http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/03/is_obama_lazy.html
All we're getting is whispers from the press, of course, A raised eyebrow here, a sad shake of the head there. But the picture that is emerging of Barack Obama, the executive, is not very flattering if you look between the lines.
Jennifer Rubin:
Well, it's becoming obvious he's not really much of a manager, decider, legislation-craftsman, or supervisor. His vetting process is in shambles and key Treasury slots are still vacant. His Treasury Secretary is a classic under-performer and Obama encourages that tendency by talking about everything other than our immediate recovery needs. He lets Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid do the legislating - and they've come up with an embarrassing stimulus and an omnibus spending-bill even Democrats aren't swallowing.
What does he like to do? Summits. These are in essence campaign events - faux town-halls where nary a discouraging word is heard and no real work is done. And he loves those campaign rallies around the country.
So if the report is accurate that others are crafting his political strategy (just like the Pelosi-Reid machine is drafting his legislation), it should should come as no surprise. George W. Bush was lambasted for poor management skills and excessive delegation. But that was nothing - Obama has delegated the entire task of governing. He will keep the campaigning for himself.
Ed Lasky:
Failure as a community organizer (at least he admits that, to some extent) :
Lazy as an attorney-dedicated to promoting himself:
Miner's firm specialized in civil rights litigation and in representing not-for-profits. "The 'game of law' irritated [Obama] more than fascinated him," Miner says. "There are people who just like the game. Barack didn't like the game."
Allison Davis, a former partner in Miner's firm (and the son of a prominent U. of C. professor), occupied an office next to Obama's at 14 West Erie Street. "He spent a lot of time working on his book [Dreams from My Father]," Davis recalls. "Some of my partners weren't happy with that, Barack sitting there with his keyboard on his lap and his feet up on the desk writing the book."
I am sure his colleagues, other lawyers, who actually had to work killer hours to pay his salaries, appreciated his work ethic.
(BTW, he kept getting extensions on the deadline to submit a manuscript, then he flew off to the South Pacific to "work on it")
Failure as a Senator: A habit of claiming credit for work he did not do :
After weeks of arduous negotiations, on April 6, 2006, a bipartisan group of senators burst out of the "President's Room," just off the Senate chamber, with a deal on new immigration policy.
As the half-dozen senators -- including John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. KennedySen.. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who made a request common when Capitol Hill news conferences are in the offing: "Hey, guys, can I come along?" And when Obama went before the microphones, he was generous with his list of senators to congratulate -- a list that included himself.
"I want to cite Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback, Mel Martinez, Ken Salazar, myself, Dick Durbin, Joe Lieberman . . . who've actually had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out," he said.
To Senate staff members, who had been arriving for 7 a.m. negotiating sessions for weeks, it was a galling moment. Those morning sessions had attracted just three to four senators a side, Sen.. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) recalled, each deeply involved in the issue. Obama was not one of them. But in a presidential contest involving three sitting senators, embellishment of legislative records may be an inevitability, Specter said with a shrug.
Unlike governors, business leaders or vice presidents, senators -- the last to win the presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960 -- are not executives. They cannot be held to account for the state of their states, their companies or their administrations. What they do have is the mark they leave on the nation's laws -- and in Obama's brief three-year tenure, as well as Sen.. Hillary Rodham Clinton's seven-year hitch, those marks are far from indelible.
(D-Mass.) -- headed to announce their plan, they met.
And for being on a Committee he was not on and doing work he did not do (again):
Barack Obama today boasted about a bill in "my committee,'' a committee on which he has no seat.
While speaking to the press in the Israeli town of Sderot, Obama mistakenly put the U.S. Senate banking committee on his resume, although the Illinois senator does not serve on the committee and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is the chairman.
The Republican National Committee distributed an e-mail pointing out Obama's mistake with a subject line of "Obama's Gaffe Machine Rolls Into Israel."
During the press conference, Obama said, "Just this past -- this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon."
Anyone see a pattern here? People overestimated him and he woefully undelivers-time and time again. No wonder he picked Geithner.
Moran's take:
Ed's evidence is compelling. I would add that during the early stages of the campaign, his "keepers of the body" - probably Axelrod at that point - overextended the candidate. His gaffes about 10,000 dead in a Kansas tornado came at the end of a long day of campaigning. They never made the same mistake again and limited his access to the press and reduced the number of events per day. This would seem to indicate the president doesn't have much stamina.
But he will continue to get a pass on this from the press unless the economy goes into free fall and still nothing much has been done.
UPDATE
Ed Lasky adds:
Sunday, March 8, 2009
WaPo: Mr. Obama defunds the nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain. Now what?
Mountain of Trouble. WaPo Editorial
Mr. Obama defunds the nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain. Now what?
TWP, Sunday, March 8, 2009; A18
BY STRIPPING the funding for the nuclear repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, President Obama has succeeded in killing the contentious project that remains unfinished 22 years after Congress selected the site. He compounds the error by not offering an alternative. If the president's vision for a clean energy future is to be believed or is to come to fruition, nuclear energy must be a part of the mix, and the safe disposal of its radioactive waste must be given more serious consideration.
The project has burned through $7.7 billion. It was supposed to start accepting spent material from the nation's operating nuclear reactors (now numbering 104) in 1998. Our longstanding support of the Yucca Mountain facility has been grounded in the belief that the center of a desert mountain 1,000 feet underground and more than 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas was an appropriate place for the nation's nuclear waste. Instead, storage is spread over 121 above-ground sites located within 75 miles of more than 161 million people in 39 states.
There's more than a modicum of politics at play in Mr. Obama's decision. The president keeps a campaign promise to shut the site down. By doing so, he pleases Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). And he potentially secures the swing state's place in the blue column; the Silver State hadn't voted for the Democratic presidential nominee since 1996 until it went to Mr. Obama in 2008. That's not to belittle the concerns of Nevadans. There have been worries about radioactive seepage into groundwater. But scientists have long maintained that corrosion wouldn't threaten the integrity of the storage containers for at least 10,000 years.
Now that the Yucca Mountain project is dead the obvious question is: Now what? As a senator in 2007, Mr. Obama suggested in a letter to Mr. Reid and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, "finding another state willing to serve as a permanent national repository . . . ." He also called for redirecting resources to improve the safety and security at plants around the country until a long-term solution is found. Those alternatives, however unlikely the first one is, are more than he offered when he cut off Yucca Mountain's funding.
In the coming weeks, Energy Secretary Steven Chu will announce plans for a meeting with key stakeholders to discuss nuclear waste storage. A report is expected within a year of the meeting. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the dry cask storage of nuclear waste currently employed is a safe short-term solution. Thankfully, "short-term" in this case is defined in decades. But until the Obama administration comes up with a real alternative, the president's promises that nuclear power will be a part of our clean energy future will remain unkept.
Mr. Obama defunds the nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain. Now what?
TWP, Sunday, March 8, 2009; A18
BY STRIPPING the funding for the nuclear repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, President Obama has succeeded in killing the contentious project that remains unfinished 22 years after Congress selected the site. He compounds the error by not offering an alternative. If the president's vision for a clean energy future is to be believed or is to come to fruition, nuclear energy must be a part of the mix, and the safe disposal of its radioactive waste must be given more serious consideration.
The project has burned through $7.7 billion. It was supposed to start accepting spent material from the nation's operating nuclear reactors (now numbering 104) in 1998. Our longstanding support of the Yucca Mountain facility has been grounded in the belief that the center of a desert mountain 1,000 feet underground and more than 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas was an appropriate place for the nation's nuclear waste. Instead, storage is spread over 121 above-ground sites located within 75 miles of more than 161 million people in 39 states.
There's more than a modicum of politics at play in Mr. Obama's decision. The president keeps a campaign promise to shut the site down. By doing so, he pleases Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). And he potentially secures the swing state's place in the blue column; the Silver State hadn't voted for the Democratic presidential nominee since 1996 until it went to Mr. Obama in 2008. That's not to belittle the concerns of Nevadans. There have been worries about radioactive seepage into groundwater. But scientists have long maintained that corrosion wouldn't threaten the integrity of the storage containers for at least 10,000 years.
Now that the Yucca Mountain project is dead the obvious question is: Now what? As a senator in 2007, Mr. Obama suggested in a letter to Mr. Reid and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, "finding another state willing to serve as a permanent national repository . . . ." He also called for redirecting resources to improve the safety and security at plants around the country until a long-term solution is found. Those alternatives, however unlikely the first one is, are more than he offered when he cut off Yucca Mountain's funding.
In the coming weeks, Energy Secretary Steven Chu will announce plans for a meeting with key stakeholders to discuss nuclear waste storage. A report is expected within a year of the meeting. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the dry cask storage of nuclear waste currently employed is a safe short-term solution. Thankfully, "short-term" in this case is defined in decades. But until the Obama administration comes up with a real alternative, the president's promises that nuclear power will be a part of our clean energy future will remain unkept.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
ExxonMobil’s Tillerson on Renewable Energy: Realism amid Politics
ExxonMobil’s Tillerson on Renewable Energy: Realism amid Politics. By Robert Bradley
Master Resource, March 7, 2009
As reported by Russell Gold at Environmental Capital, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson has made an incisive new argument against his company’s investing in government-dependent renewable energy.
“If I wanted to kill [tax subsidies], the thing to do is for Exxon Mobil to go and invest heavily in them and then Congress would immediately cancel the tax subsidy. Actually what they would do is they would just cancel it for us,” said Mr.Tillerson, during the annual analyst meeting at the New York Stock Exchange.
He added: “In reality, that is what I fear would happen. So we are not going to go into investments that are dependent on a government providing a tax system to make them viable.”
This is very interesting. Former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond and now Tillerson have argued against investing in politically dependent renewables because they have been-there-done-that, with investor losses in the 1970s. And looking at the present and future technology of wind and solar relative to what ExxonMobil can realistically add, they are not sanguine about going forward in the same area.
But Tillerson is now saying something new: If ExxonMobil were to enter the wind and solar market, then a clause in any new legislation could exclude the oil major from getting the production tax credit.
Say the venture is profitable on a bed of special government favor. The green scream would that the “polluter” is using profits from the “clean side” to subsidize the “dirty side.” Therefore, each company—perhaps of a certain size—should be subject to an “average emission test” under which taxpayer subsidies cannot be received if its overall energy production contains too much greenhouse-gas-emitting (oil and coal) energy production.
Thinking ahead in this way, a “green” strategy would be to get a company “hooked” on subsidies and then ratchet up the pressure on that firm to reduce its legitimate, consumer-driven, core energy activities. ExxonMobil is just smart enough to sniff this one out.
Russell Gold’s post continues:
Putting aside Mr. Tillerson’s dark commentary on how unpopular the company is in Washington D.C., he raises a point investors might want to consider.
Renewable energy has a lot of promise and hype, but it still needs government support. It is clearly getting that support today, but how long will the government policy underwrite renewable energy? How long will it be able to afford to underwrite renewable energy? How long will voters support green initiatives that create extra costs during this prolonged economic downturn?
This is good journalism reporting a worthy corporate stance—a rare one-two in today’s politicized discourse over energy policy.
What a great moment for free-market capitalism’s principled entrepreneurship, ™ when so much of corporate America is involved in political capitalism. Is there any doubt that ExxonMobil would be Adam Smith’s favorite company? It is certainly the consumer’s friend and the taxpayer’s friend.
Compare Raymond and Tillerson to the political entrepreneurs of the energy field such as the late Ken Lay (Enron), the disgraced John Browne (BP), and the value destroyer T. Boone Pickens (Mesa Petroleum, BP Capital). The best can still win in corporate America.
Perversely, for the second year in a row, a group of Rockefeller descendants are backing a shareholder resolution to have ExxonMobil invest in renewable energy, as reported in the Wall Street Journal. My response to this is: “Don’t Enron Exxon.” (Enron left its natural gas core to invest in solar, wind, energy efficiency, and so forth, with uniformly bad results.) The disgruntled heirs of John D. have the energy sustainability vision of Ken Lay. They should not only leave well enough alone, they should rethink their whole political philosophy and applaud the management of what is now America’s star company.
Postscript: The Fall of General Electric
Which brings up the sad tale of another company. Once in a league with ExxonMobil, General Electric is badly wounded because of mismanagement. I remember back in my Enron days when I took a phone call from GE Capital (my bosses were busy). The caller said that GE was considering adopting a company policy of no longer financing coal projects.
Corporate social responsibility, no doubt. Never mind that coal is middle-class energy and that climate alarm was and is exaggerated. Rather than focusing on consumers, GE was playing the political correctness game, as it was when it purchased Enron Wind Corporation, now GE Wind. Evidently, such form-over-substance promiscuity (the Enron disease) later spread to other areas at GE Capital.
Master Resource, March 7, 2009
As reported by Russell Gold at Environmental Capital, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson has made an incisive new argument against his company’s investing in government-dependent renewable energy.
“If I wanted to kill [tax subsidies], the thing to do is for Exxon Mobil to go and invest heavily in them and then Congress would immediately cancel the tax subsidy. Actually what they would do is they would just cancel it for us,” said Mr.Tillerson, during the annual analyst meeting at the New York Stock Exchange.
He added: “In reality, that is what I fear would happen. So we are not going to go into investments that are dependent on a government providing a tax system to make them viable.”
This is very interesting. Former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond and now Tillerson have argued against investing in politically dependent renewables because they have been-there-done-that, with investor losses in the 1970s. And looking at the present and future technology of wind and solar relative to what ExxonMobil can realistically add, they are not sanguine about going forward in the same area.
But Tillerson is now saying something new: If ExxonMobil were to enter the wind and solar market, then a clause in any new legislation could exclude the oil major from getting the production tax credit.
Say the venture is profitable on a bed of special government favor. The green scream would that the “polluter” is using profits from the “clean side” to subsidize the “dirty side.” Therefore, each company—perhaps of a certain size—should be subject to an “average emission test” under which taxpayer subsidies cannot be received if its overall energy production contains too much greenhouse-gas-emitting (oil and coal) energy production.
Thinking ahead in this way, a “green” strategy would be to get a company “hooked” on subsidies and then ratchet up the pressure on that firm to reduce its legitimate, consumer-driven, core energy activities. ExxonMobil is just smart enough to sniff this one out.
Russell Gold’s post continues:
Putting aside Mr. Tillerson’s dark commentary on how unpopular the company is in Washington D.C., he raises a point investors might want to consider.
Renewable energy has a lot of promise and hype, but it still needs government support. It is clearly getting that support today, but how long will the government policy underwrite renewable energy? How long will it be able to afford to underwrite renewable energy? How long will voters support green initiatives that create extra costs during this prolonged economic downturn?
This is good journalism reporting a worthy corporate stance—a rare one-two in today’s politicized discourse over energy policy.
What a great moment for free-market capitalism’s principled entrepreneurship, ™ when so much of corporate America is involved in political capitalism. Is there any doubt that ExxonMobil would be Adam Smith’s favorite company? It is certainly the consumer’s friend and the taxpayer’s friend.
Compare Raymond and Tillerson to the political entrepreneurs of the energy field such as the late Ken Lay (Enron), the disgraced John Browne (BP), and the value destroyer T. Boone Pickens (Mesa Petroleum, BP Capital). The best can still win in corporate America.
Perversely, for the second year in a row, a group of Rockefeller descendants are backing a shareholder resolution to have ExxonMobil invest in renewable energy, as reported in the Wall Street Journal. My response to this is: “Don’t Enron Exxon.” (Enron left its natural gas core to invest in solar, wind, energy efficiency, and so forth, with uniformly bad results.) The disgruntled heirs of John D. have the energy sustainability vision of Ken Lay. They should not only leave well enough alone, they should rethink their whole political philosophy and applaud the management of what is now America’s star company.
Postscript: The Fall of General Electric
Which brings up the sad tale of another company. Once in a league with ExxonMobil, General Electric is badly wounded because of mismanagement. I remember back in my Enron days when I took a phone call from GE Capital (my bosses were busy). The caller said that GE was considering adopting a company policy of no longer financing coal projects.
Corporate social responsibility, no doubt. Never mind that coal is middle-class energy and that climate alarm was and is exaggerated. Rather than focusing on consumers, GE was playing the political correctness game, as it was when it purchased Enron Wind Corporation, now GE Wind. Evidently, such form-over-substance promiscuity (the Enron disease) later spread to other areas at GE Capital.
Weekly Address: Toward a Better Day
Weekly Address: Toward a Better Day
White House, Saturday, March 7th, 2009 at 6:00 am
In his March 7th weekly address, the President capped off a busy week in Washington remarking on new lending guidelines aimed at lowering mortgage payments; an initiative to generate funds for small business and college loans; the release of his administration's first budget which includes $2T in deficit reduction, and the start of long overdue health care reform.
Transcript
White House, Saturday, March 7th, 2009 at 6:00 am
In his March 7th weekly address, the President capped off a busy week in Washington remarking on new lending guidelines aimed at lowering mortgage payments; an initiative to generate funds for small business and college loans; the release of his administration's first budget which includes $2T in deficit reduction, and the start of long overdue health care reform.
Transcript
More Doubts on “Green Jobs”
More Doubts on “Green Jobs”, by Robert Murphy
Master Resource, March 6, 2009
As time passes, the skepticism grows about the ability of government funding for “green jobs” to simultaneously (a) pull the economy out of recession and (b) reduce the risk of climate change. In the March 4 edition of Slate–hardly a bastion of reactionary conservatism–Senior Fellow Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations took the greenwash off of “green jobs” in the essay, ”Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Why green jobs may not save the economy or the environment.” Levi also directs CFR’s Program on Energy Security and Climate Change.
At first it sounds as if Levi is merely echoing the thoughts of Harvard’s Robert Stavins, who has recently been pointing out that it’s not necessarily optimal to try to use a single-bullet policy to address two different objectives. (This led to criticism from the always-entertaining Joe Romm that Stavins was incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.) Along the same lines of Stavins’ argument, Levi writes:
But just because “green” and “jobs” are both in demand doesn’t mean that policies focused on creating “green jobs” make sense. In fact, a close look at the economics of “green jobs” suggests that if we try to find a lasting solution to these challenges with a single set of policies, we might fail to deliver on both fronts.
But Levi doesn’t stop there. He goes on to challenge the efficacy of government funding for green jobs itself:
The fundamental problem is that there’s no solid evidence that green policies—even those aimed explicitly at creating jobs—will actually lower the long-term unemployment rate. Most of the research on how these sorts of programs might build up the work force simply tallies the payrolls, current or projected, of companies in renewable energy and other sectors…This approach is a natural winner: Green policies inevitably generate jobs in green industries, so the studies inevitably deliver good news. But skeptics argue that simple windmill-counting ignores an important fact: Every unit of energy generated from alternative sources displaces a similar amount generated by traditional means, so forgoing those other energy sources means giving up whatever jobs they were providing. This doesn’t mean that greening the economy will have no net impact on jobs, but it muddies the math considerably.
Levi has done his homework; he knows that the proponents of green jobs have a good comeback to the above argument. But then Levi gives the response to that:
[In response to my objection above,] the green jobs community…points out that a dollar spent on renewable energy or higher energy efficiency will generate more U.S. jobs than a dollar spent on traditional power. That’s probably true, since many green jobs are labor-intensive and clean energy is more likely to be generated at home rather than to be imported. But this misses a critical point, too: The dollar spent on green sources also generates less energy. (Renewables will be more expensive than traditional power for the foreseeable future.) Part of the gap can be closed by energy conservation, but other money will need to be diverted from elsewhere in the economy to make up for the remaining energy shortfall. The result is a loss of jobs somewhere else.
My point in the present blog post is not to definitively settle the score; for a more comprehensive analysis, I point readers to the study I co-authored with Robert Michaels on green jobs. What I am warning about is that many of the estimates of green jobs (that allegedly will be created by government funding) commit very naive mistakes.
To give a diferent example from the ones Levi discusses: Just the other day I heard a politician at the federal level (I forget who it was) talking about the “green” provisions in the stimulus bill. And the questioner asked whether the critics were right, when they said that cap and trade would harm the economy. In response, the politician pointed out all the jobs that would be created through the need to retrofit buildings, switch to alternative energy sources, etc.
This is crazy talk. Someone like Yale’s William Nordhaus can make a plausible case (.pdf) for a carbon tax, using the climate models of the IPCC (and in my opinion a heroic faith in the governments of the world to “get it right”). But Nordhaus is a sensible economist and recognizes that you don’t help the private sector by saddling it with another set of constraints. According to the politician’s logic, if the government required that all buildings be outfitted with polka dot wallpaper, it would stimulate the economy.*
* Unfortunately, there are Nobel laureates who would say that with a straight face. These days it’s getting hard to come up with a reductio ad absurdum…
Master Resource, March 6, 2009
As time passes, the skepticism grows about the ability of government funding for “green jobs” to simultaneously (a) pull the economy out of recession and (b) reduce the risk of climate change. In the March 4 edition of Slate–hardly a bastion of reactionary conservatism–Senior Fellow Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations took the greenwash off of “green jobs” in the essay, ”Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Why green jobs may not save the economy or the environment.” Levi also directs CFR’s Program on Energy Security and Climate Change.
At first it sounds as if Levi is merely echoing the thoughts of Harvard’s Robert Stavins, who has recently been pointing out that it’s not necessarily optimal to try to use a single-bullet policy to address two different objectives. (This led to criticism from the always-entertaining Joe Romm that Stavins was incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.) Along the same lines of Stavins’ argument, Levi writes:
But just because “green” and “jobs” are both in demand doesn’t mean that policies focused on creating “green jobs” make sense. In fact, a close look at the economics of “green jobs” suggests that if we try to find a lasting solution to these challenges with a single set of policies, we might fail to deliver on both fronts.
But Levi doesn’t stop there. He goes on to challenge the efficacy of government funding for green jobs itself:
The fundamental problem is that there’s no solid evidence that green policies—even those aimed explicitly at creating jobs—will actually lower the long-term unemployment rate. Most of the research on how these sorts of programs might build up the work force simply tallies the payrolls, current or projected, of companies in renewable energy and other sectors…This approach is a natural winner: Green policies inevitably generate jobs in green industries, so the studies inevitably deliver good news. But skeptics argue that simple windmill-counting ignores an important fact: Every unit of energy generated from alternative sources displaces a similar amount generated by traditional means, so forgoing those other energy sources means giving up whatever jobs they were providing. This doesn’t mean that greening the economy will have no net impact on jobs, but it muddies the math considerably.
Levi has done his homework; he knows that the proponents of green jobs have a good comeback to the above argument. But then Levi gives the response to that:
[In response to my objection above,] the green jobs community…points out that a dollar spent on renewable energy or higher energy efficiency will generate more U.S. jobs than a dollar spent on traditional power. That’s probably true, since many green jobs are labor-intensive and clean energy is more likely to be generated at home rather than to be imported. But this misses a critical point, too: The dollar spent on green sources also generates less energy. (Renewables will be more expensive than traditional power for the foreseeable future.) Part of the gap can be closed by energy conservation, but other money will need to be diverted from elsewhere in the economy to make up for the remaining energy shortfall. The result is a loss of jobs somewhere else.
My point in the present blog post is not to definitively settle the score; for a more comprehensive analysis, I point readers to the study I co-authored with Robert Michaels on green jobs. What I am warning about is that many of the estimates of green jobs (that allegedly will be created by government funding) commit very naive mistakes.
To give a diferent example from the ones Levi discusses: Just the other day I heard a politician at the federal level (I forget who it was) talking about the “green” provisions in the stimulus bill. And the questioner asked whether the critics were right, when they said that cap and trade would harm the economy. In response, the politician pointed out all the jobs that would be created through the need to retrofit buildings, switch to alternative energy sources, etc.
This is crazy talk. Someone like Yale’s William Nordhaus can make a plausible case (.pdf) for a carbon tax, using the climate models of the IPCC (and in my opinion a heroic faith in the governments of the world to “get it right”). But Nordhaus is a sensible economist and recognizes that you don’t help the private sector by saddling it with another set of constraints. According to the politician’s logic, if the government required that all buildings be outfitted with polka dot wallpaper, it would stimulate the economy.*
* Unfortunately, there are Nobel laureates who would say that with a straight face. These days it’s getting hard to come up with a reductio ad absurdum…
Friday, March 6, 2009
Assessing the G-20 Stimulus Plans: A Deeper Look
Assessing the G-20 Stimulus Plans: A Deeper Look. By Eswar Prasad & Isaac Sorkin
Brookings, Mar 05, 2009
Almost all of the G-20 countries have announced some type of fiscal stimulus plan to get their economies back on track but how strong are the plans and what measures are included? Eswar Prasad and Isaac Sorkin analyze the G-20 stimulus plans in detail in new research.
View the article as a PDF » View the interactive map »
The financial crisis turned into a broader macroeconomic crisis in the fall of 2008. The world economy has hit a wall since then, with growth plunging in all the major advanced and emerging economies.
Monetary policy acted as a first line of defense against the crisis but conventional measures appear to have reached their limits in many countries. Policy interest rates in many countries--including the U.S., U.K. and Japan--are now close to the zero nominal interest rate floor. Moreover, the implosion of financial systems in many economies has rendered monetary transmission mechanisms far less effective.
Thus, fiscal policy has become essential to kick-start the global recovery or, at a minimum, to prevent global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from declining further. At the November 2008 G-20 Summit in Washington, DC, the leaders of the G-20 countries promised to “use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demand to rapid effect, as appropriate, while maintaining a policy framework conducive to fiscal sustainability.” How well have countries been doing on this promise?
In this note, we provide a detailed assessment of the stimulus measures in each of the G-20 economies. We first present data on the size of fiscal stimulus packages as announced by the authorities and compiled by the IMF.[1] These data represent estimates of the size of new measures, rather than the announced size of stimulus packages, which typically includes measures already planned before the scope of the crisis became clear. We then supplement these bottom-line numbers with additional information from a variety of sources. This allows us to evaluate the fiscal stimulus packages based on three key criteria:
Thus, lack of coordination could reduce the global bang for the buck of individual countries’ policies. Given the dire situation the world economy is in, large frontloaded stimulus packages that are coordinated internationally could not only be more effective directly but also boost consumer and corporate confidence.
Our analysis is limited to the G-20 countries, mainly because this has de facto become the main global grouping of countries that is driving responses to the crisis. The G-20 countries in this analysis (substituting Spain for the EU) constitute over three-quarters of global GDP (on a market exchange rate basis) and over two-thirds of the world’s population.
We begin with a broad assessment of the contours of stimulus packages announced so far. The interactive country map provides extensive details on individual countries’ packages. It also indicates our assessment of countries that have announced packages that are large and frontloaded (green), modest in size and speed (yellow) and unimpressive in both respects (grey).
Size of Stimulus
Almost all countries in the G-20 have announced fiscal stimulus measures.[2]
The total amount of stimulus in the G-20 amounts to about $692 billion for 2009, which is about 1.4 percent of their combined GDP and a little over 1.1 percent of global GDP. This is a significant amount of stimulus, but appears to fall short of what is needed to tackle a crisis of the proportion we are currently in. The IMF, for instance, has called for stimulus equal to 2 percent of global GDP.[3]
Three countries—the U.S., China and Japan—account for about $424 billion of the overall stimulus in 2009, with their shares in the overall global stimulus amounting to 39 percent (U.S.), 13 percent (China) and 10 percent (Japan). Measures for 2009 in the U.S. stimulus package amount to 1.9 percent of its 2008 GDP and the corresponding numbers for China and Japan are 2.1 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively. For the remaining G-20 economies, the total fiscal stimulus amounts to 1.0 percent of their overall GDP.
In 2010, the U.S. accounts for over 60 percent of planned stimulus. China and Germany are the next largest contributors with China contributing 15 percent of G-20 stimulus and Germany contributing 11 percent. Measures for 2010 in the U.S. stimulus package amount to 2.9 percent of 2008 GDP, China’s 2.3 percent, and Germany’s 2.0 percent.
In summary, while almost all countries have signed on to the fiscal stimulus program, the size of the stimulus varies substantially across countries, with some of the stimulus packages looking downright meek (e.g., France, which has proposed measures amounting to only 0.7 percent of GDP in 2009).
Composition of Stimulus
There is considerable discussion about the relative effectiveness of tax cuts versus spending in stimulating domestic demand. We do not take a position on this but it is useful nevertheless to examine the choices made by different countries in this dimension. We highlight one regularity in the composition of packages across countries and then indicate one dimension in which the structure of the packages differs markedly across countries.
Most countries that have announced multiple waves of stimulus have increased the share of spending (compared to tax cuts) in the second round, just as the U.S. has done from January 2008 to January 2009. For example, Germany’s stimulus in November 2008 was largely composed of tax cuts. The second stimulus package announced in January 2009 was largely tilted towards spending. Similar features can be found in the stimulus measures announced in Australia in October 2008 and February 2009, and in Spain in March 2008 in November 2008.
There is a great deal of variation across countries in the share of the stimulus that is devoted to tax cuts. In the U.S., this share is about 45 percent. Some countries—including Brazil, Russia and the U.K.—have focused almost entirely on tax cuts. Others—including Argentina, China and India—have mostly proposed spending measures. Among the G-20 countries excluding the U.S., about one-third of the stimulus is accounted for by tax cuts and the remainder by spending measures.
Speed of Stimulus
Countries vary in the degree of frontloading of their stimulus packages—the speed with which the tax and expenditure measures hit the real economy (in terms of money reaching the pockets of firms and households, or government monies being spent on social programs or procurement). This is partially a function of the vagaries of the budget process in each country—countries may not announce stimulus for the future though they intend to enact it as part of their regular budget process.
Of the 19 countries that make up the G-20, only four countries—China, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S.—plan to spend as much or more on stimulus (as a share of GDP) in 2010 than in 2009. In other words, there is a fair amount of frontloading in the stimulus packages of the G-20 countries, with much of the stimulus taking effect in 2009. Of course, this could reflect different beliefs about the length of the recession. It could also reflect difficulty in ramping up government expenditure quickly, especially on infrastructure and other investment projects.
We should also note that some countries recognized the coming crisis and implemented stimulus plans at some point in 2008. This list includes Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, U.K. and the U.S.
Bottom Line
Fiscal stimulus has a crucial role to play in stabilizing the world economy, especially as conventional monetary policy appears to have reached its limit in many countries. By and large, policymakers in G-20 economies have acted on their leaders’ joint announcement in November 2008 to use fiscal stimulus in a concerted and coordinated manner to boost economic activity. Some countries like China and the U.S. have responded forcefully, with impressive packages. But the execution, both in terms of size and speed, leaves much to be desired in some of the G-20 countries.
There are legitimate questions about the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus, especially in economies where the financial system has broken down and where monetary policy can no longer play much of a supporting role. Moreover, excessive government borrowing to finance large budget deficits could itself generate instability and there are serious concerns about medium-term sustainability of fiscal positions in economies that are building up public debt at a rapid pace. Given the dire and fast-deteriorating economic situation and the lack of other tools, however, the world may have little choice but to engage in massive frontloaded fiscal expansion. The consequences of timidity, as history teaches us, could be even worse.
View table »
Brookings, Mar 05, 2009
Almost all of the G-20 countries have announced some type of fiscal stimulus plan to get their economies back on track but how strong are the plans and what measures are included? Eswar Prasad and Isaac Sorkin analyze the G-20 stimulus plans in detail in new research.
View the article as a PDF » View the interactive map »
The financial crisis turned into a broader macroeconomic crisis in the fall of 2008. The world economy has hit a wall since then, with growth plunging in all the major advanced and emerging economies.
Monetary policy acted as a first line of defense against the crisis but conventional measures appear to have reached their limits in many countries. Policy interest rates in many countries--including the U.S., U.K. and Japan--are now close to the zero nominal interest rate floor. Moreover, the implosion of financial systems in many economies has rendered monetary transmission mechanisms far less effective.
Thus, fiscal policy has become essential to kick-start the global recovery or, at a minimum, to prevent global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from declining further. At the November 2008 G-20 Summit in Washington, DC, the leaders of the G-20 countries promised to “use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demand to rapid effect, as appropriate, while maintaining a policy framework conducive to fiscal sustainability.” How well have countries been doing on this promise?
In this note, we provide a detailed assessment of the stimulus measures in each of the G-20 economies. We first present data on the size of fiscal stimulus packages as announced by the authorities and compiled by the IMF.[1] These data represent estimates of the size of new measures, rather than the announced size of stimulus packages, which typically includes measures already planned before the scope of the crisis became clear. We then supplement these bottom-line numbers with additional information from a variety of sources. This allows us to evaluate the fiscal stimulus packages based on three key criteria:
- Size—the extent of stimulus relative to GDP
- Composition—balance between spending and revenue measures
- Frontloading—the speed with which fiscal measures hit the ground
Thus, lack of coordination could reduce the global bang for the buck of individual countries’ policies. Given the dire situation the world economy is in, large frontloaded stimulus packages that are coordinated internationally could not only be more effective directly but also boost consumer and corporate confidence.
Our analysis is limited to the G-20 countries, mainly because this has de facto become the main global grouping of countries that is driving responses to the crisis. The G-20 countries in this analysis (substituting Spain for the EU) constitute over three-quarters of global GDP (on a market exchange rate basis) and over two-thirds of the world’s population.
We begin with a broad assessment of the contours of stimulus packages announced so far. The interactive country map provides extensive details on individual countries’ packages. It also indicates our assessment of countries that have announced packages that are large and frontloaded (green), modest in size and speed (yellow) and unimpressive in both respects (grey).
Size of Stimulus
Almost all countries in the G-20 have announced fiscal stimulus measures.[2]
The total amount of stimulus in the G-20 amounts to about $692 billion for 2009, which is about 1.4 percent of their combined GDP and a little over 1.1 percent of global GDP. This is a significant amount of stimulus, but appears to fall short of what is needed to tackle a crisis of the proportion we are currently in. The IMF, for instance, has called for stimulus equal to 2 percent of global GDP.[3]
Three countries—the U.S., China and Japan—account for about $424 billion of the overall stimulus in 2009, with their shares in the overall global stimulus amounting to 39 percent (U.S.), 13 percent (China) and 10 percent (Japan). Measures for 2009 in the U.S. stimulus package amount to 1.9 percent of its 2008 GDP and the corresponding numbers for China and Japan are 2.1 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively. For the remaining G-20 economies, the total fiscal stimulus amounts to 1.0 percent of their overall GDP.
In 2010, the U.S. accounts for over 60 percent of planned stimulus. China and Germany are the next largest contributors with China contributing 15 percent of G-20 stimulus and Germany contributing 11 percent. Measures for 2010 in the U.S. stimulus package amount to 2.9 percent of 2008 GDP, China’s 2.3 percent, and Germany’s 2.0 percent.
In summary, while almost all countries have signed on to the fiscal stimulus program, the size of the stimulus varies substantially across countries, with some of the stimulus packages looking downright meek (e.g., France, which has proposed measures amounting to only 0.7 percent of GDP in 2009).
Composition of Stimulus
There is considerable discussion about the relative effectiveness of tax cuts versus spending in stimulating domestic demand. We do not take a position on this but it is useful nevertheless to examine the choices made by different countries in this dimension. We highlight one regularity in the composition of packages across countries and then indicate one dimension in which the structure of the packages differs markedly across countries.
Most countries that have announced multiple waves of stimulus have increased the share of spending (compared to tax cuts) in the second round, just as the U.S. has done from January 2008 to January 2009. For example, Germany’s stimulus in November 2008 was largely composed of tax cuts. The second stimulus package announced in January 2009 was largely tilted towards spending. Similar features can be found in the stimulus measures announced in Australia in October 2008 and February 2009, and in Spain in March 2008 in November 2008.
There is a great deal of variation across countries in the share of the stimulus that is devoted to tax cuts. In the U.S., this share is about 45 percent. Some countries—including Brazil, Russia and the U.K.—have focused almost entirely on tax cuts. Others—including Argentina, China and India—have mostly proposed spending measures. Among the G-20 countries excluding the U.S., about one-third of the stimulus is accounted for by tax cuts and the remainder by spending measures.
Speed of Stimulus
Countries vary in the degree of frontloading of their stimulus packages—the speed with which the tax and expenditure measures hit the real economy (in terms of money reaching the pockets of firms and households, or government monies being spent on social programs or procurement). This is partially a function of the vagaries of the budget process in each country—countries may not announce stimulus for the future though they intend to enact it as part of their regular budget process.
Of the 19 countries that make up the G-20, only four countries—China, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S.—plan to spend as much or more on stimulus (as a share of GDP) in 2010 than in 2009. In other words, there is a fair amount of frontloading in the stimulus packages of the G-20 countries, with much of the stimulus taking effect in 2009. Of course, this could reflect different beliefs about the length of the recession. It could also reflect difficulty in ramping up government expenditure quickly, especially on infrastructure and other investment projects.
We should also note that some countries recognized the coming crisis and implemented stimulus plans at some point in 2008. This list includes Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, U.K. and the U.S.
Bottom Line
Fiscal stimulus has a crucial role to play in stabilizing the world economy, especially as conventional monetary policy appears to have reached its limit in many countries. By and large, policymakers in G-20 economies have acted on their leaders’ joint announcement in November 2008 to use fiscal stimulus in a concerted and coordinated manner to boost economic activity. Some countries like China and the U.S. have responded forcefully, with impressive packages. But the execution, both in terms of size and speed, leaves much to be desired in some of the G-20 countries.
There are legitimate questions about the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus, especially in economies where the financial system has broken down and where monetary policy can no longer play much of a supporting role. Moreover, excessive government borrowing to finance large budget deficits could itself generate instability and there are serious concerns about medium-term sustainability of fiscal positions in economies that are building up public debt at a rapid pace. Given the dire and fast-deteriorating economic situation and the lack of other tools, however, the world may have little choice but to engage in massive frontloaded fiscal expansion. The consequences of timidity, as history teaches us, could be even worse.
View table »
Study: Job Loss Data under Card Check in Canada
New Study Shows Job Loss Data under Card Check. By Ivan Osorio
Open Market/CEI, Mar 05, 2009
This week, Dr Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist with the Law and Economics Consulting Group, published a new study in which she analyzes the likely economic effects of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act if it were to be enacted, especially on employment. EFCA would replace secret ballots in union organizing elections with a process known as card check, whereby union organizers ask employees to sign union cards out in public, thus exposing workers to high-pressure tactics which secret ballots are designed to avoid. Labor unions see this as a way to revive their declining number. The summary of Layne-Farrar’s findings includes:
[P]assing EFCA would likely increase the US unemployment rate and decrease US job creation substantially. The precise effect on unemployment will depend on the degree to which EFCA increases union density, but for every 3 percentage points gained in union membership through card checks and mandatory arbitration, the following year’s unemployment rate is predicted to increase by 1 percentage point and job creation is predicted to fall by around 1.5 million jobs. Thus, if EFCA passed today and resulted in an increase in unionization from the current rate of about 12% to 15%, then unionized workers would increase from 15.5 to 19.6 million while unemployment a year from now would rise by 1.5 million, to 10.4 million. If EFCA were to increase the percentage of private sector union membership by between 5 and 10 percentage points, as some have suggested, my analysis indicates that unemployment would increase by 2.3 to 5.4 million in the following year and the unemployment rate would increase by 1.5 to 3.5 percentage points in the following year.
As Layne-Farrar explained in a press conference call today, she analyzed the experience of Canada with both card check and secret ballots. Union organizing in Canada is set at the provincial, rather than federal level, so different provicial policies allow for contrast. As she explained, several provinces have moved from card check to secret ballots, while one went the other way. To control for other factors, she said she did a regression going back 22 years.
Study available for download here.
For more on card ceck, see here.
Open Market/CEI, Mar 05, 2009
This week, Dr Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist with the Law and Economics Consulting Group, published a new study in which she analyzes the likely economic effects of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act if it were to be enacted, especially on employment. EFCA would replace secret ballots in union organizing elections with a process known as card check, whereby union organizers ask employees to sign union cards out in public, thus exposing workers to high-pressure tactics which secret ballots are designed to avoid. Labor unions see this as a way to revive their declining number. The summary of Layne-Farrar’s findings includes:
[P]assing EFCA would likely increase the US unemployment rate and decrease US job creation substantially. The precise effect on unemployment will depend on the degree to which EFCA increases union density, but for every 3 percentage points gained in union membership through card checks and mandatory arbitration, the following year’s unemployment rate is predicted to increase by 1 percentage point and job creation is predicted to fall by around 1.5 million jobs. Thus, if EFCA passed today and resulted in an increase in unionization from the current rate of about 12% to 15%, then unionized workers would increase from 15.5 to 19.6 million while unemployment a year from now would rise by 1.5 million, to 10.4 million. If EFCA were to increase the percentage of private sector union membership by between 5 and 10 percentage points, as some have suggested, my analysis indicates that unemployment would increase by 2.3 to 5.4 million in the following year and the unemployment rate would increase by 1.5 to 3.5 percentage points in the following year.
As Layne-Farrar explained in a press conference call today, she analyzed the experience of Canada with both card check and secret ballots. Union organizing in Canada is set at the provincial, rather than federal level, so different provicial policies allow for contrast. As she explained, several provinces have moved from card check to secret ballots, while one went the other way. To control for other factors, she said she did a regression going back 22 years.
Study available for download here.
For more on card ceck, see here.
Something New for Climate Doomsters to Fear: Political Backlash
Something New for Climate Doomsters to Fear: Political Backlash. By Marlo Lewis
Planet Gore/NRO, Thursday, March 05, 2009
Global warming used to be such fun for eco-activists and their political allies when it was a stick they could use to beat George W. Bush. For years, the Left milked global warming as a political-theater platform for partisan attack, direct-mail fundraising, and endless moral posturing. But now that they’re running the show in Washington, D.C., climate doomsters know they’ll be blamed if their policies de-stimulate our ailing economy. On two key battlefronts, these vociferous advocates of urgent action are now proceeding with caution.
Consider the climate-treaty negotiations. The global-warming crowd continually castigated Bush for opposing the Kyoto Protocol. Bush-bashing reached a fever pitch during the December 2007 UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia. The main bone of contention there was a European Union (EU) proposal to cut developed country emissions from 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) and 14 other Senators wrote to Bali delegates crowing about the committee’s approval of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill and even “bigger [U.S. policy] changes on the horizon.” The letter was obviously designed to give political aid and comfort to the legions of delegates denouncing Bush for rejecting the EU proposal.
Where do things stand in the Obama era of “change?” Greenwire (March 4, 2009, subscription required) reports that President Obama’s lead climate negotiator, Todd Stern, “yesterday dismissed as ‘unnecessary and unfeasible’ a European proposal to have developed nations curb emissions 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels in the next decade.” In an obvious reference to Kyoto, Stern explained: “I don’t want to bring home a dead-on-arrival agreement. We tried that. It didn’t do the world a lot of good.” Stern said that for America, the EU proposal is “a prescription not for progress but for stalemate,” noting that the EU target is more aggressive than the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill, which failed to pass in the Senate in June 2008.
So, are eco-pressure groups crying foul or even expressing regret that America still lags behind Europe in global-warming zealotry? No way. Greenwire summarizes their reactions:
Chris Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute think tank, praised Stern's comments.
"It's good that he was frank about some of the difficulties with the Europeans," Flavin said. "It was a warning shot that they better get serious about recognizing that we and the Europeans are not going to get to the same numbers starting from a 1990 baseline."
Elliot Diringer, vice president for international strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said Stern was simply "reflecting the political realities here in Washington."
Overall, negotiators and analysts hailed the speech as an unmistakable signal from the Obama administration that the United States is serious about getting a global deal.
"There was an unequivocal statement that we are going to make reductions," said World Resources Institute President Jonathan Lash. "I just haven't even heard a U.S. official be explicit and concrete and clear that way.
"Poland's climate ambassador, Janusz Reiter, called Stern's comments "exactly the mix of idealism and pragmatism that is the right formula for the process."
Newfound caution is also discernible among activists who litigated and won Mass. v. EPA, and who sued EPA again last year to compel the agency to issue an endangerment finding — the prerequisite to regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from new motor vehicles under §202 of the Clean Air Act (CAA).
Back in September 2008, David Bookbinder, chief climate council for the Sierra Club, derided as “bugaboos,” a “red herring,” and a “pure scare tactic” (see segments 1:47:10-1:48:22 and 2:03:83-2:05:20 of the Webcast Archive of this hearing) industry and free-market group warnings (see here, here, and here) that regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) under almost any CAA provision would expose tens of thousands of previously unregulated buildings and facilities to new controls, paperwork, and penalties under the Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program.
Yet last month, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund declined to file a motion to “stay” former EPA Administrator Johnson’s memorandum clarifying that CO2 is not currently subject to PSD regulation.
Why? According to Greenwire, “If the agency were to stay the memo immediately, Bookbinder said, it could trigger an obligation under the Clean Air Act for broad-ranging regulations targeting even very small sources of carbon emissions.” In Bookbinder’s words: “The Clean Air Act has language in there that is kind of all or nothing if CO2 gets regulated, and it could be unbelievably complicated and administratively nightmarish for both EPA and the states if they were to yank the Johnson memo and not have something in place that makes it clear that we’re going after only the very large sources.”
On Capitol Hill, the same political caution seems to be replacing political theater. In 2008, Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), and Sen. Boxer each demanded that EPA release the endangerment analysis and draft regulations that the Agency had developed in response to Mass v. EPA. Bush officials put those documents under wraps once they understood how easily CAA regulation of CO2 could spiral out of the agency’s control. Like her Bush-administration predecessor, Obama EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has decided against releasing the documents, announcing that EPA in due course would publish a new endangerment analysis and solicit public comment. None of the usual suspects in Congress is complaining or threatening subpoenas.
What does it all mean? Unfortunately, these rhetorical and tactical adjustments do not mean the Obama Administration won’t advocate cap-and-trade legislation, won’t agree to Kyoto II at the Copenhagen climate conference, or won’t regulate CO2 under the CAA.
However, their more cautious approach — which includes Obama’s proposal for a weaker emissions-reduction target (basically 1990 levels by 2020) than the U.S. Kyoto target (7 percent below 1990 levels during 2008-2012) — suggests that the global-warming crowd are worried as never before about the political backlash the economic fallout from their agenda could provoke. Our task is obvious: keep the spotlight on the threats their policies pose to our foundering economy.
Planet Gore/NRO, Thursday, March 05, 2009
Global warming used to be such fun for eco-activists and their political allies when it was a stick they could use to beat George W. Bush. For years, the Left milked global warming as a political-theater platform for partisan attack, direct-mail fundraising, and endless moral posturing. But now that they’re running the show in Washington, D.C., climate doomsters know they’ll be blamed if their policies de-stimulate our ailing economy. On two key battlefronts, these vociferous advocates of urgent action are now proceeding with caution.
Consider the climate-treaty negotiations. The global-warming crowd continually castigated Bush for opposing the Kyoto Protocol. Bush-bashing reached a fever pitch during the December 2007 UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia. The main bone of contention there was a European Union (EU) proposal to cut developed country emissions from 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) and 14 other Senators wrote to Bali delegates crowing about the committee’s approval of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill and even “bigger [U.S. policy] changes on the horizon.” The letter was obviously designed to give political aid and comfort to the legions of delegates denouncing Bush for rejecting the EU proposal.
Where do things stand in the Obama era of “change?” Greenwire (March 4, 2009, subscription required) reports that President Obama’s lead climate negotiator, Todd Stern, “yesterday dismissed as ‘unnecessary and unfeasible’ a European proposal to have developed nations curb emissions 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels in the next decade.” In an obvious reference to Kyoto, Stern explained: “I don’t want to bring home a dead-on-arrival agreement. We tried that. It didn’t do the world a lot of good.” Stern said that for America, the EU proposal is “a prescription not for progress but for stalemate,” noting that the EU target is more aggressive than the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill, which failed to pass in the Senate in June 2008.
So, are eco-pressure groups crying foul or even expressing regret that America still lags behind Europe in global-warming zealotry? No way. Greenwire summarizes their reactions:
Chris Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute think tank, praised Stern's comments.
"It's good that he was frank about some of the difficulties with the Europeans," Flavin said. "It was a warning shot that they better get serious about recognizing that we and the Europeans are not going to get to the same numbers starting from a 1990 baseline."
Elliot Diringer, vice president for international strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said Stern was simply "reflecting the political realities here in Washington."
Overall, negotiators and analysts hailed the speech as an unmistakable signal from the Obama administration that the United States is serious about getting a global deal.
"There was an unequivocal statement that we are going to make reductions," said World Resources Institute President Jonathan Lash. "I just haven't even heard a U.S. official be explicit and concrete and clear that way.
"Poland's climate ambassador, Janusz Reiter, called Stern's comments "exactly the mix of idealism and pragmatism that is the right formula for the process."
Newfound caution is also discernible among activists who litigated and won Mass. v. EPA, and who sued EPA again last year to compel the agency to issue an endangerment finding — the prerequisite to regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from new motor vehicles under §202 of the Clean Air Act (CAA).
Back in September 2008, David Bookbinder, chief climate council for the Sierra Club, derided as “bugaboos,” a “red herring,” and a “pure scare tactic” (see segments 1:47:10-1:48:22 and 2:03:83-2:05:20 of the Webcast Archive of this hearing) industry and free-market group warnings (see here, here, and here) that regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) under almost any CAA provision would expose tens of thousands of previously unregulated buildings and facilities to new controls, paperwork, and penalties under the Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program.
Yet last month, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund declined to file a motion to “stay” former EPA Administrator Johnson’s memorandum clarifying that CO2 is not currently subject to PSD regulation.
Why? According to Greenwire, “If the agency were to stay the memo immediately, Bookbinder said, it could trigger an obligation under the Clean Air Act for broad-ranging regulations targeting even very small sources of carbon emissions.” In Bookbinder’s words: “The Clean Air Act has language in there that is kind of all or nothing if CO2 gets regulated, and it could be unbelievably complicated and administratively nightmarish for both EPA and the states if they were to yank the Johnson memo and not have something in place that makes it clear that we’re going after only the very large sources.”
On Capitol Hill, the same political caution seems to be replacing political theater. In 2008, Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), and Sen. Boxer each demanded that EPA release the endangerment analysis and draft regulations that the Agency had developed in response to Mass v. EPA. Bush officials put those documents under wraps once they understood how easily CAA regulation of CO2 could spiral out of the agency’s control. Like her Bush-administration predecessor, Obama EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has decided against releasing the documents, announcing that EPA in due course would publish a new endangerment analysis and solicit public comment. None of the usual suspects in Congress is complaining or threatening subpoenas.
What does it all mean? Unfortunately, these rhetorical and tactical adjustments do not mean the Obama Administration won’t advocate cap-and-trade legislation, won’t agree to Kyoto II at the Copenhagen climate conference, or won’t regulate CO2 under the CAA.
However, their more cautious approach — which includes Obama’s proposal for a weaker emissions-reduction target (basically 1990 levels by 2020) than the U.S. Kyoto target (7 percent below 1990 levels during 2008-2012) — suggests that the global-warming crowd are worried as never before about the political backlash the economic fallout from their agenda could provoke. Our task is obvious: keep the spotlight on the threats their policies pose to our foundering economy.
Opposite Views on Climate Feedbacks (and perhaps the answer lies in the middle)
Opposite Views on Climate Feedbacks (and perhaps the answer lies in the middle). By Chip Knappenberger
Master Resource, March 5, 2009
Just how much warming should we expect from rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs)? The answer largely hinges on how much extra warming might be generated by the initial warming—that is, how strong (and in what direction) are the feedbacks from water vapor and clouds.
By most estimates (including climate model outcomes), these feedbacks are positive and result in about a doubling of the warming that would result from greenhouse gas increases alone. By others, however, the total feedbacks are negative, and imply that the total warming will be less than the warming from greenhouse gas increases alone, and only a fraction of that which is commonly expected.
The ultimate warming experienced across the 21st century will depend on the combination of greenhouse gas emissions and how the climate responds to them. The feedback issue is an essential part of the latter, for it spells the difference between a high climate sensitivity to greenhouse gas doubling (say 3-4ºC) and a much lower one (1-2ºC).
As to where the answer lies, the devil is in the details, and in this instance he is hard at work, as the processes involved are exceedingly complex—difficult to not only to fully understand, but even to adequately measure.
In a “Perspectives” piece in a recent issue of Science magazine, Andrew Dessler and Steven Sherwood attempt to put to rest any notion that the feedbacks on global temperatures are anything but positive and significant. Dessler and Sherwood point out that the role of water vapor plays the largest role in the feedback process—higher temperature (from greenhouse gases) lead to more water vapor in the atmosphere which leads to even higher temperatures still (as water vapor, itself, is a strong greenhouse gas).
But actual hard evidence that water vapor is increasing in the atmosphere has been hard to come by. Dessler and Sherwood review the recent literature on the topic, including an important contribution from Dessler et al. published last year, and conclude that there now exists sufficient evidence to conclude that atmospheric water vapor is increasing very much in line with climate model expectations and that this increase produces roughly twice the global temperature rise than does anthropogenic greenhouse gas enhancement alone. Meaning, of course, that all is generally right in model world, or as they put it: “There remain uncertainties in our simulations of the climate, but evidence for the water vapor feedback—and the large future warming it implies—is now strong.”
But apparently Dessler and Sherwood didn’t convince everyone that this is the case. One notable person who was less than impressed that this was the whole story was Roy Spencer, who has himself been working on the feedbacks issue. Spencer points out that water is actually involved in two feedback processes—the first, through water vapor as described by Dessler and Sherwood, and the second, through water droplets, or, more commonly, clouds. Changes in the patterns (horizontal, vertical, and temporal) and characteristics (droplet size, brightness, etc.) of cloud cover play an important role not only in the earth’s climate, but in how the climate responds to changes in the greenhouse effect. And, as you may have guessed from their ephemeral nature, the behavior or clouds is not particularly well-understood, and even less well modeled.
Spencer has been looking into the cloud part of the feedback processes. Over the past several years, during the period when Dessler et al. (2008) finds a positive feedback from increases in water vapor, Spencer, in his investigations, finds that cloud cover changes produce a feedback in the opposite direction. And when he adds these two effects together, he finds that the total feedback from warming-induced changes in water in the atmosphere to be negative (that is, the cloud effect dominates the vapor effect). Granted, Spencer’s investigations are far from complete and even farther from being generally accepted, but they do raise important concerns as to the ability of examinations of short-term behavior to diagnose long-term response (a situation relied on by both Spencer, and Dessler and Sherwood). Spencer concludes that “unless you know both [vapor] and [cloud] feedbacks, you don’t know the sensitivity of the climate system, and so you don’t know how much global warming there will be in the future.” Virtually the opposite sense of things than that put forth by Dessler and Sherwood.
Obviously, the final arbiter will be the earth’s climate itself, as it is the true integrator of all forces imparted upon it. But, still today, we struggle to even accurately observe the finer details of how it is responding to the changes to which it is being continually subjected. And we are further still from understanding the processes involved sufficiently to produce unassailable models of the climate’s behavior, much less future projections of its response response (as evidenced by the recent slowdown in the rate of global temperature increase despite ever-growing greenhouse gas emissions). And so the process of science continues…
[Breaking news: A new peer-reviewed paper has just been published in the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology, by researchers Garth Paltridge and colleagues which finds that the increase in atmospheric water vapor that, according to Dessler and Sherwood most definitely accompanies the increase in temperature, is absent in one of the primary databases used to study climate behavior—the so-called NCEP reanalysis data. The authors admit that perhaps there are errors contained in this dataset which may explain their results, but as it stands now (and unless some errors are identified) the reanalysis data supports a negative water vapor feedback. Paltridge et al. conclude:
Negative trends in [water vapor] as found in the NCEP data would imply that long-term water vapor feedback is negative—that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric CO2. In this context, it is important to establish what (if any) aspects of the observed trends survive detailed examination of the impact of past changes of radiosonde instrumentation and protocol within the various international networks.
Lead author Garth Paltridge describes the trials and tribulations of trying to get this result (which runs contrary to climate model expectations) published in an enlightening article over at ClimateAudit, including how at least one of the Dessler and Sherwood authors knew of Paltridge’s soon-to-be-published results and yet made no mention of it in their Science piece. Hmmm, so much for an open discussion of the science on this issue.]
References:
Dessler, A.E., and S. C. Sherwood, 2009. A matter of humidity. Science, 323, 1020-1021.
Dessler, A.E., et al., 2008. Water-vapor climate feedback inferred from climate fluctuations, 2003-2008. Geophysical Research Letters, 35, L20704.
Spencer, R., and W.D. Braswell. 2008. Potential biases in feedback diagnosis from observations data: a simple model demonstration. Journal of Climate, 21, 5624-5628.
Master Resource, March 5, 2009
Just how much warming should we expect from rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs)? The answer largely hinges on how much extra warming might be generated by the initial warming—that is, how strong (and in what direction) are the feedbacks from water vapor and clouds.
By most estimates (including climate model outcomes), these feedbacks are positive and result in about a doubling of the warming that would result from greenhouse gas increases alone. By others, however, the total feedbacks are negative, and imply that the total warming will be less than the warming from greenhouse gas increases alone, and only a fraction of that which is commonly expected.
The ultimate warming experienced across the 21st century will depend on the combination of greenhouse gas emissions and how the climate responds to them. The feedback issue is an essential part of the latter, for it spells the difference between a high climate sensitivity to greenhouse gas doubling (say 3-4ºC) and a much lower one (1-2ºC).
As to where the answer lies, the devil is in the details, and in this instance he is hard at work, as the processes involved are exceedingly complex—difficult to not only to fully understand, but even to adequately measure.
In a “Perspectives” piece in a recent issue of Science magazine, Andrew Dessler and Steven Sherwood attempt to put to rest any notion that the feedbacks on global temperatures are anything but positive and significant. Dessler and Sherwood point out that the role of water vapor plays the largest role in the feedback process—higher temperature (from greenhouse gases) lead to more water vapor in the atmosphere which leads to even higher temperatures still (as water vapor, itself, is a strong greenhouse gas).
But actual hard evidence that water vapor is increasing in the atmosphere has been hard to come by. Dessler and Sherwood review the recent literature on the topic, including an important contribution from Dessler et al. published last year, and conclude that there now exists sufficient evidence to conclude that atmospheric water vapor is increasing very much in line with climate model expectations and that this increase produces roughly twice the global temperature rise than does anthropogenic greenhouse gas enhancement alone. Meaning, of course, that all is generally right in model world, or as they put it: “There remain uncertainties in our simulations of the climate, but evidence for the water vapor feedback—and the large future warming it implies—is now strong.”
But apparently Dessler and Sherwood didn’t convince everyone that this is the case. One notable person who was less than impressed that this was the whole story was Roy Spencer, who has himself been working on the feedbacks issue. Spencer points out that water is actually involved in two feedback processes—the first, through water vapor as described by Dessler and Sherwood, and the second, through water droplets, or, more commonly, clouds. Changes in the patterns (horizontal, vertical, and temporal) and characteristics (droplet size, brightness, etc.) of cloud cover play an important role not only in the earth’s climate, but in how the climate responds to changes in the greenhouse effect. And, as you may have guessed from their ephemeral nature, the behavior or clouds is not particularly well-understood, and even less well modeled.
Spencer has been looking into the cloud part of the feedback processes. Over the past several years, during the period when Dessler et al. (2008) finds a positive feedback from increases in water vapor, Spencer, in his investigations, finds that cloud cover changes produce a feedback in the opposite direction. And when he adds these two effects together, he finds that the total feedback from warming-induced changes in water in the atmosphere to be negative (that is, the cloud effect dominates the vapor effect). Granted, Spencer’s investigations are far from complete and even farther from being generally accepted, but they do raise important concerns as to the ability of examinations of short-term behavior to diagnose long-term response (a situation relied on by both Spencer, and Dessler and Sherwood). Spencer concludes that “unless you know both [vapor] and [cloud] feedbacks, you don’t know the sensitivity of the climate system, and so you don’t know how much global warming there will be in the future.” Virtually the opposite sense of things than that put forth by Dessler and Sherwood.
Obviously, the final arbiter will be the earth’s climate itself, as it is the true integrator of all forces imparted upon it. But, still today, we struggle to even accurately observe the finer details of how it is responding to the changes to which it is being continually subjected. And we are further still from understanding the processes involved sufficiently to produce unassailable models of the climate’s behavior, much less future projections of its response response (as evidenced by the recent slowdown in the rate of global temperature increase despite ever-growing greenhouse gas emissions). And so the process of science continues…
[Breaking news: A new peer-reviewed paper has just been published in the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology, by researchers Garth Paltridge and colleagues which finds that the increase in atmospheric water vapor that, according to Dessler and Sherwood most definitely accompanies the increase in temperature, is absent in one of the primary databases used to study climate behavior—the so-called NCEP reanalysis data. The authors admit that perhaps there are errors contained in this dataset which may explain their results, but as it stands now (and unless some errors are identified) the reanalysis data supports a negative water vapor feedback. Paltridge et al. conclude:
Negative trends in [water vapor] as found in the NCEP data would imply that long-term water vapor feedback is negative—that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric CO2. In this context, it is important to establish what (if any) aspects of the observed trends survive detailed examination of the impact of past changes of radiosonde instrumentation and protocol within the various international networks.
Lead author Garth Paltridge describes the trials and tribulations of trying to get this result (which runs contrary to climate model expectations) published in an enlightening article over at ClimateAudit, including how at least one of the Dessler and Sherwood authors knew of Paltridge’s soon-to-be-published results and yet made no mention of it in their Science piece. Hmmm, so much for an open discussion of the science on this issue.]
References:
Dessler, A.E., and S. C. Sherwood, 2009. A matter of humidity. Science, 323, 1020-1021.
Dessler, A.E., et al., 2008. Water-vapor climate feedback inferred from climate fluctuations, 2003-2008. Geophysical Research Letters, 35, L20704.
Spencer, R., and W.D. Braswell. 2008. Potential biases in feedback diagnosis from observations data: a simple model demonstration. Journal of Climate, 21, 5624-5628.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The Right Way to Determine Executive Pay
The Right Way to Determine Executive Pay. By Richard R Floersch
Compensation is about more than just recruitment and retention.
WSJ, Mar 05, 2009
It's that time again -- proxy season -- when compensation committees, independent advisers and HR executives are making final decisions about executive compensation in public companies for 2009 and beyond. Meanwhile, public anger about big paychecks is at a fever pitch.
In this climate, those responsible for setting the parameters in the private sector need to start asking the right questions and taking actions, even if the results aren't popular among executives. If they don't, Congress will likely seek to change the way compensation is provided.
This would be unfortunate, because aside from disclosure, past attempts to regulate the amount and form of executive compensation have backfired. The $1 million limitation on deductibility of senior executive compensation, which became law in 1993, resulted in many companies increasing CEO salaries to $1 million. Earlier limitations on exit packages had the same effect -- the ceiling became a floor.
Often lost in public debate is a critical point: Compensation is, or should be, an integral part of a business strategy, devised to incentivize executives to accomplish that strategy.
Pay isn't just about recruitment and retention. It's also a form of communication about a company's culture and values, which can impact a company's relationship with its employees, its brand reputation, and ultimately its share value. The boards and executives at leading companies have created a culture of leadership that reinforces a true pay-for-results orientation -- pay goes up with positive results and down when the company does poorly.
Perhaps the best way all companies can demonstrate this orientation is to ask the following questions:
Does your company have incentive measures that address both company performance and its sustainability? A focus on revenue growth means little if the results will have negative long-term effects or result in massive write-downs.
Are the potential payouts under your annual incentive capped at a reasonable level to minimize "swinging for the fences" at the expense of long-term company viability? Does your compensation committee have discretion to adjust payouts that, while reflective of actual performance, do not appear fair in the broader context? Finally, does your compensation committee place a higher priority on doing what's right for the company in the long term ahead of merely copying what competitors and other companies are doing?
Other questions: Are your company's stock ownership and/or retention policies sufficiently rigorous to require executives to own substantial company stock over their careers, and hold it for long periods of time to align pay with shareholder interests? Does your company have a meaningful clawback (recoupment) policy? More than 64% of the Fortune 100 companies have clawback policies. If a company doesn't perform as well as originally believed, then why pay executives as if it did?
The good news is that setting aside the unique Wall Street pay model, which was focused on short-term results and annual bonuses, many large companies already have executive compensation structures that are predominantly focused on compensation for long-term performance. According to Equilar Inc., a leading compensation data and analysis firm, roughly 70% of total compensation for S&P 500 CEOs was in the form of long-term incentives, typically earned over three years or more and predominantly tied to shareholder return.
The debate over executive pay will no doubt persist. Policy makers should abjure knee-jerk reforms and carefully consider the actual impact of proposed changes on pay. And boards and corporate leaders need to earn policy makers' trust by demonstrating that we understand that pay communicates a broader message, and are willing to be part of the solution.
Mr. Floersch is executive vice president of McDonald's Corp. and chairman of the Center on Executive Compensation, which represents the senior HR executives at some of the largest U.S. corporations.
Compensation is about more than just recruitment and retention.
WSJ, Mar 05, 2009
It's that time again -- proxy season -- when compensation committees, independent advisers and HR executives are making final decisions about executive compensation in public companies for 2009 and beyond. Meanwhile, public anger about big paychecks is at a fever pitch.
In this climate, those responsible for setting the parameters in the private sector need to start asking the right questions and taking actions, even if the results aren't popular among executives. If they don't, Congress will likely seek to change the way compensation is provided.
This would be unfortunate, because aside from disclosure, past attempts to regulate the amount and form of executive compensation have backfired. The $1 million limitation on deductibility of senior executive compensation, which became law in 1993, resulted in many companies increasing CEO salaries to $1 million. Earlier limitations on exit packages had the same effect -- the ceiling became a floor.
Often lost in public debate is a critical point: Compensation is, or should be, an integral part of a business strategy, devised to incentivize executives to accomplish that strategy.
Pay isn't just about recruitment and retention. It's also a form of communication about a company's culture and values, which can impact a company's relationship with its employees, its brand reputation, and ultimately its share value. The boards and executives at leading companies have created a culture of leadership that reinforces a true pay-for-results orientation -- pay goes up with positive results and down when the company does poorly.
Perhaps the best way all companies can demonstrate this orientation is to ask the following questions:
Does your company have incentive measures that address both company performance and its sustainability? A focus on revenue growth means little if the results will have negative long-term effects or result in massive write-downs.
Are the potential payouts under your annual incentive capped at a reasonable level to minimize "swinging for the fences" at the expense of long-term company viability? Does your compensation committee have discretion to adjust payouts that, while reflective of actual performance, do not appear fair in the broader context? Finally, does your compensation committee place a higher priority on doing what's right for the company in the long term ahead of merely copying what competitors and other companies are doing?
Other questions: Are your company's stock ownership and/or retention policies sufficiently rigorous to require executives to own substantial company stock over their careers, and hold it for long periods of time to align pay with shareholder interests? Does your company have a meaningful clawback (recoupment) policy? More than 64% of the Fortune 100 companies have clawback policies. If a company doesn't perform as well as originally believed, then why pay executives as if it did?
The good news is that setting aside the unique Wall Street pay model, which was focused on short-term results and annual bonuses, many large companies already have executive compensation structures that are predominantly focused on compensation for long-term performance. According to Equilar Inc., a leading compensation data and analysis firm, roughly 70% of total compensation for S&P 500 CEOs was in the form of long-term incentives, typically earned over three years or more and predominantly tied to shareholder return.
The debate over executive pay will no doubt persist. Policy makers should abjure knee-jerk reforms and carefully consider the actual impact of proposed changes on pay. And boards and corporate leaders need to earn policy makers' trust by demonstrating that we understand that pay communicates a broader message, and are willing to be part of the solution.
Mr. Floersch is executive vice president of McDonald's Corp. and chairman of the Center on Executive Compensation, which represents the senior HR executives at some of the largest U.S. corporations.
How Obama's Soak-The-Rich Plan Will End Up Hurting Middle Class
How Obama's Soak-The-Rich Plan Will End Up Hurting Middle Class. By Jim Powell
Investor's Business Daily on March 3, 2009
President Obama has claimed that his budget goes after the rich who supposedly will pay the cost of his spending extravaganza. But it is already apparent that the rest of us will pay plenty.
Obama is continuing the crusade against offshore tax havens he began as an Illinois senator. He's targeting places like the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands Antilles and Switzerland, which have low taxes. There are about 50 such tax havens globally.
It's wrong to think that a U.S. crackdown on offshore tax havens would primarily hit disgraced Wall Street high rollers who made fortunes peddling subprime securities. These tax havens are used by many of the biggest U.S.-based corporations to help minimize the massive tax liabilities imposed on multinational operations.
To the extent these corporations are able to minimize their tax liabilities — along with other costs of doing business — their profits and stock valuations are higher.
Why would Obama do anything to make life harder for American consumers in already tough times?
Shares of these corporations are in millions of individual retirement plans as well as the portfolios of colleges, universities, insurance companies, hospitals and charitable institutions.
Some of the corporations would be more adversely affected than others by Obama's effort to bar the use of offshore tax havens, thereby raising corporate taxes, undermining stock valuations — and making it harder to hire people.
Why would Obama choose to attack stock valuations now, after the stock market has already lost about half its value during the past year? Why, when the country is in a serious recession, investment portfolios have been hammered, the banking sector is in turmoil, and unemployment rates are rising, would Obama make it harder for U.S.-based corporations to do business?
Obama's concern seems to be that corporations aren't paying their fair share. But corporations don't really pay taxes anyway. Corporate taxes are passed through to consumers like other costs of doing business — factored into the price of goods and services.
Trying to suppress offshore tax havens means generating upward pressure on the prices Americans pay for food, gasoline, clothing, computers, pharmaceuticals and thousands of other products that affect our daily lives. Why would Obama do anything to make life harder for American consumers in already tough times?
Moreover, corporate taxes amount to double taxation. Profits are taxed at the corporate level, and they're taxed again when investors receive interest on corporate bonds, dividends on corporate stock, or when investors sell stock, bought with personal income previously taxed, that yields a capital gain.
The crusade against offshore tax havens is just one among many Obama initiatives that will have the effect of increasing business costs and reducing returns for investors.
His proposed budget includes $353.5 billion of tax increases for U.S. businesses. Many investors face a tripling of taxes. Other proposed policies would further increase the cost of doing business, such as "green" mandates.
A proposed "card-check" law is intended to revive compulsory unionism in the private sector and make it more expensive for employers to hire people. When something becomes more expensive, demand is likely to fall.
By reducing after-tax returns from investment, Obama will discourage investors from making their funds available. For all practical purposes, investors could go on strike as they did during the 1930s when a succession of soak-the-rich taxes made it hard for investors to estimate their risks and returns, and they remained on the sidelines. Without more capital, it's almost impossible to create more private sector jobs.
Obama's populist rhetoric suggests that he's only going after the super-rich. Yet reportedly half of individuals earning over $250,000 a year are small business owners. During the past 15 years, small businesses have been creating over 90% of net new jobs — altogether, more than 20 million jobs. How smart is it for the heavy hand of government to come down on these employers?
Not very — if the goal of these policies is economic recovery and prosperity.
Investor's Business Daily on March 3, 2009
President Obama has claimed that his budget goes after the rich who supposedly will pay the cost of his spending extravaganza. But it is already apparent that the rest of us will pay plenty.
Obama is continuing the crusade against offshore tax havens he began as an Illinois senator. He's targeting places like the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands Antilles and Switzerland, which have low taxes. There are about 50 such tax havens globally.
It's wrong to think that a U.S. crackdown on offshore tax havens would primarily hit disgraced Wall Street high rollers who made fortunes peddling subprime securities. These tax havens are used by many of the biggest U.S.-based corporations to help minimize the massive tax liabilities imposed on multinational operations.
To the extent these corporations are able to minimize their tax liabilities — along with other costs of doing business — their profits and stock valuations are higher.
Why would Obama do anything to make life harder for American consumers in already tough times?
Shares of these corporations are in millions of individual retirement plans as well as the portfolios of colleges, universities, insurance companies, hospitals and charitable institutions.
Some of the corporations would be more adversely affected than others by Obama's effort to bar the use of offshore tax havens, thereby raising corporate taxes, undermining stock valuations — and making it harder to hire people.
Why would Obama choose to attack stock valuations now, after the stock market has already lost about half its value during the past year? Why, when the country is in a serious recession, investment portfolios have been hammered, the banking sector is in turmoil, and unemployment rates are rising, would Obama make it harder for U.S.-based corporations to do business?
Obama's concern seems to be that corporations aren't paying their fair share. But corporations don't really pay taxes anyway. Corporate taxes are passed through to consumers like other costs of doing business — factored into the price of goods and services.
Trying to suppress offshore tax havens means generating upward pressure on the prices Americans pay for food, gasoline, clothing, computers, pharmaceuticals and thousands of other products that affect our daily lives. Why would Obama do anything to make life harder for American consumers in already tough times?
Moreover, corporate taxes amount to double taxation. Profits are taxed at the corporate level, and they're taxed again when investors receive interest on corporate bonds, dividends on corporate stock, or when investors sell stock, bought with personal income previously taxed, that yields a capital gain.
The crusade against offshore tax havens is just one among many Obama initiatives that will have the effect of increasing business costs and reducing returns for investors.
His proposed budget includes $353.5 billion of tax increases for U.S. businesses. Many investors face a tripling of taxes. Other proposed policies would further increase the cost of doing business, such as "green" mandates.
A proposed "card-check" law is intended to revive compulsory unionism in the private sector and make it more expensive for employers to hire people. When something becomes more expensive, demand is likely to fall.
By reducing after-tax returns from investment, Obama will discourage investors from making their funds available. For all practical purposes, investors could go on strike as they did during the 1930s when a succession of soak-the-rich taxes made it hard for investors to estimate their risks and returns, and they remained on the sidelines. Without more capital, it's almost impossible to create more private sector jobs.
Obama's populist rhetoric suggests that he's only going after the super-rich. Yet reportedly half of individuals earning over $250,000 a year are small business owners. During the past 15 years, small businesses have been creating over 90% of net new jobs — altogether, more than 20 million jobs. How smart is it for the heavy hand of government to come down on these employers?
Not very — if the goal of these policies is economic recovery and prosperity.
Outsourcing Peacekeeping
Outsourcing Peacekeeping, by David Isenberg
Cato, Feb 27, 2009
Is the world ready to let private military and security contractors participate in U.N. peace operations? When I ask this, I'm not talking about Hollywood celebrities calling for the firm formerly known as Blackwater to work in Darfur.
In one respect, this is a trick question as contractors have been and are involved in such operations.
In the 1990s Defense Systems Ltd. provided security for the U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Lifeguard protected World Vision's operations in Sierra Leone. The U.N. World Food Program employed Hart Security. In East Timor, DynCorp provided logistics for the United Nations while KwaZulu Natal Security and Empower Loss Control Services provided local intelligence. In addition, demining has been contracted out to PMCs like ArmorGroup and Ronco (both bought up by Group 4 Securicor) as well as Saracen in virtually all recent U.N. operations, and DynCorp is one of three main preselected contractors for the U.S. State Department's mine-action programs.
The U.N. Security Council routinely turns to the commercial sector for the outsourcing of police, such as the International Police Task Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The U.S.-funded Pacific Architects and Engineers along with International Charter Inc. of Oregon provided logistical support to the 1999 Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group missions to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Indeed, if one looks at the Feb. 24 U.N. list of registered vendors, one finds such firms as Aegis Defense Services Ltd., DynCorp International, Hart Security, Ronco, and Steele North America, to name a few.
But beyond that, the subject of contractors being used as soldiers in peace operations, and not just providing support, is getting increasingly serious consideration. Remember that at the height of the Rwanda crisis, the Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Kofi Annan became so desperate for troops that he even considered hiring DSL to stop the genocide. Not one of 19 states then participating in the U.N. Standby Arrangements System chose to contribute military forces. Ultimately, Annan did not hire a private firm, saying, "The world may not be ready to privatize peace."
While the world still may not be willing to privatize peace, given that the word means not just transferring a capability to the private sector but giving it up entirely, many seem willing to subcontract it out.
Increasingly, military professionals seem to think that the idea is viable.
In a 2005 paper published by the Canadian Forces College, Lt. Col. Daniel Lachance wrote, "The United Nations needs experienced soldiers to fulfill an ever-growing demand for peacekeeping troops but is rarely able to get states to commit to urgent missions. One possible solution is to hire a PMC as a U.N. (Rapid Reaction Force) to stabilize the situation until professional peacekeepers can be deployed. The private military industry is ready and capable for such an assignment as witnessed by the wealth of experience that has been gathered by PMCs in support of U.N. missions."
Consider that one traditional big problem for a U.N. peace operation is merely getting the Security Council to authorize one. Rare is the day when the council is prepared to live up to its role as the final arbiter for international peace and security challenges.
The United Nations needs to radically change the way it does such operations. Many alternatives have been suggested, but one would be to provide the United Nations with its own RRF to enforce its own resolutions. This is hardly new. In 1992, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali introduced a report titled "An Agenda for Peace." A key recommendation was the call for the creation of a U.N. standby military force.
Another Canadian Forces College paper, written by Cmdr. Darren Garnier and published in 2006, said that as "PMCs are considered for Standing RRF providers, they would require a level of accountability necessitating strict U.N. oversight on recruiting, training and leadership standards."
He also notes that the concept of the private sector profiting from peace operations has the potential to radically transform the very nature of peace operations, opening up all sorts of new options. For the United Nations to leverage the potential of an agile and flexible PMC option, the organization must evolve from the institution it is today into something more representative of the dramatic realignment within the international power structure of states.
The benefit of that, while it would send neoconservatives into hysterics, would be to move the United States away from its current role as international policeman, thereby permitting a more cohesive and coordinated U.N. response to addressing security concerns.
Last year, in the Journal of Conflict and Security Law, Malcolm Patterson wrote that contract forces appear constitutionally feasible within the prerogatives the Security Council may choose to exercise in Chapter VII of its charter.
As Article 29 of the charter allows for the creation of subsidiary bodies for the performance of Security Council functions, this would allow for the formation of a contractor directorate. This would have two main responsibilities. The first would be assessment of tenderers. Successful applicants would be graded through a certification system that would accredit those holding competencies required to carry out a wide spectrum of peacekeeping and intervention deployments. Contractor companies would bid on fixed-term contracts for which they would periodically retender to the contractor directorate in open competition.
The second responsibility would be the administration of a criminal-justice apparatus. While states have always been reluctant to allow other authorities to exercise criminal jurisdiction over their troops, the better militaries have created standards of process and substantive law that could be adapted to deliver encouraging results in the contractor context.
Corporate forces would, after all, face many comparable scenarios, although the trial of a civilian (rather than military) contractor within a court having military characteristics will arouse criticisms. But given that the United States has starting using the Uniform Code of Military Justice to investigate and prosecute contractors accused of crimes, it is at least feasible.
Furthermore, contractors deployed in any future U.N. operations could be subject to status-of-forces agreements, just as the United States has done in the one it negotiated with Iraq.
Cato, Feb 27, 2009
Is the world ready to let private military and security contractors participate in U.N. peace operations? When I ask this, I'm not talking about Hollywood celebrities calling for the firm formerly known as Blackwater to work in Darfur.
In one respect, this is a trick question as contractors have been and are involved in such operations.
In the 1990s Defense Systems Ltd. provided security for the U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Lifeguard protected World Vision's operations in Sierra Leone. The U.N. World Food Program employed Hart Security. In East Timor, DynCorp provided logistics for the United Nations while KwaZulu Natal Security and Empower Loss Control Services provided local intelligence. In addition, demining has been contracted out to PMCs like ArmorGroup and Ronco (both bought up by Group 4 Securicor) as well as Saracen in virtually all recent U.N. operations, and DynCorp is one of three main preselected contractors for the U.S. State Department's mine-action programs.
The U.N. Security Council routinely turns to the commercial sector for the outsourcing of police, such as the International Police Task Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The U.S.-funded Pacific Architects and Engineers along with International Charter Inc. of Oregon provided logistical support to the 1999 Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group missions to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Indeed, if one looks at the Feb. 24 U.N. list of registered vendors, one finds such firms as Aegis Defense Services Ltd., DynCorp International, Hart Security, Ronco, and Steele North America, to name a few.
But beyond that, the subject of contractors being used as soldiers in peace operations, and not just providing support, is getting increasingly serious consideration. Remember that at the height of the Rwanda crisis, the Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Kofi Annan became so desperate for troops that he even considered hiring DSL to stop the genocide. Not one of 19 states then participating in the U.N. Standby Arrangements System chose to contribute military forces. Ultimately, Annan did not hire a private firm, saying, "The world may not be ready to privatize peace."
While the world still may not be willing to privatize peace, given that the word means not just transferring a capability to the private sector but giving it up entirely, many seem willing to subcontract it out.
Increasingly, military professionals seem to think that the idea is viable.
In a 2005 paper published by the Canadian Forces College, Lt. Col. Daniel Lachance wrote, "The United Nations needs experienced soldiers to fulfill an ever-growing demand for peacekeeping troops but is rarely able to get states to commit to urgent missions. One possible solution is to hire a PMC as a U.N. (Rapid Reaction Force) to stabilize the situation until professional peacekeepers can be deployed. The private military industry is ready and capable for such an assignment as witnessed by the wealth of experience that has been gathered by PMCs in support of U.N. missions."
Consider that one traditional big problem for a U.N. peace operation is merely getting the Security Council to authorize one. Rare is the day when the council is prepared to live up to its role as the final arbiter for international peace and security challenges.
The United Nations needs to radically change the way it does such operations. Many alternatives have been suggested, but one would be to provide the United Nations with its own RRF to enforce its own resolutions. This is hardly new. In 1992, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali introduced a report titled "An Agenda for Peace." A key recommendation was the call for the creation of a U.N. standby military force.
Another Canadian Forces College paper, written by Cmdr. Darren Garnier and published in 2006, said that as "PMCs are considered for Standing RRF providers, they would require a level of accountability necessitating strict U.N. oversight on recruiting, training and leadership standards."
He also notes that the concept of the private sector profiting from peace operations has the potential to radically transform the very nature of peace operations, opening up all sorts of new options. For the United Nations to leverage the potential of an agile and flexible PMC option, the organization must evolve from the institution it is today into something more representative of the dramatic realignment within the international power structure of states.
The benefit of that, while it would send neoconservatives into hysterics, would be to move the United States away from its current role as international policeman, thereby permitting a more cohesive and coordinated U.N. response to addressing security concerns.
Last year, in the Journal of Conflict and Security Law, Malcolm Patterson wrote that contract forces appear constitutionally feasible within the prerogatives the Security Council may choose to exercise in Chapter VII of its charter.
As Article 29 of the charter allows for the creation of subsidiary bodies for the performance of Security Council functions, this would allow for the formation of a contractor directorate. This would have two main responsibilities. The first would be assessment of tenderers. Successful applicants would be graded through a certification system that would accredit those holding competencies required to carry out a wide spectrum of peacekeeping and intervention deployments. Contractor companies would bid on fixed-term contracts for which they would periodically retender to the contractor directorate in open competition.
The second responsibility would be the administration of a criminal-justice apparatus. While states have always been reluctant to allow other authorities to exercise criminal jurisdiction over their troops, the better militaries have created standards of process and substantive law that could be adapted to deliver encouraging results in the contractor context.
Corporate forces would, after all, face many comparable scenarios, although the trial of a civilian (rather than military) contractor within a court having military characteristics will arouse criticisms. But given that the United States has starting using the Uniform Code of Military Justice to investigate and prosecute contractors accused of crimes, it is at least feasible.
Furthermore, contractors deployed in any future U.N. operations could be subject to status-of-forces agreements, just as the United States has done in the one it negotiated with Iraq.
WaPo: war crimes charges are unlikely to shake the dictator's hold on power and might lead to a worsening of the situation in Sudan
Hold the Handcuffs. WaPo Editorial
Will an international arrest warrant for Sudan's president help the people of Darfur?
TWP, Thursday, March 5, 2009; Page A18
THE ISSUING of an arrest warrant yesterday for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court prompted a predictable blizzard of celebratory statements from human rights groups and other Western advocates for the war-torn region of Darfur. What is interesting is that many of those same groups acknowledged that the war crimes charges are unlikely to shake the dictator's hold on power and might lead to a worsening of the situation in Sudan.
"The more likely outcome is that [Mr. Bashir] will remain in power with no prospect of ending up before the ICC anytime soon," said the International Crisis Group, adding that the regime might react by attacking U.N. relief personnel or refugee camps in Darfur, declaring a state of emergency or cracking down on its political opposition. Physicians for Human Rights anticipates "a likely spike in violent attacks."
It is easy to feel some moral satisfaction when one of the world's most brutal rulers is designated a fugitive from justice. Perhaps the warrant will send a shiver down the spine of Syria's Bashar al-Assad or Burma's Than Shwe. The ICC itself could use a morale boost: Six years after its creation, it has yet to convict a single war criminal and has put only one on trial. But it is hard to imagine much cheer in the camps of Darfur, where a U.N. peacekeeping force has failed to muster adequate troops or even helicopters and has not been able to provide security; or in southern Sudan, where a fragile peace between the Bashir regime and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement is at the point of collapse.
Some advocates appear to hope that the arrest warrant will spur Western governments to make a larger commitment to ending the violence in Sudan -- by supplying troops or helicopters, seeking new U.N. sanctions against the regime, or setting up a no-fly zone over Darfur. A review is underway in the Obama administration, and a special envoy probably will be named. But the factors that deterred President Bush from intervening in Darfur haven't much changed. China is ready to block any forceful action by the Security Council, while Western armies are stretched thin by deployments elsewhere.
So the best use of the ICC warrant may be as a bargaining chip with Mr. Bashir and his Chinese and Arab allies. The court's treaty allows for the Security Council to suspend a prosecution for a renewable one-year-period; Beijing and the Arab League will press for that step. That gives the Obama administration an opportunity to set a price. That price should be Mr. Bashir's exclusion from a presidential election scheduled for this year, the completion of a peace settlement with the principal Darfuri rebel groups and the full implementation of the peace accord in southern Sudan. With Sudan's oil revenue plummeting, Mr. Bashir and his party just might find that such an accommodation is in their interest. If they choose instead to respond to the arrest warrant with another wave of violence, Western governments will have to find means to respond.
Will an international arrest warrant for Sudan's president help the people of Darfur?
TWP, Thursday, March 5, 2009; Page A18
THE ISSUING of an arrest warrant yesterday for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court prompted a predictable blizzard of celebratory statements from human rights groups and other Western advocates for the war-torn region of Darfur. What is interesting is that many of those same groups acknowledged that the war crimes charges are unlikely to shake the dictator's hold on power and might lead to a worsening of the situation in Sudan.
"The more likely outcome is that [Mr. Bashir] will remain in power with no prospect of ending up before the ICC anytime soon," said the International Crisis Group, adding that the regime might react by attacking U.N. relief personnel or refugee camps in Darfur, declaring a state of emergency or cracking down on its political opposition. Physicians for Human Rights anticipates "a likely spike in violent attacks."
It is easy to feel some moral satisfaction when one of the world's most brutal rulers is designated a fugitive from justice. Perhaps the warrant will send a shiver down the spine of Syria's Bashar al-Assad or Burma's Than Shwe. The ICC itself could use a morale boost: Six years after its creation, it has yet to convict a single war criminal and has put only one on trial. But it is hard to imagine much cheer in the camps of Darfur, where a U.N. peacekeeping force has failed to muster adequate troops or even helicopters and has not been able to provide security; or in southern Sudan, where a fragile peace between the Bashir regime and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement is at the point of collapse.
Some advocates appear to hope that the arrest warrant will spur Western governments to make a larger commitment to ending the violence in Sudan -- by supplying troops or helicopters, seeking new U.N. sanctions against the regime, or setting up a no-fly zone over Darfur. A review is underway in the Obama administration, and a special envoy probably will be named. But the factors that deterred President Bush from intervening in Darfur haven't much changed. China is ready to block any forceful action by the Security Council, while Western armies are stretched thin by deployments elsewhere.
So the best use of the ICC warrant may be as a bargaining chip with Mr. Bashir and his Chinese and Arab allies. The court's treaty allows for the Security Council to suspend a prosecution for a renewable one-year-period; Beijing and the Arab League will press for that step. That gives the Obama administration an opportunity to set a price. That price should be Mr. Bashir's exclusion from a presidential election scheduled for this year, the completion of a peace settlement with the principal Darfuri rebel groups and the full implementation of the peace accord in southern Sudan. With Sudan's oil revenue plummeting, Mr. Bashir and his party just might find that such an accommodation is in their interest. If they choose instead to respond to the arrest warrant with another wave of violence, Western governments will have to find means to respond.
We can double the output of solar and wind, and double it again. We'll still depend on hydrocarbons
Let's Get Real About Renewable Energy, by Robert Bryce
We can double the output of solar and wind, and double it again. We'll still depend on hydrocarbons.
WSJ, Mar 05, 2009
During his address to Congress last week, President Barack Obama declared, "We will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."
While that statement -- along with his pledge to impose a "cap on carbon pollution" -- drew applause, let's slow down for a moment and get realistic about this country's energy future. Consider two factors that are too-often overlooked: George W. Bush's record on renewables, and the problem of scale.
By promising to double our supply of renewables, Mr. Obama is only trying to keep pace with his predecessor. Yes, that's right: From 2005 to 2007, the former Texas oil man oversaw a near-doubling of the electrical output from solar and wind power. And between 2007 and 2008, output from those sources grew by another 30%.
Mr. Bush's record aside, the key problem facing Mr. Obama, and anyone else advocating a rapid transition away from the hydrocarbons that have dominated the world's energy mix since the dawn of the Industrial Age, is the same issue that dogs every alternative energy idea: scale.
Let's start by deciphering exactly what Mr. Obama includes in his definition of "renewable" energy. If he's including hydropower, which now provides about 2.4% of America's total primary energy needs, then the president clearly has no concept of what he is promising. Hydro now provides more than 16 times as much energy as wind and solar power combined. Yet more dams are being dismantled than built. Since 1999, more than 200 dams in the U.S. have been removed.
If Mr. Obama is only counting wind power and solar power as renewables, then his promise is clearly doable. But the unfortunate truth is that even if he matches Mr. Bush's effort by doubling wind and solar output by 2012, the contribution of those two sources to America's overall energy needs will still be almost inconsequential.
Here's why. The latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that total solar and wind output for 2008 will likely be about 45,493,000 megawatt-hours. That sounds significant until you consider this number: 4,118,198,000 megawatt-hours. That's the total amount of electricity generated during the rolling 12-month period that ended last November. Solar and wind, in other words, produce about 1.1% of America's total electricity consumption.
Of course, you might respond that renewables need to start somewhere. True enough -- and to be clear, I'm not opposed to renewables. I have solar panels on the roof of my house here in Texas that generate 3,200 watts. And those panels (which were heavily subsidized by Austin Energy, the city-owned utility) provide about one-third of the electricity my family of five consumes. Better still, solar panel producers like First Solar Inc. are lowering the cost of solar cells. On the day of Mr. Obama's speech, the company announced that it is now producing solar cells for $0.98 per watt, thereby breaking the important $1-per-watt price barrier.
And yet, while price reductions are important, the wind is intermittent, and so are sunny days. That means they cannot provide the baseload power, i.e., the amount of electricity required to meet minimum demand, that Americans want.
That issue aside, the scale problem persists. For the sake of convenience, let's convert the energy produced by U.S. wind and solar installations into oil equivalents.
The conversion of electricity into oil terms is straightforward: one barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of 1.64 megawatt-hours of electricity. Thus, 45,493,000 megawatt-hours divided by 1.64 megawatt-hours per barrel of oil equals 27.7 million barrels of oil equivalent from solar and wind for all of 2008.
Now divide that 27.7 million barrels by 365 days and you find that solar and wind sources are providing the equivalent of 76,000 barrels of oil per day. America's total primary energy use is about 47.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.
Of that 47.4 million barrels of oil equivalent, oil itself has the biggest share -- we consume about 19 million barrels per day. Natural gas is the second-biggest contributor, supplying the equivalent of 11.9 million barrels of oil, while coal provides the equivalent of 11.5 million barrels of oil per day. The balance comes from nuclear power (about 3.8 million barrels per day), and hydropower (about 1.1 million barrels), with smaller contributions coming from wind, solar, geothermal, wood waste, and other sources.
Here's another way to consider the 76,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day that come from solar and wind: It's approximately equal to the raw energy output of one average-sized coal mine.
During his address to Congress, Mr. Obama did not mention coal -- the fuel that provides nearly a quarter of total primary energy and about half of America's electricity -- except to say that the U.S. should develop "clean coal." He didn't mention nuclear power, only "nuclear proliferation," even though nuclear power is likely the best long-term solution to policy makers' desire to cut U.S. carbon emissions. He didn't mention natural gas, even though it provides about 25% of America's total primary energy needs. Furthermore, the U.S. has huge quantities of gas, and it's the only fuel source that can provide the stand-by generation capacity needed for wind and solar installations. Finally, he didn't mention oil, the backbone fuel of the world transportation sector, except to say that the U.S. imports too much of it.
Perhaps the president's omissions are understandable. America has an intense love-hate relationship with hydrocarbons in general, and with coal and oil in particular. And with increasing political pressure to cut carbon-dioxide emissions, that love-hate relationship has only gotten more complicated.
But the problem of scale means that these hydrocarbons just won't go away. Sure, Mr. Obama can double the output from solar and wind. And then double it again. And again. And again. But getting from 76,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to something close to the 47.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day needed to keep the U.S. economy running is going to take a long, long time. It would be refreshing if the president or perhaps a few of the Democrats on Capitol Hill would admit that fact.
Mr. Bryce is the managing editor of Energy Tribune. His latest book is "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence'"(Public Affairs, 2008).
We can double the output of solar and wind, and double it again. We'll still depend on hydrocarbons.
WSJ, Mar 05, 2009
During his address to Congress last week, President Barack Obama declared, "We will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."
While that statement -- along with his pledge to impose a "cap on carbon pollution" -- drew applause, let's slow down for a moment and get realistic about this country's energy future. Consider two factors that are too-often overlooked: George W. Bush's record on renewables, and the problem of scale.
By promising to double our supply of renewables, Mr. Obama is only trying to keep pace with his predecessor. Yes, that's right: From 2005 to 2007, the former Texas oil man oversaw a near-doubling of the electrical output from solar and wind power. And between 2007 and 2008, output from those sources grew by another 30%.
Mr. Bush's record aside, the key problem facing Mr. Obama, and anyone else advocating a rapid transition away from the hydrocarbons that have dominated the world's energy mix since the dawn of the Industrial Age, is the same issue that dogs every alternative energy idea: scale.
Let's start by deciphering exactly what Mr. Obama includes in his definition of "renewable" energy. If he's including hydropower, which now provides about 2.4% of America's total primary energy needs, then the president clearly has no concept of what he is promising. Hydro now provides more than 16 times as much energy as wind and solar power combined. Yet more dams are being dismantled than built. Since 1999, more than 200 dams in the U.S. have been removed.
If Mr. Obama is only counting wind power and solar power as renewables, then his promise is clearly doable. But the unfortunate truth is that even if he matches Mr. Bush's effort by doubling wind and solar output by 2012, the contribution of those two sources to America's overall energy needs will still be almost inconsequential.
Here's why. The latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that total solar and wind output for 2008 will likely be about 45,493,000 megawatt-hours. That sounds significant until you consider this number: 4,118,198,000 megawatt-hours. That's the total amount of electricity generated during the rolling 12-month period that ended last November. Solar and wind, in other words, produce about 1.1% of America's total electricity consumption.
Of course, you might respond that renewables need to start somewhere. True enough -- and to be clear, I'm not opposed to renewables. I have solar panels on the roof of my house here in Texas that generate 3,200 watts. And those panels (which were heavily subsidized by Austin Energy, the city-owned utility) provide about one-third of the electricity my family of five consumes. Better still, solar panel producers like First Solar Inc. are lowering the cost of solar cells. On the day of Mr. Obama's speech, the company announced that it is now producing solar cells for $0.98 per watt, thereby breaking the important $1-per-watt price barrier.
And yet, while price reductions are important, the wind is intermittent, and so are sunny days. That means they cannot provide the baseload power, i.e., the amount of electricity required to meet minimum demand, that Americans want.
That issue aside, the scale problem persists. For the sake of convenience, let's convert the energy produced by U.S. wind and solar installations into oil equivalents.
The conversion of electricity into oil terms is straightforward: one barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of 1.64 megawatt-hours of electricity. Thus, 45,493,000 megawatt-hours divided by 1.64 megawatt-hours per barrel of oil equals 27.7 million barrels of oil equivalent from solar and wind for all of 2008.
Now divide that 27.7 million barrels by 365 days and you find that solar and wind sources are providing the equivalent of 76,000 barrels of oil per day. America's total primary energy use is about 47.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.
Of that 47.4 million barrels of oil equivalent, oil itself has the biggest share -- we consume about 19 million barrels per day. Natural gas is the second-biggest contributor, supplying the equivalent of 11.9 million barrels of oil, while coal provides the equivalent of 11.5 million barrels of oil per day. The balance comes from nuclear power (about 3.8 million barrels per day), and hydropower (about 1.1 million barrels), with smaller contributions coming from wind, solar, geothermal, wood waste, and other sources.
Here's another way to consider the 76,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day that come from solar and wind: It's approximately equal to the raw energy output of one average-sized coal mine.
During his address to Congress, Mr. Obama did not mention coal -- the fuel that provides nearly a quarter of total primary energy and about half of America's electricity -- except to say that the U.S. should develop "clean coal." He didn't mention nuclear power, only "nuclear proliferation," even though nuclear power is likely the best long-term solution to policy makers' desire to cut U.S. carbon emissions. He didn't mention natural gas, even though it provides about 25% of America's total primary energy needs. Furthermore, the U.S. has huge quantities of gas, and it's the only fuel source that can provide the stand-by generation capacity needed for wind and solar installations. Finally, he didn't mention oil, the backbone fuel of the world transportation sector, except to say that the U.S. imports too much of it.
Perhaps the president's omissions are understandable. America has an intense love-hate relationship with hydrocarbons in general, and with coal and oil in particular. And with increasing political pressure to cut carbon-dioxide emissions, that love-hate relationship has only gotten more complicated.
But the problem of scale means that these hydrocarbons just won't go away. Sure, Mr. Obama can double the output from solar and wind. And then double it again. And again. And again. But getting from 76,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to something close to the 47.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day needed to keep the U.S. economy running is going to take a long, long time. It would be refreshing if the president or perhaps a few of the Democrats on Capitol Hill would admit that fact.
Mr. Bryce is the managing editor of Energy Tribune. His latest book is "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence'"(Public Affairs, 2008).
WSJ Editorial Page: Pre-empting Drug Innovation - So much for the 'pro-business' Court
Pre-empting Drug Innovation. WSJ Editorial
So much for the 'pro-business' Court.
WSJ, Mar 05, 2009
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 yesterday that drug companies can be held liable for harm even when their products are improperly administered by a third party despite warning labels that were obvious and approved by federal regulators. The decision is a huge victory for plaintiffs lawyers, but it's a much bigger defeat for drug innovation and public health.
Wyeth v. Levine involved Diana Levine, a Vermont woman who lost an arm to gangrene after an antinausea medication produced by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals was improperly injected into an artery. Ms. Levine sued the clinic and won a settlement. But then she also sued Wyeth, arguing that the company should have put stronger warnings on the label of the drug, Phenergan, and a Vermont jury awarded her $6.7 million in damages. Wyeth appealed, arguing that the warning label had been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration, which should pre-empt liability under state law.
A majority of the Court, in an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, sided with Ms. Levine. But the ruling is difficult to square with the Riegel decision last term, where a 7-2 majority held that FDA approval shields medical devices from most lawsuits. Moreover, it's unclear that a stronger warning would have mattered.
The drug's label clearly stated that the "IV push" method employed to deliver the drug to Ms. Levine should be used as a last resort and that "INADVERTENT INTRA-ARTERIAL INJECTION CAN RESULT IN GANGRENE OF THE AFFECTED EXTREMITY." As Justice Samuel Alito explains in his dissent, "the physician assistant who treated [Ms. Levine] disregarded at least six separate warnings that are already on Phenergan's labeling, so [Ms. Levine] would be hard pressed to prove that a seventh would have made a difference."
But Justice Alito's larger point is that "drug labeling by jury verdict" undermines the workability of the federal drug-labeling regime. Juries are presented with tragic plaintiffs who were injured, not the unknown patients who are helped, by a product. Hence, they tend to focus on risks more than overall benefits. By contrast, federal regulators are tasked to take the long view and factor in the interests of all potential users of a drug. Just as importantly, "the FDA conveys its warning with one voice," writes Justice Alito, "rather than whipsawing the medical community with 50 (or more) potentially conflicting ones."
A consequence of this ruling is an almost-certain spike in product-liability suits aimed at drug companies. Merck's Vioxx litigation has already cost the company $4 billion, and Eli Lilly has paid out more than $1 billion to settle suits related to the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa. A legal standard that said the FDA, not a state tort jury, is responsible for regulating warning labels would have given both drug companies a stronger position in these lawsuits.
Yesterday's ruling will expose drug companies to a kind of double innovation jeopardy. They typically spend $1 billion on research and development to bring a drug to market, with an 11% success rate on average. But they endure that burden on the understanding that FDA approval will give them a period to sell that drug with patent protection and that FDA approval provides some protection from lawsuits. Now they will have to contemplate paying up front -- and paying later, even if the tragic mistake in applying the drug is someone else's. Wyeth is a dream come true for the plaintiffs bar.
So much for the 'pro-business' Court.
WSJ, Mar 05, 2009
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 yesterday that drug companies can be held liable for harm even when their products are improperly administered by a third party despite warning labels that were obvious and approved by federal regulators. The decision is a huge victory for plaintiffs lawyers, but it's a much bigger defeat for drug innovation and public health.
Wyeth v. Levine involved Diana Levine, a Vermont woman who lost an arm to gangrene after an antinausea medication produced by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals was improperly injected into an artery. Ms. Levine sued the clinic and won a settlement. But then she also sued Wyeth, arguing that the company should have put stronger warnings on the label of the drug, Phenergan, and a Vermont jury awarded her $6.7 million in damages. Wyeth appealed, arguing that the warning label had been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration, which should pre-empt liability under state law.
A majority of the Court, in an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, sided with Ms. Levine. But the ruling is difficult to square with the Riegel decision last term, where a 7-2 majority held that FDA approval shields medical devices from most lawsuits. Moreover, it's unclear that a stronger warning would have mattered.
The drug's label clearly stated that the "IV push" method employed to deliver the drug to Ms. Levine should be used as a last resort and that "INADVERTENT INTRA-ARTERIAL INJECTION CAN RESULT IN GANGRENE OF THE AFFECTED EXTREMITY." As Justice Samuel Alito explains in his dissent, "the physician assistant who treated [Ms. Levine] disregarded at least six separate warnings that are already on Phenergan's labeling, so [Ms. Levine] would be hard pressed to prove that a seventh would have made a difference."
But Justice Alito's larger point is that "drug labeling by jury verdict" undermines the workability of the federal drug-labeling regime. Juries are presented with tragic plaintiffs who were injured, not the unknown patients who are helped, by a product. Hence, they tend to focus on risks more than overall benefits. By contrast, federal regulators are tasked to take the long view and factor in the interests of all potential users of a drug. Just as importantly, "the FDA conveys its warning with one voice," writes Justice Alito, "rather than whipsawing the medical community with 50 (or more) potentially conflicting ones."
A consequence of this ruling is an almost-certain spike in product-liability suits aimed at drug companies. Merck's Vioxx litigation has already cost the company $4 billion, and Eli Lilly has paid out more than $1 billion to settle suits related to the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa. A legal standard that said the FDA, not a state tort jury, is responsible for regulating warning labels would have given both drug companies a stronger position in these lawsuits.
Yesterday's ruling will expose drug companies to a kind of double innovation jeopardy. They typically spend $1 billion on research and development to bring a drug to market, with an 11% success rate on average. But they endure that burden on the understanding that FDA approval will give them a period to sell that drug with patent protection and that FDA approval provides some protection from lawsuits. Now they will have to contemplate paying up front -- and paying later, even if the tragic mistake in applying the drug is someone else's. Wyeth is a dream come true for the plaintiffs bar.
Global and Northern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Activity [still] lowest in 30-years
Global and Northern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Activity [still] lowest in 30-years, by Ryan Maue
Tropical cyclone (TC) activity worldwide has completely and utterly collapsed during the past 2 to 3 years with TC energy levels sinking to levels not seen since the late 1970s. This should not be a surprise to scientists since the natural variability in climate dominates any detectable or perceived global warming impact when it comes to measuring yearly integrated tropical cyclone activity. With the continuation (persistence) of colder Pacific tropical sea-surface temperatures associated with the effects of La Nina, the upcoming 2009 Atlantic hurricane season should be above average, as we saw in 2008. Nevertheless, since the Atlantic only makes up 10-15% of overall global TC activity each year (climatological average during the past 30 years), continued Northern Hemispheric and global TC inactivity as a whole likely will continue.
Ryan Maue: Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Department of Meteorology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
Article: Maue, R. N. (2009), Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclone activity, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L05805, doi:10.1029/2008GL035946.
Abstract: Recent historical Northern Hemisphere (NH) tropical cyclone (TC) inactivity is compared with strikingly large observed variability during the past three decades. Yearly totals of the combined active-basin NH accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) are highly correlated with boreal spring sea-surface temperature (SST) in the North Pacific Ocean and are representative of an evolving dual-gyre, trans-hemispheric correlation pattern throughout the calendar year. The observed offsetting nature of Eastern Pacific and North Atlantic basin ACE during the past three decades and a strong dependence of combined Pacific TC activity upon the El Niño-Southern Oscillation reflect the interrelated modulation of overall NH integrated TC energy by large-scale modes of climate variability. Thus, the quiescent period of overall integrated NH TC ACE continuing throughout 2008 is not unexpected in the context of previous periods of colder Pacific SSTs.
Journalists can request the article from us. Leave a comment requesting it, don't forget your e-mail.
Tropical cyclone (TC) activity worldwide has completely and utterly collapsed during the past 2 to 3 years with TC energy levels sinking to levels not seen since the late 1970s. This should not be a surprise to scientists since the natural variability in climate dominates any detectable or perceived global warming impact when it comes to measuring yearly integrated tropical cyclone activity. With the continuation (persistence) of colder Pacific tropical sea-surface temperatures associated with the effects of La Nina, the upcoming 2009 Atlantic hurricane season should be above average, as we saw in 2008. Nevertheless, since the Atlantic only makes up 10-15% of overall global TC activity each year (climatological average during the past 30 years), continued Northern Hemispheric and global TC inactivity as a whole likely will continue.
Ryan Maue: Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Department of Meteorology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
Article: Maue, R. N. (2009), Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclone activity, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L05805, doi:10.1029/2008GL035946.
Abstract: Recent historical Northern Hemisphere (NH) tropical cyclone (TC) inactivity is compared with strikingly large observed variability during the past three decades. Yearly totals of the combined active-basin NH accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) are highly correlated with boreal spring sea-surface temperature (SST) in the North Pacific Ocean and are representative of an evolving dual-gyre, trans-hemispheric correlation pattern throughout the calendar year. The observed offsetting nature of Eastern Pacific and North Atlantic basin ACE during the past three decades and a strong dependence of combined Pacific TC activity upon the El Niño-Southern Oscillation reflect the interrelated modulation of overall NH integrated TC energy by large-scale modes of climate variability. Thus, the quiescent period of overall integrated NH TC ACE continuing throughout 2008 is not unexpected in the context of previous periods of colder Pacific SSTs.
Journalists can request the article from us. Leave a comment requesting it, don't forget your e-mail.
Stimulus Plan's Delayed Job Creation: Some Won't Get Jobs Until 2012 or Later
Stimulus Plan's Delayed Job Creation: Some Won't Get Jobs Until 2012 or Later. By Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D.
Heritage, March 4, 2009
WebMemo #2325
See complete article w/references here.
As Congress took up the debate on the President's massive stimulus plan, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, efforts by skeptical Members of Congress to subject the package to committee hearings and a thorough debate were rejected, including the simple request that Members be provided with enough time to at least read the 407 page bill. Those in favor of haste argued that the nation confronted a time of grave economic peril and that even a day of delay could mean catastrophe for tens of thousands of ordinary Americans who were at risk.
If Members had read the bill before voting on it, they might have seen that the claims of immediate economic activity through infrastructure spending are less than the Administration indicated.
Time Is of the Essence?
President Obama told an audience in Elkhart, Indiana:
We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression. Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we don't act immediately, millions of more jobs will be lost. The national unemployment rates will approach double digits not just here in Elkhart, [but] all across the country. More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse. So we can't afford to wait. We can't wait and see and hope for the best. We can't posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place.[1]
Well, chief among the failed ideas is the notion that a nation can spend its way to prosperity, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. Massive government spending under the New Deal did not end the Great Depression of the 1930s, nor did an ambitious infrastructure program help the Japanese to avoid the "Lost Decade" in the 1990s, which is more accurately described as the Lost Two Decades. Nonetheless, a majority in Congress passed the stimulus bill in February 2009, and in early March, President Obama claimed that the act's transportation component alone will create or save 150,000 jobs in the first year.
This seems unlikely, however, given the leisurely pace the act allows for all of the infrastructure spending authorized in the legislation. As the language of the act reveals, some of the unemployed may have to wait until 2012, or even later, for their piece of this pie.
The Road to Recovery?
The largest infrastructure component of the bill is the $27.5 billion for highways, most of which will be distributed by existing formulas to the states, territories, and Indian tribes. The delay begins with the provision that states have up to one year to obligate the money, meaning only that they have to identify a project and set aside money for it. Still to be done might be the design and engineering work, request for bids, and the selection of the winning contractor.
Under this new law, projects that should be given "priority" are those that can be done within a three-year timeframe, but the definition of the timeframe is never specified, in contrast to other limits in the bill that define it as beginning with the enactment of the act. However lax this definition might be, the three-year limit is merely a legislative preference, not a requirement, and there is no prohibition against approving projects that may take longer.
Funding in Transit
A new program is created to provide another $1.5 billion for surface transportation programs that will be allocated as competitive grants. Since the program does not now exist, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) will need to draw up the rules and guidelines (90 days are allowed), time must be allowed for states to submit proposals (180 days), and USDOT must be given time to pick winners (up to one year after act's enactment). Thus, the approval process can take up to a year for projects that are expected--but not required--to be completed within three years.
The $1.1 billion for Grants-in-Aid for Airports allows the USDOT secretary up to one year to make grants "with priority given to those projects that demonstrate to his satisfaction their ability to be completed within two years." Again, no requirement, just a suggestion.
Transit programs (buses, commuter rail, trolley cars, etc.) receive $6.9 billion in capital assistance, and states and urban areas have up to one year to obligate the money, but that could be extended if certain problems are encountered. Reflecting the long lead time involved in many transit projects and the difficulties getting them approved, the new law includes no time limit on their completion.
High-Speed Rail on the Fast Track
One of the big surprises in the bill was the $8 billion it commits to high-speed rail (HSR) corridors--the House bill included nothing for HSR, and the Senate bill included $2 billion. Apparently the $8 billion was added at the last minute in conference, allegedly at the request of President Obama, despite his commitment to "transparency." In 1991 legislation was enacted to permit the Federal Railroad Administration to designate 10 high speed rail corridors.[2] Because of the exceptionally high costs and limited benefits of HSR (the California proposal is optimistically estimated to cost $42 billion for a system that will achieve surface speeds of up to one-fourth that common to commercial aviation), nothing has ever been done to get anything underway on any of these corridors--until now, that is.
The definition of HSR, as applied to those in European and Asian countries, is passenger rail service that averages more than 150 miles per hour, which can only be achieved on very expensive, dedicated lines that serve only HSR. Since no such lines exist in the U.S., any HSR would have to first acquire a right of way, buy the land in it, lay the very costly track, and buy the new equipment.
Under the circumstances, the $8 billion is woefully short of what is needed to complete a single system, and the President and Congress know it, which is why the $8 billion should be viewed as little more than an amuse-bouche to keep the nation's influential rail hobbyists happy and content. Indeed, the law recognizes the folly of the aspiration by allowing the money also to be spent on intercity passenger rail service (Amtrak) and "congestion" grants. And the act includes no time limits on when these projects are to be completed; it states only that the money will remain available for three and one-half years.
Don't Get Your Hopes Up
Several of the other infrastructure components of the act (public housing, for example) are also permitted a lengthy period of time to get underway and be completed. As a consequence, these costly components of the bill will do nothing to alleviate the immediate downward slide in economic activity--and little or nothing to support jobs during the current year.
Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., is Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Heritage, March 4, 2009
WebMemo #2325
See complete article w/references here.
As Congress took up the debate on the President's massive stimulus plan, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, efforts by skeptical Members of Congress to subject the package to committee hearings and a thorough debate were rejected, including the simple request that Members be provided with enough time to at least read the 407 page bill. Those in favor of haste argued that the nation confronted a time of grave economic peril and that even a day of delay could mean catastrophe for tens of thousands of ordinary Americans who were at risk.
If Members had read the bill before voting on it, they might have seen that the claims of immediate economic activity through infrastructure spending are less than the Administration indicated.
Time Is of the Essence?
President Obama told an audience in Elkhart, Indiana:
We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression. Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we don't act immediately, millions of more jobs will be lost. The national unemployment rates will approach double digits not just here in Elkhart, [but] all across the country. More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse. So we can't afford to wait. We can't wait and see and hope for the best. We can't posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place.[1]
Well, chief among the failed ideas is the notion that a nation can spend its way to prosperity, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. Massive government spending under the New Deal did not end the Great Depression of the 1930s, nor did an ambitious infrastructure program help the Japanese to avoid the "Lost Decade" in the 1990s, which is more accurately described as the Lost Two Decades. Nonetheless, a majority in Congress passed the stimulus bill in February 2009, and in early March, President Obama claimed that the act's transportation component alone will create or save 150,000 jobs in the first year.
This seems unlikely, however, given the leisurely pace the act allows for all of the infrastructure spending authorized in the legislation. As the language of the act reveals, some of the unemployed may have to wait until 2012, or even later, for their piece of this pie.
The Road to Recovery?
The largest infrastructure component of the bill is the $27.5 billion for highways, most of which will be distributed by existing formulas to the states, territories, and Indian tribes. The delay begins with the provision that states have up to one year to obligate the money, meaning only that they have to identify a project and set aside money for it. Still to be done might be the design and engineering work, request for bids, and the selection of the winning contractor.
Under this new law, projects that should be given "priority" are those that can be done within a three-year timeframe, but the definition of the timeframe is never specified, in contrast to other limits in the bill that define it as beginning with the enactment of the act. However lax this definition might be, the three-year limit is merely a legislative preference, not a requirement, and there is no prohibition against approving projects that may take longer.
Funding in Transit
A new program is created to provide another $1.5 billion for surface transportation programs that will be allocated as competitive grants. Since the program does not now exist, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) will need to draw up the rules and guidelines (90 days are allowed), time must be allowed for states to submit proposals (180 days), and USDOT must be given time to pick winners (up to one year after act's enactment). Thus, the approval process can take up to a year for projects that are expected--but not required--to be completed within three years.
The $1.1 billion for Grants-in-Aid for Airports allows the USDOT secretary up to one year to make grants "with priority given to those projects that demonstrate to his satisfaction their ability to be completed within two years." Again, no requirement, just a suggestion.
Transit programs (buses, commuter rail, trolley cars, etc.) receive $6.9 billion in capital assistance, and states and urban areas have up to one year to obligate the money, but that could be extended if certain problems are encountered. Reflecting the long lead time involved in many transit projects and the difficulties getting them approved, the new law includes no time limit on their completion.
High-Speed Rail on the Fast Track
One of the big surprises in the bill was the $8 billion it commits to high-speed rail (HSR) corridors--the House bill included nothing for HSR, and the Senate bill included $2 billion. Apparently the $8 billion was added at the last minute in conference, allegedly at the request of President Obama, despite his commitment to "transparency." In 1991 legislation was enacted to permit the Federal Railroad Administration to designate 10 high speed rail corridors.[2] Because of the exceptionally high costs and limited benefits of HSR (the California proposal is optimistically estimated to cost $42 billion for a system that will achieve surface speeds of up to one-fourth that common to commercial aviation), nothing has ever been done to get anything underway on any of these corridors--until now, that is.
The definition of HSR, as applied to those in European and Asian countries, is passenger rail service that averages more than 150 miles per hour, which can only be achieved on very expensive, dedicated lines that serve only HSR. Since no such lines exist in the U.S., any HSR would have to first acquire a right of way, buy the land in it, lay the very costly track, and buy the new equipment.
Under the circumstances, the $8 billion is woefully short of what is needed to complete a single system, and the President and Congress know it, which is why the $8 billion should be viewed as little more than an amuse-bouche to keep the nation's influential rail hobbyists happy and content. Indeed, the law recognizes the folly of the aspiration by allowing the money also to be spent on intercity passenger rail service (Amtrak) and "congestion" grants. And the act includes no time limits on when these projects are to be completed; it states only that the money will remain available for three and one-half years.
Don't Get Your Hopes Up
Several of the other infrastructure components of the act (public housing, for example) are also permitted a lengthy period of time to get underway and be completed. As a consequence, these costly components of the bill will do nothing to alleviate the immediate downward slide in economic activity--and little or nothing to support jobs during the current year.
Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., is Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
PPI: Tariffs Are One Percent of American Tax Revenue, But Once Were Half
Tariffs Are One Percent of American Tax Revenue, But Once Were Half
PPI Trade Fact of the Week March 4, 2009
The Numbers: U.S. government tax revenue:
[see table in the original article]
What They Mean:
How has taxation changed in a century?
For one thing, it is larger. In 1909, William Taft's revenue men collected $604 million in taxes, or about 5 percent of GDP. By comparison, the $2.2 trillion forecast for 2009 will be about 16 percent of GDP, with the extra money going to pay for a long series of 20th-century innovations. In rough chronological order: food-safety inspections, a permanent standing army, Social Security, national highways, Medicare, clean air programs, space exploration, AIDS research, and so on.
For another, it is fairer. Of Taft's $604 million, $301 million came from tariffs, with clothes and food bringing in half of tariff revenue and a quarter of federal money: $84 million from clothes and household linens; $56 million from sugar; $18 million from other foods. As in every age, taxation of clothes and food hits poorer families hardest, as they spend more of their income on necessities; the then Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Tennessean Benton McMillin, called the tariff system a "tax on want."
Woodrow Wilson's creation of the income tax in 1913, joined by the 1916 estate tax, remains the most revolutionary of all American tax reforms. It shrank the tariff system to 5 percent of revenue by 1920, shifted tax payment from poor to rich, and joins the payroll tax Franklin Roosevelt created in 1936 to pay for Social Security and later for Medicare at the heart of the 2009 tax system. The 1040 forms American workers fill out in coming weeks will accordingly raise about 45 percent of the government's money this year; payroll taxes add 40 percent. Another 9 percent comes from corporate taxes, and 1 percent from estate taxes. Taft's tax system survives in vestigial form, with excise taxes raising 3 percent and tariffs 1 percent.
But though taxation generally has changed, the tariff system has not. Now a small part of the tax system, tariffs nonetheless remain the government's most effective tax on want, as it still relies on clothes, shoes, and food for most of its money. Of last year's $26 billion in tariff revenue, clothes brought in $9.5 billion. Shoes added $1.9 billion, about the same as cars; household linens and luggage came in at a billion each. Altogether, low-cost household necessities account for about 6 percent of imports, but raise 60 percent of tariff money; and foods -- mainly orange juice, cheese, and canned tuna -- raise another half billion. Further tilting tariff policy against poor families, the system taxes the cheapest products most heavily: acrylic sweaters are taxed at 32 percent, and cashmeres at 4 percent; women's polyester underwear is taxed at 16 percent, but 0.9 percent on silks; 48 percent tax on cheap sneakers, but 8.5 percent on leather dress shoes; and so on. A triviality for most Americans, the tariff system likely costs single-mother families (whose clothing and food bills are highest relative to income) a week's salary each year, more than any tax but the payroll tax, as it quietly raises prices for life necessities.
Further Reading:
New -- The Internal Revenue Service traces its ancestry to Abraham Lincoln's Civil War revenue policy, which imposed the first income tax and created the excise taxes. Tax forms and advice, for free from the IRS:http://www.irs.gov/individuals/index.html
Old -- The modern Harmonized Tariff System stretches out through 97 chapters and about 11,000 separate products, from live horses to statuary. See chapters 61 and 62 for high clothing tariffs, chapter 27 for zero-tariff energy, chapter 64 for shoes, and chapter 79 for goods made entirely of zinc:http://www.usitc.gov/tata/hts/bychapter/index.htm
And money -- The 2009 Budget's Summary Tables lay out grim tax revenue forecasts for 2009:http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/
Analysis and ideas -
Next wave -- PPI's Paul Weinstein suggests a reshaping of the tax system:
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=450020&subsecID=900200&contentID=254831
PPI's Ed Gresser looks at tariffs, taxes and the single mom:
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=108&subsecID=900010&contentID=250828
... and, in left-right collaboration with the Heritage Foundation's Daniella Markheim, on shoe tariffs as America's single-worst tax:
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=108&subsecID=900010&contentID=254538
And context -
Tariffs around the world -- Japan, Europe, and Switzerland join America in drawing about 1 percent of revenue from tariffs. Norway, Hong Kong, and Singapore are lower, at zero or essentially zero; Korea is a bit higher at 3 percent. The World Bank's World Development Indicators 2008 finds only a few Sub-Saharan African nations -- Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Cote d'Ivoire -- relying on tariffs for 40 percent or more of tax revenue. Latin American countries are usually below 10 percent, and the normal range for mid-tier developing countries tops out at the 15 percent and 20 percent recorded for India and the Philippines. The WTO's world tariff summary:
http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/publications_e/world_tariff_profiles08_e.htm
Tariffs as employment policy -- Tariffs in the United States are rarely debated as tax policy; the standard arguments revolve around trade flows and employment. But as 2009 passes, tariffs (at least the light-industry tariffs that bring in the most money) have mostly lost their power to affect employment and trade flows, and are reverting instead to their 18th-century origins as excise taxes whose sole function is to raise money. In 1970, the four big high-tariff industries -- clothes, shoes, linens, and luggage -- accounted for 1.7 million out of the 58 million private-sector U.S. jobs. By 1980, they were down to 1.4 million; then 1.0 million in 1990, 0.6 million in 2000, 0.35 million by the end of the textile quota system in 2004, and now 0.22 million out of 112 million private-sector jobs.
PPI Trade Fact of the Week March 4, 2009
The Numbers: U.S. government tax revenue:
[see table in the original article]
What They Mean:
How has taxation changed in a century?
For one thing, it is larger. In 1909, William Taft's revenue men collected $604 million in taxes, or about 5 percent of GDP. By comparison, the $2.2 trillion forecast for 2009 will be about 16 percent of GDP, with the extra money going to pay for a long series of 20th-century innovations. In rough chronological order: food-safety inspections, a permanent standing army, Social Security, national highways, Medicare, clean air programs, space exploration, AIDS research, and so on.
For another, it is fairer. Of Taft's $604 million, $301 million came from tariffs, with clothes and food bringing in half of tariff revenue and a quarter of federal money: $84 million from clothes and household linens; $56 million from sugar; $18 million from other foods. As in every age, taxation of clothes and food hits poorer families hardest, as they spend more of their income on necessities; the then Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Tennessean Benton McMillin, called the tariff system a "tax on want."
Woodrow Wilson's creation of the income tax in 1913, joined by the 1916 estate tax, remains the most revolutionary of all American tax reforms. It shrank the tariff system to 5 percent of revenue by 1920, shifted tax payment from poor to rich, and joins the payroll tax Franklin Roosevelt created in 1936 to pay for Social Security and later for Medicare at the heart of the 2009 tax system. The 1040 forms American workers fill out in coming weeks will accordingly raise about 45 percent of the government's money this year; payroll taxes add 40 percent. Another 9 percent comes from corporate taxes, and 1 percent from estate taxes. Taft's tax system survives in vestigial form, with excise taxes raising 3 percent and tariffs 1 percent.
But though taxation generally has changed, the tariff system has not. Now a small part of the tax system, tariffs nonetheless remain the government's most effective tax on want, as it still relies on clothes, shoes, and food for most of its money. Of last year's $26 billion in tariff revenue, clothes brought in $9.5 billion. Shoes added $1.9 billion, about the same as cars; household linens and luggage came in at a billion each. Altogether, low-cost household necessities account for about 6 percent of imports, but raise 60 percent of tariff money; and foods -- mainly orange juice, cheese, and canned tuna -- raise another half billion. Further tilting tariff policy against poor families, the system taxes the cheapest products most heavily: acrylic sweaters are taxed at 32 percent, and cashmeres at 4 percent; women's polyester underwear is taxed at 16 percent, but 0.9 percent on silks; 48 percent tax on cheap sneakers, but 8.5 percent on leather dress shoes; and so on. A triviality for most Americans, the tariff system likely costs single-mother families (whose clothing and food bills are highest relative to income) a week's salary each year, more than any tax but the payroll tax, as it quietly raises prices for life necessities.
Further Reading:
New -- The Internal Revenue Service traces its ancestry to Abraham Lincoln's Civil War revenue policy, which imposed the first income tax and created the excise taxes. Tax forms and advice, for free from the IRS:http://www.irs.gov/individuals/index.html
Old -- The modern Harmonized Tariff System stretches out through 97 chapters and about 11,000 separate products, from live horses to statuary. See chapters 61 and 62 for high clothing tariffs, chapter 27 for zero-tariff energy, chapter 64 for shoes, and chapter 79 for goods made entirely of zinc:http://www.usitc.gov/tata/hts/bychapter/index.htm
And money -- The 2009 Budget's Summary Tables lay out grim tax revenue forecasts for 2009:http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/
Analysis and ideas -
Next wave -- PPI's Paul Weinstein suggests a reshaping of the tax system:
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=450020&subsecID=900200&contentID=254831
PPI's Ed Gresser looks at tariffs, taxes and the single mom:
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=108&subsecID=900010&contentID=250828
... and, in left-right collaboration with the Heritage Foundation's Daniella Markheim, on shoe tariffs as America's single-worst tax:
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=108&subsecID=900010&contentID=254538
And context -
Tariffs around the world -- Japan, Europe, and Switzerland join America in drawing about 1 percent of revenue from tariffs. Norway, Hong Kong, and Singapore are lower, at zero or essentially zero; Korea is a bit higher at 3 percent. The World Bank's World Development Indicators 2008 finds only a few Sub-Saharan African nations -- Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Cote d'Ivoire -- relying on tariffs for 40 percent or more of tax revenue. Latin American countries are usually below 10 percent, and the normal range for mid-tier developing countries tops out at the 15 percent and 20 percent recorded for India and the Philippines. The WTO's world tariff summary:
http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/publications_e/world_tariff_profiles08_e.htm
Tariffs as employment policy -- Tariffs in the United States are rarely debated as tax policy; the standard arguments revolve around trade flows and employment. But as 2009 passes, tariffs (at least the light-industry tariffs that bring in the most money) have mostly lost their power to affect employment and trade flows, and are reverting instead to their 18th-century origins as excise taxes whose sole function is to raise money. In 1970, the four big high-tariff industries -- clothes, shoes, linens, and luggage -- accounted for 1.7 million out of the 58 million private-sector U.S. jobs. By 1980, they were down to 1.4 million; then 1.0 million in 1990, 0.6 million in 2000, 0.35 million by the end of the textile quota system in 2004, and now 0.22 million out of 112 million private-sector jobs.
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