Paper Promises vs. Real Costs. By Doug Bandow
LOST is an artifact of the collectivist of the 1970s' New International Economic Order
Washington Times, April 22, 2009
The return of piracy to the high seas demonstrates the limits of international law. The international community might agree that it is wrong to seize ships for ransom, but a few thugs with guns in Somalia beg to differ. Paper guarantees cannot stop seajackings.
Yet Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants Congress to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty, the ultimate in paper guarantees. LOST, which essentially creates a second United Nations, is an artifact of the collectivist New International Economic Order popular in the 1970s, but it is being resold as a guarantor of freedom of the seas.
The convention obviously doesn't do anything to prevent piracy. Moreover, the recent contretemps between the U.S. and Chinese navies demonstrates that LOST's navigational guarantees are no more certain.
The USNS Impeccable, an unarmed spy ship, was operating 75 miles from China's Hainan Island. Chinese vessels harassed the U.S. vessel and ordered it to leave, causing the U.S. Navy to send in a supporting destroyer.
Territorial waters extend just 12 nautical miles, but LOST empowers nations to exercise control over resources in the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone. Washington contends that U.S. ships are allowed to conduct activities "in waters beyond the territorial sea of another state without prior notification or consent," according to Defense Department spokesman Stewart Upton. Beijing disagrees.
Washington would seem to have the better argument, though China's contention that peaceful uses of the ocean do not include spying is plausible. Alas, LOST fails to offer the clear, unambiguous protection of navigational freedom as claimed by its proponents.
LOST largely codifies customary international law, which favors free transit. However, the treaty only offers a paper guarantee. Even if LOST recognizes the Impeccable's right to spy, it offers no practical protection of that right.
If China - or Brazil, Malaysia or Pakistan, which also purport to forbid intelligence gathering within their exclusive zones - believes it to be in its interest and ability to prevent foreign passage, it won't spend a lot of time parsing ambiguous LOST provisions before acting. Geopolitical interest and military capability, not juridical technicalities, will triumph.
The problem is likely to grow as Beijing develops a blue-water navy. Last month, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee: "In the past several years, they have become more aggressive in asserting claims for the [exclusive zones] which are excessive under almost any international code." Despite China's adherence to LOST.
Although the treaty's navigational benefits are more theoretical than real, LOST has significant downsides. Most important, the so-called Part XI governing seabed mining was amended in 1994, but the result is only less bad.
LOST was crafted to redistribute wealth from First World democracies to Third World autocracies. The International Seabed Authority would regulate private ocean development, mine the seabed itself through an entity called the Enterprise, and pay off favored nations and groups. Those objectives remain unchanged.
Moreover, treaty proponents talk excitedly about new litigation opportunities created by LOST. Professor William C.G. Burns of the Monterey Institute of International Studies wrote that the convention "may prove to be one of the primary battlegrounds for climate change issues in the future." He dismissed the argument that the document does not authorize such litigation: "While very few of the drafters of [the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea] may have contemplated that it would one day become a mechanism to confront climate change, it clearly may play this role in the future."
Environmental activists also look forward to using LOST Article 207, which directs countries to "adopt laws and regulations to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment from land-based sources." Treaty advocates publicly claim the provision is merely hortatory.
Yet the mandate already has sparked litigation between Ireland and Britain. Moreover, Citizens for Global Solutions and the World Wildlife Federation argue that the convention will stop Russia from polluting the Arctic. They have yet to explain how LOST would bind Russia but not America.
No wonder Bernard H. Oxman of the University of Miami warned LOST backers to shut up about their plans. He explained: "Experienced international lawyers know where many of the sensitive nerve endings of governments are. Where possible, they should try to avoid irritating them."
Finally, the United Nations proclaims that LOST is not "a static instrument, but rather a dynamic and evolving body of law that must be vigorously safeguarded and its implementation aggressively advanced." If you like activist judges at the national level, imagine what you will get at the international level.
Before the Senate approves the Law of the Sea Treaty, members should consider the tradeoff they would be making. The convention offers paper benefits but imposes real costs. It's a deal only a pirate could love.
Friday, April 24, 2009
The Benefits of Port Liberalization: A Case Study from India
The Benefits of Port Liberalization: A Case Study from India. By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
Cato Development Policy Analysis no. 7
December 3, 2008
In contrast to the rest of India, where it is the government that predominantly owns and manages ports, the Indian state of Gujarat has implemented various forms of port liberalization since the 1990s. This has helped it become the country's fastest growing state. Gujarat's economy has grown at an average of 10.14 percent per year from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2006, the last five years for which data are available. This is comparable with China's average growth rate since 1978, and is distinctly faster than the growth of the other Asian tigers in the 15 years before the Asian financial crisis of 1997.
Gujarat has broken new ground with different forms of privatization, ranging from private provision of port services to completely private ownership of new ports. The process started in the 1980s and gathered momentum rapidly after the central government in New Delhi enacted major economic reforms in the early 1990s. Gujarat has taken advantage of a constitutional loophole to convert its minor ports into some of the biggest ports in the country, vastly improved the availability and efficiency of port infrastructure, and facilitated the development of industrial centers that otherwise would not have existed.
Gujarat's port liberalization, along with its status as one of the economically freest states in India, should serve as a model for the rest of India and other developing countries, which can also benefit from the dynamic gains of port privatization.
Read the study in PDF format.
Swaminathan Aiyar is a research fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and has been the editor of India's two biggest financial dailies, The Economic Times and Financial Express.
Cato Development Policy Analysis no. 7
December 3, 2008
In contrast to the rest of India, where it is the government that predominantly owns and manages ports, the Indian state of Gujarat has implemented various forms of port liberalization since the 1990s. This has helped it become the country's fastest growing state. Gujarat's economy has grown at an average of 10.14 percent per year from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2006, the last five years for which data are available. This is comparable with China's average growth rate since 1978, and is distinctly faster than the growth of the other Asian tigers in the 15 years before the Asian financial crisis of 1997.
Gujarat has broken new ground with different forms of privatization, ranging from private provision of port services to completely private ownership of new ports. The process started in the 1980s and gathered momentum rapidly after the central government in New Delhi enacted major economic reforms in the early 1990s. Gujarat has taken advantage of a constitutional loophole to convert its minor ports into some of the biggest ports in the country, vastly improved the availability and efficiency of port infrastructure, and facilitated the development of industrial centers that otherwise would not have existed.
Gujarat's port liberalization, along with its status as one of the economically freest states in India, should serve as a model for the rest of India and other developing countries, which can also benefit from the dynamic gains of port privatization.
Read the study in PDF format.
Swaminathan Aiyar is a research fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and has been the editor of India's two biggest financial dailies, The Economic Times and Financial Express.
The Problems and Potential of China's Pharmaceutical Industry
The Problems and Potential of China's Pharmaceutical Industry. By Roger Bate, Karen Porter
Posted: Thursday, April 23, 2009
HEALTH POLICY OUTLOOK
AEI Online
Click here to view this Outlook as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.
Posted: Thursday, April 23, 2009
HEALTH POLICY OUTLOOK
AEI Online
Click here to view this Outlook as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.
After 29 years, Senate ratification of the CEDAW treaty is still a terrible idea
This Is No Time to Go Wobbly. By Austin Ruse
After 29 years, Senate ratification of the CEDAW treaty is still a terrible idea.
The Weekly Standard, Apr 27, 2009
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women once told Libya to reinterpret the Koran so as to fall within committee guidelines. It instructed Belarus that a national celebration of Mother's Day violated women's rights by perpetuating a negative cultural stereotype.
It appears that the Obama administration and Senate Democrats want the United States to sit in the dock before this same committee, as must every country that ratifies the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, pronounced See-Daw). The CEDAW treaty has bounced around the Senate for 29 years, ever since President Jimmy Carter signed it in 1980. It has twice been voted favorably out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but has never received the necessary concurrence of two-thirds of the senators present, no matter which party has been in power. Now, however, with staunch backers like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry in key positions in the executive and legislative branches, CEDAW's moment may finally have come.
Let us hope not. The first big reason for rejecting the CEDAW treaty is wholly practical: It is unneeded. American women enjoy civil and human rights that are the envy of the world. Take the word of one of America's leading feminist activists and theoreticians, Janet Benshoof. She writes on RH Reality Check, a website funded by Ted Turner's UN Foundation, "No one questions that American women enjoy a higher standard of rights and freedoms than do most people in the world." American women do not need CEDAW to guarantee them their rights.
The second big reason not to ratify is the language of the treaty itself. Note that it calls for the elimination of "all forms" of discrimination against women. And its backers are not kidding. The treaty is explicit that this refers not just to public but also to private behavior. Two years ago the committee instructed both Greece and Indonesia to root out sex differences in housework; another signatory, Norway, actually legislated sex parity on private corporate boards, then testified before the committee that the law was proving difficult to enforce.
The treaty may be bad, but the committee that is charged with monitoring compliance is worse and is the third big reason to resist CEDAW. All U.N. human rights treaties establish compliance committees before which governments must report every few years. At least on paper, the committees have the power only to "offer observations." But they go further, and much of what they say is purely ideological. The CEDAW committee directed China to legalize prostitution even though the treaty condemns prostitution. It criticized Ireland for allowing the Catholic Church too great a voice in public policy. It took Slovenia to task because only 30 percent of children were in state-sponsored day care.
Some will look at these pronouncements and conclude the committee could not possibly have any real power. They would be wrong. Many legal advocates and national courts around the world take the committee seriously. It should be noted that any power the committee has is given to it by leftist lawyers and activist judges. Still, it is actual power.
The high court of Colombia recently overturned the country's laws on abortion. In doing so, it cited the CEDAW committee, which had told Colombia it was treaty-bound to change its laws. The Mexican high court recently upheld the liberal abortion laws of Mexico City, and at least two of the judges mentioned supposed CEDAW obligations.
Keep in mind that the CEDAW treaty is silent on abortion, something Senator Barbara Boxer and the Congressional Research Service underscore in deflecting this objection to it. What they don't say is that the committee's General Recommendation 24 has reinterpreted the treaty to make abortion a part of its health mandate. According to Human Rights Watch, the CEDAW committee has directed 93 countries to liberalize their abortion laws.
Who sits on this committee that reinterprets the hard-fought political decisions of sovereign states? Twenty-two academics and left-wing NGO advocates for women's rights from countries like Bangladesh, Cuba, Algeria, Thailand, and Ghana (to cite just the countries of the first five members listed). At present all but one of the members are female. As for their eminence, it's a safe bet that long-time CEDAW supporter Vice President Joseph Biden couldn't name a single one of them. Nevertheless, once nominated and elected by signatory nations, the members of the committee are accountable only to themselves. And this is the group the Obama administration would invite to judge the United States.
Which brings us to the final big reason for refusing to ratify the CEDAW treaty. Like every kangaroo court, it undermines the rule of law, and in this case it also sullies the international system. If the treaty obligations of sovereign states can be reinterpreted by this committee and then accepted by national courts, the concept of sovereignty has been drained of meaning. For that matter, the whole notion of human rights is up for grabs if left-wing nonstate actors are allowed to create and impose new human rights at will.
It is tempting to assume that neither the CEDAW treaty nor the committee could affect a big, strong country like the United States. But remember, the Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons overturning the juvenile death penalty cited the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty the United States has never ratified. The Court also cited the death penalty provision of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a provision the Senate formally rejected when approving the covenant. Far from deterred, the left-wing legal class in this country is primed and ready to advance litigation citing CEDAW, and high officials toeing the feminist line are eager to give them that chance.
Still, sensible politicians of both parties have found good reason to resist this troublesome treaty for a generation. May they once more carry the day.
Austin Ruse is president of C-FAM (the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington-based research institute on international social policy.
After 29 years, Senate ratification of the CEDAW treaty is still a terrible idea.
The Weekly Standard, Apr 27, 2009
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women once told Libya to reinterpret the Koran so as to fall within committee guidelines. It instructed Belarus that a national celebration of Mother's Day violated women's rights by perpetuating a negative cultural stereotype.
It appears that the Obama administration and Senate Democrats want the United States to sit in the dock before this same committee, as must every country that ratifies the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, pronounced See-Daw). The CEDAW treaty has bounced around the Senate for 29 years, ever since President Jimmy Carter signed it in 1980. It has twice been voted favorably out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but has never received the necessary concurrence of two-thirds of the senators present, no matter which party has been in power. Now, however, with staunch backers like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry in key positions in the executive and legislative branches, CEDAW's moment may finally have come.
Let us hope not. The first big reason for rejecting the CEDAW treaty is wholly practical: It is unneeded. American women enjoy civil and human rights that are the envy of the world. Take the word of one of America's leading feminist activists and theoreticians, Janet Benshoof. She writes on RH Reality Check, a website funded by Ted Turner's UN Foundation, "No one questions that American women enjoy a higher standard of rights and freedoms than do most people in the world." American women do not need CEDAW to guarantee them their rights.
The second big reason not to ratify is the language of the treaty itself. Note that it calls for the elimination of "all forms" of discrimination against women. And its backers are not kidding. The treaty is explicit that this refers not just to public but also to private behavior. Two years ago the committee instructed both Greece and Indonesia to root out sex differences in housework; another signatory, Norway, actually legislated sex parity on private corporate boards, then testified before the committee that the law was proving difficult to enforce.
The treaty may be bad, but the committee that is charged with monitoring compliance is worse and is the third big reason to resist CEDAW. All U.N. human rights treaties establish compliance committees before which governments must report every few years. At least on paper, the committees have the power only to "offer observations." But they go further, and much of what they say is purely ideological. The CEDAW committee directed China to legalize prostitution even though the treaty condemns prostitution. It criticized Ireland for allowing the Catholic Church too great a voice in public policy. It took Slovenia to task because only 30 percent of children were in state-sponsored day care.
Some will look at these pronouncements and conclude the committee could not possibly have any real power. They would be wrong. Many legal advocates and national courts around the world take the committee seriously. It should be noted that any power the committee has is given to it by leftist lawyers and activist judges. Still, it is actual power.
The high court of Colombia recently overturned the country's laws on abortion. In doing so, it cited the CEDAW committee, which had told Colombia it was treaty-bound to change its laws. The Mexican high court recently upheld the liberal abortion laws of Mexico City, and at least two of the judges mentioned supposed CEDAW obligations.
Keep in mind that the CEDAW treaty is silent on abortion, something Senator Barbara Boxer and the Congressional Research Service underscore in deflecting this objection to it. What they don't say is that the committee's General Recommendation 24 has reinterpreted the treaty to make abortion a part of its health mandate. According to Human Rights Watch, the CEDAW committee has directed 93 countries to liberalize their abortion laws.
Who sits on this committee that reinterprets the hard-fought political decisions of sovereign states? Twenty-two academics and left-wing NGO advocates for women's rights from countries like Bangladesh, Cuba, Algeria, Thailand, and Ghana (to cite just the countries of the first five members listed). At present all but one of the members are female. As for their eminence, it's a safe bet that long-time CEDAW supporter Vice President Joseph Biden couldn't name a single one of them. Nevertheless, once nominated and elected by signatory nations, the members of the committee are accountable only to themselves. And this is the group the Obama administration would invite to judge the United States.
Which brings us to the final big reason for refusing to ratify the CEDAW treaty. Like every kangaroo court, it undermines the rule of law, and in this case it also sullies the international system. If the treaty obligations of sovereign states can be reinterpreted by this committee and then accepted by national courts, the concept of sovereignty has been drained of meaning. For that matter, the whole notion of human rights is up for grabs if left-wing nonstate actors are allowed to create and impose new human rights at will.
It is tempting to assume that neither the CEDAW treaty nor the committee could affect a big, strong country like the United States. But remember, the Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons overturning the juvenile death penalty cited the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty the United States has never ratified. The Court also cited the death penalty provision of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a provision the Senate formally rejected when approving the covenant. Far from deterred, the left-wing legal class in this country is primed and ready to advance litigation citing CEDAW, and high officials toeing the feminist line are eager to give them that chance.
Still, sensible politicians of both parties have found good reason to resist this troublesome treaty for a generation. May they once more carry the day.
Austin Ruse is president of C-FAM (the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington-based research institute on international social policy.
Shanahan et alii's article on severe droughts in Africa
Comment On “Debate Over Climate Risks - Natural or Not” On Dot Earth. By Roger Pielke Sr
Climate Science, Apr 20, 2009
There is an interesting discussion on going at Andy Revkin’s weglob Dot Earth on the topic Debate Over Climate Risks - Natural or Not, which invites responses to the statement,
“One clear-cut lesson [of this study] seems to be that human-driven warming, for this part of Africa, could be seen as a sideshow given the normal extremes. Tell me why that thought is misplaced if you feel it is.”
This subject was initiated by a Science article by Shanahan et al and subsequent news item on April 16 2009 by Andy Revkin which includes the text
“For at least 3,000 years, a regular drumbeat of potent droughts, far longer and more severe than any experienced recently, have seared a belt of sub-Saharan Africa that is now home to tens of millions of the world’s poorest people, climate researchers reported in a new study.
That sobering finding, published in the April 17th issue of Science magazine emerged from the first study of year-by-year climate conditions in the region over the millenniums, based on layered mud and dead trees in a crater lake in Ghana. “
The abstract of the Science article by Shanahan et al reads
“ Although persistent drought in West Africa is well documented from the instrumental record and has been primarily attributed to changing Atlantic sea surface temperatures, little is known about the length, severity, and origin of drought before the 20th century. We combined geomorphic, isotopic, and geochemical evidence from the sediments of Lake Bosumtwi, Ghana, to reconstruct natural variability in the African monsoon over the past three millennia. We find that intervals of severe drought lasting for periods ranging from decades to centuries are characteristic of the monsoon and are linked to natural variations in Atlantic temperatures. Thus the severe drought of recent decades is not anomalous in the context of the past three millennia, indicating that the monsoon is capable of longer and more severe future droughts.”
Climate Science and our research papers have emphasized the large natural variations of climate that have occurred in the paleo-climate record and that these variations dwarf anything we have experienced in the instrumental record.
For example, in
Rial, J., R.A. Pielke Sr., M. Beniston, M. Claussen, J. Canadell, P. Cox, H. Held, N. de Noblet-Ducoudre, R. Prinn, J. Reynolds, and J.D. Salas, 2004: Nonlinearities, feedbacks and critical thresholds within the Earth’s climate system. Climatic Change, 65, 11-38,
our abstract reads
“The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the norm. While this is widely accepted, there is a relatively poor understanding of the different types of nonlinearities, how they manifest under various conditions, and whether they reflect a climate system driven by astronomical forcings, by internal feedbacks, or by a combination of both. In this paper, after a brief tutorial on the basics of climate nonlinearity, we provide a number of illustrative examples and highlight key mechanisms that give rise to nonlinear behavior, address scale and methodological issues, suggest a robust alternative to prediction that is based on using integrated assessments within the framework of vulnerability studies and, lastly, recommend a number of research priorities and the establishment of education programs in Earth Systems Science. It is imperative that the Earth’s climate system research community embraces this nonlinear paradigm if we are to move forward in the assessment of the human influence on climate.”
In an article specifically with respect to drought,
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: Global climate models - Many contributing influences. Citizen’s Guide to Colorado Climate Change, Colorado Climate Foundation for Water Education, pp. 28-29,
I wrote
“A vulnerability perspective, focused on regional and local societal and environmental resources, is a more inclusive, useful and scientifically robust framework to use with policymakers. In contrast to the limited range of possible future risks by current climate models, the vulnerability framework permits the evaluation of the entire spectrum of risks to the water resources associated with all social and environmental threats, including climate variability and change.”
Thus, regardless of the role humans play within the climate system (and it is much more than due to carbon dioxide increases; see), adaptation plans to deal with climate variations, beyond what occurred in the historical record, should be a priority.
Climate Science, Apr 20, 2009
There is an interesting discussion on going at Andy Revkin’s weglob Dot Earth on the topic Debate Over Climate Risks - Natural or Not, which invites responses to the statement,
“One clear-cut lesson [of this study] seems to be that human-driven warming, for this part of Africa, could be seen as a sideshow given the normal extremes. Tell me why that thought is misplaced if you feel it is.”
This subject was initiated by a Science article by Shanahan et al and subsequent news item on April 16 2009 by Andy Revkin which includes the text
“For at least 3,000 years, a regular drumbeat of potent droughts, far longer and more severe than any experienced recently, have seared a belt of sub-Saharan Africa that is now home to tens of millions of the world’s poorest people, climate researchers reported in a new study.
That sobering finding, published in the April 17th issue of Science magazine emerged from the first study of year-by-year climate conditions in the region over the millenniums, based on layered mud and dead trees in a crater lake in Ghana. “
The abstract of the Science article by Shanahan et al reads
“ Although persistent drought in West Africa is well documented from the instrumental record and has been primarily attributed to changing Atlantic sea surface temperatures, little is known about the length, severity, and origin of drought before the 20th century. We combined geomorphic, isotopic, and geochemical evidence from the sediments of Lake Bosumtwi, Ghana, to reconstruct natural variability in the African monsoon over the past three millennia. We find that intervals of severe drought lasting for periods ranging from decades to centuries are characteristic of the monsoon and are linked to natural variations in Atlantic temperatures. Thus the severe drought of recent decades is not anomalous in the context of the past three millennia, indicating that the monsoon is capable of longer and more severe future droughts.”
Climate Science and our research papers have emphasized the large natural variations of climate that have occurred in the paleo-climate record and that these variations dwarf anything we have experienced in the instrumental record.
For example, in
Rial, J., R.A. Pielke Sr., M. Beniston, M. Claussen, J. Canadell, P. Cox, H. Held, N. de Noblet-Ducoudre, R. Prinn, J. Reynolds, and J.D. Salas, 2004: Nonlinearities, feedbacks and critical thresholds within the Earth’s climate system. Climatic Change, 65, 11-38,
our abstract reads
“The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the norm. While this is widely accepted, there is a relatively poor understanding of the different types of nonlinearities, how they manifest under various conditions, and whether they reflect a climate system driven by astronomical forcings, by internal feedbacks, or by a combination of both. In this paper, after a brief tutorial on the basics of climate nonlinearity, we provide a number of illustrative examples and highlight key mechanisms that give rise to nonlinear behavior, address scale and methodological issues, suggest a robust alternative to prediction that is based on using integrated assessments within the framework of vulnerability studies and, lastly, recommend a number of research priorities and the establishment of education programs in Earth Systems Science. It is imperative that the Earth’s climate system research community embraces this nonlinear paradigm if we are to move forward in the assessment of the human influence on climate.”
In an article specifically with respect to drought,
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: Global climate models - Many contributing influences. Citizen’s Guide to Colorado Climate Change, Colorado Climate Foundation for Water Education, pp. 28-29,
I wrote
“A vulnerability perspective, focused on regional and local societal and environmental resources, is a more inclusive, useful and scientifically robust framework to use with policymakers. In contrast to the limited range of possible future risks by current climate models, the vulnerability framework permits the evaluation of the entire spectrum of risks to the water resources associated with all social and environmental threats, including climate variability and change.”
Thus, regardless of the role humans play within the climate system (and it is much more than due to carbon dioxide increases; see), adaptation plans to deal with climate variations, beyond what occurred in the historical record, should be a priority.
Capitalist Reform to Reduce International Oil Demand: Getting World Refiners to Price at Market
Capitalist Reform to Reduce International Oil Demand: Getting World Refiners to Price at Market. By Donald Hertzmark
Master Resource, April 23, 2009
A market-driven revitalization of the world oil refining sector is the best and fastest way to reduce both oil demand and related air emissions, including CO2. A combination of market-based pricing–absent from foreign refineries (most politically owned and/or managed)– and new investment brought forth by the improved profitability of such pricing, could reduce the demand for crude oil by between eight and twelve million barrels per day, or about 10–15 percent.
A Bold Hypothesis
This rather astounding assertion can be educed as follows:
Subsidizing Middle Distillate Is Like Fighting Chemistry And Economics At The Same Time
The Government giveaways of gasoline in a number of oil exporting countries, especially Venezuela and the Persian Gulf nations, are well known. But while these subsidies are considerable, the far greater player in the subsidy game is the encouragement of middle distillate over-consumption in country-after-country in the developing world.
In many countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and other leading developing countries, prices of diesel and kerosene are maintained at 70–85% of the energy equivalent price of gasoline. These price ratios, unlike those in the real world, which are generally within 5-6% of one another on an energy basis, give energy consumers every reason to use more of the middle distillates and less of the more expensive products.
Moreover, since the low prices for middle distillates are below the cost of supplying such products, the funds to supply the induced demand must come from somewhere – either taxpayers or the consumers of the non-subsidized oil products (gasoline, HFO, LPG) must foot the bill. Although increasing numbers of taxpayers have become alarmed (rightly) about the subsidization of renewable energy, the harm to the economy of the world that is created by subsidies for refined oil products, especially middle distillates, currently dwarfs the resource misallocation created by renewable energy policies. In 2007, middle distillate subsidies cost Indonesia about $9.8 billion, more than 2% of that country’s GDP.
At worst, subsidies can so promote demand for the subsidized product, while simultaneously retarding the efficient supply of that product that vast financial and economic imbalances in the energy sector may occur. Worldwide, the demand for middle distillates in recent years has increased from about 35 to 38% of the crude oil barrel. In the countries cited above, as in many other subsidizers, the middle distillate proportion in the demand barrel can range from 50–60%.
Countries import middle distillates at market prices and sell them for less; or worse, they build expensive refinery add-ons solely to meet middle distillate demand and then sell the products for less than the cost of production. By rendering the oil refining sector less profitable than would otherwise be the case, subsidies stunt the investment in new technology and clean fuels needed to meet increasingly stringent environmental demands for reducing plain old pollution (lead additives for gasoline, volatile organic compounds, CO, sulphur).
Simply put, where middle distillate subsidies are present, the country’s approach to meeting refined oil product demand is tantamount to fighting chemistry. There is almost no way to make a barrel of oil produce a 50–60% yield of diesel, jet fuel and kerosene at a reasonable cost (yes, it can be done at an unreasonable cost, just as you can grow bananas in Alaska – that doesn’t make it a good investment). Pressure, heat and catalysts will almost always generate other products, gasoline and LPGs, as well as (some) HFO.
Ending Oil-Product Subsidies Offers an Environmental Upside
A country with refined-product subsidies will tend to consume more oil products than it might without below-market pricing. At the same time, as long as refiners lack the financial capability (or even the desire) to invest in better yields of light products, they will try to meet demand in the least expensive way, either importing middle distillate products or refining more crude in simple refineries. (Note: Countries without any oil refineries tend not to subsidize the consumption of these products).
In a simple refining configuration, about one third of the output is heavy fuel oil, assuming a light crude is used. Heavier crudes may yield more than 40% HFO from simple distillation. The proportion of middle distillates and gasolines are about equal, at roughly 30–35%, depending on cut points and the specifics of the crude oil used. Such a refinery cannot produce a demand barrel that is more than 50% middle distillates. So the refiner will export some of the unwanted gasoline and HFO and import middle distillates. If this is done at the margin, then there is little or no impact on prices and product availability, but if it is general practice, then the prices for the exported gasoline, naphtha and HFO products will tend to be depressed. The financial impacts on a refiner of selling middle distillates below cost and other products at depressed prices virtually guarantees continuous financial stress for such companies.
If a refining company could recoup its investments in upgrading low quality feeds and avoid selling unfinished gasolines and HFO at distressed prices, then they might be able to build a better refinery. In a highly complex refinery, with full reduction of heavy byproducts, middle distillate yields rarely rise above 40%. With a mix of various unappetizing heavy, high sulphur crudes and HFO, Valero Energy’s Delaware City refinery produces 40% middle distillates, 53% gasolines, 3% HFO, and precious little else. Even the petroleum coke, about 1% of output, is recycled to generate electric power.
The roughly 155,000 b/d of light products produced in Valero’s complex refinery requires just 170,000 b/d of low quality feed. A simple refinery will need roughly 240,000 b/d to produce the same yield of light products. If rest of the world were able to replicate the efficiency of the U.S. refining sector, then current demand for gasoline and middle distillates, LPGs and chemical feedstocks could be met with 10–15% less (lower quality) crude oil each day, even allowing for lags in adoption.
Shifting the HFO now used to generate electricity to natural gas, where feasible, would result in a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions. Worldwide, the consumption of HFO for power generation and industry is about 10 million b/d, 12% of total oil demand. Reducing the crude oil distillation that is rendered unnecessary with modern technology, and replacing current industrial and utility consumption of HFO with natural gas, an excellent financial option for most countries, could result in a net annual reduction in CO2 emissions of more than 500 million tonnes, more than the CO2 emissions from all natural gas flaring worldwide.[1]
The moral of the story is that fighting the market and fighting chemistry is a bad idea – bad for profits, bad for oil reserves and bad for the environment. There is literally no other set of investments in the next 10–15 years that could reduce air pollution (and CO2 emissions) as dramatically as the investments induced by good oil pricing policies. It is literally equivalent to removing 20% of U.S. power generation capacity from service, a feat that is beyond the wildest dreams of any renewable energy advocate.
Notes
[1] This reduction is calculated as follows:
Nine million barrels per day (b/d) of HFO, when burned, creates 1.55*109 T/year CO2 – all this HFO could go into fuels production, displacing crude oil, since the demand for the light products is evident.
An equivalent power or industrial output from natural gas creates no more than 1.08*109 T/year CO2. Efficiencies more typical of natural gas use in power would lower this energy equivalence figure to about 560 million T/year CO2.
The differential, about 500-1,000 million T/year CO2, is greater than the known emissions from gas flaring worldwide (see Chapter 6).
Master Resource, April 23, 2009
A market-driven revitalization of the world oil refining sector is the best and fastest way to reduce both oil demand and related air emissions, including CO2. A combination of market-based pricing–absent from foreign refineries (most politically owned and/or managed)– and new investment brought forth by the improved profitability of such pricing, could reduce the demand for crude oil by between eight and twelve million barrels per day, or about 10–15 percent.
A Bold Hypothesis
This rather astounding assertion can be educed as follows:
- Most countries subsidize refined oil product consumption, usually middle distillates (diesel and kerosene) at the expense of gasoline and other products;
- Owing to the price controls on heavily used middle distillate products, most oil refiners outside the U.S. and a few other countries lose money;
- The subsidies to middle distillate users, at the expense of gasoline and LPG consumers, creates an “unbalanced” demand barrel – one that defies both economics and chemistry;
- Refiners lose money and avoid investing in modern refining technology; instead refiners build more simple refineries and use up crude oil to meet the unbalanced demand barrel, which creates more heavy fuel oil (HFO);
- The U.S., with its sophisticated refineries and market-based pricing of oil products, creates virtually no net HFO, using it as a feedstock instead. In fact, the U.S. is a net importer of HFO from Europe and the Caribbean, a less expensive feedstock for refining than crude oil;
- Most of this HFO created outside the U.S. is used to generate electricity, creating significant greenhouse gas emissions;
- Right-pricing refined oil products would (1) reduce the demand for middle distillates; (2) make refining a going business without subsidies; and (3) induce investment in better refining technology;
- The excess HFO now created as a artifact of middle distillate subsidies would be absorbed within the refining system as a feedstock, reducing the demand for crude oil by at least 8 million barrels per day, perhaps 12-13 million b/d;
- Replacement of this HFO in power generation by natural gas would, on balance, reduce the output of CO2 by an amount greater than the CO2 generated by all natural gas flaring worldwide, or, equivalently, taking 20% of U.S. electricity generating capacity out of service.
Subsidizing Middle Distillate Is Like Fighting Chemistry And Economics At The Same Time
The Government giveaways of gasoline in a number of oil exporting countries, especially Venezuela and the Persian Gulf nations, are well known. But while these subsidies are considerable, the far greater player in the subsidy game is the encouragement of middle distillate over-consumption in country-after-country in the developing world.
In many countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and other leading developing countries, prices of diesel and kerosene are maintained at 70–85% of the energy equivalent price of gasoline. These price ratios, unlike those in the real world, which are generally within 5-6% of one another on an energy basis, give energy consumers every reason to use more of the middle distillates and less of the more expensive products.
Moreover, since the low prices for middle distillates are below the cost of supplying such products, the funds to supply the induced demand must come from somewhere – either taxpayers or the consumers of the non-subsidized oil products (gasoline, HFO, LPG) must foot the bill. Although increasing numbers of taxpayers have become alarmed (rightly) about the subsidization of renewable energy, the harm to the economy of the world that is created by subsidies for refined oil products, especially middle distillates, currently dwarfs the resource misallocation created by renewable energy policies. In 2007, middle distillate subsidies cost Indonesia about $9.8 billion, more than 2% of that country’s GDP.
At worst, subsidies can so promote demand for the subsidized product, while simultaneously retarding the efficient supply of that product that vast financial and economic imbalances in the energy sector may occur. Worldwide, the demand for middle distillates in recent years has increased from about 35 to 38% of the crude oil barrel. In the countries cited above, as in many other subsidizers, the middle distillate proportion in the demand barrel can range from 50–60%.
Countries import middle distillates at market prices and sell them for less; or worse, they build expensive refinery add-ons solely to meet middle distillate demand and then sell the products for less than the cost of production. By rendering the oil refining sector less profitable than would otherwise be the case, subsidies stunt the investment in new technology and clean fuels needed to meet increasingly stringent environmental demands for reducing plain old pollution (lead additives for gasoline, volatile organic compounds, CO, sulphur).
Simply put, where middle distillate subsidies are present, the country’s approach to meeting refined oil product demand is tantamount to fighting chemistry. There is almost no way to make a barrel of oil produce a 50–60% yield of diesel, jet fuel and kerosene at a reasonable cost (yes, it can be done at an unreasonable cost, just as you can grow bananas in Alaska – that doesn’t make it a good investment). Pressure, heat and catalysts will almost always generate other products, gasoline and LPGs, as well as (some) HFO.
Ending Oil-Product Subsidies Offers an Environmental Upside
A country with refined-product subsidies will tend to consume more oil products than it might without below-market pricing. At the same time, as long as refiners lack the financial capability (or even the desire) to invest in better yields of light products, they will try to meet demand in the least expensive way, either importing middle distillate products or refining more crude in simple refineries. (Note: Countries without any oil refineries tend not to subsidize the consumption of these products).
In a simple refining configuration, about one third of the output is heavy fuel oil, assuming a light crude is used. Heavier crudes may yield more than 40% HFO from simple distillation. The proportion of middle distillates and gasolines are about equal, at roughly 30–35%, depending on cut points and the specifics of the crude oil used. Such a refinery cannot produce a demand barrel that is more than 50% middle distillates. So the refiner will export some of the unwanted gasoline and HFO and import middle distillates. If this is done at the margin, then there is little or no impact on prices and product availability, but if it is general practice, then the prices for the exported gasoline, naphtha and HFO products will tend to be depressed. The financial impacts on a refiner of selling middle distillates below cost and other products at depressed prices virtually guarantees continuous financial stress for such companies.
If a refining company could recoup its investments in upgrading low quality feeds and avoid selling unfinished gasolines and HFO at distressed prices, then they might be able to build a better refinery. In a highly complex refinery, with full reduction of heavy byproducts, middle distillate yields rarely rise above 40%. With a mix of various unappetizing heavy, high sulphur crudes and HFO, Valero Energy’s Delaware City refinery produces 40% middle distillates, 53% gasolines, 3% HFO, and precious little else. Even the petroleum coke, about 1% of output, is recycled to generate electric power.
The roughly 155,000 b/d of light products produced in Valero’s complex refinery requires just 170,000 b/d of low quality feed. A simple refinery will need roughly 240,000 b/d to produce the same yield of light products. If rest of the world were able to replicate the efficiency of the U.S. refining sector, then current demand for gasoline and middle distillates, LPGs and chemical feedstocks could be met with 10–15% less (lower quality) crude oil each day, even allowing for lags in adoption.
Shifting the HFO now used to generate electricity to natural gas, where feasible, would result in a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions. Worldwide, the consumption of HFO for power generation and industry is about 10 million b/d, 12% of total oil demand. Reducing the crude oil distillation that is rendered unnecessary with modern technology, and replacing current industrial and utility consumption of HFO with natural gas, an excellent financial option for most countries, could result in a net annual reduction in CO2 emissions of more than 500 million tonnes, more than the CO2 emissions from all natural gas flaring worldwide.[1]
The moral of the story is that fighting the market and fighting chemistry is a bad idea – bad for profits, bad for oil reserves and bad for the environment. There is literally no other set of investments in the next 10–15 years that could reduce air pollution (and CO2 emissions) as dramatically as the investments induced by good oil pricing policies. It is literally equivalent to removing 20% of U.S. power generation capacity from service, a feat that is beyond the wildest dreams of any renewable energy advocate.
Notes
[1] This reduction is calculated as follows:
Nine million barrels per day (b/d) of HFO, when burned, creates 1.55*109 T/year CO2 – all this HFO could go into fuels production, displacing crude oil, since the demand for the light products is evident.
An equivalent power or industrial output from natural gas creates no more than 1.08*109 T/year CO2. Efficiencies more typical of natural gas use in power would lower this energy equivalence figure to about 560 million T/year CO2.
The differential, about 500-1,000 million T/year CO2, is greater than the known emissions from gas flaring worldwide (see Chapter 6).
WaPo on OLC memos: The Accountability Question
The Accountability Question. WaPo Editorial
The right way to deal with torture's legacy
WaPo, Friday, April 24, 2009
THE APPARENT confusion within the Obama administration about whether to prosecute officials of the previous administration for committing torture is not surprising. Two fundamental principles are colliding in this matter, and it's not easy to achieve a fair outcome that reconciles both.
On one side, you have the sacred American tradition of peacefully transferring power from one party to another every four or eight years without cycles of revenge and criminal investigation. It's one thing to investigate Richard Nixon for authorizing wiretaps and burglaries in secrecy, outside the normal channels of government, for personal political gain. It's another to criminalize decisions authorized through all the proper channels, with congressional approval or at least awareness, for what everyone agrees to be the high purpose of keeping Americans safe from terrorist attack. Once you start down that road, where do you stop? Should Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger and their team have been held criminally or civilly liable for dereliction of duty 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, given that they knowingly allowed Osama bin Laden to flee Sudan for sanctuary in Afghanistan? What if the next administration believes that Barack Obama is committing war crimes every time he allows the Air Force to fling missiles into Pakistan, killing innocent civilians in a country with which we are not at war?
Such concerns are heightened when the country is at war, as we in fact are, though in the daily life of most Americans it might not seem so. Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict great damage, perhaps on a scale far larger than in 2001, and the country needs its guardians in the armed forces, the CIA and elsewhere to focus on defending the country against that threat, not themselves against legal action. The Obama administration needs to attract the best possible talent into government, and then expect from those who serve unflinching advice on hard calls. Neither will happen if public service routinely is followed by the need to hire private attorneys and empty one's bank account.
AND YET, on the other side, we have this: American officials condoned and conducted torture. Waterboarding, to take the starkest case, has been recognized in international and U.S. law for decades as beyond the pale, and it was used hundreds of times during the Bush years. Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general of the United States, has stated flatly that it is illegal. In a country founded on the rule of law, a president can't sweep criminality away for political reasons, even the most noble. When the United States sees torture taking place in other parts of the world, it issues some pretty simple demands: Stop doing that, and punish -- or at least identify, and in some way hold accountable -- those responsible, so that the practice will not be repeated. How can a country that purports to serve as a moral exemplar ask any less of itself?
The answer does not lie with those congressional Democrats who are eager to put the entire Bush administration on trial. Nor, as President Obama has discovered this week, can it be found in his own wishful calls to look forward rather than dwelling on the past. As other nations have discovered, the past will haunt the present until it is investigated and openly dealt with. And although we have misgivings about international justice intruding on the sovereignty of democratic governments, it's also true that if the United States doesn't examine its own record, other nations will have a better claim to do so.
To an extent, such an examination is going on all around us. The Senate intelligence committee is conducting a review. The Senate Armed Services Committee, having been mostly AWOL when it could have made a difference, has issued a useful report. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is examing the conduct of Bush administration lawyers. It may seem, after a week of constant news coverage and newly published legal memos, that there isn't much left to learn.
But wide holes remain in public knowledge of how torture came to be official U.S. policy and how that policy was implemented. The efficacy of "enhanced interrogation techniques" remains in dispute. We don't know if some interrogations went beyond even what the Justice Department had approved. The extent of congressional knowledge and approbation remains unclear. And as former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld might note, we don't know what we don't know.
SO THERE remains, as we have long argued, a need for a bipartisan commission composed of respected leaders to conduct a thorough review. Mr. Obama should take the lead in forming such a panel. It should conduct its work deliberately and issue its findings publicly.
In the end, no such panel can answer every question. We will never know what detainees might have disclosed if interrogators had persisted with more humane techniques. We can't measure precisely the damage inflicted on the United States and its soldiers by the fallout from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. But a presidential commission could produce the fullest, least-heated account possible.
Once it did so, prosecutions would not be the only option. Based on what we know today, we do not believe they would be the best option. For reasons laid out at the beginning of this editorial, we would be extremely reluctant to go after lawyers and officials acting in what they believed to be the nation's best interest at a time of grave danger. If laws were broken, Congress or the president can opt for amnesty. In gray areas, the government can exercise prosecutorial discretion. But the work of the commission should not be prejudged. And the prudence of not prosecuting, if that proves the wisest course, would earn more respect, here and abroad, if it followed a process of thorough review and calm deliberation.
The right way to deal with torture's legacy
WaPo, Friday, April 24, 2009
THE APPARENT confusion within the Obama administration about whether to prosecute officials of the previous administration for committing torture is not surprising. Two fundamental principles are colliding in this matter, and it's not easy to achieve a fair outcome that reconciles both.
On one side, you have the sacred American tradition of peacefully transferring power from one party to another every four or eight years without cycles of revenge and criminal investigation. It's one thing to investigate Richard Nixon for authorizing wiretaps and burglaries in secrecy, outside the normal channels of government, for personal political gain. It's another to criminalize decisions authorized through all the proper channels, with congressional approval or at least awareness, for what everyone agrees to be the high purpose of keeping Americans safe from terrorist attack. Once you start down that road, where do you stop? Should Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger and their team have been held criminally or civilly liable for dereliction of duty 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, given that they knowingly allowed Osama bin Laden to flee Sudan for sanctuary in Afghanistan? What if the next administration believes that Barack Obama is committing war crimes every time he allows the Air Force to fling missiles into Pakistan, killing innocent civilians in a country with which we are not at war?
Such concerns are heightened when the country is at war, as we in fact are, though in the daily life of most Americans it might not seem so. Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict great damage, perhaps on a scale far larger than in 2001, and the country needs its guardians in the armed forces, the CIA and elsewhere to focus on defending the country against that threat, not themselves against legal action. The Obama administration needs to attract the best possible talent into government, and then expect from those who serve unflinching advice on hard calls. Neither will happen if public service routinely is followed by the need to hire private attorneys and empty one's bank account.
AND YET, on the other side, we have this: American officials condoned and conducted torture. Waterboarding, to take the starkest case, has been recognized in international and U.S. law for decades as beyond the pale, and it was used hundreds of times during the Bush years. Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general of the United States, has stated flatly that it is illegal. In a country founded on the rule of law, a president can't sweep criminality away for political reasons, even the most noble. When the United States sees torture taking place in other parts of the world, it issues some pretty simple demands: Stop doing that, and punish -- or at least identify, and in some way hold accountable -- those responsible, so that the practice will not be repeated. How can a country that purports to serve as a moral exemplar ask any less of itself?
The answer does not lie with those congressional Democrats who are eager to put the entire Bush administration on trial. Nor, as President Obama has discovered this week, can it be found in his own wishful calls to look forward rather than dwelling on the past. As other nations have discovered, the past will haunt the present until it is investigated and openly dealt with. And although we have misgivings about international justice intruding on the sovereignty of democratic governments, it's also true that if the United States doesn't examine its own record, other nations will have a better claim to do so.
To an extent, such an examination is going on all around us. The Senate intelligence committee is conducting a review. The Senate Armed Services Committee, having been mostly AWOL when it could have made a difference, has issued a useful report. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is examing the conduct of Bush administration lawyers. It may seem, after a week of constant news coverage and newly published legal memos, that there isn't much left to learn.
But wide holes remain in public knowledge of how torture came to be official U.S. policy and how that policy was implemented. The efficacy of "enhanced interrogation techniques" remains in dispute. We don't know if some interrogations went beyond even what the Justice Department had approved. The extent of congressional knowledge and approbation remains unclear. And as former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld might note, we don't know what we don't know.
SO THERE remains, as we have long argued, a need for a bipartisan commission composed of respected leaders to conduct a thorough review. Mr. Obama should take the lead in forming such a panel. It should conduct its work deliberately and issue its findings publicly.
In the end, no such panel can answer every question. We will never know what detainees might have disclosed if interrogators had persisted with more humane techniques. We can't measure precisely the damage inflicted on the United States and its soldiers by the fallout from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. But a presidential commission could produce the fullest, least-heated account possible.
Once it did so, prosecutions would not be the only option. Based on what we know today, we do not believe they would be the best option. For reasons laid out at the beginning of this editorial, we would be extremely reluctant to go after lawyers and officials acting in what they believed to be the nation's best interest at a time of grave danger. If laws were broken, Congress or the president can opt for amnesty. In gray areas, the government can exercise prosecutorial discretion. But the work of the commission should not be prejudged. And the prudence of not prosecuting, if that proves the wisest course, would earn more respect, here and abroad, if it followed a process of thorough review and calm deliberation.
Reckless 'Endangerment' - The Obama EPA plays 'Dirty Harry' on cap and trade
Reckless 'Endangerment'. WSJ Editorial
The Obama EPA plays 'Dirty Harry' on cap and trade.
WSJ, Apr 24, 2009
President Obama's global warming agenda has been losing support in Congress, but why let an irritant like democratic consent interfere with saving the world? So last Friday the Environmental Protection Agency decided to put a gun to the head of Congress and play cap-and-trade roulette with the U.S. economy.
The pistol comes in the form of a ruling that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant that threatens the public and therefore must be regulated under the 1970 Clean Air Act. This so-called "endangerment finding" sets the clock ticking on a vast array of taxes and regulation that EPA will have the power to impose across the economy, and all with little or no political debate.
This is a momentous decision that has the potential to affect the daily life of every American, yet most of the media barely noticed, and those that did largely applauded. When America's Founders revolted against "taxation without representation," this is precisely the kind of kingly diktat they had in mind.
Michigan Democrat John Dingell helped to write the Clean Air Act, as well as its 1990 revision, and he says neither was meant to apply to carbon. But in 2007 five members of the Supreme Court followed the environmental polls and ordered the EPA to determine if CO2 qualified as a "pollutant." The Bush Administration prudently slow-walked the decision. As Peter Glaser, an environmental lawyer at Troutman Sanders, told Congress in 2008, "The country will experience years, if not decades, of regulatory agony, as EPA will be required to undertake numerous, controversial, time-consuming, expensive and difficult regulatory proceedings, all of which ultimately will be litigated."
The Obama EPA has now opened this Pandora's box. The centerpiece of the Clean Air Act is something called the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, or NAAQS, under which the EPA decides the appropriate atmospheric concentration of a given air pollutant. Under this law the states must adopt measures to meet a NAAQS goal, and the costs cannot be considered. For global warming, this is going to be a hugely expensive futility parade.
Greenhouse gases mix in the atmosphere, and it doesn't matter where they come from. A ton of emissions from Ohio has the same effect on global CO2 as a ton emitted in China; and even if Ohio figured out a way to reduce its emissions to zero, it would still have no control over the carbon content in its ambient air. But under the law, EPA would be required to severely punish Ohio -- and every state -- for not complying with NAAQS.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA also must regulate all "major" sources of emissions that emit more than 250 tons of an air pollutant in a year. That includes "any building, structure, facility or installation." This might be a reasonable threshold for conventional pollutants such as SOX or NOX, but it's extremely low for carbon. Hundreds of thousands of currently unregulated sources will suddenly be subject to the EPA's preconstruction permitting and review, including schools, hospitals, malls, restaurants, farms and colleges. According to EPA, the average permit today takes 866 hours for a source to prepare, and 301 hours for EPA to process. So this regulatory burden will increase by several orders of magnitude.
The EPA took the highly unusual step of not accompanying its endangerment finding with actual proposed regulations. For now, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims her agency will only target cars and trucks. That is bad enough. It probably means, for example, that California's mileage fleet burdens will seep out to every other state. So even as taxpayers are now paying tens of billions of dollars to prop up GM and Chrysler, Ms. Jackson will be able to tell the entire auto industry it must make even more small cars that consumers don't want to buy.
Still, why confine the rule only to cars and trucks? By the EPA's own logic, it shouldn't matter where carbon emissions come from. Carbon from a car's tailpipe is the same as carbon from a coal-fired power plant. And transportation is responsible for only 28% of U.S. emissions, versus 34% for electricity generation. Ms. Jackson is clearly trying to limit the immediate economic impact of her ruling, so as not to ignite too great a business or consumer backlash.
But her half-measure is also too clever by half. By finding carbon a public danger, she is inviting lawsuits from environmental lobbies demanding that EPA regulate all carbon sources. Massachusetts and two other states have already sued in federal court to force the EPA to create a NAAQS for CO2.
Which brings us back to the Obama Administration's political roulette. Democrats know that their cap-and-tax agenda is losing ground, notably among Midwestern Senators. The EPA "endangerment" is intended to threaten businesses and state and local governments until they surrender and support the Obama agenda. The car industry is merely the first target, meant to be the object lesson.
Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey put it this way at MIT recently: "Do you want the EPA to make the decision or would you like your Congressman or Senator to be in the room and drafting legislation? . . . Industries across the country will just have to gauge for themselves how lucky they feel if they kill legislation in terms of how the EPA process will include them."
This "Dirty Harry" theory of governance -- Do you feel lucky? -- is as cynical as it is destructive. And contra Mr. Markey, if cap and tax is killed this year, it will be done in by Democrats, many of whom are starting to realize the economic harm it would inflict. In March, the Senate voted 89 to 8 on a resolution vowing to pass a climate bill only if "such legislation does not increase electricity or gasoline prices."
That's called democracy, but for the Obama Administration such debate is an inconvenient truth. If they can't get Congress to pass their agenda, they'll use EPA and the courts to impose it. How lucky do you feel?
The Obama EPA plays 'Dirty Harry' on cap and trade.
WSJ, Apr 24, 2009
President Obama's global warming agenda has been losing support in Congress, but why let an irritant like democratic consent interfere with saving the world? So last Friday the Environmental Protection Agency decided to put a gun to the head of Congress and play cap-and-trade roulette with the U.S. economy.
The pistol comes in the form of a ruling that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant that threatens the public and therefore must be regulated under the 1970 Clean Air Act. This so-called "endangerment finding" sets the clock ticking on a vast array of taxes and regulation that EPA will have the power to impose across the economy, and all with little or no political debate.
This is a momentous decision that has the potential to affect the daily life of every American, yet most of the media barely noticed, and those that did largely applauded. When America's Founders revolted against "taxation without representation," this is precisely the kind of kingly diktat they had in mind.
Michigan Democrat John Dingell helped to write the Clean Air Act, as well as its 1990 revision, and he says neither was meant to apply to carbon. But in 2007 five members of the Supreme Court followed the environmental polls and ordered the EPA to determine if CO2 qualified as a "pollutant." The Bush Administration prudently slow-walked the decision. As Peter Glaser, an environmental lawyer at Troutman Sanders, told Congress in 2008, "The country will experience years, if not decades, of regulatory agony, as EPA will be required to undertake numerous, controversial, time-consuming, expensive and difficult regulatory proceedings, all of which ultimately will be litigated."
The Obama EPA has now opened this Pandora's box. The centerpiece of the Clean Air Act is something called the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, or NAAQS, under which the EPA decides the appropriate atmospheric concentration of a given air pollutant. Under this law the states must adopt measures to meet a NAAQS goal, and the costs cannot be considered. For global warming, this is going to be a hugely expensive futility parade.
Greenhouse gases mix in the atmosphere, and it doesn't matter where they come from. A ton of emissions from Ohio has the same effect on global CO2 as a ton emitted in China; and even if Ohio figured out a way to reduce its emissions to zero, it would still have no control over the carbon content in its ambient air. But under the law, EPA would be required to severely punish Ohio -- and every state -- for not complying with NAAQS.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA also must regulate all "major" sources of emissions that emit more than 250 tons of an air pollutant in a year. That includes "any building, structure, facility or installation." This might be a reasonable threshold for conventional pollutants such as SOX or NOX, but it's extremely low for carbon. Hundreds of thousands of currently unregulated sources will suddenly be subject to the EPA's preconstruction permitting and review, including schools, hospitals, malls, restaurants, farms and colleges. According to EPA, the average permit today takes 866 hours for a source to prepare, and 301 hours for EPA to process. So this regulatory burden will increase by several orders of magnitude.
The EPA took the highly unusual step of not accompanying its endangerment finding with actual proposed regulations. For now, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims her agency will only target cars and trucks. That is bad enough. It probably means, for example, that California's mileage fleet burdens will seep out to every other state. So even as taxpayers are now paying tens of billions of dollars to prop up GM and Chrysler, Ms. Jackson will be able to tell the entire auto industry it must make even more small cars that consumers don't want to buy.
Still, why confine the rule only to cars and trucks? By the EPA's own logic, it shouldn't matter where carbon emissions come from. Carbon from a car's tailpipe is the same as carbon from a coal-fired power plant. And transportation is responsible for only 28% of U.S. emissions, versus 34% for electricity generation. Ms. Jackson is clearly trying to limit the immediate economic impact of her ruling, so as not to ignite too great a business or consumer backlash.
But her half-measure is also too clever by half. By finding carbon a public danger, she is inviting lawsuits from environmental lobbies demanding that EPA regulate all carbon sources. Massachusetts and two other states have already sued in federal court to force the EPA to create a NAAQS for CO2.
Which brings us back to the Obama Administration's political roulette. Democrats know that their cap-and-tax agenda is losing ground, notably among Midwestern Senators. The EPA "endangerment" is intended to threaten businesses and state and local governments until they surrender and support the Obama agenda. The car industry is merely the first target, meant to be the object lesson.
Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey put it this way at MIT recently: "Do you want the EPA to make the decision or would you like your Congressman or Senator to be in the room and drafting legislation? . . . Industries across the country will just have to gauge for themselves how lucky they feel if they kill legislation in terms of how the EPA process will include them."
This "Dirty Harry" theory of governance -- Do you feel lucky? -- is as cynical as it is destructive. And contra Mr. Markey, if cap and tax is killed this year, it will be done in by Democrats, many of whom are starting to realize the economic harm it would inflict. In March, the Senate voted 89 to 8 on a resolution vowing to pass a climate bill only if "such legislation does not increase electricity or gasoline prices."
That's called democracy, but for the Obama Administration such debate is an inconvenient truth. If they can't get Congress to pass their agenda, they'll use EPA and the courts to impose it. How lucky do you feel?
The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief - April 2009 Newsletter
The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief - April 2009 Newsletter
"Keep the Light On" Project Helps Guyanese Woman Turn Her Life Around [more]
Public-Private Partnership Targets Russian Youth [more]
Spotlight on ABC: A Comprehensive Strategy for Prevention of Sexual Transmission of HIV/AIDS [more]
Engaging People Living with HIV/AIDS in Haiti’s Community-based Economic Growth [more]
2009 HIV/AIDS Implementers’ Meeting [more]
PDF Version
"Keep the Light On" Project Helps Guyanese Woman Turn Her Life Around [more]
Public-Private Partnership Targets Russian Youth [more]
Spotlight on ABC: A Comprehensive Strategy for Prevention of Sexual Transmission of HIV/AIDS [more]
Engaging People Living with HIV/AIDS in Haiti’s Community-based Economic Growth [more]
2009 HIV/AIDS Implementers’ Meeting [more]
PDF Version
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Mexican Corrections Instructors Graduate from New Mexico Training Academy
Mexican Corrections Instructors Graduate from New Mexico Training Academy
US State Dept, Bureau of Public Affairs, Office of the Spokesman
US State Dept, Bureau of Public Affairs, Office of the Spokesman
Washington, DC, April 23, 2009
On Friday April 24, 2009, the first class of twenty-four federal correctional instructors from Mexico will graduate from the New Mexico Corrections Department’s (NMCD) Training Academy in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The officers will return home and serve as the initial cadre of instructors at Mexico’s first-ever corrections academy in Xalapa, Veracruz. There, the instructors will begin teaching the first basic academy class of 200 new cadets.
As part of the Merida Initiative, the Department of State’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs is assisting the Government of Mexico with establishing the corrections academy which is scheduled to be officially opened in late June 2009.
The Mexican correctional cadets began their six-week training class at the NMCD Training Academy on March 16. The cadets received basic instruction for four weeks, defensive tactics instructor course for one week, and during the final week, they received train-the-trainer instruction. Graduation is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. at the NMCD Training Academy gymnasium, located at 4337 State Road 14. Dignitaries from Mexico and the U.S. Department of State will be present.
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and the New Mexico Corrections Department have a Memorandum of Understanding that allows the Corrections Department to train and mentor prison staff from Mexico and Central America.
Note: For security reasons, neither photography nor videotaping of the graduating officers’ faces is allowed. Reporters planning to attend the ceremony must contact the New Mexico Corrections Department Public Information Office in advance.
WSJ Editorial Page on Credit Cards: Lend less and charge more. No, lend more and charge less!
Political Credit Cards. WSJ Editorial
Lend less and charge more. No, lend more and charge less!
WSJ, Apr 23, 2009
If you use credit cards -- and actually read your mail -- you don't need anyone to tell you that card issuers have been raising fees and interest rates while often cutting credit limits too.
The political class has also noticed. Yesterday the House Financial Services Committee passed a so-called cardholders bill of rights. Chris Dodd, desperately looking for a chance to appear tough on the banks he used to succor, has written an even more draconian bill in the Senate. And today President Obama is meeting with the heads of several large banks in what the White House has advertised as a little friendly arm-twisting session over their rates and billing practices.
Credit card issuers are the companies that consumers love to hate, which makes them an easy populist target. But despite our conflicted relationship with the card companies, Americans enjoy some of the best and easiest access to consumer credit anywhere in the world. Or did enjoy.
This past weekend, Presidential adviser Larry Summers berated the card companies, saying consumers were being "deceived into paying extraordinarily high rates" of interest on the debt they've accumulated by, well, buying things they want. No one disputes that rates have been going up this year, which may seem unfair with the fed funds rate pegged at near-zero and the prime rate at an all-time low of 3.25%. But card issuer greed doesn't begin to explain what's happening.
Far more important, credit-card delinquencies are rising and will continue to rise as long as the economy keeps bleeding jobs. Many credit-card issuers, having seen in housing what happens when you lend people money they can't pay back, don't want to repeat the experience. So they're pulling back or increasing the cost of credit, or both.
The once-booming market for securitizing and selling credit-card receivables has also dried up along with most of the rest of the securitized debt market, forcing banks to keep that debt on their balance sheets.
And in December the Federal Reserve approved regulations that impose most of what Barney Frank and Caroline Maloney want in their bill anyway -- effective July 2010. These columns warned at the time that the new rules would restrict consumer access to credit and increase interest rates and fees. This wasn't soothsaying, merely judgment based on price-control experience. Q.E.D.
Faced with mounting charge-offs and looming restrictions on their prices, card issuers have been raising prices now, in advance of the Fed hangman. Banks are also closing accounts and raising rates now to recalibrate their risk levels before the new restrictions take effect. But that is exactly what the Fed expected them to do, and it's one of the reasons it gave them a year and a half to prepare. Even the House bill, for the most part, wouldn't take effect for a year.
But then this week's credit-card dog-and-pony show isn't about helping consumers. It's about once again blaming the bankers for what ails the economy, even if the political class is partly responsible. Our politicians spend half of their time berating banks for offering too much credit on too easy terms, and the other half berating banks for handing out too little credit at too high a price. The bankers should tell the President that they'll start doing more lending when Washington stops changing the rules.
Lend less and charge more. No, lend more and charge less!
WSJ, Apr 23, 2009
If you use credit cards -- and actually read your mail -- you don't need anyone to tell you that card issuers have been raising fees and interest rates while often cutting credit limits too.
The political class has also noticed. Yesterday the House Financial Services Committee passed a so-called cardholders bill of rights. Chris Dodd, desperately looking for a chance to appear tough on the banks he used to succor, has written an even more draconian bill in the Senate. And today President Obama is meeting with the heads of several large banks in what the White House has advertised as a little friendly arm-twisting session over their rates and billing practices.
Credit card issuers are the companies that consumers love to hate, which makes them an easy populist target. But despite our conflicted relationship with the card companies, Americans enjoy some of the best and easiest access to consumer credit anywhere in the world. Or did enjoy.
This past weekend, Presidential adviser Larry Summers berated the card companies, saying consumers were being "deceived into paying extraordinarily high rates" of interest on the debt they've accumulated by, well, buying things they want. No one disputes that rates have been going up this year, which may seem unfair with the fed funds rate pegged at near-zero and the prime rate at an all-time low of 3.25%. But card issuer greed doesn't begin to explain what's happening.
Far more important, credit-card delinquencies are rising and will continue to rise as long as the economy keeps bleeding jobs. Many credit-card issuers, having seen in housing what happens when you lend people money they can't pay back, don't want to repeat the experience. So they're pulling back or increasing the cost of credit, or both.
The once-booming market for securitizing and selling credit-card receivables has also dried up along with most of the rest of the securitized debt market, forcing banks to keep that debt on their balance sheets.
And in December the Federal Reserve approved regulations that impose most of what Barney Frank and Caroline Maloney want in their bill anyway -- effective July 2010. These columns warned at the time that the new rules would restrict consumer access to credit and increase interest rates and fees. This wasn't soothsaying, merely judgment based on price-control experience. Q.E.D.
Faced with mounting charge-offs and looming restrictions on their prices, card issuers have been raising prices now, in advance of the Fed hangman. Banks are also closing accounts and raising rates now to recalibrate their risk levels before the new restrictions take effect. But that is exactly what the Fed expected them to do, and it's one of the reasons it gave them a year and a half to prepare. Even the House bill, for the most part, wouldn't take effect for a year.
But then this week's credit-card dog-and-pony show isn't about helping consumers. It's about once again blaming the bankers for what ails the economy, even if the political class is partly responsible. Our politicians spend half of their time berating banks for offering too much credit on too easy terms, and the other half berating banks for handing out too little credit at too high a price. The bankers should tell the President that they'll start doing more lending when Washington stops changing the rules.
The President's Apology Tour
The President's Apology Tour. By Karl Rove
Great leaders aren't defined by consensus.
WSJ, Apr 23, 2009
President Barack Obama has finished the second leg of his international confession tour. In less than 100 days, he has apologized on three continents for what he views as the sins of America and his predecessors.
Mr. Obama told the French (the French!) that America "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward Europe. In Prague, he said America has "a moral responsibility to act" on arms control because only the U.S. had "used a nuclear weapon." In London, he said that decisions about the world financial system were no longer made by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy" -- as if that were a bad thing. And in Latin America, he said the U.S. had not "pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors" because we "failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas."
By confessing our nation's sins, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that Mr. Obama has "changed the image of America around the world" and made the U.S. "safer and stronger." As evidence, Mr. Gibbs pointed to the absence of protesters during the Summit of the Americas this past weekend.
That's now the test of success? Anti-American protesters are a remarkably unreliable indicator of a president's wisdom. Ronald Reagan drew hundreds of thousands of protesters by deploying Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe. Those missiles helped win the Cold War.
There is something ungracious in Mr. Obama criticizing his predecessors, including most recently John F. Kennedy. ("I'm grateful that President [Daniel] Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old," Mr. Obama said after the Nicaraguan delivered a 52-minute anti-American tirade that touched on the Bay of Pigs.) Mr. Obama acts as if no past president -- except maybe Abraham Lincoln -- possesses his wisdom.
Mr. Obama was asked in Europe if he believes in American exceptionalism. He said he did -- in the same way that "the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism." That's another way of saying, "No."
Mr. Obama makes it seem as though there is moral equivalence between America and its adversaries and assumes that if he confesses America's sins, other nations will confess theirs and change. But he won no confessions (let alone change) from the leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua or Russia. He apologized for America and our adversaries rejoiced. Fidel Castro isn't easing up on Cuban repression, but he is preparing to take advantage of Mr. Obama's policy shifts.
When a president desires personal popularity, he can lose focus on vital American interests. It's early, but with little to show for the confessions, David Axelrod of Team Obama was compelled to say this week that the president planted, cultivated and will harvest "very, very valuable" returns later. Like what?
Meanwhile, the desire for popularity has led Mr. Obama to embrace bad policies. Blaming America for the world financial crisis led him to give into European demands for crackdowns on tax havens and hedge funds. Neither had much to do with the credit crisis. Saying that America's relationship with Russia "has been allowed to drift" led the president to push for arms negotiations. But that draws attention away from America's real problems with Russia: its invasion of Georgia last summer, its bullying of Ukraine, its refusal to join in pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, and its threats of retaliation against the Poles, Balts and Czechs for standing with the U.S. on missile defense.
Mr. Obama is downplaying the threats we face. He takes comfort in thinking that Venezuela has a defense budget that "is probably 1/600th" of America's -- it's actually 1/215th -- but that hasn't kept Mr. Chávez from supporting narcoterrorists waging war on Colombia (a key U.S. ally) or giving petrodollars to anti-American regimes. Venezuela isn't likely to attack the U.S., but it is capable of harming American interests.
Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoir "Years of Renewal": "The great statesmen of the past saw themselves as heroes who took on the burden of their societies' painful journey from the familiar to the as yet unknown. The modern politician is less interested in being a hero than a superstar. Heroes walk alone; stars derive their status from approbation. Heroes are defined by inner values; stars by consensus. When a candidate's views are forged in focus groups and ratified by television anchorpersons, insecurity and superficiality become congenital."
A superstar, not a statesman, today leads our country. That may win short-term applause from foreign audiences, but do little for what should be the chief foreign policy preoccupation of any U.S. president: advancing America's long-term interests.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
Great leaders aren't defined by consensus.
WSJ, Apr 23, 2009
President Barack Obama has finished the second leg of his international confession tour. In less than 100 days, he has apologized on three continents for what he views as the sins of America and his predecessors.
Mr. Obama told the French (the French!) that America "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward Europe. In Prague, he said America has "a moral responsibility to act" on arms control because only the U.S. had "used a nuclear weapon." In London, he said that decisions about the world financial system were no longer made by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy" -- as if that were a bad thing. And in Latin America, he said the U.S. had not "pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors" because we "failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas."
By confessing our nation's sins, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that Mr. Obama has "changed the image of America around the world" and made the U.S. "safer and stronger." As evidence, Mr. Gibbs pointed to the absence of protesters during the Summit of the Americas this past weekend.
That's now the test of success? Anti-American protesters are a remarkably unreliable indicator of a president's wisdom. Ronald Reagan drew hundreds of thousands of protesters by deploying Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe. Those missiles helped win the Cold War.
There is something ungracious in Mr. Obama criticizing his predecessors, including most recently John F. Kennedy. ("I'm grateful that President [Daniel] Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old," Mr. Obama said after the Nicaraguan delivered a 52-minute anti-American tirade that touched on the Bay of Pigs.) Mr. Obama acts as if no past president -- except maybe Abraham Lincoln -- possesses his wisdom.
Mr. Obama was asked in Europe if he believes in American exceptionalism. He said he did -- in the same way that "the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism." That's another way of saying, "No."
Mr. Obama makes it seem as though there is moral equivalence between America and its adversaries and assumes that if he confesses America's sins, other nations will confess theirs and change. But he won no confessions (let alone change) from the leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua or Russia. He apologized for America and our adversaries rejoiced. Fidel Castro isn't easing up on Cuban repression, but he is preparing to take advantage of Mr. Obama's policy shifts.
When a president desires personal popularity, he can lose focus on vital American interests. It's early, but with little to show for the confessions, David Axelrod of Team Obama was compelled to say this week that the president planted, cultivated and will harvest "very, very valuable" returns later. Like what?
Meanwhile, the desire for popularity has led Mr. Obama to embrace bad policies. Blaming America for the world financial crisis led him to give into European demands for crackdowns on tax havens and hedge funds. Neither had much to do with the credit crisis. Saying that America's relationship with Russia "has been allowed to drift" led the president to push for arms negotiations. But that draws attention away from America's real problems with Russia: its invasion of Georgia last summer, its bullying of Ukraine, its refusal to join in pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, and its threats of retaliation against the Poles, Balts and Czechs for standing with the U.S. on missile defense.
Mr. Obama is downplaying the threats we face. He takes comfort in thinking that Venezuela has a defense budget that "is probably 1/600th" of America's -- it's actually 1/215th -- but that hasn't kept Mr. Chávez from supporting narcoterrorists waging war on Colombia (a key U.S. ally) or giving petrodollars to anti-American regimes. Venezuela isn't likely to attack the U.S., but it is capable of harming American interests.
Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoir "Years of Renewal": "The great statesmen of the past saw themselves as heroes who took on the burden of their societies' painful journey from the familiar to the as yet unknown. The modern politician is less interested in being a hero than a superstar. Heroes walk alone; stars derive their status from approbation. Heroes are defined by inner values; stars by consensus. When a candidate's views are forged in focus groups and ratified by television anchorpersons, insecurity and superficiality become congenital."
A superstar, not a statesman, today leads our country. That may win short-term applause from foreign audiences, but do little for what should be the chief foreign policy preoccupation of any U.S. president: advancing America's long-term interests.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
WSJ Editorial Page: Federal President's invitation to indict Bush officials will haunt his presidency
Presidential Poison. WSJ Editorial
His invitation to indict Bush officials will haunt Obama's Presidency.
WSJ, Apr 23, 2009
Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.
Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.
If this analogy seems excessive, consider how Mr. Obama has framed the issue. He has absolved CIA operatives of any legal jeopardy, no doubt because his intelligence advisers told him how damaging that would be to CIA morale when Mr. Obama needs the agency to protect the country. But he has pointedly invited investigations against Republican legal advisers who offered their best advice at the request of CIA officials.
"Your intelligence indicates that there is currently a level of 'chatter' equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks," wrote Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, in his August 1, 2002 memo. "In light of the information you believe [detainee Abu] Zubaydah has and the high level of threat you believe now exists, you wish to move the interrogations into what you have described as an 'increased pressure phase.'"
So the CIA requests a legal review at a moment of heightened danger, the Justice Department obliges with an exceedingly detailed analysis of the law and interrogation practices -- and, seven years later, Mr. Obama says only the legal advisers who are no longer in government should be investigated. The political convenience of this distinction for Mr. Obama betrays its basic injustice. And by the way, everyone agrees that senior officials, including President Bush, approved these interrogations. Is this President going to put his predecessor in the dock too?
Mr. Obama seemed to understand the peril of such an exercise when he said, before his inauguration, that he wanted to "look forward" and beyond the antiterror debates of the Bush years. As recently as Sunday, Rahm Emanuel said no prosecutions were contemplated and now is not a time for "anger and retribution." Two days later the President disavowed his own chief of staff. Yet nothing had changed except that Mr. Obama's decision last week to release the interrogation memos unleashed a revenge lust on the political left that he refuses to resist.
Just as with the AIG bonuses, he is trying to co-opt his left-wing base by playing to it -- only to encourage it more. Within hours of Mr. Obama's Tuesday comments, Senator Carl Levin piled on with his own accusatory Intelligence Committee report. The demands for a "special counsel" at Justice and a Congressional show trial are louder than ever, and both Europe's left and the U.N. are signaling their desire to file their own charges against former U.S. officials.
Those officials won't be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers hearing about waterboarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn't doing enough to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.
Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but he'll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway's political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies is partly to blame.
Above all, the exercise will only embitter Republicans, including the moderates and national-security hawks Mr. Obama may need in the next four years. As patriotic officials who acted in good faith are indicted, smeared, impeached from judgeships or stripped of their academic tenure, the partisan anger and backlash will grow. And speaking of which, when will the GOP Members of Congress begin to denounce this partisan scapegoating? Senior Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Richard Lugar, John McCain, Orrin Hatch, Pat Roberts and Arlen Specter have hardly been profiles in courage.
Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party's desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.
His invitation to indict Bush officials will haunt Obama's Presidency.
WSJ, Apr 23, 2009
Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.
Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.
If this analogy seems excessive, consider how Mr. Obama has framed the issue. He has absolved CIA operatives of any legal jeopardy, no doubt because his intelligence advisers told him how damaging that would be to CIA morale when Mr. Obama needs the agency to protect the country. But he has pointedly invited investigations against Republican legal advisers who offered their best advice at the request of CIA officials.
"Your intelligence indicates that there is currently a level of 'chatter' equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks," wrote Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, in his August 1, 2002 memo. "In light of the information you believe [detainee Abu] Zubaydah has and the high level of threat you believe now exists, you wish to move the interrogations into what you have described as an 'increased pressure phase.'"
So the CIA requests a legal review at a moment of heightened danger, the Justice Department obliges with an exceedingly detailed analysis of the law and interrogation practices -- and, seven years later, Mr. Obama says only the legal advisers who are no longer in government should be investigated. The political convenience of this distinction for Mr. Obama betrays its basic injustice. And by the way, everyone agrees that senior officials, including President Bush, approved these interrogations. Is this President going to put his predecessor in the dock too?
Mr. Obama seemed to understand the peril of such an exercise when he said, before his inauguration, that he wanted to "look forward" and beyond the antiterror debates of the Bush years. As recently as Sunday, Rahm Emanuel said no prosecutions were contemplated and now is not a time for "anger and retribution." Two days later the President disavowed his own chief of staff. Yet nothing had changed except that Mr. Obama's decision last week to release the interrogation memos unleashed a revenge lust on the political left that he refuses to resist.
Just as with the AIG bonuses, he is trying to co-opt his left-wing base by playing to it -- only to encourage it more. Within hours of Mr. Obama's Tuesday comments, Senator Carl Levin piled on with his own accusatory Intelligence Committee report. The demands for a "special counsel" at Justice and a Congressional show trial are louder than ever, and both Europe's left and the U.N. are signaling their desire to file their own charges against former U.S. officials.
Those officials won't be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers hearing about waterboarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn't doing enough to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.
Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but he'll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway's political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies is partly to blame.
Above all, the exercise will only embitter Republicans, including the moderates and national-security hawks Mr. Obama may need in the next four years. As patriotic officials who acted in good faith are indicted, smeared, impeached from judgeships or stripped of their academic tenure, the partisan anger and backlash will grow. And speaking of which, when will the GOP Members of Congress begin to denounce this partisan scapegoating? Senior Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Richard Lugar, John McCain, Orrin Hatch, Pat Roberts and Arlen Specter have hardly been profiles in courage.
Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party's desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
According to an MIT study, cap and trade could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year
Fuzzy Math. By John McCormack
According to an MIT study, cap and trade could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year.
Apr 22, 2009 12:00:00 AM
Excerpts:
It's just another inconvenient truth: If Americans want any of the government remedies that would supposedly save a planet allegedly imperiled by global warming, it's going to cost them.
Just how much it will cost them has been a point of contention lately. Many congressional Republicans, including members of the GOP leadership, have claimed that the plan to limit carbon emissions through cap and trade would cost the average household more than $3,100 per year. According to an MIT study, between 2015 and 2050 cap and trade would annually raise an average of $366 billion in revenues (divided by 117 million households equals $3,128 per household, the Republicans reckon).
But on March 24, after interviewing one of the MIT professors who conducted the study on which the GOP relied to produce its estimate, the St. Petersburg Times fact-check unit, Politifact, declared the GOP figure of $3,100 per household was a "Pants on Fire" falsehood. The GOP claim is "just wrong," MIT professor John Reilly told Politifact. "It's wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin."
According to Politifact, Reilly's report included an "estimate of the net cost to individuals" that "would be $215.05 per household. A far cry from $3,128."
Running with Politifact's report, bloggers at Think Progress called the GOP's claim a "deliberate lie," a "myth", and an "outright lie". On April 1, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann said that cap and trade's "average additional cost per family six years from now would be 79 bucks, minus the amount foreign gas prices would drop based on decreased demand, and minus lowered health care costs, because of the cleaner atmosphere. Thirty-one bucks, 3,100 bucks, it's all the
same to Congressman John the mathlete Boehner, today's worst person in the world." On April 8, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said of the GOP's figure: "No. Pants on fire. The MIT guy says 'no.' That's not what the study says. Not true. You can't say that."
[...]
When the Star-Tribune's opinion page editor Eric Ringham was contacted about Bachmann's use of the figure, he apologized for letting her include it in her column. "It wasn't on my radar. I'm embarrassed to have let it go unchallenged," Ringham told Think Progress. "You can rest assured this study is never going to be represented in the paper again . . . without confirmation it's being accurately portrayed."
[...]
But, as the saying goes, a lie can make its way halfway around the world while the truth is putting its shoes on. During a lengthy email exchange last week with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, MIT professor John Reilly admitted that his original estimate of cap and trade's cost was inaccurate. The annual cost would be "$800 per household", he wrote. "I made a boneheaded mistake in an excel spread sheet. I have sent a new letter to Republicans correcting my error (and to others)."
While $800 is significantly more than Reilly's original estimate of $215 (not to mention more than Obama's middle-class tax cut), it turns out that Reilly is still low-balling the cost of cap and trade by using some fuzzy logic. In reality, cap and trade could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year.
The $800 paid annually per household is merely the "cost to the economy [that] involves all those actions people have to take to reduce their use of fossil fuels or find ways to use them without releasing [Green House Gases]," Reilly wrote. "So that might involve spending money on insulating your home, or buying a more expensive hybrid vehicle to drive, or electric utilities substituting gas (or wind, nuclear, or solar) instead of coal in power generation, or industry investing in more efficient motors or production processes, etc. with all of these things ending up reflected in the costs of good and services in the economy."
In other words, Reilly estimates that "the amount of tax collected" through companies would equal $3,128 per household--and "Those costs do get passed to consumers and income earners
in one way or another"--but those costs have "nothing to do with the real cost" to the economy. Reilly assumes that the $3,128 will be "returned" to each household. Without that assumption, Reilly wrote, "the cost would then be the Republican estimate [$3,128] plus the cost I estimate [$800]."
In Reilly's view, the $3,128 taken through taxes will be "returned" to each household whether or not the government cuts a $3,128 rebate check to each household.
He wrote in an email:
It is not really a matter of returning it or not, no matter what happens this revenue gets recycled into the economy some way. In that regard, whether the money is specifically returned to households with a check that says "your share of GHG auction revenue", used to cut someone's taxes, used to pay for some government services that provide benefit to the public, or simply used to offset the deficit (therefore meaning lower Government debt and lower taxes sometime in the future when that debt comes due) is largely irrelevant in the calculation of the "average" household. Each of those ways of using the revenue has different implications for specific households but the "average" affect is still the same. [...] The only way that money does not get recycled to the "average" household is if it is spent on something that provides no useful service for anyone--that it is true government waste.
He added later: "I am simply saying that once [the tax funds are] collected they are not worthless, they have value. If the Republicans were to focus on that revenue, and their message was to rally the public to make sure all this money was returned in a check to each household rather than spent on other public services then I would have no problem with their use of our number."
Most Americans probably care a great deal whether they would get to spend that $3,128 themselves or the government spends it on programs to put a chicken in every pot and a Prius in every garage. And the fact is, it's anybody's guess how cap-and-trade revenues would end up being spent. Obama has suggested he would like to use most of cap-and-trade revenues to fund his "making work pay" middle- and lower-class tax credit ($400 per individual and $800 per family per year). Congressional Democrats have left the door open to spending the revenues to "invest in clean energy jobs and cost-saving energy efficient technology," as Rep. Markey's staffers have written.
After corresponding with Reilly, I contacted Politifact's reporter Alexander Lane and editor Bill Adair to ask if they would correct their report that the GOP's estimate of cap and trade's cost is a "pants on fire" falsehood.
Lane wrote in an email: "The detail of my piece that you think needs correcting seems to be in flux...". The "detail" to which he referred was Reilly's admission that the real cost per household would be $800--not $215 per household as Politifact originally reported.
While the discrepancy between these figures was solely Reilly's fault, Politifact's report contained inaccuracies that it should have been able to avoid. Politifact accepted Reilly's logic that the $3,128 collected per household via taxes translates to a net-cost of $0 per household. It reported that "results of a cap-and-trade program, such as increased conservation and more competition from other fuel sources, would put downward pressure on prices," but it didn't make clear that Reilly's estimate of the "real cost"--which didn't include the $3,128 per household--already accounts for these downward pressures. "Moreover," Politifact added, "consumers would get some of the tax back from the government in some form." In fact, Reilly assumed that all--not "some"--of the tax revenue would be returned. Politifact and other news outlets reporting on Reilly's criticism of the GOP's estimate have not made it clear that taxpayers would "get" some or most of this money back through government spending.
When I asked Bill Adair over the phone last week if Politifact would correct its report, he didn't answer the question and ended our conversation by saying: "You're getting me at a really bad time. I would love to talk about this any time tomorrow." Adair did not reply to further inquiries.
On Monday, Politifact won a Pulitzer prize. It has not yet corrected its report.
John McCormack is a deputy online editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Reilly's estimated "real cost" per household was $800 for a family of four. In fact, Reilly calculated this $800 cost for the average-sized American household--2.56 people, the same figure Republicans used in their calculation.
According to an MIT study, cap and trade could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year.
Apr 22, 2009 12:00:00 AM
Excerpts:
It's just another inconvenient truth: If Americans want any of the government remedies that would supposedly save a planet allegedly imperiled by global warming, it's going to cost them.
Just how much it will cost them has been a point of contention lately. Many congressional Republicans, including members of the GOP leadership, have claimed that the plan to limit carbon emissions through cap and trade would cost the average household more than $3,100 per year. According to an MIT study, between 2015 and 2050 cap and trade would annually raise an average of $366 billion in revenues (divided by 117 million households equals $3,128 per household, the Republicans reckon).
But on March 24, after interviewing one of the MIT professors who conducted the study on which the GOP relied to produce its estimate, the St. Petersburg Times fact-check unit, Politifact, declared the GOP figure of $3,100 per household was a "Pants on Fire" falsehood. The GOP claim is "just wrong," MIT professor John Reilly told Politifact. "It's wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin."
According to Politifact, Reilly's report included an "estimate of the net cost to individuals" that "would be $215.05 per household. A far cry from $3,128."
Running with Politifact's report, bloggers at Think Progress called the GOP's claim a "deliberate lie," a "myth", and an "outright lie". On April 1, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann said that cap and trade's "average additional cost per family six years from now would be 79 bucks, minus the amount foreign gas prices would drop based on decreased demand, and minus lowered health care costs, because of the cleaner atmosphere. Thirty-one bucks, 3,100 bucks, it's all the
same to Congressman John the mathlete Boehner, today's worst person in the world." On April 8, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said of the GOP's figure: "No. Pants on fire. The MIT guy says 'no.' That's not what the study says. Not true. You can't say that."
[...]
When the Star-Tribune's opinion page editor Eric Ringham was contacted about Bachmann's use of the figure, he apologized for letting her include it in her column. "It wasn't on my radar. I'm embarrassed to have let it go unchallenged," Ringham told Think Progress. "You can rest assured this study is never going to be represented in the paper again . . . without confirmation it's being accurately portrayed."
[...]
But, as the saying goes, a lie can make its way halfway around the world while the truth is putting its shoes on. During a lengthy email exchange last week with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, MIT professor John Reilly admitted that his original estimate of cap and trade's cost was inaccurate. The annual cost would be "$800 per household", he wrote. "I made a boneheaded mistake in an excel spread sheet. I have sent a new letter to Republicans correcting my error (and to others)."
While $800 is significantly more than Reilly's original estimate of $215 (not to mention more than Obama's middle-class tax cut), it turns out that Reilly is still low-balling the cost of cap and trade by using some fuzzy logic. In reality, cap and trade could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year.
The $800 paid annually per household is merely the "cost to the economy [that] involves all those actions people have to take to reduce their use of fossil fuels or find ways to use them without releasing [Green House Gases]," Reilly wrote. "So that might involve spending money on insulating your home, or buying a more expensive hybrid vehicle to drive, or electric utilities substituting gas (or wind, nuclear, or solar) instead of coal in power generation, or industry investing in more efficient motors or production processes, etc. with all of these things ending up reflected in the costs of good and services in the economy."
In other words, Reilly estimates that "the amount of tax collected" through companies would equal $3,128 per household--and "Those costs do get passed to consumers and income earners
in one way or another"--but those costs have "nothing to do with the real cost" to the economy. Reilly assumes that the $3,128 will be "returned" to each household. Without that assumption, Reilly wrote, "the cost would then be the Republican estimate [$3,128] plus the cost I estimate [$800]."
In Reilly's view, the $3,128 taken through taxes will be "returned" to each household whether or not the government cuts a $3,128 rebate check to each household.
He wrote in an email:
It is not really a matter of returning it or not, no matter what happens this revenue gets recycled into the economy some way. In that regard, whether the money is specifically returned to households with a check that says "your share of GHG auction revenue", used to cut someone's taxes, used to pay for some government services that provide benefit to the public, or simply used to offset the deficit (therefore meaning lower Government debt and lower taxes sometime in the future when that debt comes due) is largely irrelevant in the calculation of the "average" household. Each of those ways of using the revenue has different implications for specific households but the "average" affect is still the same. [...] The only way that money does not get recycled to the "average" household is if it is spent on something that provides no useful service for anyone--that it is true government waste.
He added later: "I am simply saying that once [the tax funds are] collected they are not worthless, they have value. If the Republicans were to focus on that revenue, and their message was to rally the public to make sure all this money was returned in a check to each household rather than spent on other public services then I would have no problem with their use of our number."
Most Americans probably care a great deal whether they would get to spend that $3,128 themselves or the government spends it on programs to put a chicken in every pot and a Prius in every garage. And the fact is, it's anybody's guess how cap-and-trade revenues would end up being spent. Obama has suggested he would like to use most of cap-and-trade revenues to fund his "making work pay" middle- and lower-class tax credit ($400 per individual and $800 per family per year). Congressional Democrats have left the door open to spending the revenues to "invest in clean energy jobs and cost-saving energy efficient technology," as Rep. Markey's staffers have written.
After corresponding with Reilly, I contacted Politifact's reporter Alexander Lane and editor Bill Adair to ask if they would correct their report that the GOP's estimate of cap and trade's cost is a "pants on fire" falsehood.
Lane wrote in an email: "The detail of my piece that you think needs correcting seems to be in flux...". The "detail" to which he referred was Reilly's admission that the real cost per household would be $800--not $215 per household as Politifact originally reported.
While the discrepancy between these figures was solely Reilly's fault, Politifact's report contained inaccuracies that it should have been able to avoid. Politifact accepted Reilly's logic that the $3,128 collected per household via taxes translates to a net-cost of $0 per household. It reported that "results of a cap-and-trade program, such as increased conservation and more competition from other fuel sources, would put downward pressure on prices," but it didn't make clear that Reilly's estimate of the "real cost"--which didn't include the $3,128 per household--already accounts for these downward pressures. "Moreover," Politifact added, "consumers would get some of the tax back from the government in some form." In fact, Reilly assumed that all--not "some"--of the tax revenue would be returned. Politifact and other news outlets reporting on Reilly's criticism of the GOP's estimate have not made it clear that taxpayers would "get" some or most of this money back through government spending.
When I asked Bill Adair over the phone last week if Politifact would correct its report, he didn't answer the question and ended our conversation by saying: "You're getting me at a really bad time. I would love to talk about this any time tomorrow." Adair did not reply to further inquiries.
On Monday, Politifact won a Pulitzer prize. It has not yet corrected its report.
John McCormack is a deputy online editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Reilly's estimated "real cost" per household was $800 for a family of four. In fact, Reilly calculated this $800 cost for the average-sized American household--2.56 people, the same figure Republicans used in their calculation.
Volunteers for Prosperity Program Authorization Signed into Law
Volunteers for Prosperity Program Authorization Signed into Law
USAID, April 21, 2009
WASHINGTON D.C. - Today President Barack Obama signed into law the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. Included in that legislation was a first-ever legislative authorization for the President to establish the Volunteers for Prosperity (VfP) program in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The VfP program aims to promote short- and long-term international volunteer service by skilled American professionals to addressing the needs of those living in the poorest areas of the world.
Volunteers for Prosperity was first established on September 25, 2003 by Executive Order 13317. The volunteers, working under the direction of U.S. nonprofits and companies, are deployed to developing countries on flexible, short-term assignments ranging from a few weeks to several months.
When speaking of service today, President Obama said, "All that's required on your part is a willingness to make a difference. That is, after all, the beauty of service. Anyone can do it. You don't need to be a community organizer, or a Senator -- or a Kennedy - or even a President to bring change to people's lives."
"It is an honor to witness the President sign this important piece of legislation into law," said Alonzo Fulgham, USAID Acting Administrator, who joined the President at today's bill signing. "Volunteers for Prosperity allows everyday Americans to make a difference by applying their expertise to pressing challenges overseas. USAID is thrilled to have the President's and Congress' support for continuing this important initiative."
Since 2003, the USAID Volunteers for Prosperity program has developed a network of more than 250 partner organizations of U.S.-based nonprofits and companies that utilize Americans trained in professional specialties as volunteers overseas to share their skills with local communities. Typical VfP volunteers include professionals such as doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers, business executives and IT specialists. Volunteers are generally mid-career professionals with high levels of practical skills and experience who come from and return to active work environments. Since the programs inception, nearly 120,000 American professionals have shared their skills to support USAID's agriculture, economic growth, education, environment, global health, and democracy and governance sectors.
VfP partner organizations manage their own volunteer programs. The prospective volunteer is responsible for contacting the partner organization directly and applying for a volunteer assignment The VfP website is a resource that gives prospective volunteers exposure to VfP partners' international development and volunteer activities. When contacted directly by a prospective volunteer, VfP Office staff assess the prospective volunteer's skills and interests and provides guidance on partner organizations that might be a good match.
In March 2008 the Volunteers for Prosperity Service Incentive Program or "VfPServe" was launched. This is an innovative public-private partnership to help address the financial challenges facing a number of skilled Americans interested in short-term international voluntary service by providing matching grants ranging from $500 to $1000 to offset travel and living costs of volunteering abroad. The grant award process is competitive and a prospective volunteer who applies for a matching grant must have at least three years of professional experience, have identified and contacted a sponsoring U.S. organization, and in collaboration with that organization, developed a service assignment.
To be eligible for a matching grant, the volunteer must raise at least an equal amount of funds from within his/her local community, as well as any additional funds needed to meet the assignment's budget. Fundraising is facilitated through an online platform funded and managed by USAID and implemented through its partner NGO. During the first year of the program applicants requested matching grants totaling approximately $153,000 to help offset roughly $453,000 in total assignment costs which provided services in over 30 countries. The application for the VfPServe grant can be found online at http://www.globalgiving.com/cb/vfpserv/.
For more information about the Volunteers for Prosperity program please go to www.usaid.gov/about_usaid/presidential_initiative/vfp.html
USAID, April 21, 2009
WASHINGTON D.C. - Today President Barack Obama signed into law the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. Included in that legislation was a first-ever legislative authorization for the President to establish the Volunteers for Prosperity (VfP) program in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The VfP program aims to promote short- and long-term international volunteer service by skilled American professionals to addressing the needs of those living in the poorest areas of the world.
Volunteers for Prosperity was first established on September 25, 2003 by Executive Order 13317. The volunteers, working under the direction of U.S. nonprofits and companies, are deployed to developing countries on flexible, short-term assignments ranging from a few weeks to several months.
When speaking of service today, President Obama said, "All that's required on your part is a willingness to make a difference. That is, after all, the beauty of service. Anyone can do it. You don't need to be a community organizer, or a Senator -- or a Kennedy - or even a President to bring change to people's lives."
"It is an honor to witness the President sign this important piece of legislation into law," said Alonzo Fulgham, USAID Acting Administrator, who joined the President at today's bill signing. "Volunteers for Prosperity allows everyday Americans to make a difference by applying their expertise to pressing challenges overseas. USAID is thrilled to have the President's and Congress' support for continuing this important initiative."
Since 2003, the USAID Volunteers for Prosperity program has developed a network of more than 250 partner organizations of U.S.-based nonprofits and companies that utilize Americans trained in professional specialties as volunteers overseas to share their skills with local communities. Typical VfP volunteers include professionals such as doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers, business executives and IT specialists. Volunteers are generally mid-career professionals with high levels of practical skills and experience who come from and return to active work environments. Since the programs inception, nearly 120,000 American professionals have shared their skills to support USAID's agriculture, economic growth, education, environment, global health, and democracy and governance sectors.
VfP partner organizations manage their own volunteer programs. The prospective volunteer is responsible for contacting the partner organization directly and applying for a volunteer assignment The VfP website is a resource that gives prospective volunteers exposure to VfP partners' international development and volunteer activities. When contacted directly by a prospective volunteer, VfP Office staff assess the prospective volunteer's skills and interests and provides guidance on partner organizations that might be a good match.
In March 2008 the Volunteers for Prosperity Service Incentive Program or "VfPServe" was launched. This is an innovative public-private partnership to help address the financial challenges facing a number of skilled Americans interested in short-term international voluntary service by providing matching grants ranging from $500 to $1000 to offset travel and living costs of volunteering abroad. The grant award process is competitive and a prospective volunteer who applies for a matching grant must have at least three years of professional experience, have identified and contacted a sponsoring U.S. organization, and in collaboration with that organization, developed a service assignment.
To be eligible for a matching grant, the volunteer must raise at least an equal amount of funds from within his/her local community, as well as any additional funds needed to meet the assignment's budget. Fundraising is facilitated through an online platform funded and managed by USAID and implemented through its partner NGO. During the first year of the program applicants requested matching grants totaling approximately $153,000 to help offset roughly $453,000 in total assignment costs which provided services in over 30 countries. The application for the VfPServe grant can be found online at http://www.globalgiving.com/cb/vfpserv/.
For more information about the Volunteers for Prosperity program please go to www.usaid.gov/about_usaid/presidential_initiative/vfp.html
Conservative about Dennis Blair memo on high-value information of coercive interrogation
Who's Politicizing Intelligence Now?, by Stephen F. Hayes
Obama's intelligence chief admits the value of tough interrogations.
The Weekly Standard, Apr 22, 2009
Admiral Dennis Blair, the top intelligence official in the United States, thanks to his nomination by Barack Obama, believes that the coercive interrogation methods outlawed by his boss produced "high-value information" and gave the U.S. government a "deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country." He included those assessments in a letter distributed inside the intelligence community last Thursday, the same day Obama declassified and released portions of Justice Department memos setting out guidelines for those interrogations.
That letter from Blair served as the basis for a public statement that his office put out that same day. But the DNI's conclusions about the results of coercive interrogations--in effect, that they worked--were taken out of Blair's public statement. A spokesman for the DNI told the New York Times that the missing material was cut for reasons of space, though the statement would be posted on DNI's website, where space doesn't seem to be an issue.
Curious.
There's more. Blair's public statement differed from his letter to colleagues in another way. The letter included this language: "From 2002 through 2006 when the use of these techniques ended, the leadership of the CIA repeatedly reported their activities both to Executive Branch policymakers and to members of Congress, and received permission to continue to use the techniques." Blair's public statement made no mention of the permission granted by "members of Congress"--permission that came from members of Obama's own party.
Odd.
And then there are the memos themselves. Sections of the memos that describe the
techniques have been declassified and released. But other sections of those same memos--the parts that describe, in some detail, the value of the program--have been redacted and remain hidden from public view.
Marc Thiessen, a speechwriter for George W. Bush, had access to the full memos and read them to prepare a speech for Bush in 2006. When Thiessen looked at the redacted version released by the White House last week, he noticed something strange.
He writes: "But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out. The Obama administration released pages of unredacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved."
It's not just those memos. Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he has read other memos that describe the intelligence obtained by using coercive interrogation and that demonstrate its value. He has asked for them to be declassified and made public.
It is possible, I suppose, that a series of fortunate coincidences has resulted in the public disclosure of only that information that will be politically helpful to the Obama administration. It is also possible that Dick Cheney has taken up synchronized swimming in his retirement.
It wouldn't be the first time the Obama administration has politicized intelligence. Back in the early days of the administration, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer wrote an article about Obama's decision to ban some of these interrogation techniques. She spoke with White House counsel Greg Craig, who described the deliberations.
Across the Potomac River, at the C.I.A.'s headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, however, there was considerably less jubilation. Top C.I.A. officials have argued for years that so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques have yielded lifesaving intelligence breakthroughs. "They disagree in some respect," Craig admitted. Among the hard questions that Obama left open, in fact, is whether the C.I.A. will have to follow the same interrogation rules as the military. While the President has clearly put an end to cruel tactics, Craig said that Obama "is somewhat sympathetic to the spies' argument that their mission and circumstances are different."
Despite such sentiments, Obama's executive orders will undoubtedly rein in the C.I.A. Waterboarding, for instance, has gone the way of the rack, now that the C.I.A. is strictly bound by customary interpretations of the Geneva Conventions. This decision, too, was the result of intense deliberation. During the transition period, unknown to the public, Obama's legal, intelligence, and national-security advisers visited Langley for two long sessions with current and former intelligence-community members. They debated whether a ban on brutal interrogation practices would hurt their ability to gather intelligence, and the advisers asked the intelligence veterans to prepare a cost-benefit analysis. The conclusions may surprise defenders of harsh interrogation tactics. "There was unanimity among Obama's expert advisers," Craig said, "that to change the practices would not in any material way affect the collection of intelligence."
That's interesting: "top CIA officials have argued for years that so-called 'enhanced' interrogation techniques have yielded lifesaving intelligence breakthroughs," but the team of "expert advisers" from Obama's presidential campaign apparently knows better.
All of this leads to one obvious question: Who needs intelligence professionals when you have campaign advisers?
Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins).
Obama's intelligence chief admits the value of tough interrogations.
The Weekly Standard, Apr 22, 2009
Admiral Dennis Blair, the top intelligence official in the United States, thanks to his nomination by Barack Obama, believes that the coercive interrogation methods outlawed by his boss produced "high-value information" and gave the U.S. government a "deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country." He included those assessments in a letter distributed inside the intelligence community last Thursday, the same day Obama declassified and released portions of Justice Department memos setting out guidelines for those interrogations.
That letter from Blair served as the basis for a public statement that his office put out that same day. But the DNI's conclusions about the results of coercive interrogations--in effect, that they worked--were taken out of Blair's public statement. A spokesman for the DNI told the New York Times that the missing material was cut for reasons of space, though the statement would be posted on DNI's website, where space doesn't seem to be an issue.
Curious.
There's more. Blair's public statement differed from his letter to colleagues in another way. The letter included this language: "From 2002 through 2006 when the use of these techniques ended, the leadership of the CIA repeatedly reported their activities both to Executive Branch policymakers and to members of Congress, and received permission to continue to use the techniques." Blair's public statement made no mention of the permission granted by "members of Congress"--permission that came from members of Obama's own party.
Odd.
And then there are the memos themselves. Sections of the memos that describe the
techniques have been declassified and released. But other sections of those same memos--the parts that describe, in some detail, the value of the program--have been redacted and remain hidden from public view.
Marc Thiessen, a speechwriter for George W. Bush, had access to the full memos and read them to prepare a speech for Bush in 2006. When Thiessen looked at the redacted version released by the White House last week, he noticed something strange.
He writes: "But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out. The Obama administration released pages of unredacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved."
It's not just those memos. Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he has read other memos that describe the intelligence obtained by using coercive interrogation and that demonstrate its value. He has asked for them to be declassified and made public.
It is possible, I suppose, that a series of fortunate coincidences has resulted in the public disclosure of only that information that will be politically helpful to the Obama administration. It is also possible that Dick Cheney has taken up synchronized swimming in his retirement.
It wouldn't be the first time the Obama administration has politicized intelligence. Back in the early days of the administration, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer wrote an article about Obama's decision to ban some of these interrogation techniques. She spoke with White House counsel Greg Craig, who described the deliberations.
Across the Potomac River, at the C.I.A.'s headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, however, there was considerably less jubilation. Top C.I.A. officials have argued for years that so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques have yielded lifesaving intelligence breakthroughs. "They disagree in some respect," Craig admitted. Among the hard questions that Obama left open, in fact, is whether the C.I.A. will have to follow the same interrogation rules as the military. While the President has clearly put an end to cruel tactics, Craig said that Obama "is somewhat sympathetic to the spies' argument that their mission and circumstances are different."
Despite such sentiments, Obama's executive orders will undoubtedly rein in the C.I.A. Waterboarding, for instance, has gone the way of the rack, now that the C.I.A. is strictly bound by customary interpretations of the Geneva Conventions. This decision, too, was the result of intense deliberation. During the transition period, unknown to the public, Obama's legal, intelligence, and national-security advisers visited Langley for two long sessions with current and former intelligence-community members. They debated whether a ban on brutal interrogation practices would hurt their ability to gather intelligence, and the advisers asked the intelligence veterans to prepare a cost-benefit analysis. The conclusions may surprise defenders of harsh interrogation tactics. "There was unanimity among Obama's expert advisers," Craig said, "that to change the practices would not in any material way affect the collection of intelligence."
That's interesting: "top CIA officials have argued for years that so-called 'enhanced' interrogation techniques have yielded lifesaving intelligence breakthroughs," but the team of "expert advisers" from Obama's presidential campaign apparently knows better.
All of this leads to one obvious question: Who needs intelligence professionals when you have campaign advisers?
Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins).
Number of Federal Subsidy Programs Tops 1,800
Number of Federal Subsidy Programs Tops 1,800. By Chris Edwards, Director of Tax Policy Studies, Cato Institute
Cato, Apr 22, 2009
Cato, Apr 22, 2009
Op-Ed by Energy Sec Chu and Labor Sec Solis: Building the American Clean Energy Economy
Op-Ed by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis: Building the American Clean Energy Economy
To commemorate Earth Day, the op-ed below on green jobs and energy independence by Secretaries Steven Chu and Hilda Solis ran in the following papers yesterday and today:
Austin American-Statesman
Buffalo News
Denver Post
Montgomery Advertiser
Omaha World Herald
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Building the American Clean Energy Economy
By Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis
On April 22nd, people across the country and around the world will celebrate Earth Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness about the plight of our natural resources and taking real action to make a difference. For decades, while Americans in towns and cities across the country have worked to make a difference in their communities, politicians in both parties in Washington have ignored the energy crisis, imperiling our economy, our security and our planet. Now, we have a unique and critical opportunity to attack the energy crisis head on and create a comprehensive energy policy that will bolster our economy, end our dependence on foreign oil and reduce the threat of deadly pollution that is devastating our planet.
During his first months in office, President Obama has already taken some important first strides toward those goals as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Recovery Act included billions of dollars to be invested in cities and states across the country to strengthen our clean energy industry and help restore America's place at the forefront of the 21st century global economy.
Recently, we visited the Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania where workers at the facility are being trained for the types of green jobs those Recovery Act dollars are funding. At the community college, these jobs range from the construction and facility upgrades of green buildings to the installation of energy-efficient street lights to conducting energy audits. In a booming clean energy sector, those jobs will range from research and development to skilled labor jobs like weatherizing to floor shifts at wind and solar facilities. And these are jobs that cannot be shipped overseas.
This focus on jump-starting the creation of an American clean energy sector will be the foundation of the president's energy policy. With the depletion of the world's oil reserves and the growing disruption of our climate, the development of clean, renewable sources of energy is the growth industry of the 21st century. Rather than sending billions overseas to pay for these new and developing energy technologies, President Obama believes we should invest those dollars here in American jobs and innovation. By developing a clean energy economy here at home, we will end our dependence on foreign oil and begin to make America truly energy independent. That's not just an economic and environmental imperative, it's also a national security imperative.
As part of this comprehensive policy, we must crack down on the corporations that pollute the water we drink and the air we breathe. Cracking down on these polluters in a real way will mean that we can finally tackle global warming and its potentially catastrophic effects - because ultimately, our approach to energy policy and combating the effects of global warming are two sides of the same coin.
We have an enormous, urgent environmental and economic task ahead of us, and it is one that we have ignored for far too long. If we are going to create clean energy industry jobs in this country, break the stranglehold that foreign oil has on our economy and punish the polluters who are devastating our natural resources, then we've got to be honest about the difficult tasks and tough choices ahead. It's going to mean telling the special interests that their days of dictating energy policy in this country are over. It's going to mean refusing to settle for the status quo and the same ineffective policies that have held us back for over 30 years, created price shocks and fostered energy dependence. This president is committed to tackling these challenges head on to create a clean energy policy that works for all Americans, so that we can pass on to our children and grandchildren not just a stronger economy, but a cleaner planet.
To commemorate Earth Day, the op-ed below on green jobs and energy independence by Secretaries Steven Chu and Hilda Solis ran in the following papers yesterday and today:
Austin American-Statesman
Buffalo News
Denver Post
Montgomery Advertiser
Omaha World Herald
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Building the American Clean Energy Economy
By Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis
On April 22nd, people across the country and around the world will celebrate Earth Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness about the plight of our natural resources and taking real action to make a difference. For decades, while Americans in towns and cities across the country have worked to make a difference in their communities, politicians in both parties in Washington have ignored the energy crisis, imperiling our economy, our security and our planet. Now, we have a unique and critical opportunity to attack the energy crisis head on and create a comprehensive energy policy that will bolster our economy, end our dependence on foreign oil and reduce the threat of deadly pollution that is devastating our planet.
During his first months in office, President Obama has already taken some important first strides toward those goals as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Recovery Act included billions of dollars to be invested in cities and states across the country to strengthen our clean energy industry and help restore America's place at the forefront of the 21st century global economy.
Recently, we visited the Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania where workers at the facility are being trained for the types of green jobs those Recovery Act dollars are funding. At the community college, these jobs range from the construction and facility upgrades of green buildings to the installation of energy-efficient street lights to conducting energy audits. In a booming clean energy sector, those jobs will range from research and development to skilled labor jobs like weatherizing to floor shifts at wind and solar facilities. And these are jobs that cannot be shipped overseas.
This focus on jump-starting the creation of an American clean energy sector will be the foundation of the president's energy policy. With the depletion of the world's oil reserves and the growing disruption of our climate, the development of clean, renewable sources of energy is the growth industry of the 21st century. Rather than sending billions overseas to pay for these new and developing energy technologies, President Obama believes we should invest those dollars here in American jobs and innovation. By developing a clean energy economy here at home, we will end our dependence on foreign oil and begin to make America truly energy independent. That's not just an economic and environmental imperative, it's also a national security imperative.
As part of this comprehensive policy, we must crack down on the corporations that pollute the water we drink and the air we breathe. Cracking down on these polluters in a real way will mean that we can finally tackle global warming and its potentially catastrophic effects - because ultimately, our approach to energy policy and combating the effects of global warming are two sides of the same coin.
We have an enormous, urgent environmental and economic task ahead of us, and it is one that we have ignored for far too long. If we are going to create clean energy industry jobs in this country, break the stranglehold that foreign oil has on our economy and punish the polluters who are devastating our natural resources, then we've got to be honest about the difficult tasks and tough choices ahead. It's going to mean telling the special interests that their days of dictating energy policy in this country are over. It's going to mean refusing to settle for the status quo and the same ineffective policies that have held us back for over 30 years, created price shocks and fostered energy dependence. This president is committed to tackling these challenges head on to create a clean energy policy that works for all Americans, so that we can pass on to our children and grandchildren not just a stronger economy, but a cleaner planet.
Why don't environmentalists celebrate modern farming on Earth Day?
Yielding to Ideology Over Science. By Ronald Bailey
Why don't environmentalists celebrate modern farming on Earth Day?
Reason, April 21, 2009
One might think that environmentalists would celebrate the accomplishments of modern farming on Earth Day. After all, the biggest way humanity disturbs the natural world is in how we produce food. Agriculture uses up more land and water than any other human activity. To the extent that we want to preserve biodiversity and protect natural areas, boosting agricultural productivity is the most vital thing that we can do.
Since 1960 global crop yields have more than doubled, with the benefit that the area of land devoted to producing food has not increased very much. If farmers were still producing food at 1960 levels of productivity, agriculture would have had to expand from 38 percent of the earth's land to 82 percent to feed the world's current population. This enormous increase in yields is the result of applying more artificial fertilizers, breeding higher yielding crops, a wider use of pesticides and herbicides, and expanding irrigation. More recently, advances in modern biotechnology have also contributed to boosting yields. However, last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a new report, Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops, by its senior scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman that tries to make the case that modern crop biotechnology should be largely abandoned because it has failed to increase agricultural yields.
Failure to Yield begins by noting that, in the United States, 90 percent of soybeans and 63 percent of the corn crop are biotech varieties. Genes have been inserted in these varieties (called transgenic or genetically engineered by the report) to confer pest and herbicide resistance on the crops. The UCS study distinguishes between intrinsic yield, the highest yield possible under ideal conditions, and operational yield, the yield obtainable in the field taking into account factors like pests and environmental stresses. The study then asserts, "No currently available transgenic varieties enhance the intrinsic yield of any crops."
In addition, Gurian-Sherman claims that biotech crops have only marginally increased operational yields for corn (largely through insect resistance traits) and not at all for soybeans in the United States.
First, keep in mind that farmers are not stupid, and especially not poor farmers in developing countries. The UCS report acknowledges that American farmers have widely adopted biotech crops in the past 13 years. Why? "The fact that the herbicide-tolerant soybeans have been so widely adopted suggests that factors such as lower energy costs and convenience of GE soybeans also influence farmer choices." Indeed. Surely saving fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases should be viewed by a UCS advocacy scientist as an environmental good. And what does Gurian-Sherman mean by "convenience"? Later, he admits that biotech herbicide resistant crops save costs and time for farmers. Herbicide resistance is also a key technology for expanding soil-saving no-till agriculture which, according to a report in 2003, saved 1 billion tons of topsoil from eroding annually. In addition, no-till farming significantly reduces the run-off of fertilizers into streams and rivers.
The UCS report correctly observes, "It is also important to keep in mind where increased food production is most needed—in developing countries, especially in Africa, rather than in the developed world." Which is exactly what is happening with biotech crops in poor countries. Currently, 13.3 million farmers around the world are planting biotech crops. Notably, 90 percent of the world's biotech farmers, that is, 12.3 million, are small and resource-poor farmers in developing countries like China, India, and South Africa. Gurian-Sherman is right that biotech contributions to yields in developed countries are relatively modest. Farmers here already have access and can afford modern agricultural technologies so improvements are going to be at the margins. Nevertheless, it is instructive to compare the rate of increase in corn yields between the biotech-friendly U.S. and biotech-hostile France and Italy over the past ten years. University of Georgia crop scientist Wayne Parrott notes, "In marked contrast to yield increases in the U.S., yields in France and Italy have leveled off."
The yield story is very different in poor countries. For example, a 2006 study found that biotech insect resistant cotton varieties boosted the yields for India's cotton farmers by 45 to 63 percent. Amusingly, some anti-biotech activists counter that these are not really yield increases, merely the prevention of crop losses. Of course, another way to look at it is that these are increases in operational yields. Whether due to yield increase or crop loss prevention, in 2008 this success led to nearly 70 percent of India's cotton fields being planted with biotech varieties. Similarly, biotech insect resistant corn varieties increased yields (or prevented losses) by 24 percent in the Philippines.
The UCS report also declares, "We must not simply produce more food at the expense of clean air, water, soil, and a stable climate, which future generations will also require." Biotech varieties are already helping farmers to achieve those environmental benefits.
Gurian-Sherman notes that crops typically use only 30 to 50 percent of nitrogen fertilizers they receive. Nitrogen fertilizer contributes to water pollution and is the primary source of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Agriculture contributes up to 12 percent of man-made global warming emissions. So one would think that a new biotech variety of rice created by Arcadia Biosciences, which needs 50 to 60 percent less nitrogen fertilizer than conventional varieties, would be welcomed by the UCS. But it isn't. The really good news is that research into transferring this same set of fertilizer-thrifty genes into other crops is moving rapidly forward.
Another promising area of research involves using genetic engineering to transfer the C4 photosynthetic pathway into rice, which currently uses the less efficient C3 pathway. This could boost rice yields tremendously, perhaps as much 50 percent, while reducing water use. In addition, researchers are pursuing all manner of other ways to boost crop production including salt, heat, and drought tolerance, along with viral, fungal, and bacterial disease resistance. All of these biotech techniques could improve crop productivity and thus reduce agriculture's toll on land, water, and air resources.
"To the extent to which groups like UCS have advocated prohibitive and disproportional regulations, they are responsible for the lack of even greater achievements in operational yield and perhaps even in intrinsic yield," notes Parrott. "In fact UCS is on the record as opposing engineered stress tolerance in crops. Such a stance by UCS is untenable and contradictory—yield losses caused by adverse growing conditions defeats the purpose of having a higher intrinsic yield—that is why it is so important to increase operational yield, and increasing operational yield is done with resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses—i.e., adverse growing conditions."
Increasing crop yields to meet humanity's growing demand for healthful food while protecting the natural world will require deploying the full scientific armamentarium. This includes advances in crop breeding, improvements in cultivation practices, the safer deployment of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides—and, yes, genetic engineering. It is odd that while the UCS accepts the scientific consensus on man-made global warming, it refuses to accept the scientific consensus on the safety, usefulness, and environmental benefits of biotech crops.
"In the end, after helping prevent scientific advances with genetically modified crops," notes Parrott, "the UCS is not in a good position to be calling genetically modified crops a failure because their scientific advances have not been greater."
Ronald Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.
Why don't environmentalists celebrate modern farming on Earth Day?
Reason, April 21, 2009
One might think that environmentalists would celebrate the accomplishments of modern farming on Earth Day. After all, the biggest way humanity disturbs the natural world is in how we produce food. Agriculture uses up more land and water than any other human activity. To the extent that we want to preserve biodiversity and protect natural areas, boosting agricultural productivity is the most vital thing that we can do.
Since 1960 global crop yields have more than doubled, with the benefit that the area of land devoted to producing food has not increased very much. If farmers were still producing food at 1960 levels of productivity, agriculture would have had to expand from 38 percent of the earth's land to 82 percent to feed the world's current population. This enormous increase in yields is the result of applying more artificial fertilizers, breeding higher yielding crops, a wider use of pesticides and herbicides, and expanding irrigation. More recently, advances in modern biotechnology have also contributed to boosting yields. However, last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a new report, Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops, by its senior scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman that tries to make the case that modern crop biotechnology should be largely abandoned because it has failed to increase agricultural yields.
Failure to Yield begins by noting that, in the United States, 90 percent of soybeans and 63 percent of the corn crop are biotech varieties. Genes have been inserted in these varieties (called transgenic or genetically engineered by the report) to confer pest and herbicide resistance on the crops. The UCS study distinguishes between intrinsic yield, the highest yield possible under ideal conditions, and operational yield, the yield obtainable in the field taking into account factors like pests and environmental stresses. The study then asserts, "No currently available transgenic varieties enhance the intrinsic yield of any crops."
In addition, Gurian-Sherman claims that biotech crops have only marginally increased operational yields for corn (largely through insect resistance traits) and not at all for soybeans in the United States.
First, keep in mind that farmers are not stupid, and especially not poor farmers in developing countries. The UCS report acknowledges that American farmers have widely adopted biotech crops in the past 13 years. Why? "The fact that the herbicide-tolerant soybeans have been so widely adopted suggests that factors such as lower energy costs and convenience of GE soybeans also influence farmer choices." Indeed. Surely saving fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases should be viewed by a UCS advocacy scientist as an environmental good. And what does Gurian-Sherman mean by "convenience"? Later, he admits that biotech herbicide resistant crops save costs and time for farmers. Herbicide resistance is also a key technology for expanding soil-saving no-till agriculture which, according to a report in 2003, saved 1 billion tons of topsoil from eroding annually. In addition, no-till farming significantly reduces the run-off of fertilizers into streams and rivers.
The UCS report correctly observes, "It is also important to keep in mind where increased food production is most needed—in developing countries, especially in Africa, rather than in the developed world." Which is exactly what is happening with biotech crops in poor countries. Currently, 13.3 million farmers around the world are planting biotech crops. Notably, 90 percent of the world's biotech farmers, that is, 12.3 million, are small and resource-poor farmers in developing countries like China, India, and South Africa. Gurian-Sherman is right that biotech contributions to yields in developed countries are relatively modest. Farmers here already have access and can afford modern agricultural technologies so improvements are going to be at the margins. Nevertheless, it is instructive to compare the rate of increase in corn yields between the biotech-friendly U.S. and biotech-hostile France and Italy over the past ten years. University of Georgia crop scientist Wayne Parrott notes, "In marked contrast to yield increases in the U.S., yields in France and Italy have leveled off."
The yield story is very different in poor countries. For example, a 2006 study found that biotech insect resistant cotton varieties boosted the yields for India's cotton farmers by 45 to 63 percent. Amusingly, some anti-biotech activists counter that these are not really yield increases, merely the prevention of crop losses. Of course, another way to look at it is that these are increases in operational yields. Whether due to yield increase or crop loss prevention, in 2008 this success led to nearly 70 percent of India's cotton fields being planted with biotech varieties. Similarly, biotech insect resistant corn varieties increased yields (or prevented losses) by 24 percent in the Philippines.
The UCS report also declares, "We must not simply produce more food at the expense of clean air, water, soil, and a stable climate, which future generations will also require." Biotech varieties are already helping farmers to achieve those environmental benefits.
Gurian-Sherman notes that crops typically use only 30 to 50 percent of nitrogen fertilizers they receive. Nitrogen fertilizer contributes to water pollution and is the primary source of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Agriculture contributes up to 12 percent of man-made global warming emissions. So one would think that a new biotech variety of rice created by Arcadia Biosciences, which needs 50 to 60 percent less nitrogen fertilizer than conventional varieties, would be welcomed by the UCS. But it isn't. The really good news is that research into transferring this same set of fertilizer-thrifty genes into other crops is moving rapidly forward.
Another promising area of research involves using genetic engineering to transfer the C4 photosynthetic pathway into rice, which currently uses the less efficient C3 pathway. This could boost rice yields tremendously, perhaps as much 50 percent, while reducing water use. In addition, researchers are pursuing all manner of other ways to boost crop production including salt, heat, and drought tolerance, along with viral, fungal, and bacterial disease resistance. All of these biotech techniques could improve crop productivity and thus reduce agriculture's toll on land, water, and air resources.
"To the extent to which groups like UCS have advocated prohibitive and disproportional regulations, they are responsible for the lack of even greater achievements in operational yield and perhaps even in intrinsic yield," notes Parrott. "In fact UCS is on the record as opposing engineered stress tolerance in crops. Such a stance by UCS is untenable and contradictory—yield losses caused by adverse growing conditions defeats the purpose of having a higher intrinsic yield—that is why it is so important to increase operational yield, and increasing operational yield is done with resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses—i.e., adverse growing conditions."
Increasing crop yields to meet humanity's growing demand for healthful food while protecting the natural world will require deploying the full scientific armamentarium. This includes advances in crop breeding, improvements in cultivation practices, the safer deployment of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides—and, yes, genetic engineering. It is odd that while the UCS accepts the scientific consensus on man-made global warming, it refuses to accept the scientific consensus on the safety, usefulness, and environmental benefits of biotech crops.
"In the end, after helping prevent scientific advances with genetically modified crops," notes Parrott, "the UCS is not in a good position to be calling genetically modified crops a failure because their scientific advances have not been greater."
Ronald Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.
A Backdoor Nationalization - The latest Treasury brainstorm will retard a banking recovery
A Backdoor Nationalization. WSJ Editorial
The latest Treasury brainstorm will retard a banking recovery.
WSJ, Apr 21, 2009
Just when you think the political class may have learned something in months of trying to fix the banking system, the ghost of Hank Paulson returns to haunt the Treasury. The latest Beltway blunder -- and it would be a big one -- is the Obama Administration's weekend news leak that it may insist on converting its preferred shares in some of the nation's largest banks into common equity. The stock market promptly tumbled by more than 3.5% yesterday, with J.P. Morgan falling 10% and financial stocks as a group off 9%, as measured by the NYSE Financials index. Note to White House: Sneaky nationalizations aren't any more popular with investors than the straightforward kind.
The occasion for this latest nationalization trial balloon is the looming result of the Treasury's bank strip-tease -- a.k.a. "stress tests." Treasury is worried, with cause, that some of the largest banks lack the capital to ride out future credit losses. Yet Secretary Timothy Geithner and the White House have concluded that they can't risk asking Congress for more bailout cash.
Voila, they propose a preferred-for-common swap, which can conjure up an extra $100 billion in bank tangible common equity, a core measure of bank capital. Not that this really adds any new capital; it merely shifts the deck chairs on bank balance sheets. Why Treasury thinks anyone would find this reassuring is a mystery. The opposite is the more likely result, since it signals that Treasury no longer believes it can tap more public capital to support the financial system if the losses keep building.
Worse, wholesale equity conversion would mean the government owns a larger share of more banks and is more entangled than ever in their operations. Giving Barney Frank more voting power is more likely to induce panic than restore confidence. Simply look at the reluctance of some banks -- notably J.P. Morgan Chase -- to participate in Mr. Geithner's private-public toxic asset sale plan. The plan is rigged so taxpayers assume nearly all the downside risk, but the banks still don't want to play lest Congress they become even more subject to political whim.
A backdoor nationalization also creates more uncertainty, not less, by offering the specter of an even lengthier period of federal control over the banking system. And it creates the fear of even more intrusive government influence over bank lending and the allocation of capital. These fears have only been enhanced by the refusal of Treasury to let more banks repay their Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money.
As it stands, banks and their owners at least know how much they owe Uncle Sam, and those preferred shares represent a distinct and separate tier of bank capital. Once the government is mixed in with the rest of the equity holders, the value of its investments -- and the cost to the banks of buying out the Treasury -- will fluctuate by the day.
Congress is also still trying to advance a mortgage-cramdown bill that would hammer the value of already distressed mortgage-backed securities, and now the Administration is talking up legislation to curb credit-card fees and interest. Both of these bills would damage bank profits, but large government ownership stakes would leave the banks helpless to oppose them. (See Citigroup, 36% owned by the feds and now a pro-cramdown lobbyist.)
We've come to this pass in part because the Obama Administration is afraid to ask Congress for the money for a meaningful bank recapitalization. And it may need that money now in part because Mr. Paulson's Treasury insisted on buying preferred stock in all the big banks instead of looking at each case on its merits. That decision last fall squandered TARP money on banks that probably didn't need it and left the Administration short of funds for banks that really do.
The sounder strategy -- and the one we've recommended for two years -- is to address systemic financial problems the old-fashioned way: bank by bank, through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a resolution agency with the capacity to hold troubled assets and work them off over time. If the stress tests reveal that some of our largest institutions are insolvent or nearly so, it's then time to seize the bank, sell off assets and recapitalize the remainder. (Meanwhile, the healthier institutions would get a vote of confidence and could attract new private capital.)
Bondholders would take a haircut and shareholders may well be wiped out. But converting preferred shares to equity does nothing to help bondholders in the long run anyway. And putting the taxpayer first in line for any losses alongside equity holders offers shareholders little other than an immediate dilution of their ownership stake. Treasury's equity conversion proposal increases the political risks for banks while imposing no discipline on shareholders, bondholders or management at failed or failing institutions.
The proposal would also be one more example of how Treasury isn't keeping its word. When he forced banks to accept public capital whether they needed it or not, Mr. Paulson said the deal was temporary and the terms wouldn't be onerous. To renege on those promises now will only make a bank recovery longer and more difficult.
The latest Treasury brainstorm will retard a banking recovery.
WSJ, Apr 21, 2009
Just when you think the political class may have learned something in months of trying to fix the banking system, the ghost of Hank Paulson returns to haunt the Treasury. The latest Beltway blunder -- and it would be a big one -- is the Obama Administration's weekend news leak that it may insist on converting its preferred shares in some of the nation's largest banks into common equity. The stock market promptly tumbled by more than 3.5% yesterday, with J.P. Morgan falling 10% and financial stocks as a group off 9%, as measured by the NYSE Financials index. Note to White House: Sneaky nationalizations aren't any more popular with investors than the straightforward kind.
The occasion for this latest nationalization trial balloon is the looming result of the Treasury's bank strip-tease -- a.k.a. "stress tests." Treasury is worried, with cause, that some of the largest banks lack the capital to ride out future credit losses. Yet Secretary Timothy Geithner and the White House have concluded that they can't risk asking Congress for more bailout cash.
Voila, they propose a preferred-for-common swap, which can conjure up an extra $100 billion in bank tangible common equity, a core measure of bank capital. Not that this really adds any new capital; it merely shifts the deck chairs on bank balance sheets. Why Treasury thinks anyone would find this reassuring is a mystery. The opposite is the more likely result, since it signals that Treasury no longer believes it can tap more public capital to support the financial system if the losses keep building.
Worse, wholesale equity conversion would mean the government owns a larger share of more banks and is more entangled than ever in their operations. Giving Barney Frank more voting power is more likely to induce panic than restore confidence. Simply look at the reluctance of some banks -- notably J.P. Morgan Chase -- to participate in Mr. Geithner's private-public toxic asset sale plan. The plan is rigged so taxpayers assume nearly all the downside risk, but the banks still don't want to play lest Congress they become even more subject to political whim.
A backdoor nationalization also creates more uncertainty, not less, by offering the specter of an even lengthier period of federal control over the banking system. And it creates the fear of even more intrusive government influence over bank lending and the allocation of capital. These fears have only been enhanced by the refusal of Treasury to let more banks repay their Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money.
As it stands, banks and their owners at least know how much they owe Uncle Sam, and those preferred shares represent a distinct and separate tier of bank capital. Once the government is mixed in with the rest of the equity holders, the value of its investments -- and the cost to the banks of buying out the Treasury -- will fluctuate by the day.
Congress is also still trying to advance a mortgage-cramdown bill that would hammer the value of already distressed mortgage-backed securities, and now the Administration is talking up legislation to curb credit-card fees and interest. Both of these bills would damage bank profits, but large government ownership stakes would leave the banks helpless to oppose them. (See Citigroup, 36% owned by the feds and now a pro-cramdown lobbyist.)
We've come to this pass in part because the Obama Administration is afraid to ask Congress for the money for a meaningful bank recapitalization. And it may need that money now in part because Mr. Paulson's Treasury insisted on buying preferred stock in all the big banks instead of looking at each case on its merits. That decision last fall squandered TARP money on banks that probably didn't need it and left the Administration short of funds for banks that really do.
The sounder strategy -- and the one we've recommended for two years -- is to address systemic financial problems the old-fashioned way: bank by bank, through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a resolution agency with the capacity to hold troubled assets and work them off over time. If the stress tests reveal that some of our largest institutions are insolvent or nearly so, it's then time to seize the bank, sell off assets and recapitalize the remainder. (Meanwhile, the healthier institutions would get a vote of confidence and could attract new private capital.)
Bondholders would take a haircut and shareholders may well be wiped out. But converting preferred shares to equity does nothing to help bondholders in the long run anyway. And putting the taxpayer first in line for any losses alongside equity holders offers shareholders little other than an immediate dilution of their ownership stake. Treasury's equity conversion proposal increases the political risks for banks while imposing no discipline on shareholders, bondholders or management at failed or failing institutions.
The proposal would also be one more example of how Treasury isn't keeping its word. When he forced banks to accept public capital whether they needed it or not, Mr. Paulson said the deal was temporary and the terms wouldn't be onerous. To renege on those promises now will only make a bank recovery longer and more difficult.
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