B and B

New corporate giveaway under guise of "fixing" the mortgage crisis

I am of mixed opinions of how or even whether to assist people and banks that got involved in the overinflated housing market over the last few years.  But one thing I am clear about is that giving out billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to the housing industry that reaped in mega-profits during those years is profoundly wrong.

Daniel Gross wrote in Slate last Monday (emphasis added):

The proposed tax break [now passed by the Senate] is hard to justify for several reasons. It does nothing for slow and steady companies that keep their heads and simply rack up profits year after year—and pay their taxes accordingly. Rather, it rewards the most reckless participants in the bubble. If you borrowed a ton of money to build spec houses in Miami and reported $2 billion in profits between 2002 and 2007 but gave up all those profits by notching a $2 billion loss this year, the extended carryback has a great deal of value. If you've been building affordable housing in Wichita, Kan., and booked $300 million in profits in those years, and then, through careful management of costs, managed to eke out a $5 million profit this year, it has no value. The big public homebuilders, whose shares rallied on the news of this potential tax break, didn't pay any windfall taxes on the bubble-era earnings. Why should they get an extraordinary post-bubble windfall?

Homebuilders argue that they need relief because their sector, which provides a great deal of domestic employment, is on the ropes, and they're finding it more difficult to raise capital. Which is as it should be. After bubbles pop, those who screwed up really badly fail and get taken over by creditors or opportunistic investors. Those who have sound underlying franchises but merely got a little carried away can survive if they take painful restructuring moves. This is what is known as market capitalism. For all the talk of a credit crunch, capital is still available—it's just not available on the easy terms managers had come to expect during the late Greenspan years. Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and plenty of other firms tied to the mortgage/finance complex have taken steps to shore up their balance sheets and replenish lost capital. But investors, having been burned, demand more downside protection and better guaranteed returns. Thornburg Mortgage was forced to pay 18 percent interest for an emergency round of capital raising that allowed it to stave off bankruptcy. This is also what is known as market capitalism.

...

The proposal to give new tax breaks to homebuilders and banks is yet another example of the pernicious trend of privatizing profit and socializing losses, which is gnawing away at faith in the system. Dilute the shareholders, not the taxpayers.

Thankfully, the House of Representatives may take a far more sensible route, according to the Washington Post (emphasis added):

On Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee approved an $11 billion tax package that rejects help for home builders and offers a $7,500 tax credit to first-time home buyers rather than buyers of foreclosed properties.

Please keep paying attention so that we all do not get swindled in the end.

Republicans for Environmental Protection, all 70 of them, meet in San Antonio

A group called Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP) just had their national conference in our fair town.   Given the nature of GOP policies over the last, say, 27 years, the name sounds oxymoronic, perhaps an intentional obfuscation.  But I've followed this group for many years, and they do appear to be legitimate--pathetically ineffective, perhaps, but legitimate. 

The REP website proclaims that this conference is "Truly... our most exciting conference ever!"

The Express-News reports that at this most exciting conference, the keynote speaker, GOP pollster Whit Ayres, spoke to "crowd of about 70, including about a dozen Texans."

That reveals a lot about the current standing of conservation in the party of Theodore Roosevelt.

REP's website lists the awards they have given out since their founding in 1996.  Amongst these awards in one called the "Environmental Legislator of the Year," presumably limited to Republicans.  Here are the winners:

1996 - Rep. Christopher Shays, CT
1998 - Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, NY (now retired)
2000 - Sen. Jim Jeffords, VT (later become an Independent allied with Democrats; now retired)
2002 - Rep. Nancy Johnson, CT (defeated by a Democrat in 2006
2004 - Rep. Jim Greenwood, PA (now retired)

I guess they gave up after 2004, because I don't see any such award since then.  Rep. Shays is the lone survivor, and he is hanging by a thread.

"Conservation, stewardship, those are very bedrock conservative issues," said David Jenkins, the group's governmental affairs director. "The party has gotten away from that some."

Some, indeed.

Funding the Iraq War

I have plenty of my own opinions on the current situation in Congress regarding funding Bush's Iraq War, but while I try to gather time to express them, at least two others have expressed viewpoints with which I can get behind.

From South Texas Chisme:

Congressional Democrats who voted for the latest war funding bill have been taking quite a beating from anti-war Democrats. I opposed the clusterf**k in Iraq before we invaded and continue to oppose it. However, I'm inclined to give the Congressional Democrats who voted for the war funding bill a break. Even with the support of every Democrat (and a few Republicans), they did not have the votes to overcome a Presidential veto. The stubborn jerk the American people put in the Whitehouse (twice!), the guy who constantly uses the troops for photo ops while opposing active-duty pay raises and veterans benefits, would not hesitate to increase the troops suffering for political gain. Bush has stated that ending the Iraq war would be the next President's job. Bush has never cleaned up one of his own failures. How could anybody assume he'd do anything different now?

And, from McBlogger:

You know, there is something to be said for being as obstinate as Bush and cutting off all funding from the DoD. It's brinksmanship and it's a game the Democrats will likely lose. I like Olbermann's commentary because it fully encapsulates all the anger and frustration I and many others feel. I don't like it because it misplaces that anger and frustration which should rightfully be directed at two places... Connecticut native George Bush who vetoed the bill that placed a deadline on our involvement in Iraq and the Congressional Republicans who let that veto stand.

It is to them that I say 'We're done'. The American people see past your pathetic and cynical attempt to hold the men and women of the US Armed Services hostage to your failed policies and misguided attempts to remake the world. While we would LOVE nothing more than for Congressional Democrats to throw a giant wrench in everything, we know that isn't possible as long as Congressional Republicans feel free to continue enabling the disastrous President Bush.

How can we end the horrors in Darfur?

What can we do to end the horrors being perpetrated in Darfur?  Is divestment from companies that invest in Sudan enough?  Given the pain, the suffering, and the killing going on every day in Darfur, as the Sudanese government appears to perpetually put off allowing any meaningful peacekeeping force to enter the country, I am strongly tempted to jump on Senator Joe Biden's latest suggestion--send U.S. troops and put and end to the slaughter once and for all.

The Houston Chronicle reports:

Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Democratic presidential candidate, called Wednesday for the use of military force to end the suffering in Darfur.

"I would use American force now," Biden said at a hearing before his committee. "I think it's not only time not to take force off the table. I think it's time to put force on the table and use it."

In advocating use of military force, Biden said senior U.S. military officials in Europe told him that 2,500 U.S. troops could "radically change the situation on the ground now."

"Let's stop the bleeding," Biden said. "I think it's a moral imperative."

Many others have had similar suggestions.  New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who has been reporting on Darfur, at great personal risk, for years, recently wrote about suggestions his readers sent him.  In a March 13 column, unfortunately behind the TimesSelect subscription curtain, Kristof wrote:

Six weeks ago, I invited readers to send in their own suggestions for what we should do about Darfur, and the result was a deluge of proposals from all over the world.

The common thread was a far more muscular approach. Several readers suggested that we should dispatch a private force -- supplied by a military contractor like Blackwater USA -- to fight the janjaweed militia.

Many readers also recommended that we supply arms to Darfur refugees or rebel groups. Some people suggested that we blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan exports oil.

Kristof, whose opinions on this subject deserve profound respect, does not think any of these "far more muscular" approaches would be helpful.  And, by inference, he would probably think the same of Senator Biden's recent proposal.  Again, from his March 13 column:

After inviting the discussion, I feel ungrateful in criticizing such well-meaning suggestions -- but I'm afraid that in the aftermath of the Iraq war, aggressive military measures would be counterproductive. We would be handing President Omar al-Bashir a propaganda victory and a chance to rally support (''Those American crusaders are trying to steal another Arab country's oil!'').

Likewise, Darfur is already awash with guns and irresponsible armed factions terrorizing civilians. The last thing Darfur needs is more AK-47s.

Ok.  After first hearing about it, I was ready to strongly push Biden's proposal, but Kristof's words have reminded me of the vast complications of that approach.  Bush's Iraq War is tragic in so many ways, but one of the worst ways is that is has helped tie our hands in dealing with the Darfur massacres.

So what is Kristof's preferred approach?  I already know, based on Ruth Messinger's words a few weeks ago, that Kristof supports the divestment campaign.  And he has some other suggestions in his March 13 column:

[W]hat Darfur needs isn't a single dramatic solution but a collection of incremental steps that add to the pressure for a peace agreement there.

President Bush could ratchet up the pressure by giving a prime-time speech on Darfur. He and Tony Blair could lead a summit on Darfur in Europe. He could invite leaders of China and Egypt to join him on a trip to a Darfur refugee camp in Chad.

Mr. Bush is expected to announce soon a series of financial sanctions on Sudan (similar to those that have inflicted considerable pain on North Korea and Iran), and those are welcome. Enforcing a no-fly zone would also help add to the pressure.

But the top priority for Darfur is something that few people talk about -- a negotiated peace agreement. Peacekeepers are desperately needed, but the only real hope for lasting security is a negotiated peace among all the tribes of Darfur. And that is conceivable: an attempt last April came close, but ultimately a flawed deal was reached that made the conflict worse.

Unfortunately, in the month since this column was written, nothing of the sort he proposes has actually happened.  No Bush prime-time speech on Darfur.  No Bush-Blair summit on Darfur.  Do Bush-China-Egypt joint trip fo a refugee camp.  And the proposed sanctions are not yet in place, either, much less a no-fly zone. 

Obviously, there is also no peace agreement.

In that context, perhaps Biden isn't so far off base.  How much longer will the killing go on?

Bush's public land sale dies in Congress for second year in a row

The U.S. Senate, by a vast majority earlier this week, said no to President Bush's proposal to sell off hundreds of thousands acres of the public's land.  They did this by approving an alternate scheme for funding rural counties' schools.  (That was Bush's trumped-up rationale.)  So for the second year in a row, Bush's privatization scheme is dead.

WASHINGTON, DC, March 28, 2007 (ENS) – The Senate today approved a bipartisan plan to extend payments to rural counties affected by declining revenues from logging on federal lands. The plan would provide money to more than 700 counties in 39 states.

Agreed to by a vote of 75-22, the plan was added as an amendment to the $122 billion emergency spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some $425 million of the $5 billion package will be paid for with emergency spending included in the bill, with the remainder funded by closing a series of yet to be identified tax loopholes.

The plan is "a lifeboat to keep rural communities afloat," said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and cosponsor of the amendment.

The plan provides $2.8 billion to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act through 2011 as well as $1.9 billion for the Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program, which provides money to state and local governments for loss of tax revenues from federal lands in their state.

The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act, passed in 2000 with broad bipartisan support, guaranteed payments to eligible rural counties for public education and transportation projects.

The law was enacted because of declining timber sales on federal lands - the affected counties had historically received 25-50 percent of timber receipts from U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands.

"This is not some kind of welfare program. These are not handout payments," Wyden told colleagues. "This is part of a 100 year deal that came about when the federal forest system was created."

Money from the program has been used to support more than 4,400 schools, help maintain road systems and fund law enforcement in rural counties, but it expired in September 2006.

...

The Senate must reconcile the plan with the House of Representatives, which only included a one-year $400 million extension to the county payments program in its version of the emergency war spending bill. And President Bush has vowed to veto the spending package, largely due to objections over a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said finding a long-term solution to the problem of rural county payments is critical.

"Our counties should not have to rely on emergency funding year after year and be faced with such uncertainty," Feinstein said. "We must provide our rural counties with a stable funding stream so that they are not in the same dire situation next year and can plan for the future."

Land sales are by nature one-time events and so are completely inappropriate as a long-term funding source for anything.  And, of course, selling off this country's heritage for a short-term money source is grossly negligent stewardship of the public's property. 

After seeing Bush's public land sell-off die last year, even when the GOP still controlled Congress, I knew it would go nowhere this year, in a Democratic congress.  Now, it appears to be official.

Al Gore's climate crisis testimony to Congress today

At the science policy blog Prometheus, Kevin Vranes has an excellent rundown of Al Gore's congressional testimony today concerning actions we can take to address global warming, a.k.a. climate change, a.k.a. the climate crisis.

Notable excerpts:

The biggest bombshell was his second proposal: eliminate employment/payroll taxes and replace the revenue with a new carbon/pollution tax. This is the first time I've heard Mr. Gore specifically endorse a carbon tax, which automatically gives it new life in the policy debate. But more startling is the proposed revenue offset by eliminating payroll taxes.

...

As the hearing went on I started to focus more on the R's than the D's and I finally realized why: the D's have been on board for a while, but up to this point the R's have been stalling. They aren't any longer, and almost to a person the R's made loud and positive noises about accepting the science and wanting to do something about it. So I started wanting to hear the next R, to hear how he (no female R's on EPW right now) was positioning himself on climate change, knowing that the R's are playing catch up.

...

Sen. Lieberman (I-CT) made a point I've been pushing for a while: that we are already passed the political tipping point for movement on climate change. I think if you consider the rhetoric and tone of the debate both among the elected and in the press, we are passed a tipping point on moving on climate change. Lieberman made the point that we better get past that political tipping point before we hit the climatological tipping point, which I suppose is a reference to a sudden Atlantic meridional overturning shutdown (few believe this is an immediate threat). Gore, however, disagreed that we've reached a political tipping point. But if we are not yet passed a tipping point, that implies that we could still slide back down, forget about all this and do nothing on climate change. I don't think that's going to happen; I think action is inevitable.

Here is video of Gore's opening statements (found on YouTube via the blog She Flies With Her Own Wings).

Ciro Rodriguez open house in San Antonio tomorrow, March 3

Walker Report informs us that our new congressman, Ciro Rodriguez, is having an open house at his new office on the southwest side of San Antonio tomorrow, Saturday, March 3.

Congressman Ciro Rodriguez invites you to visit with him during his District 23, Open House Event

March 3rd
9- 11 a.m.

1950 SW Military Drive
(210) 922-1874

At the Open House you can…

• Address your concerns directly to the Congressman and other elected officials
• Learn about the Congressman’s legislative agenda and recent actions
• Learn about our Constituent Services

Meanwhile, I think it would be nice if Rep. Rodriguez's staff in D.C. would post this kind of event notice on the congressman's official website, so we all wouldn't have to hear second, or third, or fourth, hand--and on such short notice.  Alas, two months into the new Congress, the web site is still the same generic template that has been up since day one.  It's past time for Ciro and staff to enter the information age! 

If anyone reading this can attend the open house tomorrow, perhaps you can share this concern with the congressman.  Thanks in advance, whoever you may be.

Bush trying again to sell off public lands

Amazingly, after getting thoroughly dumped on when they tried this last year, the Bush administration is once again proposing to sell off substantial amounts of our nation's public lands.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune yesterday:

For the second year in a row, the Bush administration has proposed selling off as much as 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools and roads.

And for the second year, Western lawmakers and environmentalists blasted the plan, saying short-term gains would be offset by the permanent loss of the land.

Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., the new chairman of an Appropriations subcommittee that oversees environmental spending, pronounced the plan dead on arrival. “They are just not going to do this. It's not going to happen,” Dicks said Monday.

“We're going to find a way to fund the (rural) schools program without selling even one acre of public land,” added Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called the plan a “betrayal,” and said he would “work around the clock ... to convince Congress to act honorably and fulfill the federal obligation to our rural counties.”

Once again, former timber lobbyist, Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, is serving as Bush's point man on this plan. Once again, he is lying by claiming that no one has come up with a better idea to fund the rural schools in question.

For some background on last year's proposal, which faded away after receiving essentially no support amongst either the public or Congress, see these old posts of mine:

• New public lands sell-off proposed by GOP: Feb 11, 2006
• The trumped up rationale to privatize public land: Feb 12, 2006
• Point man on Bush's public lands sale beholden to real estate developer: Feb 13, 2006
• Some details on the Bush public land sale emerge: Feb 20, 2006
• GOP Senator vows to kill Bush's public land sell-off: Feb 21, 2006
• Montanans take their public land seriously: Feb 25, 2006
• Ultimate goal of privatizing public lands: Mar 2, 2006
• More opposition to Bush's "sneaker" public lands sale: Mar 22, 2006
• Bush's public land sale sputters along: Mar 30, 2006

Last year's sell-off, clearly on its last legs by the end of March, was officially put out of its misery over the summer. Now, Bush and Rey have brought it back from the dead with a few cosmetic changes.

The rhetoric is unchanged, however. Here is a quote from Mark Rey from the last post above, a post which outlined a specific alternative proposal from Senators Baucus and Wyden for funding rural schools "by withholding taxes from payments by the Federal government for goods and services delivered by public contractors at a rate of three percent of the payment amount" At that time, Rey said, "We're open to alternatives, but nary another alternative has emerged." I asked, rhetorically, "What will his tune be tomorrow?"

Over ten months later, his tune is precisely the same. The Durango Herald reports today: "Rey said he was open to hearing about other funding mechanisms for helping rural communities, but the plan's critics had offered none."

Fortunately, Democrats now control Congress, so we have real hope that an alternative along the lines of the one Baucus and Wyden proposed last year will actually emerge as legislation.

Iraq and the U.S. Senate

Democrats in the U.S. Senate, with the help of some Republicans, have been attempting to construct a non-binding 'sense of the Senate' resolution expressing opposition to the Bush/McCain path in Iraq. They need a supermajority of 60 votes in order to get it through an expected filibuster from the Rebublicans who still cling tightly to Bush's shoes.

In my opinion, the worth of a non-binding resolution would be to get such a strong majority, including a substantial number of Bush's own party, that Bush would be compelled to change his behavior. Given Bush's notorious partisanship and stubbornness, that requires getting something close to half of Republicans on board, and likely would require more than half.

Perhaps sharing this view, Majority Leader Harry Reid, GOP Senator Chuck Hagel and others opposing Bush's new tactics dropped their original, strongly worded resolution and latched onto a watered-down one, sponsored by John Warner (R-Virginia) and Carl Levin (D-Michigan).

Reading the text, I am disappointed in the Warner-Levin resolution. It does not read as an unequivocal disapproval of Bush's plans. A key section says, "The recommendations in this Act should not be interpreted as precipitating any immediate reduction in, or withdrawal of,, the present level of forces." I do not see how Bush would feel compelled to change course even if the Senate approved it unanimously.

As Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) has stated, Warner-Levin appears to endorse the status quo, and that is completely unacceptable.

Feingold goes on the say:

Some have argued that any legislative vehicle that could be spun as a rejection of the President’s policies would be worth supporting. I understand that strategy, and it may sound good to some. But when all the spinning is done, what we are left with is the actual text of the legislation, which is an endorsement of the open-ended commitment of the U.S. military in Iraq.

I have to agree. If Warner-Levin is what it takes to get more than a few members of the GOP on board, then let them stay in the water.

Democrats and the few like-minded Republicans should revert to the original resolution, which will then presumably fail due to a GOP filibuster. Then they should move on to consider binding actions that may be able to have some impact on reining in Bush's destructive actions.

A day to celebrate -- before we get down to work

Today was a historic day as Nancy Pelosi was elected the first female Speaker of the House in our nation's entire history.  From the Washington Post:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was sworn in today as the first female speaker of the House in U.S. history, as Democrats formally took control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years and immediately set their sights on quick passage of ethics legislation.

Pelosi, 66, took the oath of office at 2:30 p.m. EST after winning election as speaker in a straight party-line vote that reflected the Democrats' 233-202 House majority in the new 110th Congress. Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) became House minority leader.

Before taking the oath from Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the longest-serving House member, Pelosi pledged in a speech to work in bipartisan fashion toward ending the war in Iraq, reining in deficit spending and raising ethical standards among lawmakers, among other goals.

Hailing her election to the speakership as a "historic moment for the women of America," Pelosi declared, "For our daughters and granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling. . . . Now the sky is the limit. Anything is possible."

As former House Majority leader, now Minority Leader, Republican John Boehner said in introducing Pelosi, "Today is a cause for celebration."

But while we celebrate, let's not forget that, despite the lofty rhetoric, chronic problems remain -- the sky is not yet the limit.  And if anything is to be possible for our daughters and graddaughters, we still have a lot of work to do.