Come December, months after it should have happened, the White House will convene a jobs summit. That’s a good thing if we’re really going to talk about all options. Because important ones are missing right now. To that end, I’d like to suggest a few names for the summit’s guest list: Bob Borosage and other people at the Institute for America’s Future; Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers; Cathy Barthomew [bio] and Bob Kuttner, founding co-editor of The American Prospect, L. Randy Wray, professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Research Director with the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability. These five take the long view, the big picture view. And what they see – what anybody who really looks sees – is that America’s job situation needs a transformation before the race to the bottom becomes an irrevocable plunge.
The key to that transformation is industrial policy, which includes trade policy and a labor-market strategy. The kind of thing countries as far apart culturally and politically as Denmark and China have successfully engineered to make life for their citizens better. America’s fate now rests in the hands of other countries’ industrial policies. Not having our own is, ultimately, an economic suicide pact courtesy of the promoters of the same policies and behavior that got us into this gigantic economic mess.
While the festering unemployment rolls and the growing number of experts with clout mouthing the words "jobless recovery" may not fall into the traditional category of leading economic indicator, they clearly are a leading indicator on the minds of people who still care about working Americans. And also on the minds of a few politicians who normally don’t care but are pondering the approach of midterm elections.
It can never be repeated too often that Barack Obama inherited the mess. Not just the disaster bred of the Cheney-Bush years, the longest recession since the Depression, but that deeper wider mess that’s plagued us for far longer than any single administration. The mop the President chose includes some fiscal and relief policies which prove that progressive economic policy isn’t totally dead. But so far it’s been little beyond old-fashioned stimulus and saying hosannas to the pieces of the New Deal and Great Society whose continued existence has made the situation a good deal less horrendous than it would otherwise have been. But relying on decades-old cushioning programs and inadequate government spending isn’t going to solve either the short term or underlying long-term problems of the economy.
After close to four decades of allowing the screwing of American workers to take place amid a chorus of lionized public intellectuals shouting that the screwing is good for us, the current disaster ought to be one of those crises that Rahm Emanuel says we should never waste. Forty years after LBJ added to the New Deal, it’s time to do it again. This time with a permanent jobs program such as the one that L. Randall Wray proposes here:
Direct job creation programs have been common in the US and around the world. Americans immediately think of the various New Deal programs such as the Works Progress Administration (which employed about 8 million), the Civilian Conservation Corps (2.75 million employed), and the National Youth Administration (over 2 million part-time jobs for students). Indeed, there have been calls for revival of jobs programs like VISTA and CETA to help provide employment of new high school and college graduates now facing unemployment due to the crisis.
But what I am advocating is something both broader and permanent: a universal jobs program available through the thick and thin of the business cycle. The federal government would ensure a job offer to anyone ready and willing to work, at the established program compensation level, including wages and benefits package. To make matters simple, the program wage could be set at the current minimum wage level, and then adjusted periodically as the minimum wage is raised. The usual benefits would be provided, including vacation and sick leave, and contributions to Social Security.
Note that the program compensation package would set the minimum standard that other (private and public) employers would have to meet. In this way, public policy would effectively establish the basic wage and benefits permitted in our nation--with benefits enhanced as our capacity to provide them increases. I do not imagine that determining the level of compensation will be easy; however, a public debate that brings into the open matters concerning the minimum living standard our nation should provide to its workers is not only necessary but also would be healthy. ...
As the economy begins to recover, the private sector (as well as the public sector) will begin to hire again; this will draw workers out of the program. That is a good thing; indeed, one of the major purposes of this program is to keep people working so that a pool of employable labor will be available when a downturn comes to an end. Further, the program should do what it can to upgrade the skills and training of participants, and it will provide a work history for each participant to use to obtain better and higher paying work. Experience and on-the-job training is especially important for those who tend to be left behind no matter how well the economy is doing. The program can provide an alternative path to employment for those who do not go to college and cannot get into private sector apprenticeship programs.
A year-round, year-after-year, a jobs program that produces real value in new public infrastructure or maintenance and repair of what already exists.
Or you could go for the Danish model. In his book, Obama’s Challenges Bob Kuttner writes:
This idea [of an active labor-market strategy] is not just to cultivate a broadly educated population but to subsidize the customized training of workers for emergent technologies, as well as their living expenses so that they can afford to train – and do so at a scale to make a difference. This strategy is combined with a national commitment that there shall be no bad jobs an; and that every job shall pay a true living wage, with the productivity to justify it.
Last year, I conducted a study of the country that comes closest to realizing this strategy, the small, highly trade-dependent nation of Denmark. The Danes call their model "flexicurity" – great labor-market flexibility combined with superb worker security. If that sounds lie an oxymoron, the rest of the Danish model defies the usual economic categories and manages to square several other circles
I published my findings in the March-April 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs, but here are the headlines.
On the one hand, the Danes are passionate free traders. They score well in the ratings constructed by pro-market organizations. The World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index ranks Denmark third, just behind the United States and Switzerland, and even the far-right Heritage Foundation ranks Denmark eleventh, giving it demerits only for the size of its public sector. Denmark’s financial markets are clean and transparent, its barrier to imports minimal, its labor markets the most flexible in Europe, its multinational corporations dynamic and largely unmolested by industry policies, and its unemployment rate of 2.8 percent, the lowest in the OECD. [Now 4.1%, and the lowest in the OECD – MB.]
On the other hand, Denmark spends about 50 percent of its GDP socially and has the world’s second-highest tax rate after Sweden, as well as strong trade unions and one of the world’s most equal income distributions. For the half of the GDP that they pay in taxes, the Danes get not just universal health insurance but also generous child-care and family-leave arrangements, unemployment compensation that typically covers around 95 percent of lost wages, free higher education, secure pensions in old age, and the world’s most creative system of worker retraining.
What makes the flexicurity model both attractive to workers and dynamic for society are six key features: full employment; strong unions recognized as social partners; fairly equal wages among different sectors, so that a shift from manufacturing to service-sector work does not typically entail a pay cut; employer freedom to hire and fire as necessary; a comprehensive income floor; and a set of labor-market programs that spend an astonishing 4.5 percent of Danish GDP on programs such as transitional unemployment assistance, wage subsidies, and highly customized retraining. In return for such spending, the unions actively support both employer flexibility and a set of tough rules to weed out welfare chiselers; workers are understood to have duties as well as rights.
It’s not hard to come up with all kinds of reasons why the programs of a small, far more homogeneous country won’t work as well in big, diverse America. But if Democrats really want policies that go further than merely wielding a mop every time there’s a recession, they should invent an American version of an active labor-market strategy that helps stop putting so many people through the wringer.
Combined with this fresh approach to the labor market should be a focused effort to create green jobs and green careers, and more investment in research and development. Currently, the use ranks 7th among the 30-country membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development when it comes to R&D, 22nd when it comes to non-defense R&D.
Several billions in stimulus money has already gone into weatherization projects, providing jobs and home upgrades that will pay off in lower utility bills and reduced energy consumption. But other stimulus money is not being so well spent. In fact, it’s exacerbating one of the very problems we should be trying to solve, off-shoring American jobs.
Some students at American University concluded in their report Blown Away that more than 80% of the $1.05 billion federal clean-energy grants handed out since September 1 has gone to foreign wind companies.
Even more striking is the fact that there are few restrictions on the how the grants can be used, according to a transcript of a Treasury Department briefing. In fact, more than $800 million has been given to firms for wind farms that were already producing electricity before they received the grants, according to a review of the records by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.
"There are no restrictions on the use of the funds," Dan Tangherlini, an assistant secretary for management at the Department of Treasury, said, during a Sept. 1 conference call to announce the grants.
Could the money be used to pay shareholders?
"You know, that's possible," Tangherlini said, when a reporter asked that question during the call.
Foreign wind companies, however, say that their U.S. subsidiaries are creating jobs.
But where? As Muskegon Critic and others have discovered, a lot of those jobs are being stimulated abroad – the vast majority in the case of the Chinese wind-turbine manufacturer who will be supplying the machines for a Texas wind farm. In America, 330 jobs, 300 of them temporary; in China, 2000 jobs. The Campaign for America’s Future is urging progressives to send emails or letters backing Sen. Chuck Schumer's call for Steven Chu at the Department of Energy to "reject any request for stimulus money unless the high-value components, including the wind turbines, are manufactured in the United States."
As Jerome a Paris has pointed out, one of the reasons for this is exactly what we’re talking about, the lack of an industrial policy, especially a green industrial policy, over the past 30 years. The U.S. doesn’t currently have the manufacturing capability to supply all the wind turbines slated for installation. Inconsistent and incomplete government policy nearly bankrupted some turbine makers who, if they weren’t bought out, downsized their operations to avoid being caught in a bind the next time Congress decided to let the production tax credit expire. Not just no industrial policy but an anti-industrial one.
Leo Gerard fumed:
So accustomed to being bought and sold, Washington simply begins processing forms so it can hand over your tax dollars to create jobs in a turbine factory in the city of Shenyang, China at a subsidy of $193,133 each.
It's like these bureaucrats live in Wonderland. Or an America where the unemployment rate isn't 10.2 percent. Or where 40,000 American manufacturing facilities didn't disappear in the past decade. Or where banks didn't repossess nearly a quarter million American homes in the past three months.
We've got a message for Washington: Hell no! We're not giving tax dollars to China. What's wrong with these businesses and our government? It is the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It's not the Chinese Recovery and Reinvestment Act. ...
China has an industrial policy. And it uses that policy to dominate. Here is how Keith Bradsher of the New York Times described China's policy to become a world leader in renewable energy, which of course, would include construction of wind turbine factories:
"Calling renewable energy a strategic industry, China is trying hard to make sure that its companies dominate globally. Just as Japan and South Korea made it hard for Detroit automakers to compete in those countries - giving their own automakers time to amass economies of scale in sheltered domestic markets - China is shielding its clean energy sector while it grows to a point where it can take on the world." ...
"European wind turbine makers have stopped even bidding for some Chinese contracts after concluding that their bids would not be seriously considered, said Jorg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China."
As Gerard says, this wouldn’t be happening if the U.S. had an industrial plan that operated with the same kind of attitude toward Americans that China has toward the Chinese. Free trade on level-playing field, sure. But accepting the masquerade of a free trade policy while China engages in broad-based protectionism is not on the level. And stimulating their economy with our stimulus money demonstrates just how far our lack of an industrial policy has pushed us out of whack.
Nobody should begrudge tens of millions of Chinese who are being lifted from poverty by the Red capitalists running their government. But that doesn’t mean we should let this happen at the expense of American workers, today’s and tomorrow’s. That’s not a prescription for a trade war, but rather a plea for common-sense trade policy, one that doesn’t cower every time the Chinese scowl when the U.S. or some European company files a World Trade Organization complaint against them.
Next Thursday, the U.S.-China Economic And Security Review Commission will release its 2009 Annual Report to Congress. Included will be a look at:
China’s detailed industrial policy designed to attract foreign investment and production
and to create "national champions" to compete on a global scale.China’s use of subsidies and other trade-distorting measures in violation of its international commitments.
China’s role in the creation of the economic imbalances that that helped produce the global financial crisis.
At Building the New Economy: Making it in America, a conference put on by the Institute for America’s Future and the Alliance for American Manufacturing two weeks ago, the chair of the China commission, Carolyn Bartholomew, pointed out that China has adopted a centralized process focused on China’s national interests, a policy that builds, supports and proects. China owns many companies and highly controls others. It uses subsidies, intellectual property theft, currency manipulation, price controls, ruthless eminent domain. It underpays its workers and it permits no free unions. The arsenal of government policies in no way may for level ground. The green wave that is bringing those Shenyang wind turbines to America isn’t going to lift our boats, it’s going to swamp us if Washington fails adopt an industrial trade policy that doesn’t ignore these inequities.
Regarding that relationship, Natasha Chart has blogged some good ideas here as well as why we should look to other countries on industrial policy, too.
Finally, when Democrats start talking about an industrial, trade and labor-market policy, they shouldn’t forget the labor movement itself. Without the pressures it once brought to bear, we wouldn’t have minimum wage laws, Society Security, unemployment compensation or a very big middle class in this country. Over the years, Democrats have let their alliance with labor drift as union membership – along with union jobs – have disappeared or departed overseas. Forming unions, the legal right of all workers as another consequence of the progressive pressure in the New Deal years, has been made more difficult by decades of union-busting and negligent enforcement of the law.
There’s a campaign promise on the table in this regard. It’s not radical, won’t take nearly the political capital of initiating an industrial policy or even a permanent jobs program. It’s called the Employee Free Choice Act. By giving workers wishing to unionize a better chance against the corporate foes of anything that says they can’t treat employees exactly as they please, it would help even the playing field between workers whose productivity gains in the past 30 years have been siphoned into profits.
Altogether that's a big bite. But we're
The jobs summit can tread old ground. Or it can go bold.
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rawr_capsMedia Matters for America has documented numerous falsehoods in Sarah Palin's memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life. Below is a list of what we've found so far.
1. Palin falsely suggests poor will be "hit hardest" by cap and trade
Palin: Obama "admitted" cap and trade will cause "electricity bills to 'skyrocket' " and "those hit hardest will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet." Palin falsely suggests that "those hit hardest [by cap and trade] will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet" and that Obama "has already admitted that the policy he seeks will cause our electricity bills to 'skyrocket.' " She added: "So much for the campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. This is a tax on everyone." [Going Rogue, Pages 390-391]
CBO says poorest quintile will benefit from Waxman-Markey. The Congressional Budget Office found that in 2020, the version of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that passed the House in June with the support of the Obama administration would result in a $125 average annual benefit to the quintile of households with the lowest income and a $160 average annual cost to all American households.
Obama was talking about a different plan causing energy costs to "skyrocket." As the Associated Press noted in fact-checking Palin's book, Obama was not talking about the cap-and-trade legislation that has since passed in the House when he referred to energy costs "necessarily skyrocket[ting]." When Obama made that statement to the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in January 2008, he was describing a cap-and-trade proposal that would auction off 100 percent of available carbon allowances, and he made no mention at the time of a plan to compensate consumers for potential cost increases. But as PolitiFact.com noted, the Waxman-Markey bill initially would distribute most of the carbon allocations for free and contains substantial provisions to offset costs to consumers, and thus "should reduce costs to consumers."
2. Palin still falsely claiming stimulus money for energy efficiency she vetoed required tougher building codes
Palin: "One-size-fits-all codes" required to get funds "simply wouldn't work." Palin claims that she vetoed a $25 million "earmark for energy conservation" available through the stimulus because Alaska would have needed to adopt "universal energy building codes" to be eligible for the funds. She comments: "Universal building codes -- in Alaska! A practical, libertarian haven full of independent Americans who did not desire 'help' from government busybodies. A state full of hardy pioneers who did not like taking orders from the feds telling us to change our laws. A state so geographically diverse that one-size-fits-all codes simply wouldn't work." [Going Rogue, Pages 361-362]
PolitiFact: Palin's claim that funds were "tied to universal energy building codes" is "false." After Palin made similar comments on Fox News' Hannity, PolitiFact said she was "wrong" because "municipalities are not forced to accept the specific standards and, given that local governments set their own codes, the feds would be satisfied if Alaska merely promoted such building codes [emphasis in original]." PolitiFact also reported that in a letter to Palin's chief of staff, a Department of Energy official "wrote that the provision 'provides flexibility with regard to building codes' and 'expressly includes standards other than those cited so long as the standards achieve equivalent energy savings.' "
3. Palin continues distortion of NY Times article to defend "palling around with terrorists" claim
Palin claimed her "palling around" comment followed report on "friendship" between Obama and Ayers. Palin claims: "In relation to the breaking news about the friendship between the unrepentant domestic terrorist [Bill Ayers] and the Democrat candidate for president of the United States, headquarters issued an approved sound bite about Obama 'palling around with terrorists,' and I was happy to be the one to deliver it. As more information was made public concerning Obama's associations and the fact that he had kicked off his political career in Ayers's living room, the sound bite was written into a rally speech." [Going Rogue, Pages 306-307]
NY Times article Palin cited reported that Obama and Ayers "do not appear to have been close." In the October 2008 speech to which Palin is presumably referring, she cited that day's New York Times article in claiming that Obama is "palling around with terrorists." But, in fact, the Times reported that "the two men do not appear to have been close." From the October 3, 2008, New York Times: "A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' "
CNN Fact Check: Palin statement "false." In an October 5, 2008, Fact Check, CNN's Political Ticker blog found Palin's statement "false," writing: "There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now 'palling around,' or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are."
4. Palin stands by falsehood that Obama opposed "protect[ing] babies born alive after botched abortions"
Palin: Obama "opposed laws that would protect babies born alive after botched abortions." Palin writes that during her September 2008 interviews with CBS' Katie Couric, she asserted that the "real extremism" on abortion comes from people "like Barack Obama, who opposed laws that would protect babies born alive after botched abortions" -- joining other conservatives in misleadingly referencing Obama's opposition to legislation that would have amended the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975. [Going Rogue, Page 278]
As Obama and other opponents noted, criminal code already prevented killing of children. Opponents of the bill noted that the legislation was unnecessary, as the Illinois criminal code unequivocally prohibits killing children, and said that the bill posed a threat to abortion rights. When tasked by the Illinois attorney general's office with investigating allegations that fetuses born alive at an Illinois hospital were abandoned without treatment -- the alleged incident that inspired the "Born Alive Act" -- the Illinois Department of Public Health reportedly said that it was unable to substantiate the allegations but said that if the allegations had proved true, the conduct alleged would have been a violation of existing Illinois law. The Obama presidential campaign subsequently cited specific provisions of the Illinois Compiled Statutes in stating that the "born alive principle was already the law in Illinois." Time magazine and The Washington Post's "fact checker" have previously debunked similar claims previously advanced by Palin.
5. Palin falsely suggests she did not support aerial hunting
Palin: Radio host "suggested we get together and hunt from helicopters, which Alaska hunters don't do." Palin falsely suggests that Alaskans do not engage in the aerial hunting of wolves, writing of her phone call with a radio host impersonating French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "Then Sarkozy started talking about hunting and suggested we get together and hunt from helicopters, which Alaska hunters don't do (despite circulated Photoshopped images of me drawing a bead on a wolf from the air)." [Going Rogue, Page 327]
Aerial hunting of wolves takes place in Alaska under program supported by Palin. Under Alaska law, "the Board of Game may authorize a predator control program as part of a game management plan that involves airborne or same day airborne shooting." In 2007, Palin introduced a bill to "simplify and clarify Alaska's intensive management law for big game and the state's 'same day airborne hunting' law," which she stated would "give the Board of Game and state wildlife managers the tools they need to actively manage important game herds and help thousands of Alaskan families put food on their tables."
6. Palin falsely suggested media did not criticize Dems over fashion
Palin: "[M]any wondered at the same time why no other candidates or their spouses were being asked a thing about their hair, makeup, or clothes." Palin noted reports that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 "to clothe and accessorize" Palin and her family and asserted that "many wondered at the same time why no other candidates or their spouses were being asked a thing about their hair, makeup, or clothes." [Going Rogue, Pages 314-315]
Edwards, Obama, Clinton, and Biden were subjected to frequent scrutiny "about their hair, makeup, or clothes." During the Democratic primary, the media devoted significant attention to John Edwards' "expensive" haircuts -- which were brought up by moderators in two Democratic presidential debates in 2007 -- to Obama's clothing, including during the April 16, 2008, presidential debate and in a Washington Post article stating: "One of the most distinctive elements of Barack Obama's public style comes down to what he so often is not wearing: patriotism on his sleeve"; to then-Sen. Hillary Clinton's clothing, including linking Clinton's "bright colors" to "likability problem" and calling attention to her neckline; and to questions over whether Biden had "taken steps to pre-empt baldness."
7. Palin attacks "Democrat lawmaker" who's actually a Republican
Palin: "Democrat lawmaker ... complained that I wasn't as 'sparky.' " Palin mocks the "political buckshot" her "critics fired" at her, writing: "[L]ocally, the opposition would criticize me for focusing on national issues -- as if I suddenly needed to become parochial and think of Alaska's issues as irrelevant to the nation. In Juneau, one Democrat lawmaker complained that I wasn't as 'sparky' as before and that Piper and I no longer brought around bagels like we used to." [Going Rogue, Page 344]
"Democrat lawmaker" actually a Republican. Palin appeared to be referring to a January 31 AP article that quoted Alaska state Sen. Bert Stedman -- a Republican -- describing Palin as "[n]ot so sparky." The article also reported that a separate Alaska lawmaker, a Democrat, mentioned that Palin, before the 2008 election, "walked around the building with (her daughter) Piper handing out bagels. I think those days are gone."
In anticipation of the release of Sarah Palin's memoir, Going Rogue, Media Matters for America has compiled a list of Palin's Top 10 falsehoods from before the book was published.
Falsehood 1: Democratic health reform bills include "death panel[s]"
CLAIM: Democratic health care reform proposals include a "death panel" which would determine whether people are "worthy of health care."
- Attacking Democratic health care reform proposals, Palin wrote:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. [Palin Facebook post, more than 40 media reports debunking claims of euthanasia and "death panels," PolitiFact.com wrote: "We've looked at the inflammatory claims that the health care bill encourages euthanasia. It doesn't. There's certainly no 'death board' that determines the worthiness of individuals to receive care. ... [Palin] said that the Democratic plan will ration care and 'my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care.' Palin's statement sounds more like a science fiction movie (Soylent Green, anyone?) than part of an actual bill before Congress. We rate her statement Pants on Fire!" [PolitiFact.com, 8/10/09]
Falsehood 2: Palin said "thanks but no thanks" to Bridge to Nowhere
CLAIM: Palin refused federal funds to build a noted, a year before Palin was elected governor, Congress appropriated the relevant federal money to Alaska and allowed the state to decide whether to spend it on the bridge. After authorizing appropriations bill in November 2005, Congress earmarked the money for Alaska, but specified that it did not have to be spent on the bridge. Somerby wrote, "[N]o one had to 'tell Congress' anything about the Bridge to Nowhere, because Congress had removed itself from decision-making about the project." Second, Palin did not refuse the funds or reimburse the federal government; Alaska reportedly kept the federal funds.
Palin supported bridge project until it became clear no new federal funds would be provided. On several occasions during her 2006 gubernatorial run, Palin reportedly bill to which Palin referred noted that the legislation was unnecessary, as the Illinois criminal code unequivocally prohibits killing children, and said that the bill posed a threat to abortion rights. When tasked by the Illinois attorney general's office with investigating allegations that fetuses born alive at an Illinois hospital were abandoned without treatment -- the alleged incident that inspired the "Born Alive Act" -- the Illinois Department of Public Health reportedly said that it was unable to substantiate the allegations but said that if the allegations had proved true, the conduct alleged would have been a violation of existing Illinois law. The Obama presidential campaign subsequently cited specific provisions of the Illinois Compiled Statutes in stating that the "born alive principle was already the law in Illinois."
Falsehood 9: Palin vetoed stimulus energy efficiency money because it required tougher building codes
CLAIM: Palin vetoed stimulus funds for energy efficiency because it was "tied to universal building codes" that wouldn't work in Alaska.
- On the June 8 edition of Fox News' Hannity, Palin stated (retrieved from the Nexis database):
PALIN: I vetoed a bucket of the [stimulus] money, not a whole lot, we did accept education dollars and infrastructure dollars, but dollars that were tied to universal energy building codes for Alaska, kind of a one-size-fits-all building code that isn't going to work up there in Alaska and really prohibits opportunity to build and to develop, and just wasn't going to work up there in Alaska, so I vetoed a bucket of that money.
Our lawmakers now are considering they override of the veto which is cool, that's checks and balances. You know they can explore that.
HANNITY: You don't want them to, though?
PALIN: I don't think that it would be a healthy thing for our state to adopt because it would be a federal mandate, fixed, centralized government, telling Alaskan communities that have opted out of building codes for the most part.
Them telling us what's best for our businesses and residences, how to build them, and we're all for energy conservation. We have hundreds of millions of dollars, in fact, budgeted for programs there but we don't want those fat strings attached where centralized, big government is going to tell us what is best.
REALITY: PolitiFact called Palin statement "False" because "municipalities are not forced to accept the specific standards." PolitiFact.com found Palin's statements on Hannity "False," writing:
Palin was specifically concerned with a provision in the stimulus (it is Section 410, as she will refer it later) that ties the energy efficiency money to assurances that the state or local governments "will implement" a "building energy code for residential buildings that meets or exceeds the most recently published International Energy Conservation Code, or achieves equivalent or greater energy savings" as well as "a building energy code (or codes) for commercial buildings throughout the State that meets or exceeds the ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-2007, or achieves equivalent or greater energy savings." The provision also states that recipients of the federal money must implement a plan to achieve compliance with the building codes within eight years in at least 90 percent of new and renovated residential and commercial building space.
That language seems pretty rigid, but then along came Missouri, which applied for the money, but instead of agreeing to the specifics of the building code, committed merely to "working with communities to create model energy efficiency standards that, if local units of government choose to implement (our emphasis), should reduce energy costs for Missourians." The Department of Energy approved the application.
So Palin's chief of staff wrote to the Department of Energy to get some clarification about what exactly Alaska would be committing itself to if it accepted the money.
In response, Steven G. Chalk of the DOE said the stimulus provision recognizes that not every state has statewide building codes, and that the governor does not have the authority to force local governments to implement building codes. In those cases, Chalk wrote, it's sufficient for the governor to simply "promote" the codes. It is enough, he wrote, for the state to work with local governments to create model energy efficiency standards, but no municipality would be forced to adopt any new codes.
As for Palin's claims of "one-size-fits-all" building codes, Chalk wrote that the provision "provides flexibility with regard to building codes" and "expressly includes standards other than those cited so long as the standards achieve equivalent energy savings."
So Palin is wrong. The municipalities are not forced to accept the specific standards and, given that local governments set their own codes, the feds would be satisfied if Alaska merely promoted such building codes.
Despite these assurances from the Department of Energy, Palin vetoed the money and insisted the provision amounted to "big brother" government involvement. The state legislature is now threatening to pursue a very rare veto override.
Falsehood 10: Under Palin's leadership, Alaska began building a $40 billion natural gas pipeline
CLAIM: During Palin's term as governor, construction began on a $40 billion natural gas pipeline in Alaska, "North America's largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever."
- During her RNC timeline for the pipeline project, "On-site construction" is expected to begin in April 2016. </p>
PolitiFact: Pipeline unlikely to cost $40 billion. Calling Palin's debate claim about the pipeline "False," PolitiFact.com wrote:
Now what about Palin's claim that the pipeline would cost "nearly $40-billion"? We're not sure where she got that figure -- neither her office in Alaska nor the McCain campaign has ever returned our calls to tell us. TransCanada estimates the cost at $26-billion.
Yes, there could be cost overruns. But experts were skeptical the price could reach Palin's estimate.
PolitiFact: Pipeline not North America's "most expensive infrastructure project ever." PolitiFact further wrote:
Palin was certainly wrong that the pipeline would be the "most expensive infrastructure project ever." What we suspect she meant to say -- and has said repeatedly in the past -- is that it would be the most expensive privately funded infrastructure project ever.
But she's probably wrong on that count, too. We talked to several experts in pipelines and large-scale engineering projects, who said the only private infrastructure project on the scale of Palin's proposed pipeline was the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, an oil pipeline also from the North Slope that is often referred to as the Alaska Pipeline. The Alaska Pipeline was completed in 1977 at a cost of $8-billion. In 2007 dollars that would be just over $27-billion, edging out Palin's proposed natural gas pipeline.
Ethan Forman broke the Danvers High School meep-ban story in the Salem News on 11/10/2009 (See "Meep: Truth or Onion?"). Over the past few days, the story has been picked up by several wire services and other outlets, none of whom provided any information beyond what was in Forman's original story.
Yesterday, NPR's All Things Considered looked into it, and actually added something to the story by interviewing a student, Mike Spiewak ("Principal Tells Students 'Meep' Is Off-Limits"):
According to Spiewak, the source was neither Beaker nor Road Runner, at least not directly:
RAZ: Well, did you pick it up from Beaker or the Road Runner?
Mr. SPIEWAK: No. Actually, my friend Alex, he picked it up on Xbox LIVE. He was in a party with a couple of kids playing Call of Duty last year. One of the kids that were in the party, you know, he said meep and, you know, Alex picked it up and we started using it.
Kudos to NPR for journalistic initiative.
I still haven't quite figured out why.
Back in July, and using the 2009 elections as the immediate backdrop, I suggested that the greatest level of volatility in the coming election cycles would be in the gubernatorial races.
The basic thesis was that the current economic and political climate had essentially put the state's chief executives in the position of making few popular choices. The expectation was that this would transcend incumbency--even in the myriad of open seat races, the change narrative would be an enticing one.
It is now more than four months later, and the 2009 election cycle has come and gone. In the interim, little has changed to dispel the sense that the gubernatorial elections are going to be the site of the greatest turmoil.
Since then, we have had two electoral results that would seem to confirm that incumbency in the state executive's office comes with peril in this climate. The "shake up" (insert name of state capital here) meme is an attractive one, and certainly played a part in the victories of Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell (especially Christie, who was swimming upstream against the natural political tendencies of his state, plus his own campaign missteps).
While most of the traditional media (including a particularly poor analysis from the Los Angeles Times) wanted to make those elections about ascendant Republicanism, there is pretty solid evidence from the exit polling in New Jersey to suggest that an anti-incumbent mood was more prevalent than an anti-Democratic mood.
President Obama, among the electorate that voted in the Garden State this month, had a 57% approval rating. Given the partisan breakdown of the electorate (41% Democratic, 31% Republican, and 28% Independent), and a basic assumption (90% of Democrats approve of Obama, and 90% of Republicans disapprove), we find that Barack Obama's approval rating among New Jersey Independents would have been in the neighborhood of 62%.
And that segment of the New Jersey electorate went to Chris Christie by 30 points (60-30-9). In other words, there was a sizeable contingent of voters who approved of President Obama's job performance who nonetheless cast their ballots for Christie.
There is also an additional four months of polling data to reflect upon. This data also speaks to the antipathy at the state level towards the party in power.
It is rare, in the polling that is available right now (and here are a pair of excellent resources), to find an incumbent who is in comfortable position for next year's election cycle, when the majority of the nation's governorships will be up for grabs.
Indeed, a cursory glance across the nation finds just three governors who lead by ten points or more in the most recent polls released in their state. Interestingly, two of the three are Democrats (Mike Beebe of Arkansas and, extraordinarily, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts). The lone Republican is Texas Governor Rick Perry, and even in an unspectacular field he leads the leading Democratic candidate by just eleven points. Utah's newly-minted Republican Governor Gary Herbert, who just took office in August, also polled well, though the poll involving his candidacy was based on his re-elect numbers as opposed to an actual trial heat with an opponent.
Even in fairly reliably partisan states, the incumbent party is in some degree of peril. Look at Arizona, where even Republican pollsters suggest that incumbent Governor Jan Brewer could be in dire straits when challenged by Democratic Attorney General Terry Goddard. By the same token, incumbency has not worn well on the Governors of '08 blue states like New York, Colorado, and Ohio.
Governorships are, by definition, more volatile than the federal offices come election time. This is the by-product of term limits, which stunt the power of incumbency while also ensuring that a large percentage of races in any given election cycle will be open seats.
Indeed, while a number of such states do not have recent polling on their gubernatorial races, those that do are more likely to hint at a partisan switch in 2010 than they are to hint at a retention for the incumbent party. Some of these, of course, are predictable: Democrats probably did not expect to hold onto states like Oklahoma when term limits took out Brad Henry, nor would the GOP, except in the best of electoral climates, expect to hang onto a state like Hawaii.
The closeness of these open seats even defy traditional political convention. One would expect Wisconsin or Minnesota to be a toss-up, but the most recent polling out of Alabama implies a surprising level of competitiveness for Democratic candidates in a state that John McCain carried by 20 points. The same holds true in a blue state like Maine, where an October PPP poll showed some scenarios in which the Democrats could lose that statehouse.
Of course, there are a myriad of variables still unknown. As we saw this week with the news that Tom Tancredo is likely to make a bid for Governor of Colorado, there is the potential for some incredibly ideological primary wars next year. This is especially true on the Republican side, where the Hoffman Effect is becoming a real phenomenon. Might this push some less-electable GOP candidates into the general election? It is not unreasonable to assume that it won't.
There is also peril for Democrats in the cycle, of course. If the "right track/wrong track" metric stays the same, or even worsens, that could impact Democrats on all electoral levels. As we saw in both 1994 and 2006, a truly toxic nationalized climate does reverberate down to the statehouse level, even though the issue dynamics in these races are often quite different than those in federal elections. If voters are still cranky 50 weeks from now, the undertow could be severe.
As often happens, in the midterm cycle the federal elections get most of the ink. With redistricting coming forth after the 2010 cycle, however, the gubernatorial elections (to say nothing of state legislative elections) take on additional critical importance. Therefore, progressive political junkies, if they are interested in building/maintaining a progressive majority, would do well to look beyond the U.S. Capitol come Election Day 2010.
Given the clear and unabating volatility there, absolutely nothing can be assumed or taken for granted.
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