Over the weekend, Maureen Groppe penned a piece for the Star taking a look at the fundraising races taking place across Indiana in competitive congressional contests. Her take can be summarized as such:
Democrats have the cash advantage in each of the three House districts in Indiana that Republicans hope to seize this fall.
But the gap could narrow, and cash isn't always enough when you're facing powerful political headwinds.
The article cites the election of now-Reps. Baron Hill and Joe Donnelly in 2006 despite being outspent by their respective opponents.
What's important to note, though, is that at least in the case of Hill, he didn't need to spend as much because his name identification was already very high throughout the district -- he had, after all, already been elected in the Fightin' Ninth before.
And that's the biggest problem facing our Carmel-based friend Todd Young: it costs a lot of money to boost name recognition in Southern Indiana. There's a reason the GOP ran a guy named "Millionaire Mike" for all of those years.
In some ways, though, the Todd Young campaign strategy may see this as a feature, not a bug. Anti-establishment year or not, this part of the state is much more likely to support 'Generic Republican' this year than they are a Carmel native who has only lived in the district -- and Bloomington, at that -- for a few years.
"I think Joe is an excellent choice," said Murray Clark, chairman of the Indiana Republican Party. "We've had people in that position lately who are very capable and put politics aside. I think Joe will be of that same quality."
Republican stalwart Murray Clark on the nomination of Joe Hogsett to be Indiana's next U.S. Attorney.
Oh, Theodore. All of those Hamilton County Republican Party meetings appear to have muddled your head.
To recap, Ninth-District-by-way-of-the-Fifth-District Republican challenger Todd Young has been in hot water as of late over his (complete lack of a) stance on Social Security. And after weeks of bad press, he's had enough -- enter Obama bashing, stage far-right.
In a telephone interview from his New Albany campaign office at 3122 Blackiston Mill Road, Young said Hill needed to explain his [federal stimulus funding] vote with the jobless rate in Indiana still hovering around 10 percent.
"I predict this is the last thing [Hill] is going to want to talk about, but it's the big issue that voters care about," Young said.
The issue with this line of attack, of course, is that Baron Hill is more than willing to talk about the jobs that federal funds have created in the Ninth District. He even has -- gasp! -- facts.
Daniel Altman, communications director for the Hill campaign, responded to Young's remarks by saying cities and towns across the 9th District including Georgetown, Seymour, Jeffersonville and Marengo are benefiting from the stimulus.
The new wastewater treatment facility being constructed for Georgetown was spurred by stimulus dollars.
"Todd Young needs to check his facts," Altman wrote in an e-mail.
Young's problem is simple: he's running a national narrative campaign in a local narrative race. He has air-dropped press releases from Washington, consultants from Virginia, and a stale message that sounds like it was written for GENERIC REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE X, not a Southern Indiana campaign.
For the same reason that the Ninth District cares about what Social Security means for them, they care about the job situation at home first and foremost. Maybe if Young had a few more years under his belt actually living in Southern Indiana, he'd know that by now.
"For Washington consultants to sit around and personally disparage the Governor anonymously to reporters is unfortunate and counterproductive and frankly immature," the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, continued.
I'll be updating and bumping this post over the next day or so as more numbers roll in, but we've already seen some interesting fundraising figures come down the pipeline in the last twenty-four hours. Here are the highlights:
IN-SEN: Brad Ellsworth (D) raised more than $600k, has $1.2 million cash on hand. Dan Coats (R) raised roughly $1.5 million, has $1 million cash on hand. (Worth noting that the Indiana Democratic Party continues to benefit from Senator Bayh's cash infusion for this race.)
Bottom line: A tight money race, but Ellsworth still has the cash advantage. At this point, he needs to start using it.
IN-3: Dr. Tom Hayhurst (D) had $279k cash on hand. Marlin Stutzman (R) had under $50k.
Bottom line: A tough district for Democrats in a good year, but Hayhurst will benefit from a head start in the fundraising race and the dark cloud of Mark Souder that hangs over everything.
IN-2: Joe Donnelly (D) raised $250k, has $989k cash on hand. Jackie Walorski (R) raised $260k, has $303k cash on hand.
Bottom line: I have contended from the outset that this race is more about Walorski positioning herself for 2012 than actually winning this year. That being said, her numbers are decent -- although not nearly as strong as one might expect from a self-professed grassroots queen.
IN-8: Trent VanHaaften (D) raised more than $300k, and reported $360k cash on hand. Larry Bucshon(R) raised $231k and ended with $206k cash on hand.
Bottom line: This has to be a disappointment for the Bucshon camp -- the guy had a huge head start, only a light primary challenge, and still couldn't manage to maintain anything resembling a fundraising advantage. This will still be a tough hold, but these figures should deflate the illusion that Bucshon is close to top-tier heading forward.
IN-9: Baron Hill (D) raised nearly $300k and ended with over $1.1 million cash on hand. Todd Young (R-Carmel) raised roughly $386k, but ended with only $259k cash on hand.
Bottom line: Young's pre-primary funds make his numbers look better than they are, and his paltry cash on hand figure certainly won't instill much confidence in Republicans in one of the most expensive areas of the state to build district-wide name identification. (Why do you think they kept running Sodrel year after year?) Advantage: Team BPH.
More updates as they become available.
IN-7: Congressman Carson (D) continued his strong run of reports, pulling in $137k and reporting $381k cash on hand. His "opponent" Marvin Scott (R-Crazytown) pulled in just a few thousand dollars, and spent almost all of it.
Bottom line: Another year, another big win on the docket for the good Congressman.
It is not enough to say Indiana's Unemployment Insurance (UI) Trust Fund is insolvent, as the governor and his Department of Workforce Development (DWD) have and will deflect this by saying 1.) This is a recession and 2.) But Michigan, California, Ohio, New York and Illinois' funds are much worse than ours! Those states' funds are worse, but those states are also much more heavily populated than ours.
No, the best way to look at DWD's UI problem (and having one of the worst UI programs in the country) is by digging into the truths that have not been appearing in the media and have not been sent-out in press releases by the governor's press representatives at DWD and elsewhere. Most of the information below is open for public inspection (after all, as some of the "Lead Team" at DWD forget, they are a public agency).
I would, therefore, like to put some of the pieces together for whomever would like to see.
1). Indiana was the third state to have an insolvent Trust Fund (Michigan's went insolvent in 2007, South Carolina's right before ours) during the current recession (we went insolvent in Nov. 2008). Next year, Indiana (along with SC) will have an increased federal UI tax for employers, who will have to pay $21 more/per employee (undoubtedly causing more lay-offs/terminations).
2). How did IN's Trust Fund get so low so fast? Since 2000, as is known by now, benefits were increased (our weekly amount is still not very high at $390/week, although Daniels said it was "Rolls Royce" high) and taxes on businesses were severely reduced. In 2005, Indiana had a Trust Fund balance of $600,000,000 or so; by November 2008, Indiana's fund was bankrupt, and currently, the federal government is bailing-out Indiana with $1.7 Billion (and expected to be over $2 Billion by the end of the year).
Did the recession cause this massive loss of money? Oh, surely it was a major factor; but, incompetence and corruption at DWD have also drained the fund of hundreds of millions from the fund with no oversight by Daniels at all. In 2008, DWD was responsible for OVER-paying $261 Million to claimants who did not deserve to be paid UI benefits (an error rate of 26% of the total amount of benefits for all of 2008). This amount was the highest in the US and $150 Million more than the next closest state, New York.
Click on "Agency Responsible Overpayment by cause - all states".
2009's numbers should be out soon, and I can guarantee the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Trust Fund due to incompetence and negligence at DWD will be to blame.
The people running DWD (none of whom have been with DWD more than 4 years and none of whom worked their way up, but were instead appointed by the governor) have been warned numerous times of problems by inside staff (who DO have UI experience), the US Department of Labor who oversees DWD, the US DOL's Inspector General who did an investigation of ethics problems, the Indiana State Board of Accounts who did an audit last year, and the Indiana Inspector General's office who completed an investigation in December last year and cited many ethics and accounting problems.
3). Indiana's DWD is being sued by the ACLU of Indiana because of poor UI Appeals backlogs (people waiting months for an appealed hearing). The backlogs are certainly caused because the initial-level "adjudication" is THE WORST in the country, and has been among the worst in the last 3 or 4 years. In the first quarter 2010, Indiana had the worst adjudication quality scores for separation cases (firings, voluntary quits, etc.) and non-separation cases (work searches, vacation pay, pensions, etc.). Out of 100 randomly-sampled issues, Indiana's "Adjudication Center" got only 18 correct.
So if you file for unemployment and receive a determination stating whether or not you should get UI, could be an 82% chance your determination is wrong!
Check the boxes for "Nonmonetary Separation Quality" and "Nonmonetary Nonseparation Quality", and be sure the quarter is from January 2010 to March 2010. You can also do any quarter this way and see that Indiana's has been bad for the last 4 years and getting worse.
There are many good lay-people working at DWD and especially with UI, but the training is poor (there is no standardized training program for claims adjudicators), claims deputies/adjudicators are still held to a de facto, very high quota to "take care of issues quickly", and the focus on quality has only somewhat recently come-up (but is still being done poorly). Nepotism and cronyism are big at DWD, which is impactful, and anybody with ideas or suggestions to improve the system (who are not sycophantic brown-nosers) are deemed radicals or troublemakers and are punished, harassed and terminated (there have been many people canned from DWD just to shut them up).
So if anyone out there buys the lines of "the recession caused the Trust Fund debt" or "we're doing better than other states", need to be told what I have provided above and educated about what the people running DWD have done to the UI program. Under Governor Daniels, DWD has developed one of the worst workforce development agencies in the country. The Governor has assigned friends from high places or good connections, not to mention former staff members, to run DWD, and they have run it into the ground.
When the Indiana UI program is this bad, businesses, claimants and taxpaying citizens are the ones punished for it with higher UI taxes, denying claimants who should have been paid UI, and costs that are passed on to taxpayers as well. Every Hoosier needs to remember this has happened SOLELY on Governor Daniels' watch. DWD's UI program is the antithesis of "fiscal conservatism" and is a disgrace to the laws and regulations of both the US government and State of Indiana.
Making a nomination announcement about 7 p.m., President Barack Obama selected Bingham McHale partner Joe Hogsett for the top prosecutor position in the southern part of the state. Indiana's Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh had recommended Hogsett for the post, and his office in Washington, D.C., confirmed the nomination.
If approved by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and confirmed by the full Senate, the attorney who's been practicing since 1981 would take the reigns from interim U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison, who's held the job since Susan Brooks left in 2007.
Hogsett is a top-tier candidate for this position, and should encounter little turbulence during his nomination hearings. I couldn't be happier for a guy that has been nothing but kind to me every time I've had the pleasure of talking to him.
Someone needs to tell Carmel-based Republican challenger Todd Young that less may in fact be more, but there are limits to everything. And when the long-shot Ninth District congressional candidates -- some of whom aren't even on the ballot -- start to earn more ink than you on a critical topic on the campaign trail, perhaps it's time to come out of hiding.
"He apparently has decided that his best strategy on Social Security is to simply say nothing," Hill said. "The voters of the 9th Congressional District deserve better. They deserve a congressman that will be up front with them instead of ducking questions."
Those words sparked a series of responses from Hill's opponents. All four candidates battling for Indiana's 9th District seat spoke with The Tribune in phone interviews Tuesday.
Libertarian candidate Greg Knott said Social Security is not what Hill described, but he also said it's not a Ponzi scheme.
"I don't think Social Security fits that definition," Knott said. "It is a rip-off."
"That's an irresponsible statement," Hill said of Young's remarks in a phone interview. "To say that is the same old political rhetoric. It scares senior citizens."
Notice what happened there. The story leads off with Congressman Hill stating his position on Social Security, segues to his Libertarian opponent... and then back to Hill, for lack of anything from Todd Young.
But hey, getting upstaged by a Libertarian challenger isn't the worst thing in the world. They're principled and all.
Wait, what? A write-in candidate?
Write-in candidate Jerry Lucas of Jennings County agrees with Young's decription of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.
[...]
Lucas says steps must be taken to ensure those who are filing for Social Security claims are entitled to them.
"We're going to have to clean it out," Lucas said. "There's no such thing as solvent Social Security. It has become a cash hole."
...
And the response from the Young "campaign" was limited to this:
"Right now we're looking at the Paul Ryan plan," Burchfield said. "The thing that Todd wants to have done is verification that the plan's numbers can make Social Security solvent. If we can verify that they are good numbers and that the last-ditch effort to make this plan work is raising taxes, then he (Young) could sign on.
Well, that and some boilerplate references to tax increases and liberalism.
This is getting ugly, folks. What do you call amateur hour when it lasts for weeks?
Kudos to Democratic State Auditor candidate Sam Locke for hitting the ground running in the weeks after this year's State Convention. The roll-out of his "Locke Star" supporters program has been a great success, and I for one have already run into a few people sporting the stylish campaign t-shirt.
All it takes is $30 to earn your "Locke Star" moniker, so be sure to throw a few Hamiltons to a great candidate and help us compete in this critical statewide race.
Jonathan Swain was Obama's communications guru here in Indiana during the wildly successful 2008 campaign. He's since moved on to greener federal pastures, but by the looks of it, he's still kicking ass and taking names out in his new digs. Great work, JSwain.
Congressman Baron Hill is still on the offensive, pressuring this Carmel-based opponent to own up to his position -- any position at this point would do -- on Social Security. Hill held a press conference yesterday where he dismissed Republican efforts to privatize the program:
The 9th District Democrat is responding to a proposal from Republican Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin that would allow workers to invest their Social Security taxes through individual accounts.
During a stop in New Albany, Hill said the plan is too risky and he's signed a pledge that he won't support it. He has also been calling on his Republican opponent in the November election, Todd Young, to do the same.
"It does need to be fixed," Hill said. "There are some unfunded liabailities. But it's not a Ponzi scheme like my opponent has said. Social Security is a sacred trust between the federal government and senior citizens. It should not be trivialized as a Ponzi scheme."
Todd Young, for his part, released yet another trivial written release knocking Baron Hill for -- get this -- not having a position on Social Security reform.
(An excellent, excellent post. - promoted by Thomas)
I was disappointed to see the usually-sharp Ed Kilgore fall into the trap of buying Mitch Daniels' spin - in a recent piece on Mitch Daniels' presidential prospects, Kilgore wrote that "his state's positive fiscal record stands out sharply against a national landscape of state fiscal disaster." Ed, if you believe that, I think Mitch has a bargain-priced $50 billion invasion of Iraq to sell you.
Far from being the "island of growth" that Mitch Daniels likes to pretend we are, Indiana is struggling just as much as the rest of the region. And it's not just Daniels' phony jobs announcements that are the problem - Indiana has a real problem with unemployment. And I don't see any hope of fixing that when the party that controls the state executive branch and the state Senate won't acknowledge that there's a problem.
A cursory glance at Indiana's unemployment rate gives you the outlines - 10% unemployment, using the standard U-3 measure. When you look at the bigger picture, it gets even worse. Using the broadest measure - U-6, which includes "marginally attached" workers and those working part-time who would rather be working full-time - more than 18% of Hoosiers can't find a real job. That means Indiana is worse off than our neighbors in Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky.
Just yesterday, the Indianapolis Star ran a piece on how Indiana's job picture is worse than our neighbors. A recent study by the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project shows that Indiana ranks 6th-worst in the nation when they measure declines in employment from November 2007 to May 2010. It's simply unacceptable for the Governor of the state that ranks 44th in employment growth to be celebrating our nonexistent jobs. The objective reality is that Indiana's employment growth trails Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky (and almost every other state in the US).
It's easy for Mitch to spin Indiana's unemployment when our neighbors to the north in Michigan are facing the worst unemployment rate in the nation. But he shouldn't get a free pass just because Hoosiers are marginally better off than the hardest-hit state.
But what about Indiana's budget? It's often asserted that Indiana has a "positive" budget and that we have a surplus. And that's true - if you choose to selectively leave out a large chunk of Indiana's finances.
Indiana is one of 26 states who are in debt to the federal government because they can't afford to pay out their unemployment insurance benefits, according to ProPublica. Indiana's Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund has been insolvent since at least 2008, and we currently owe almost $2 billion to the federal government for the state's share of UI benefits. Just a couple of months ago, at Mitch Daniels' urging, the state postponed a law that would raise UI rates to start paying off that debt.
Sales tax collections, though higher than April 2009, are lower than FY 2008, FY 2007 and even FY 2006 levels. Year to date sales tax collections are 5% below prior year. If the -5% trend continues for the full fiscal year it will be the worst performance in state history, exceeding FY 2009's record of -4.7%. The budget as passed projected sales tax collections equal to prior year. April individual income tax collections are the lowest in five years. Year to date income tax collections are 11% below prior year-on top of an 11% decline for FY 2009. The budget as passed projected a 1% decline in individual income tax collections for FY 2010. (Source: Indiana State Budget Agency)
May's monthly revenue report showed that "revenue collections through eleven months of the current state fiscal year are now $1.032 billion or 9% below the budget passed by the General Assembly."
In 35 years of following debates over nuclear arms control, I have never seen anything quite as shabby, misleading and-let's not mince words-thoroughly ignorant as Mitt Romney's attack on the New START treaty in the July 6 Washington Post.
While Lugar's statement was slightly less blunt, I don't think Indiana's senior Senator would disagree. But unlike Lugar, Romney is running for President in 2012, which means he has to make up reasons to oppose anything and everything President Obama does.
And did Romney really think that you could somehow mount ICBMs on bombers? I just find that mind-boggling, and so did Kaplan: "This is where I began to wonder if Romney had fallen prey to someone, perhaps a spy from Sarah Palin's camp, who wanted to make him look like an idiot." Seriously, Mitt - take a break from tying your dog to the roof of your car and pick up a Tom Clancy book sometime.
Here's part of Lugar's statement:
Governor Mitt Romney's hyperbolic attack on the New START Treaty in the July 6 edition of The Washington Post repeats discredited objections and appears unaware of arms control history and context. In advancing these arguments, he rejects the Treaty's unequivocal endorsement by the Defense Department led by Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also distances himself from prominent Republican national security leaders, including Jim Schlesinger, Henry Kissinger, James Baker, and Brent Scowcroft, who have backed the Treaty after thoughtful analysis.
[...]
Governor Romney offers additional treaty misreadings and myths that have been refuted explicitly in Congressional hearings. The Bilateral Consultative Commission has no power to "amend the treaty with specific reference to missile defense," as he contends. In fact, the Commission cannot change anything in treaty text or make changes that "affect substantive rights or obligations under this Treaty." He asserts that missiles on rail cars constitute a loophole in the Treaty. But the last Russian rail-based missiles were deactivated in 2008. If Russia decided to build new ones, they would count under the overall limits on ICBM's and their launchers. He also bemoans that New START does not "apply the MIRV limits that were part of the prior START treaty." But there were no MIRV limits in START I, and START II never entered into force. He objects to New START's counting of bombers as just a single weapon, even though they can carry multiple warheads. But this provision favors the U.S, given our bomber advantage, and reflects the position of Ronald Reagan, who originally proposed not counting bombers at all in START I.
When it comes to the success or failure of a political campaign, there's casual ineptitude when it comes to managing an effort, and then there's professional idiocy.
Ninth District Republican challenger (and Carmel native) Todd Young is no amateur, folks.
As if coming out vaguely in favor of privatizing Social Security wasn't bad enough, Young followed that train wreck by calling Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" and dismissing its role for hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers.
But wait, there's more!
In the aftermath of all this, Young has proceeded to completely ignore any and all requests to clarify his position on the subject. Nada. Zilch. The ol' goose egg.
All of which has provided Congressman Baron Hill the opening he needed to reveal the complete lack of substance behind Young's country-club-Republican-meets-Tea-Party bid for office. Via Dan Suddeath in the News and Tribune, the latest:
Democrat and incumbent Rep. Baron Hill criticized Republican challenger Todd Young on Wednesday for not signing a pledge to protect Social Security from privatization - a move that Hill made last month.
"My opponent's lack of comment is disturbing," Hill said. "He apparently has decided that his best strategy on Social Security is to simply say nothing."
Hill again brought up a video posted on the website www.youtube.com last month where Young refers to Social Security as "a Ponzi scheme" while addressing a crowd of supporters at a town hall meeting.
"Republicans in Washington have declared war on Social Security," Hill said. "Given the fact that my opponent was recently endorsed by D.C. Republicans and his statement that Social Security is a 'Ponzi scheme,' he seems to have the exact same agenda."
For any other campaign, this sort of story would probably be the last straw that spurred an otherwise sleepy operation into action. Not Todd Young, though -- policy positions are for those libruls out in Washington!
While he didn't mention his view on Social Security, Young responded to Hill's statement by questioning his allegiance to President Barack Obama.
In the race to television screens across the Hoosier state, Brad Ellsworth appears to have crossed the finish line first. (For the record, I don't count the Coats primary advertisements, nor the out-of-state mercenary ads currently targeting Ellsworth's campaign.) Check it out:
Via Dan Suddeath of the News and Tribune, a glimpse at why the politically tumultuous passage of health care reform should (and I believe will) provide dividends for Democrats for years to come.
Americans denied health coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions have a new avenue for obtaining insurance.
Through the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has established a transitional plan that will last until 2014, when insurance companies will be prohibited from excluding adults with pre-existing conditions. The federal health care reform package earmarked $5 billion for the measure, known as the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, or PCIP.
To qualify, a person must have been uninsured for at least six months and been denied coverage due to a health condition. Only U.S. citizens or those residing in the country legally can apply for the plan.
Although national political prognosticators were quick to signal doom and gloom for moderate Democrats in contested districts in the immediate aftermath of the health care votes, I think it's worth noting that for Indiana Democrats, the "selling" of this reform package consists mainly of explaining what the bill does (or doesn't) do for Hoosiers.
And for someone like Congressman Baron Hill, who represents an area of the state with tens of thousands of uninsured families, announcements like these go a long way to showing why his vote was the right vote.
Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., voted in favor of the health care reform package in Congress and lauded the "quick deployment" of the PCIP.
"This is welcome news to so many Southern Indiana residents who have been unfairly unable to secure affordable coverage because they have a pre-existing condition," he said.
Hill's opponent, Carmel-native Todd Young, didn't offer a comment for the story, presumably because he doesn't actually have anything to offer to the discussion. He certainly can't say he opposes offering health insurance to Southern Indiana, and he definitely hasn't shown an interest in sharing any unique ideas of his own.
So, for now, the guy sits in silence, wondering what he's going to do in November if shouting "Repeal!" at the top of his lungs over and over again doesn't prove to be the political goldmine he once thought it was.
Once upon a time, "cap-and-trade" wasn't an object of conservative Republican opprobrium (e.g., as a "big government cap-and-tax scheme that will destroy our economy and end our way of life as we know it"). Actually, once up on a time, "cap-and-trade" was...wait for it...a conservative Republican idea! That's right, let's head to the "way back machine" and briefly review the Political History of Cap and Trade.
John B. Henry was hiking in Maine's Acadia National Park one August in the 1980s when he first heard his friend C. Boyden Gray talk about cleaning up the environment by letting people buy and sell the right to pollute. Gray, a tall, lanky heir to a tobacco fortune, was then working as a lawyer in the Reagan White House, where environmental ideas were only slightly more popular than godless Communism. "I thought he was smoking dope," recalls Henry, a Washington, D.C. entrepreneur. But if the system Gray had in mind now looks like a politically acceptable way to slow climate change-an approach being hotly debated in Congress-you could say that it got its start on the global stage on that hike up Acadia's Cadillac Mountain.
People now call that system "cap-and-trade." But back then the term of art was "emissions trading," though some people called it "morally bankrupt" or even "a license to kill." For a strange alliance of free-market Republicans and renegade environmentalists, it represented a novel approach to cleaning up the world-by working with human nature instead of against it.
Despite powerful resistance, these allies got the system adopted as national law in 1990, to control the power-plant pollutants that cause acid rain. With the help of federal bureaucrats willing to violate the cardinal rule of bureaucracy-by surrendering regulatory power to the marketplace-emissions trading would become one of the most spectacular success stories in the history of the green movement...
In the end, the conservative Republican-inspired "cap-and-trade" system for acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide was put into place by Republican President George HW Bush, who "not only accepted the cap, he overruled his advisers' recommendation of an eight million-ton cut in annual acid rain emissions in favor of the ten million-ton cut advocated by environmentalists." And it worked incredibly well, "cost[ing] utilities just $3 billion annually, not $25 billion... [and] by cutting acid rain in half, it also generates an estimated $122 billion a year in benefits from avoided death and illness, healthier lakes and forests, and improved visibility on the Eastern Seaboard."
In short, good things happened when we harnessed the tremendous power of the market to solve environmental problems. Today, the biggest and most pressing of those problems - identified, once again, by a massive amount of scientific research and evidence over several decades - is not acid rain, but global warming. And the proposed solution, once again, is the conservative, market-based "cap-and-trade" system. Strangely, however, it's conservative, market-based Republicans who have morphed into the loudest and most vociferous opponents of "cap-and-trade," while Democrats have become its biggest proponents.
Even stranger, as Climate Progress points out, many Republicans are now opposing - even "demagoguing" - against an idea they once supported! A short list includes: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who once said she supported cap-and-trade because she believed "it offers the opportunity to reduce carbon, at the least cost to society;" Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), who once bragged that voting for "cap-and-trade" in Massachusetts was an "important step ... towards improving our environment;" Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who once asserted that cap-and-trade "will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy;" and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who used to believe that we should "set emission standards and let the best technology win." Actually, as Steve Benen at Washington Monthly points out, the McCain-Palin official website in 2008 promised that a McCain administration would "establish...a cap-and-trade system that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
My, how times have changed in less than 2 years.
The point of all this is simple. Cap-and-trade is not some dastardly scheme to destroy the U.S. economy. Cap-and-trade is not radical, either. In fact, cap-and-trade is a tried, true, tested and proven, market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible cost. It worked with acid rain, far faster and cheaper than anyone predicted. Why would it be any different with carbon dioxide than sulfur dioxide? And why would Republicans oppose their own idea, after watching it produce one of the biggest environmental victories in U.S. history, on the gravest environmental threat facing our country and our planet? Even more, why would Republicans oppose an idea that -- even if you put aside the issue of global warming -- is still imperative - for urgent economic (e.g., sending $400 billion overseas every year to pay for imported oil) and national security (sending that $400 billion to a lot of countries that aren't our friends, are building nuclear weapons programs, etc.) reasons?
It's hard to think of any good reasons, how about some bad ones? Because, in the end, that's about all the cap-and-trade naysayers have left.
Via Shella, the latest missive from the increasingly Zirkle-esque campaign of 7th CD Republican challenger Marvin Scott:
"My opponent is a convert to Islam," says Scott in the statement sent out by a public relations firm. "He made the personal decision to change his faith, and that is his sacred right. I passionately defend his right to become a Muslim and I defend every other American's right to practice or change their faith as they choose. What they do not have the right to do is to replace American law with extremist Muslim Sharia law. I believe that all Americans should join together in condemning "Muslim Extremism" and all of its ramifications."
Here's the kicker, " I ask my opponent to join me in standing up, standing strong and standing against "Muslim Extremism" and Sharia law."
My computer woes -- apparently now solved after an epic five day chkdsk scan -- have me a few days behind the curve, but I couldn't bring myself to ignore this past weekend's best bit of journalism. Kudos to Angela Mapes-Turner of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette for another great piece of investigative work.
The skinny is this: Republican State Rep. Eric Turner really, really loved the privatization of Indiana's welfare services. He especially loved advocating for the now-infamous centralized call-centers, specifically the one located in Marion at the Jones Middle School. Notably, he was an outspoken and staunch defender of the program after it started its immediate and well-documented slide into disaster, perhaps raising eyebrows with his particularly rose-colored outlook on the clearly degenerating privatization scheme.
Misguided? Definitely. But unethical, surely you jest?
Oh, did we mention that he and his son might have had a wee bit of private interest in the endeavor?
By May 2008, 59 of Indiana's counties had been brought into IBM's system. Concerns about clients not being served well by the call center had caused state officials to halt the transition of Indiana's remaining 33 counties.
That's when Turner toured the call center in his role as legislator and told the Marion Chronicle-Tribune he was impressed.
Turner told the newspaper there could be legislative committees to look into the issues, but the cost of reverting to the old system would be "astronomical" and call center workers were doing their jobs.
At the same time, his son Paul Ezekiel Turner's company was in negotiations to buy the former Jones Middle School from Marion Community Schools.
On May 5, 2008, the school board voted to sell the building for $350,000 to Mainstreet Capital Partners LLC, a joint venture between "Zeke" Turner and his father.
Now, just two years later, and after receiving nearly $200,000 a year from ACS -- the same company who Turner has been defending publicly for years -- the property has been assessed in excess of $7 million.
And, despite all of this, Turner hasn't even once mentioned any of this on his required financial disclosure forms.
For his part, FSSA whipping boy spokesman Marcus "Pay No Attention to the Disaster Behind the Curtain" Barlow's main excuse for all of this is that we shouldn't care, because the private company really got a great lease.
The rent is similar to the cost of less expensive industrial warehouse space, not more expensive commercial real estate, Barlow said.
"They actually got a really good deal," he said.
Speaker Bauer argues it's hard to know whether something's a good deal if it's brokered privately, behind closed doors.
"We're having trouble in general getting information out of these private contractors," he said. "Let the people judge."
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