Jonathan Kantrowitz

Step 1. Get some balls:

Step 2. Use the reconciliation process!

By large majorities the public wants a public option, and a requirement that everyone have health insurance, according to this report in the Washington Post:

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health-care plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and wins clear majority support from the public…

But sizable majorities back two key and controversial provisions: both the so-called public option and a new mandate that would require all Americans to carry health insurance.

Independents and senior citizens, two groups crucial to the debate, have warmed to the idea of a public option, and are particularly supportive if it would be administered by the states and limited to those without access to affordable private coverage….

57 percent of all Americans now favor a public insurance option, while 40 percent oppose it.

Fifty-six percent of those polled back a provision mandating that all Americans buy insurance, either through their employers or on their own or through Medicare or Medicaid. That number rises to 71 percent if the government were to provide subsidies for many lower-income Americans to help them buy coverage. With those qualifiers, a majority of Republicans say they support the mandate.

Yet Republicans in the Senate and Joe Lieberman, remain adamant in their opposition to these provisions. Maybe that’s why, when asked in the same poll, “who do you trust to make the right decisions for the country’s future” only 19% of Americans said Republicans in Congress.

A report released by the Death Penalty Information Center concludes that states are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on the death penalty, draining state budgets during the economic crisis and diverting funds from more effective anti-violence programs. A nationwide poll of police chiefs conducted by RT Strategies, released with the report, found that they ranked the death penalty last among their priorities for crime-fighting, do not believe the death penalty deters murder, and rate it as the least efficient use of limited taxpayer dollars.

Read “Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis.”

“The death penalty is a colossal waste of money that would be better spent putting more cops on the street. New Jersey threw away $250 million on the death penalty over 25 years with nothing to show for it. The death penalty isn’t a deterrent whatsoever. New Jersey’s murder rate has dropped since the state got rid of the death penalty. If other states abolished the death penalty, law enforcement wouldn’t miss it and the cost savings could be used on more effective crime-fighting programs,” said Police Chief James Abbott of West Orange, New Jersey. Abbott, a Republican, has served 29 years on the police force and was a member of the state commission that recommended the death penalty be abolished.

Key findings from the poll of police chiefs include:

The death penalty was ranked last when the police chiefs were asked to name one area as “most important for reducing violent crime,” with only one percent listing it as the best way to reduce violence. The death penalty came in behind more police officers; reducing drug abuse; better economy and more jobs; longer prison sentences; and technological innovations such as improved laboratories and crime databases.

The police chiefs ranked the death penalty as the least efficient use of taxpayers’ money. They rated expanded training and more equipment for police officers; hiring more police officers; community policing; more programs to control drug and alcohol abuse; and neighborhood watch programs as more efficient uses of taxpayers’ dollars.

Almost 6 in 10 police chiefs (57%) agreed that the death penalty does little to prevent violent crimes because perpetrators rarely consider the consequences when engaged in violence. Although the police chiefs did not oppose the death penalty in principle, less than half (47%) would support it if a sentence of life without parole with mandatory restitution to the victim’s family were available.

“We need to stop wasting money on a broken death penalty and instead spend our limited resources on solving more homicides. My brother’s murder has remained unsolved for more than six years. The death penalty won’t bring my brother back or help to apprehend his murderer. We need to start investing in programs that will actually improve public safety and get more killers off the streets,” said Judy Kerr of Albany, California.

The extra costs of the death penalty, beyond life sentences, are often $10 million per year per state. If a state spent that $10 million on hiring new police officers (or teachers) at $40,000 per year, it could afford to hire 250 additional workers.

California spends $137 million per year on the death penalty and has not had an execution in almost four years, even as the state pays its employees in IOUs and releases inmates early to address overcrowding and budget shortfalls. In Florida, where the courts have lost 10 percent of their funding, the state spends $51 million dollars per year on the death penalty or $24 million for each execution.

Executions themselves are not expensive; it is the pursuit of the death penalty that carries a high price tag. The higher costs of the death penalty process — including the costs of higher security on death row — are unavoidable and likely to increase in light of all the mistakes that have been made in capital cases.

In 2009, 11 state legislatures (Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Texas and Washington) considered abolition bills. New Mexico abolished the death penalty and Maryland narrowed its application with costs as an issue in both states.

Both houses of the Connecticut legislature voted to end the death penalty and one house of the Montana and Colorado legislatures (where cost savings were to be allocated to solving cold cases) passed abolition bills. The trend of states reexamining the death penalty in light of the economic crisis is expected to continue.

“I saw no signs that were offensive.”

According to Stanford Business School Research

There’s good news for supporters of the Waxman-Markey climate bill from Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Stefan Reichelstein. Although passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June 2009, the bill is expected to spur a contentious debate in the Senate starting this fall. Opponents argue that the bill’s proposed “cap-and-trade” system will take a high financial toll on energy consumers and companies alike, and devastate the economy at a time the country can least afford it.

According to research reported in StanfordKnowledgebase, Reichelstein and doctoral student Ozge Islegen believe they have evidence to the contrary. Reichelstein and Islegen have examined the financial impact of regulating coal-fired power plants that produce carbon dioxide emissions under a cap-and-trade system and found the financial burden to be much less than previously projected.

“We were very pleasantly surprised with the results, especially in light of previous cost estimates,” said Reichelstein, Stanford Business School’s William R. Timken Professor of Accounting, who said that everyone agrees there will be a price associated with regulating carbon emissions. “But after several dire scenarios reported in the popular press, we became interested in measuring and quantifying exactly what that cost would be.”

They focused on three key questions. First, at what price for emission permits would fossil fuel power plants, in particular coal-based plants, invest in the new clean carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies rather than buy such permits on the open market? “If the world wants sizable reductions – say cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent over the next 40 years – how high would the price of the emissions permits need to go before electric power producers and distributors would have a financial incentive to implement the new clean CCS technologies?,” asked Reichelstein.

Second, will CCS technologies actually keep the market price of such emission permits reasonable? “In terms of carbon dioxide emissions, several sectors in the economy – for instance the whole transportation sector – could achieve sizeable reductions. How big a role CCS could play in keeping the market price of emission permits say under $60 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, was something we very much wanted to investigate,” said Reichelstein.

And finally, how far are electricity prices likely to rise in the case where two scenarios are both fulfilled: (1) if power generators are required to obtain emission permits; and (2) if CCS technology is available on the terms currently projected by engineering cost studies?

This last point is an important one. Although CCS technology has been documented in a number of pilot projects, it has yet to be proven for large commercial installations. FutureGen, an Illinois-based partnership of private firms and the U.S. government, is attempting to certify CCS technology for a commercial-sized coal-fueled power plant. If this is possible, then the cost savings possible by implementing CCS should scale well.

The implications for the environment are huge. In 2007, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions measured six gigatons. Roughly half of this came from fossil fuel plants, with coal-fired plants alone emitting two gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions. “The current projection for CCS technology is that it would clean up the carbon emissions of fossil fuel plants by 85 percent,” said Reichelstein. “That would take us a long way toward achieving the emission cut goals being mentioned in current public policy discussions.”

For coal-fired plants, Islegen and Reichelstein find that the break-even price for the adoption of CCS technology is just $25 to $30 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions. Once the price of emission permits moves beyond that range, operators of coal-fired power plants would find it advantageous to invest in CCS technology rather than buy emission permits. This finding stands in contrast to the conclusions of a widely quoted 2007 McKinsey & Co. study ["Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost?"] that predicted the price of permits would have to reach $50 per ton before power plants would convert to CCS.

The sheer magnitude of emissions from coal-fired power plants in the United States and other parts of the world, most notably China, implies that the CCS option could be a major force in keeping the market price of emission permits relatively low. In connection with the Waxman-Markey climate bill, there has been debate about the need for a “safety valve.” Such a provision would require the U.S. government to issue more permits if the price of existing permits reached a certain threshold – say $75 per ton. “Our calculations suggest that the CCS option may ensure that such safety valves would not be activated,” said Reichelstein.

Although the price of electricity for consumers could rise as much as 23 percent – not an insubstantial amount – it’s significantly less than others have projected. “We were actually quite surprised that the impact on electricity prices was that small,” said Reichelstein.

Furthermore, because of the way the energy industry is regulated in the United States, it could take many years before the full brunt of a cap-and-trade system would be felt. In most U.S. states, energy firms are reimbursed for their costs plus an agreed-upon return on their investment. Given that the basis for their costs is largely historical, consumer prices will go up much more slowly than in unregulated markets. “The higher costs would only be gradually phased in, and it would take 30 years for prices to rise to their new equilibrium levels,” said Reichelstein.

Yet there are many unknowns that enter into the picture. Because the current legislative situation is so uncertain, very few new power plants are being approved, either by regulatory commissions or investors. “People in the industry are quite reasonably wondering if they should invest in a project with a useful life of 40 to 50 years given the uncertainty of the regulatory situation, the potential costs of permits, and the viability of new technologies,” said Reichelstein. Some industry observers worry that this may lead to energy shortages, because the older plants are not only less efficient, but also they have a higher chance of shutting down for unscheduled maintenance.

Overall, Reichelstein concluded that “the economics of the CCS option for fossil fuel plant appears quite attractive.”

“Given the urgency of the problems created by burning fossil fuels, demonstration projects like the FutureGen project in Illinois are of crucial importance for informing the ongoing public policy discussions,” said Reichelstein.

Former Congressman Rob Simmons has had a change of heart when it comes to two important pieces of legislation that he backed when he was in Congress – Cap and Trade and the Employee Free Choice Act or “card check” as it is known. Simmons announced last Friday afternoon via a blog post that he has reversed his position on these issues.

“While Rob Simmons can spin this all he wants, he is in a primary battle and is desperate to get the support of real, principled Republicans. So Rob Simmons is more than happy to say whatever it takes to win an election regardless of what the facts are or what their records show,” said Caligiuri spokesperson Tiffany Romero Grossman.

Grossman continued, “Simmons has now proven he is a D.C. insider who says what he needs to back home in order to win elections, but placates special interests when in Washington. How else can you logically explain it? Simmons said himself it wasn’t until he was back in Connecticut as the state’s business advocate, talking to the people of Connecticut, when he supposedly had this change of heart. So who was he talking to in D.C. that shaped his original position? The liberal special interests? Connecticut voters should question why Simmons wasn’t home talking to people when he was in Congress – and what will he do if he gets there again?”

“After 6 years in Congress, Simmons is clearly a part of the problem not the solution. His latest epiphany on two key issues that clearly he hopes will fool real, principled Republicans is right out of the D.C. insider playbook. We need a new generation of leadership in Washington – leadership that puts the people first, and doesn’t need to flip flop their positions later to win another election.

Everyone has the right to change their mind on where they stand – but doing so years later, once confronted with a competitive primary, simply stinks of political pandering.

Given that Simmons was a part of the Republican Congress that clearly lost their way and spent us into oblivion, one has to wonder why he didn’t try to cover that up first,” said Grossman.

Don’t you just love it when Republicans fight among themselves?

Rob Simmons used to be a moderate:

I’m wondering who Rob Simmons is now. I know who he used to be. He’s the guy with the top ratings from the National Abortion Rights Action League. He’s the one who voted for stem-cell research. He’s been reasonably supportive of public education. He’s even got a 47 percent rating from the ACLU — about the same he got from the Christian Coalition. He voted with liberals about 50 percent of the time. I doubt Sam Caligiuri would ever assemble a record close to that.

All of this actually added to his old appeal in my view. At least he can say no to someone.

Why, even the chablis-sipping League of Conservation Voters, possibly the polar opposite of the Tea Party Express, once handed him a 73 percent rating. He once got a 0 percent rating from the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigrant Reform.

Now he has endorsed the Tea Bag movement, waving a tea bag around and carrying it along with his Constitution:

and now he has backed away from some more of his previous support of moderate positions:

I was wrong about two issues I supported in Congress – the Employee Free Choice Act (also known as “card check”) and “cap and trade.” After hearing more from the people who would be most affected by these bills, I became convinced they would cause more harm than good and I would oppose them in the Senate.

I learned of the enormous burden these two proposals would impose on job producers in the form of dramatically higher operating costs, and how those costs would be passed in turn onto workers and consumers. The net result will be an even weaker economy and fewer jobs.

This tacking to the hard-right may help him win the Republican nomination ( are there no moderate Republican voters left in Connecticut?) But it sure won’t help him win many non-affiliated voters in the general election.

There are hopeful signs that America’s leaders are beginning to realize the futility of our efforts there. The Christian Science Monitor offers this report:

Two of President Obama’s top advisers on Afghanistan – Sen. John Kerry and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel – said Sunday that the United States should not commit more troops to Afghanistan until Afghans sort through their political crisis.

The statements are further evidence that the Obama administration views the political situation in Afghanistan – and not the Taliban – as the primary threat to American success there.

“The mission is not defined exclusively by the military component,” said Senator Kerry on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

It will also depend upon the state of the Afghan government, he said: “What will the government of Afghanistan be able to deliver.”

What it must deliver, he and others say, is some minimum level of competence. Many Afghans join the Taliban – or at least accept it – because of the government’s near-total failure to uphold the rule of law or provide the most basic services, such as water and electricity.

Without a degree of competence from the Afghan government, no number of troops will ever be enough to make Afghans accept what they see as an incompetent government at best, or an illegitimate government at worst.

“The threat of failure of the Afghan government is empowering the Taliban to be able to recruit people because of frustration and distrust,” Kerry said.

Washington policymakers have become increasingly frustrated and distrustful of the Afghan government, too – hence the current White House strategy review.

The issue came to a head in August with allegations that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s virtually stole a presidential election through massive fraud. Kerry said “it would be intensely irresponsible for the president of the United States to commit more troops to the country” with the result of the election in doubt, said Kerry…