http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/09/14/about-race-what-you-need-know-about-latest-ferguson-report?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2015-09-14

The Moral Challenge Bernie Sanders Brought to the House Falwell Built

2015-09-14 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source:ourfuture

Author:Issah J. Poole

Emphasis Mine

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Monday went to a pillar of the religious right – Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. – to make the case that fighting for economic justice is as moral an undertaking as such cornerstone issues for Christian conservatives as opposing abortion.

“It would, I think, be hard for anyone in this room to make the case that the United States today is a just society or anything close to a just society,” he said in his speech to packed convocation at the school founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, known for forming the Moral Majority political organization and leading its fervent crusades against gay rights, reproductive choice and other progressive positions on social issues. “There is no justice when the top one-tenth of 1 percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. There is no justice when all over this country people are working longer hours for lower wages, while 58 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent.”

Nor is there justice, he said, when “low-income and working-class mothers are forced to be separated from their new babies one or two weeks after giving birth” because “the United States is the only major country on earth that does not provide paid family and medical leave,” or when “thousands of people in this country die each year because they don’t have health insurance and don’t get to a doctor when they should.”

“I am not a theologian or an expert on the Bible or a Catholic,” he said at one point. “I am just a U.S. senator from the small state of Vermont. But I agree with Pope Francis when he says, ‘The current financial crisis… originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person! We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose.’”

Sanders early in his address quoted the words of Jesus Christ in the gospel of Matthew (as rendered in the New International Version, a Bible translation popular with conservatives): “So in everything, do to others what you would have them to do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” He closed with a challenge to students seeking to discern how to apply that scripture and other themes of the Gospel to their political engagement: “I would hope very much that as part of that discussion and part of that learning process, some of you will conclude that, if we are honest in striving to be a moral and just society, it is imperative that we have the courage to stand with the poor, to stand with working people, and when necessary, take on very powerful and wealthy people whose greed, in my view, is doing this country enormous harm.”

In a question-and-answer session afterward, Liberty University Vice President for Spiritual Development David Nasser sought to show common ground with Sanders on making eradicating the vestiges of racism and racial inequality from the society a top priority. But when Nasser quoted presidential candidate Mike Huckabee in saying that racism “is a sin problem, not a skin problem,” Sanders reminded him that it took a Supreme Court, a civil rights movement and “public policy” to end segregation and lay the groundwork for improved race relations.

Sanders also challenged people who fight for “the protection of the unborn” to join him in the fight against threats to the already-born as a result of budget decisions being made by Republicans in Congress, such as proposals that he said would cause 27 million people to lose access to health care, cut billions of dollars in foods assistance to low-income families and cut funding for college aid for low-income students by $90 billion – while giving $250 billion in tax relief over the next 10 years to the top 0.2 percent of wealth holders.

“I don’t think that’s a moral budget,” he said.

See: http://ourfuture.org/20150914/the-moral-challenge-bernie-sanders-brought-to-the-house-falwell-built

Hillary 1, GOP nil…

2015-09-14 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source:bluenationreview.com

Author:Shawn Drury

Emphasis Mine

Despite what Republican presidential candidates may say, Hillary Clinton did not do anything illegal with her emails while Secretary of State. And she’s definitely not being investigated for doing anything illegal.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department responded to a request by a conservative group that wanted to review messages Clinton may have sent about a video the State Department broadcast in Pakistan. The response read, in part:

“There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision — she appropriately could have done so even if she were working on a government server. Under policies issue both by the National Archives and Records Administration and the State Department, individual officers and employees are permitted and expected to exercise judgment to determine what constitutes a federal record.”

One would think this would close the door on any subsequent inquiries, but despite facts to the contrary, Republicans continue to deny climate change and promote conspiracy theories about Benghazi. As such, the Justice Department’s findings won’t stop a senate committee from calling former Clinton aides to testify about how she managed her email.

Thank goodness they’re focusing on the important issues of the day.

See:http://bluenationreview.com/justice-department-finds-in-hillary-clintons-favor-on-email-question/

If the Anti-Abortion Frenzy Were Actually about Abortion . . . What a Serious Anti-Abortion Movement Would Actually Look Like

Forty years after Roe v. Wade, the Pro-life movement is a radical failure by the very metrics that abortion foes cite to inspire their base. What would a real anti-abortion movement look like?

2015-09-14 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source:valerietarico.com

Author:valerie tarico

Emphasis Mine

Forty years after Roe v. Wade, the Pro-life movement is a radical failure by the very metrics that abortion foes cite to inspire their base. What would a real anti-abortion movement look like?

U.S. women have obtained nearly 53 millionlegal abortions since 1973. That is because self-described abortion foes ignore or oppose the most powerful strategies for making abortion obsolete. The anti-abortion movement is dominated by religious fundamentalists whose determination to control sex—who has it, with whom, for what purpose—takes priority over their desire to reduce abortions. This focus has seriously interfered with eliminating the supply and demand for abortion services.

If the top priority of the Pro-life movement actually were to end abortion, both tactics and results would be radically different. Imagine a fictional person whose chief life goal is to reduce abortion by, say, 90 percent over the next twenty years. This person might devoutly believe that every fertilized egg has a soul and that fetal demise is a tragedy; or he/she might simply think that abortion is an expensive, invasive, emotionally-complex medical procedure that should be made obsolete. Either way, this person believes that moving society beyond abortion is the most valuable cause to which he or she can devote a lifetime.

It might come as a surprise to the audience of today’s anti-abortion theater—but our protagonist’s goal is attainable. Armed with just the information and technologies available today, someone genuinely committed to reducing abortion by 90 percent in 20 years could map out a plan to get there—and even make people’s lives better in the process.

Skeptical? Let me map it out. When someone gets serious about building an effective beyond-abortion campaign the strategic plan will look something like this:

Serious beyond-abortion advocates will ensure that all Americans have the knowledge and means to prevent the kind of pregnancies that lead to abortion.

Since many parents had poor role models for birds and bees conversations, serious anti-abortion activists will promote programs that help parents to overcome discomfort and create healthy, age-appropriate conversations about genitalia, sexual health, sexual pleasure, intimacy and reproduction.

Conversations between children and trusted adults delay the onset of sexual activity while increasing the percent of sexually-active teens who protect themselves against unwanted pregnancy (and so the need for abortion). Therefore, serious anti-abortion activists will help parents build trust and credibility on sexual matters. Despite the discomfort of aging traditionalists, who might prefer to avoid frank conversations about sex, serious anti-abortion activists will keep their eye on their prize, which is fewer abortions.

Since preventing abortion is a higher priority for them than promoting chastity, serious anti-abortion activists will promote open, honest conversations about sex within religious communities.

Approximately 85% of Christian youth have sex before marriage and the rate of abortion is as high among Christian believers as non-Christians, so beyond-abortion advocates will work diligently to ensure that Christian young people are equipped to manage their fertility and thus initiate pregnancy only when they are prepared to carry forward a new life.

Because beyond-abortion activists are single-mindedly intent on reducing abortion, they will take to heart the social science research showing that shaming—for example through abstinence-only sermons, books and classes—drives down intimate conversations and preparations for safer sex while doing little to delay or reduce more impulsive sexual activity. They will recognize that guilt and shame about normal sexual urges can lead to denial, wishful-thinking, church-avoidance and impulsive high-risk behaviors. They are also committed to helping young people understand and manage sexual desire and pleasure rather than simply trying to suppress those urges, which has been shown not to work. They will challenge old attitudes that treat youth contraception as “premeditated sin” or pregnancy as a punishment and will instead help young Christians to explore the spirit and purpose of ancient chastity laws. They will develop faith-compatible programs like Our Whole Lives, which was created by the Unitarian Church to integrate thoughtful, responsible family planning with other spiritual and moral wisdom.

Serious beyond-abortion advocates will treat the school system as part of the sexual education “village.”

To quote a research summary from Advocates for Youth: “Evaluations of comprehensive sex education programs show that these programs can help youth delay onset of sexual activity, reduce the frequency of sexual activity, reduce number of sexual partners, and increase condom and contraceptive use . . . teens who received comprehensive sex education were 50 percent less likely to experience pregnancy than those who received abstinence-only education.”

Recognizing that some families struggle with addiction, mental illness and other challenges that keep kids from getting excellent health information and care and recognizing that some children suffer unwanted sexual contact at home, serious anti-abortion activists will support school efforts to fill knowledge gaps. They will invest in accountable, effective sexual health curricula demonstrated to delay sexual initiation and reduce risky sexual behavior (as measured by self-report, STIs, pregnancy and abortion). They will also lobby for age-appropriate education that starts long before youth become sexually active. When public dollars are limited, they will fund these materials and programs through charitable giving. Beyond-abortion advocates will insist that family planning be integrated into educational and career planning, not because this helps students attain their goals but because preventing surprise pregnancy prevents abortion.

Serious beyond-abortion activists will recognize that attempts to restore traditional gender roles and the traditional family formation sequence (education-marriage-sex-childbearing) have largely failed. They will also recognize that abortion prevention must adapt to a shifting pattern of pair bonding and family formation. Expanding beyond abstinence-till-marriage, they will deploy whatever tools are necessary to reduce the pregnancies that lead to abortion.

For over 20 years, advocates for child well-being promoted a return to traditional marriage as a means to ensure that parents get ready before getting pregnant. Lead advocate, Isobel Sawhill (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, Generation Unbound) concedes that the changes in family structure are likely irreversible and that new methods are needed to support well-timed pregnancy and family flourishing. To reduce abortions, serious anti-abortion activists will adopt a pragmatic approach to intentional childbearing and family well-being, including community services for young families and access to better birth control.

Serious anti-abortion activists will drive a technology revolution in contraception—from every-day and every-time birth control methods to long-acting contraceptives like IUDs and implants that radically reduce unintended pregnancy and abortion.

Long-acting contraceptives are the most dramatically-effective means to date of reducing demand for abortion. A St. Louis program that offered top-tier, long-acting contraceptives to 9,000 women and youth dropped unwanted pregnancy and abortion to less than half the local average. A Colorado program that provided long-acting contraceptives to sexually-active teens reduced teen pregnancy and abortion by 40 and 35 percent respectively. Serious anti-abortion activists will challenge the false perception that these methods work to end rather than prevent pregnancy and instead promote the science-based awareness that these methods are true contraceptives with bonus health benefits. They will work to reform liability practices that undermine development and distribution of better birth control.

Serious anti-abortion activists will ensure that young and poor women in marginalized communities have access to excellent reproductive health services free of charge, since these are the youth and women with the highest rates of unplanned pregnancy.

While unsought pregnancy and abortion are declining for middle and upper middle income families, they are on the increase among those least able to absorb the impact of another child. But making excellent contraception available to teens at no cost can drop the abortion rate by three quarters. As is, Title X family planning services prevent 2.2 million unplanned pregnancies yearly, without which the abortion rate would be two-thirds higher.

Drawing on tested models like A Step Ahead in Memphis, serious anti-abortion activists will create programs that recognize the complexity and financial challenges of life in poor communities. These programs will provide rapid response, single-visit services and they will systematically eliminate financial barriers to better birth control. They will address anxiety (and contraceptive avoidance) that is due to forced sterilizations and other bad history and ensure that women are freely able to choose and switch contraceptive methods, as well as have them removed as desired.

Serious anti-abortion activists will insist that medical practices be updated so that family planning becomes a routine part of adolescent medicine, family practice, prenatal care, and hospital labor and delivery services.

Women and men are most likely to engage in effective pregnancy prevention when primary care providers and other doctors routinely assess family plans and fertility management as a part of all medical care. Serious anti-abortion activists will promote innovative and effective programs that treat pregnancy intentions like one more vital sign for both healthy and chronically-ill patients. They will ensure that continuing education programs teach doctors how (and why) to include family planning conversations in prenatal care and birthing services. They will monitor hospitals and other care systems to ensure that the best fertility management options are available on patient request.

As both unintended pregnancy and abortion decline, serious anti-abortion activists will ensure that any woman who does end up with a surprise pregnancy will never be driven by financial or educational or career concerns to terminate that pregnancy.

Forty percent of women seeking abortions cite financial concerns as a factor in their decision to end a pregnancy. Serious anti-abortion activists will tackle structural barriers to broad family prosperity including policies that create income inequality and cause families to fall out of the middle class. They champion family-friendly workplace norms and public policies including maternity leave, paid family leave, affordable childcare, and mom-friendly education alternatives for youth and women who decide to carry forward a surprise pregnancy.

Serious anti-abortion advocates will work to minimize maternal health problems and fetal anomalies by promoting pre-conception care and prenatal care and by ensuring that fertility management is integrated into care for chronic conditions such as diabetes and HIV.

Only a small percent of abortion is triggered by threats to maternal health and life, or by fetal anomalies, but serious anti-abortion activists will work to prevent these difficult situations. They will raise awareness that preconception care can prevent some fetal anomalies and maternal health risks and they will make sure that medically-compromised women receive integrated care so that high-risk pregnancies occur only when a woman or couple actively wants a baby.

With an eye to the future, serious anti-abortion activists will aggregate $200 million in philanthropic dollars, public research funds and investment capital to develop better birth control for men and take it to market.

A man is involved in every pregnancy and men are involved in many abortion decisions, but today male contraceptives lag behind female contraceptives by almost a century. As of 2015, the best reversible method for women has an annual pregnancy rate of 1 in 2000, while the best for men (the condom) has a 1 in 6 annual pregnancy rate. Serious anti-abortion activists will recognize that giving men better means to manage their fertility will result in fewer surprise pregnancies and fewer abortions.

Forty years after Roe v. Wade, the Pro-life movement is a radical failure by the very metrics that abortion foes cite to inspire their base—or would be if the goal were actually to eliminate abortion. Unintended pregnancy and abortion are in decline, thanks to a number of cultural and economic factors and better birth control. But American care providers still serve over a million women seeking abortions annually and over 900,000 of these women terminate a pregnancy.

Self-described abortion foes in Congress pass copy-cat TRAP laws (targeted restrictions of abortion providers) that drive up the price of abortion care. Other self-proclaimed abortion foes have launched a multi-year “yuck factor” media campaign aimed at triggering moral and physical disgust. Still others harry women and care providers, forcing them to walk gauntlets of posters and prayers at clinic entrances or stalking and doxing them online.

Indeed, self-proclaimed foes have so stigmatized abortion care that most of us have no idea which third of our female friends have terminated ill-conceived pregnancies.

But, if a half century of evidence from around the globe is to be believed, no amount of shaming or harassing women, nurses and doctors—however well-organized and sustained—will produce anything close to a 90 percent reduction in abortion. Nor will another 800 restrictive laws like those passed in the last twenty years, even if they criminalize women and providers. Such approaches may force some women to carry forward unwanted pregnancies, but their effect is limited by the power of human desperation. Extreme restrictions and stigma in Eastern Europe filled orphanages with unwanted babies but also filled backrooms with bleeding women. In pre-Roe America, compassionate clergy became weary of burying dead parishioners and helped to create an underground railroad to safe. Around the globe, 22 million women each year undergo a back-alley abortion rather than carry yet another unwanted pregnancy to term and over 20,000 pay with their lives. More restrictions, more disgust, more stigma—these may feel righteous to some, but at best they produce an impasse that destroys dreams and hopes and even lives and that satisfies no one.

By contrast, we know what it would take to make most abortion simply go away. Ironically, the upstream solution lies in the common ground between those who oppose abortion care and those who support it—the value we all place on empowering young people to flourish, and parents to love and care for their children. The only question is whether an anti-abortion movement will emerge that takes this challenge seriously.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author ofTrusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

See:http://valerietarico.com/2015/09/11/if-the-anti-abortion-frenzy-were-actually-about-abortion-what-a-serious-anti-abortion-movement-would-actually-look-like/

Obama Has Done More for Clean Energy Than You Think

The Obama administration has left a clean-power legacy that will stand as facts on the ground in the fight against climate change.

2015-09-12 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source:Scientific American

Author: David Biello

Emphasis Mine

A blue-black field of 5.2 million solar panels tilted toward the Arizona sun might just be the Hoover Dam project of the Great Recession. The Agua Caliente Solar Power Project hosts nearly 300 megawatts of silicon photovoltaics (PV) that turn sunshine into electricity. That made the Yuma County facility the largest working solar farm in the world when it opened in April 2014. But when it comes to mega–energy projects, Agua Caliente has competition, including four of the world’s largest solar-power plants to use the sun’s heat and one of the largest wind farms on the planet. And its all thanks to billions in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO).

The most important thing the Obama administration has done to combat climate change may not end up being raised fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks or even its Clean Power Plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The most important thing may turn out to be the loans that enabled large power facilities that run on sunshine or Earth’s heat to break ground out west, wind farms to be built from coast to coast and construction of the nation’s first brewery for biofuels not made from food—as well as a host of other advanced manufacturing energy projects.

The loan program got its start a full decade ago with the Energy Policy Act of 2005—legislation that aimed to provide incentives to produce energy in the U.S., whether by drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico or building new power plants. Only companies with established credit histories, however, like utility giant Southern Co., could take advantage of the loan program created by that bill. Companies behind new, alternative energy projects, like electric-carmaker Tesla Motors, typically did not have the benefit of such track records, however. As a result, almost no one applied for a loan.

So in 2009, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to deal with the economic fallout of the Great Recession, the loan program got new terms. Most importantly, the federal government agreed to take more of the financial risk for renewable energy projects. The result was a stampede of applications. “There were hundreds of applications and 15 people working as hard as they possibly could when I got there,” recalls Jonathan Silver, who became head of the LPO in 2009 and is now a managing director at Tax Equity Advisors and a clean-energy investor and consultant. “We were building this car as we drove it, which is not easy.”

The loan program still required innovative technology, defined as “new or significantly improved technologies as compared with commercial technologies” (with commercial defined as used in three or more other projects over more than five years), but suddenly had a lot more money, specifically some $16 billion to loan before September 2011 on top of the $56 billion already available. The program also had the full expertise of the Energy Department to evaluate projects and help new technologies overcome the hurdles to commercialization, often dubbed the “valley of death” by those in the finance and tech industries. Those innovations range from the basic layout of solar farms of more than 100 megawatts to storing sunshine in molten salts and using lens to concentrate it and improve photovoltaic efficiency.

Between March 2009 and August 2010, when the window closed for new applications, the loan program received hundreds of submissions. By September 2011, the $16 billion had been loaned to various renewable energy projects. An additional $16 billion in loans, guarantees or commitments have been made since then, including $8 billion to help build the nation’s first new nuclear reactors in more than 30 years in Georgia.

The biggest challenge the loan program faced may not have been public criticism of failed deals like Solyndra, Fisker Automotive and Beacon Power or technology letdowns such as the Ivanpah solar-thermal power plant producing less electricity than expected. Rather, the biggest challenge came from within the Obama administration itself, particularly the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which stood athwart greater ambition. For example, one deal, dubbed SolarStrong, would have loaned $344 million to put solar panels on housing on military bases across the country. But OMB axed the deal because budget rules require it to assume that the Department of Defense might not have the appropriations to repay the loan in future decades. “At which point, all you can do is go home and have a scotch,” Silver recalls.

“Military appropriations are not considered permanent appropriations,” explains Peter Davidson, who oversaw the LPO from 2013 to June of this year. “It’s the environment we have to work in, we try and do what we can.”

In the end, the LPO’s successes helped kill off some of its own portfolio of projects. Building utility-scale solar photovoltaic plants like Agua Caliente and Antelope Valley helped render obsolete solar thermal power plants like Ivanpah and Solana as silicon technology improved dramatically and costs dropped whereas the price of steel and glass remained relatively high. Large photovoltaic installations also helped make solar panels so cheap that it drove companies like Solyndra—whose business model relied on PV remaining expensive—into bankruptcy. “We were simply financing the best deals available,” Silver says, noting that the program could not independently seek out good projects. “The single thing that bound all these applications together was not their size or technology or geography or financing structure. The single thing that bound them together is that they applied.”

Nate Silver: ‘Stop Comparing Donald Trump And Bernie Sanders’

2015-09-12 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source: Daily Kos

Author:Lawrence Lewis

Emphasis Mine

Nate Silver took a look at the media’s comparisons of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and found them lacking. He makes ten points, each of which are blockquoted below and followed by my own reactions, but you’ll have to click through to read the entirety of Silver’s analysis.

1. Trump is “winning” (for now), and Sanders isn’t.

Silver thinks there is reason to believe Trump’s lead won’t hold. I’ve tended to agree, assuming that as the ridiculously large GOP field gets narrowed, supporters of mainstream Republicans will coalesce around another mainstream Republican. But I’m no longer sure that will matter. Ben Carson is now second in many polls, and when you add his numbers to those of Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz, it appears that there may be enough unhinged GOP voters to carry Trump, after all. This shouldn’t frighten Democrats now eyeing the head-to-head general election polls. Most Americans know the personality, but not his politics. Most Americans don’t like bigotry and misogyny. My guess is that if Trump is the GOP nominee, Democrats could bring back Michael Dukakis and still win.

2. Sanders is campaigning on substantive policy positions, and Trump is largely campaigning on the force of his personality.

This is the big one, and if we ended up with a Sanders/Trump general election, it would become even more apparent. Trump is an ignorant blow-hole, and Sanders has a long, deep, and wide history of substantively analyzing and taking stands on issues. The guy is a wonk. Trump is an affectation.

3. Sanders is a career politician; Trump isn’t.

To the GOP base, that’s a big plus for Trump. For voters who want a president that knows what he or she is doing, that’s a big plus for Sanders. It’s also another fundamental difference between the two men. Sanders is the real deal, while Trump is a fake tan and a bad toupee.There’s more below.

4. Trump is getting considerably more media attention.

This says everything about the media. Silver looked at Yahoo News and found that over the past month, Trump has received more media “hits” than Sanders and Hillary Clinton combined. Of course, the media find it much easier to cover personalities than policies. It’s their basic mode of operation.

5. Sanders has a much better “ground game.”

Sanders has a professional campaign apparatus in place, while Trump is more of a TV phenomenon. That can make a huge difference when it comes time for people to vote.

6. Sanders holds policy positions of a typical liberal Democrat; Trump’s are all over the place.

Sanders is not some whacky outsider trying to elbow into the Democratic base: He actually supports Democratic Party positions overwhelmingly often. This means base Democrats will like him. He even voted the same as Hillary Clinton 93 percent of the time when they served in the Senate together. Trump’s positions align well with the GOP base on some issues, but are anathema on others. That will make it easier for Democrats to want to vote for Sanders, and harder for Republicans to want to vote for Trump.

7. Sanders’s support divides fairly clearly along ideological and demographic lines; Trump’s doesn’t.

This one may better serve Trump, whose support is ideologically widespread among Republicans. Sanders appeals primarily to white, liberal Democrats. That’s not a secret, and it’s where Sanders will have to expand his support if he’s going to make a serious run at Clinton for the nomination. However, polls do show that Democratic voters who don’t prefer Sanders as their first choice are fine with him as their second choice. As is the case in reverse—it’s not that Clinton’s supporters don’t like Sanders, it’s just that they like Clinton more.

8. Sanders’s candidacy has clear historical precedents; they’re less obvious for Trump.

Silver compares Sanders to previous insurgent Democratic candidates, such as Bill Bradley, Howard Dean and Eugene McCarthy. They all gave the mainstream candidate a scare, but ultimately fell short. But Trump is more openly hostile to the GOP than were previous insurgent Republican candidates. Given how much the GOP base hates all things government, that may actually help Trump in the primaries.

9. Trump is running against a field of 16 candidates; Sanders is running against one overwhelming front-runner.

The diluted Republican field has prevented the GOP establishment from rallying behind just one of their own, and has helped Trump jump to his current lead. I will add that it also means Trump’s lead is a relatively small plurality, which may or may not grow as other candidates drop out. See my comment on Silver’s point No. 1. But were the Democratic field as diluted, Sanders might also enjoy a plurality lead.

10. Trump is a much greater threat to his party establishment.

Sanders is an outsider. But because he has aligned with Democrats so often, if he were to win the nomination the Democratic establishment base wouldn’t have a lot of trouble aligning behind him. The Republican establishment would have a much tougher time rallying behind Trump. His open hostility to the party, his animosity toward right wing media, and his apostasy on some key Republican issues means that if he did win the nomination, the GOP establishment might not even mind if he lost. The GOP establishment does not like not being in command. As Silver says:

A Trump nomination would be more of an existential threat to the Republican establishment.

Could Trump win without it? Not likely. It’s even less likely given his inattention to the ground game, which would make him particularly dependent on the party’s. Sanders would have the entire Democratic establishment behind him and he’d have his own ground apparatus. He’d have his long experience both with the politics of politics, with understanding and articulating his understanding of the issues, and he’d have stands on the issues that are much more aligned with those of the electorate than are Trump’s.The media love a simplistic narrative, and for them equating the outsider candidacies of Trump and Sanders is too easy. But as is so often the case with narratives promoted by the major media, this one is also absurdly wrong.

See:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/10/1419991/-Nate-Silver-Stop-Comparing-Donald-Trump-And-Bernie-Sanders?detail=email#

Is Donald Trump Showing Republicans Can Win in the Bible Belt Without Being Overtly Religious?

For Trump, a lapsed Presbyterian, religion really isn’t important to his politics.

2015-09-12 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source:

Author: Zaid Jilani

Emphasis Mine

Historically, the American South has been the nation’s most religious corridor, and politicians courting Republican voters in particular are quick to point to their religiosity. In 2008, deep south states such as Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee went to the pastor Mike Huckabee. In 2012, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee went to the avowed Catholic evangelical Rick Santorum.

But the country has seen a number of shifts in its religiosity. The number of Americans who identify as unaffiliated with any religion grew from 16.1 percent in 2007 to 22.8 percent in 2014, while the share of Americans who identify as Catholic, mainline Protestant and evangelical Protestant declined. This shift is particularly evident among young people; 25 percent of Americans born after 1980 say they are atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular.

This may explain why a candidate who is not religious at all — real estate mogul Donald Trump — is leading the polls in virtually every southern state.

Take Florida, where a recent poll showed Trump in the lead at 29 percent. Digging into the results of the poll, you’ll find that Jeb Bush — who comes from a family that has long courted the Christian right as a political arm — had a remarkable zero percent of support from young voters, while Trump was capturing over half of them. In Alabama, Trump is nearing 40 percent of the vote, eclipsing the second candidate, Ben Carson, who is closer to 17 percent.In Georgia, Trump is at 34 percent and Bush is at 12 percent.

For Trump, who is a lapsed Presbyterian, religion really isn’t important to his politics. When GOP pollster Frank Luntz asked him if he has ever “asked God for forgiveness” over the summer, he responded, “I’m not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so. I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.” This caused right-wing blogger and activist Erick Erickson to say that Trump made a “potentially fatal error” in admitting he was not very religious — a prediction that has fallen pretty flat.

When Ben Carson, who has managed an impressive second place in the polls over the past few months, was asked about the differences between himself and Trump, he pointed to religion. “I’ve realized where my success has come from, and I don’t in any way deny my faith in God,” he said. “And I think that is the big difference. By humility and the fear of the lord are riches and honor and life and that’s a very big part of who I am. I don’t get that impression with [Trump]. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t get that.”

This led Trump to fire back, tweeting, “Wow, I am ahead of the field with Evangelicals (am so proud of this) and virtually every other group, and Ben Carson just took a swipe at me.”

From the looks of things, Trump’s point is correct. His candidacy is proving that religiosity is not very important to the GOP voter base. But bluster, candor and cultural affirmation, all of which Trump provides with his broadsides against various liberal boogeymen, from immigrants to Hillary Clinton, are key.

(N.B.: perhaps this is a different segment of the base…)

Zaid Jilani is an AlterNet staff writer. Follow @zaidjilani on Twitter.

See: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trump-showing-republicans-can-win-bible-belt-without-being-overtly?akid=13470.123424.EdIs2E&rd=1&src=newsletter1042267&t=4

I Finally Understand Trump’s Appeal After Going To His Iran Rally

2015-09-122015-09-12 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source: TPM

Author: Jason Stanford

Emphasis Mine

Speaking at the Stop the Iran Deal Rally with the U.S. Capitol as his backdrop, Donald Trump at first made the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran seem like a simple negotiation gone awry, nothing more.

“We’re gonna do, and we’re gonna get, nothing. Nothing. We are led by very, very stupid people. Very, very stupid people. We cannot let it continue.”

There were far more homemade signs at the rally than there were “Make America Great Again” caps, the unofficial uniform of Trump’s supporters, but his Art-of-the-Deal take on the Iran deal played well enough with the crowd. They seemed to regard him with amusement and sincere interest, though their general opinion was best expressed later by Sarah Palin who said, “You don’t reward terrorism. You kill it!” This crowd didn’t want a better deal. They wanted no deal.

But it didn’t take long for Trump to suck them in with a rant that gave a clue as to why the flamboyant billionaire is playing so well with white, working class Republicans.

“We lose everywhere. We lose militarily. We can’t beat ISIS. Give me a break. We can’t beat anybody. Our vets are being treated horribly,” he said, and the people around me started murmuring in agreement. Suddenly the crowd, or at least the part I was standing in, shifted from taking in a spectacle to feeling a chord struck inside them. Forget the facts—there are plenty of dead terrorists and Somali pirates who are unavailable to comment—but Trump’s vision of America on a losing streak felt true to the Tea Party crowd.

“It will change,” he said. “We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored of winning. Believe me.”

There was no hollering back where I stood, but that isn’t to say he wasn’t getting a response. The murmuring had taken on a happier tone. “Winning, yeah,” said one. “That’d be nice, huh? Winning?” said another.

“We are going to turn this country around,” Trump said, the crowd now completely with him. “We are going to start winning bigly, on trade, militarily.” And yes, Trump said “bigly,” but no one cared. He’d conjured both a word and a world in which the United States didn’t have the most powerful and lethal military force in the history of the planet. Every word he said felt true to them, even the one he made up.

“We’re going to build up our military. We’re going to have such a strong military, that nobody—nobody!—is going to mess with us. We’re not going to have to use it,” said Trump.

(N.B.: Might makes right)

This is American Exceptionalism re-imagined by Charles Atlas. Trump wants to prove that he can make America so huge and so strong—the strongest!—that no terrorist would dare kick sand in our faces again. Thinking this way is more than a little silly, but it is exactly how the people who went to the Stop Iran Deal Rally felt.

The pity of this all is that the Iran deal shows how America can lead (and win!) in an increasingly disorganized world. We negotiated with Iran from a position of strength. We had support from our European allies. We had Iran’s billions in our banks. Behind door number one was Iran giving up their nuclear weapons program. Behind door number two was Iran becoming the next destination for Drone Airlines. The United States gave up nothing in this deal. In exchange for their own money, Iran gave us what we wanted: an Iran without The Bomb.

This is what winning looks like. This is our enemy surrendering their weapons without a fight not because they love us but because they know they would not survive the fight. After our embassies getting bombed, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia invading Georgia, the red line in Syria, Benghazi, Russia invading Ukraine, Boko Haram, and ISIS, stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons was change we need to believe in.

There are reasonable criticisms of the Iran deal, but you didn’t hear any at the rally. Instead, they got Sen. Ted Cruz, who seems to get his intelligence briefings from Call of Duty. “If this deal goes through, we know to an absolute certainty, people will die,” Cruz said. “Americans will die.” They also heard from Palin, who took the occasion to tell not one but two thinly veiled penis jokes at the President’s expense.

Cruz and Palin are minor players who are as yet unable to tap directly into what animated the crowd at the Stop Iran Deal Rally. “What part of ‘Death to America and Israel’ do you not understand?” read one popular sign. To them, negotiating with Iran exposes our weakness. Maybe they’re being misled. Maybe they’ve thought that everything Obama has done is wrong so long that they can’t see anything he does as right. But if they—and Trump—want America to be great again, they could hardly do better than Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Jason Stanford is a partner with the Truman National Security Project. He is also a national Democratic consultant and writes regular columns for The Austin American-Statesman and The Quorum Report.

See: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/trump-appeal-winning-iran-rally

The GOP’s Vicious Religious Warfare: The Arms Race for Extremists’ Hearts and Minds

Trump, Cruz, Huckabee & Carson are engaging in a heated campaign to get the support of the religious right.

2015-09-11 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source: Salon, via AlterNet

Author: Heather Digby Parton

Emphasis Mine

Trump, Cruz, Huckabee & Carson are engaging in a heated campaign to get the support of the religious right.

There is a lot of talk in the political media about the “invisible primary,” which is the lining up of big donors and establishment endorsements. On the Democratic side, the winner of this invisible primary so far is Hillary Clinton, who has gathered many endorsements and has collected a healthy amount of major Democratic donor money. On the Republican side the invisible primary is almost as fractious as the campaign itself, with Bush, Walker, Kasich, Rubio and the rest of the allegedly establishment candidates wooing and being wooed by Republican billionaires of all stripes — conservative, ultra-conservative and extreme. Trump is already a big winner of his own invisible primary; at yesterday’s Iran rally he promised even more declaring, “I’ll win so much, you’ll get bored with winning”.

But there’s another invisible primary going on as well and it’s an important one: the Evangelical primary. I’ve written here before about how important this constituency is to the GOP base. Indeed, one might even say that white Evangelical voters and the churches to which they belong are as important to the Republicans as the unions are to the Democrats. They are the footsoldiers. And as much as the elites may want to keep them under control and out of sight when the national zeitgeist shifts against conservative morality (it goes back and forth), since at least 1980 they know they cannot alienate them. And any conservative politician who is building himself or herself a long career needs to cultivate them carefully.

So, in this hugely populated race for the GOP presidential nomination, this invisible Evangelical primary could be more salient than usual. While the field is full of religious-right candidates — like Scott Walker, Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal, just to name three also-rans — it is Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson who are the clear favorites. (Walker polls in the middle of the field but he’s been having problems with Christian conservatives for some time, despite his impressive evangelical bona fides.)

Trump is currently polling well among Evangelicals, but it’s unlikely that a serial divorcer with a shaky record on abortion can hold this whole group no matter how many times he declares that the Bible is his favorite book. But as I wrote here, it won’t be for lack of trying. Trump has been doing outreach with the Christian right since 2012 and spent a lot of money and time cultivating their support.

Nonetheless, Ben Carson leads the invisible evangelical primary in Iowa at the moment. Polls show him gaining significantly on Trump there and with such a large contingent of religious right voters, the very pious Carson is a natural favorite. He is a political extremist, but then so are they. The big question has been if Carson could do as well in evangelical circles in southern states. If the new PPP poll is correct, he’s certainly doing better than any of the others in South Carolina, so that’s a good sign. Trump has almost double his support though, which is perhaps why Carson challenged the sincerity of Trump’s faith yesterday.

But what of the other two big Christian right contenders, Huckabee and Cruz? Well, they seem to be going head to head, fighting for pre-eminence among the more militant of religious conservatives. This week we saw quite a spectacle with Cruz nearly coming to blows with a Huckabee staffer at the Kim Davis rally when Cruz tried to join the group onstage. Huckabee’s campaign had reportedly done all the leg work for the rally and perhaps they thought that Cruz was crashing their event like some Code Pink protester. In any case, the little contretemps showed just how important it is for candidates of the Christian right to be seen as warriors for family values and religious liberty. Kim Davis and her stand against gay marriage was an excellent way to show fealty to the cause.

Unfortunately, there was only room for one Christian soldier on that stage, and Huckabee used all of it, strutting around unctuously begging the authorities to let Kim Davis go and take him instead — even though Davis was a free woman standing right there on the the side of the stage. Judging by the response at right-wing Twitter aggregation site Twitchy, conservatives were divided on who won that round, with some calling Huckabee disgraceful and others saying “if Ted Cruz can’t stand up to Mike Huckabee …”

Cruz pouted for a bit and then headed back to Washington to join the rally against the Iran peace agreement and once again call the president “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism.” He seemed a bit overshadowed at that event as well, as Trump and Sarah Palin took the spotlight and competed for who could serve the best word-salad for lunch.

However, Cruz did have some very good news yesterday, which may just put him over the top of the invisible Evangelical primary when all is said and done:

David Barton, an influential Christian author and activist, is taking charge of the leading super-PAC supporting Ted Cruz.

The super-PAC, Keep the Promise PAC, is the umbrella for a group of related pro-Cruz political committees that raised $38 million in the first half of the year, more than the super-PACs supporting any other candidate with the exception of Jeb Bush.

Barton’s appointment highlights the role that Evangelical Christians are playing in the Cruz campaign. The Texas senator is the son of a preacher and announced his presidential bid at Liberty University, a Christian institution founded by the televangelist Jerry Falwell.

Barton is a self-taught historian, former school administrator and the founder of Wallbuilders, a group dedicated to the idea that the U.S. was established as a Christian nation and should embrace those roots. Time Magazine named him one of the country’s top 25 most influential Evangelicals in 2005.

There is no one more responsible than David Barton for the vast amounts of misinformation and downright lies the evangelical right believes about the fundamental nature of the U.S. constitution and the founders’ intentions. He has quite literally written a parallel history, using phony documents and misconstrued facts to prove that the American Revolution was a religious crusade for the express purpose of creating a Christian nation. He was most recently exposed as a fraud when constitutional scholars of all political persuasions proved that his book “The Jefferson Lies” was riddled with errors and his publisher withdrew it from the shelves. Not that it mattered. As usual in these cases, Barton insisted he was a persecuted martyr and his stock among the Christian conservatives went way up.

If Mike Huckabee thought he won a battle by keeping Cruz off the stage down there in Tennessee, Cruz knew he won the war. Barton is not only a Christian right superstar; he also has a huge boatload of money to spend on him. His “Keep the Promise” PAC is is funded by some extremely wealthy conservative energy billionaires from Texas and one hugely wealthy hedge fund billionaire from New York, who mainly wants to abolish the IRS. Their investment makes the statement announcing Barton’s appointment downright hilarious:

“From the outset, the Keep the Promise PACs made their mission to provide a voice for the millions of courageous conservatives who are looking to change the direction of the country. Barton’s involvement is an important step signaling that the effort will not be run by a D.C. consultant but by a grassroots activist.”

Nothing says “grassroots” like fracking billionaires and hedge-fund tycoons. But in a way it’s a perfect amalgam of the invisible donor primary and the invisible Evangelical primary. Big money and big Christian Right cred. It’s probably too early to declare that Cruz has scored a win — after all, “the Evangelicals love Trump” too and Carson remains a threat. But he’s definitely a player. And whatever happens in the presidential race, that makes Cruz an even more powerful figure on the right.

See:http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/gops-vicious-religious-warfare-arms-race-extremists-hearts-and-minds?akid=13464.123424.r84Lzz&rd=1&src=newsletter1042225&t=6